Money-in-the-Bank Ladder Match (Kofi Kingston VS CM Punk VS MVP VS Christian VS Finlay VS Shelton Benjamin VS Mark Henry VS Kane)
The Money-in-the-Bank briefcase means today what winning King of the Ring meant in the late 1990s. While not a guarantee of super-stardom, it’s a vote of confidence from the company and a promissory note of a main event program in the coming year. Assuming this to be the case, the only two competitors that I saw as logical choices for winning MitB this year were MVP or Christian, with my official prediction being MVP. I won’t waste time crabbing about the selections for the other participants in this match because, even though some of them were questionable, you have to put eight people in this match for it to be compelling and the more guys that get a WrestleMania payday the better.

MVP is on the cusp of breaking into that next level and Christian would benefit from some kind of catalyst to put him in the main event picture. CM Punk winning this match makes no sense. Consider CM Punk’s year since last WrestleMania. He won MitB at WrestleMania 24, he became World Champion & lost the title, became a Tag-Team Champion & lost the title, and became Intercontinental Champion & lost the tile. This type of booking suggests to me a star on the decline, not a star on the rise so it doesn’t make sense to me that you’d give MitB to a guy that’s so clearly being booked as in decline.

Storylines aside, this was an exciting match to watch. My feelings on the choice of winner aside, it was Kofi Kingston that stood out the most in this match. His spot where he climbed the collapsed ladder while Mark Henry was holding it and his other spot where he leapt through the frame of the ladder were both something I’d never seen before and were well-executed. The other players certainly did their part but Kofi’s moves were the most original. Although I’m not entirely enamoured with his character his performance was certainly something to take note of and makes me want to see more of him.

Kid Rock VS. The 25-Diva Battle Royal
I’ve always looked upon the musical interlude at WrestleMania as the washroom break so putting Kid Rock on after the first match made no sense to me but I don’t watch WrestleMania for the musical guest so, at the end of the day, I don’t really care where it appears on the card. That being said, to have the women participating in the battle royal that was to follow parade down to the ring during his last song with no introductions was the next in a long line of events that made no sense at WrestleMania 25. For weeks ahead of time the build-up for the Diva Battle Royal had been advertised as having “divas from the past and present” participating in the battle royal. I did not see one single “past diva” confirmed on the WWE website nor announced on WWE programming. The only hint of who would be there I got was hearing that Tammy “Sunny” Sitch would be there and I heard that on Live Audio Wrestling (an independent radio show) and they were just reporting something that they read on Sitch’s website. What is the point of bringing back talent for a one-night-only performance on a pay-per-view if you’re not going to advertise it ahead of time so that it will affect people’s buying decision??? I’m reminded of the dying days of WCW when they brought in James Brown as part of an angle with Ernest Miller as a surprise on a pay-per-view which ended up meaning absolutely nothing since not a single person tuned in to see if James Brown was going to show up because they didn’t know ahead of time!

Not advertising the divas from the past was bad enough but not even giving them proper entrances and parading them down en masse was even more baffling. Battle royals are pretty boring matches to watch, in general, because the sheer number of people in the ring makes it impossible to concentrate on any particular individual and, until the field is thinned to around six or so wrestlers, it’s too crowded for the participants to do anything other than punch or shove each other. The point of a battle royal on a show like WrestleMania is to give stars of name recognition but limited capacity an opportunity to make their entrance and get in and out of the ring quickly enough so that they don’t embarrass themselves. A great example of this done correctly was the Gimmick Battle Royal WrestleMania 17. It was a riot to see stars like Kamala and Hillbilly Jim come out and do a big-time entrance and then sit back and let a five-minute battle royal just take its course. Apparently Victoria, Molly Holly, Torrie Wilson, and Sunny all participated in this debacle but their appearances were of the blink-and-you-missed-it variety. This is a particular shame if any of them were counting on the appearance as PR to feed their independent bookings and if I were one of them I’d be pretty ticked off.

This, however, was not the worst of it as the battle royal featured Santino Marella in drag as your winner. For a comedy angle, having a male wrestler enter a female event in drag is fine for what it is but it was insulting to have all three announcers act as if they had no idea who this “mystery woman” was and put over the assertion that she was “Santina”, the female relative of Santino Marella. If WWE wants to have Marella to channel the spirit of Andy Kaufmann and have him wrestle women that’s one thing but if you expect anyone to believe that the announcers are fooled that it’s an actual woman then you better go a lot further and give him the full RuPaul treatment instead of turning him into a low-rent drag queen. This battle royal could have given fans a glimpse of some stars from the past and seeded a program between the newly arrived Gail Kim and the Beth Phoenix, the WWE’s most dominant female wrestler, but what it wound up being was a complete waste of time for a gag that wasn’t even funny.

Rey Mysterio VS. JBL
This match was as profound a waste of time as the Diva Battle Royal but at least it was shorter. Much like CM Punk, Rey Mysterio has backslid from being World Champion to vying for the Intercontinental Championship, a belt so de-valued in prestige that it plays second fiddle to a briefcase. Six days earlier these two faced each other in a singles match on Raw (i.e. for free) wherein Mysterio beat JBL clean with his finisher in five minutes. Why the hell would anyone be interested in even watching the same match six days later? I assumed that JBL would pull some trickery to win in an underhanded fashion but instead he stared at the lights for a second time, this time losing in under 30 seconds. Rey Mysterio is one of the WWE’s wrestlers that people will actually show up at an event to see so putting him in a squash match on the biggest show of the year makes no sense to me. It makes even less sense that they’d allow him to come out dressed like Doink after a three day meth-binge. I’ve never liked his PPV superhero costumes but this year’s just looked stupid. As a complete aside, Jim Ross made the remark along the lines of “Rey Mysterio is dressed like Heath Ledger’s Joker but his career is alive and well.” Did Ledger sleep with JR’s wife or something before he died? I laughed when JR said it but that was pretty cold-blooded and out of nowhere.

Matt Hardy VS Jeff Hardy
This was your basic jealous brother feud. I thought they’d end it and put Jeff over but they did the right thing by letting the heel win so the feud can continue. It’s too bad that the match didn’t have more time to build which was probably why it seemed more like a collection of high-spots than a match. Still, the finisher with Matt giving Jeff a twist of fate with his head wrapped in a chair was pretty innovative.

Undertaker VS Shawn Michaels
This was, by far and away, the best match on the card and the only one that felt like a big deal. These two really know how to build a match to a crescendo. Although I personally hate it when guys kick out of each other’s finishers Michaels did the job clean and looked strong doing it. The Undertaker’s “streak” is the only compelling thing left about that character. If it does end, it needs to be against somebody that it can truly elevate, not an established future-legend like Shawn Michaels.

Chris Jericho VS Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka, and Ricky Steamboat with Ric Flair
One month ago, this was the best-booked angle in professional wrestling. Even though the Mickey Rourke tie-in hit speed-bumps that were out of the WWE’s control the promos that were cut by Jericho, Piper, and Steamboat (best of his career, by the way) made this angle truly compelling and really let Jericho show why he’s so much better as a heel than as a face. Then the writing team got a hold of it and turned it into a confusing clusterfrick. So let me get this straight. Jericho is the heel but he’s facing three-on-one handicap odds? How is that heelish in any way?!? If he’d have lost, he lost to superior odds so it doesn’t make him look bad. If he wins the babyfaces look like bums and deserve no sympathy. I don’t get it. Piper is still one of the best promos in wrestling but he looked TERRIBLE in the ring. He could barely walk and the eight-inch vertical he achieved on his drop-kick was just plain sad. He did the best that could have been expected but he never should have been there in the first place. Snuka was even worse and looked like a tiger-striped version of Gypsy Joe, the octogenarian that New Jack beat the tar out of a few years back (check it out on YouTube). Steamboat, despite his 56 years, looked great and not only didn’t embarrass himself but actually put together a believable match. It would have made so much more sense to book him alone against Jericho, MAYBE with Piper or Flair in his corner. So regardless of how little the three-on-one made sense it got even kookier after the bell when Jericho started jaw-jacking in Mickey Rourke’s direction who was conveniently dragged out of the stadium’s bar for the duration of the match and wasn’t seen for the rest of the card. Rourke looked like he was bored to the point of falling asleep and had a stone-faced expression to Jericho’s taunts. Frank Shamrock was seated next to him, which was a little random and weird, but what I will say for Shamrock is that he at least “got it” and was egging Rourke on in a manner that fit a wrestling angle. Rourke then got up and took approximately 5 hours to climb into the ring and eventually grazed Jericho with a left hook that Jericho sold like he’d been hit by a cruise missile. Rourke’s involvement in this match took WAY too long and should have been limited to a quick poke in the chops due to Jericho taunting him from the floor at ringside during the match.

John Cena VS Edge VS Big Show
Three-way matches are always hard to pull off convincingly, particularly when it’s for a title, and even more so when one of the wrestlers is 7’ tall and over 400 pounds. I honestly think it’s far too late to book Big Show in anything other than mid-card comedy angles. He’s done so many jobs and looked so vulnerable that it’s practically impossible for him to be taken seriously as an unstoppable big man. They put the title on him back in 2000 and nobody took it seriously so putting him back in the title picture nine years and countless programs that made him look like a goofball later is too much of a suspension of disbelief to see him as a title contender. Edge is the best heel they have in the company and I can take or leave Cena but I’m sure the two of them could have put together a compelling singles match without Big Show gumming up the works. The build-up to this match was also idiotic and puerile and the moronic “winner gets Vicky Guerrero” stipulation was (thankfully) never even referenced.

As an aside, I don’t understand why so many people hate Cena to the extent that they do. Little boys think he’s cool and teenage girls think he’s “hawt,” therefore he sells a lot of tickets. Not the first to do so and won’t be the last. The only thing I don’t like about him is that he wrestles in jean shorts and sneakers and looks the furthest thing from a champion. I guess they’re going for the “every man” gimmick but that can be pulled off while still making Cena look different from the guy that operates the Tilt-A-Whirl at the local carnival. I will give the guy credit, though. When he won and was heading back to the dressing room with the belt he very intentionally sidled up to one of the marks wearing a “Cena Sucks” shirt and just sat there hamming it up while the mark had a conniption fit. That’s the mark of a guy that doesn’t take himself too seriously and I can respect that.

Randy Orton VS Triple H
This angle also went off the rails during the weeks leading up to it. It was truly confusing as to who was the face and who was the heel at times. However, you knew the two competitors would give their all and put on a decent match, which they did. The angle of Orton having a legitimate beef that Triple H screwed him over years ago but being deranged in the way he was “making things right” was a good idea and Orton did play the part to the hilt. Sometimes the best heels are people that are actually right in a moral sense but unlikable. However, the WWE refuses to make Triple H look “weak” under any circumstances and ruined anything that was compelling about this match on the Raw show six days earlier when the last visual fans had of these two before WrestleMania was Triple H sitting on Orton’s chest and punching him repeatedly in the head. When you have an angle that involves a face that’s desperate to get his hands on the heel you make the heel run way, sit in locked cars, sit behind bullet proof glass, have the face removed from the arena, issue restraining orders, drive around in a pope-mobile, communicate with the TV broadcast “via satellite from an undisclosed location,” and surround himself with body-guards so that he’s never touched! That, boys and girls, is called GETTING HEAT! Whoever it is that keeps making Triple H look strong in absolutely every situation is ruining any chance he has at ever being a successful babyface. To be a babyface you need SYMPATHY. Look at a guy like Hacksaw Jim Duggan in the 1980s. He looked like a hosed-down hobo, was ugly as sin, was cross-eyed & blind as a bat, and rivaled Ted Arcidi in terms of actual in-ring ability. Even with all that working against him, he was over like nobody’s business because he knew how to garner sympathy by actually looking vulnerable in the hands of whatever heel he was programmed with. If a babyface just walks around kicking the crap out of everyone he gets his hands on in a stand-up fight why would anyone feel any sympathy or emotional connection with him? People often accuse Hogan of always looking strong but that could not be further from the truth. True, he never lost an actual match in a zillion years but his harshest critics seem to forget everything that went on in between all the matches when Hogan would have seizures and take a pounding from the heels over and over and over again. For whatever reason, Triple H has to be booked like Superman and it’s because of that the building goes quiet when he wins as a face because there is absolutely no climax in any of his feuds. Triple H steam-rolled over Orton on WrestleMania Sunday just like he did on Raw less than a week earlier. Whoop-dee-doo. Just shave his head, change his name to Goldberg, and feed him the next one.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Triple H hater and I’m not someone you’ll hear saying that he only got where he is by marrying the boss’ daughter. If that is true, he’s the smartest wrestler in the world and more power to him for pulling it off. I have no idea whether it’s Triple H himself that insists on his being booked as invincible or if it comes from other sources. Wherever it comes from it’s ruining his character. Having a guy that’s invulnerable and that always gets the last laugh is BORING because it’s PREDICTABLE.

One critique I heard from a few places is that this match should not have gone last in favour of Michaels/Undertaker. This is a tough one to call but, at the end of the day, the main event of WrestleMania should be the world title match. If there is a match on the undercard that is more compelling than the world title match and people start leaving the arena when it’s over then the booker needs to ask himself why people don’t care the most about who the champion is.

Carlito & Primo VS Miz & Morrison?
It angers me to no end that this match was dropped from the card in favour of the parade of nonsense that was presented instead. Although the tag titles have become essentially meaningless in the past five or so years I saw a glimmer of hope when they announced and booked compellingly a unification of the Raw & Smackdown tag titles. Not only would this get rid of a completely redundant title (there are barely enough tag teams in WWE to warrant one tag title let alone two) it would also present one team as clearly dominant. Although the tag team titles won’t ever be your main event, it’s no accident that the times in history when wrestling revenue was the highest coincided with the times in history that the tag division was the strongest. To yank this match and present it as a dark match was an insult to the teams that participated. As much as it pains me to say it, they should just get rid of the tag titles if they’re not even viewed as important enough to be featured on the same card that a guy in drag wins an all-female battle royal.

It’s 24 hours before Wrestlemania 24. The card is more-or-less finalized and it’s time for some predictions. This year’s card has a lot of “meh” matches on it for me so I’m only going to talk about the three matches that really matter in terms of why people are tuning in.

Ric Flair VS. Shawn Michaels
Everyone expects Flair to lose and ride off into the sunset. Just because that’s so predictable I’m going to go with Flair making Michaels tap out to the Figure-4. I think they’ll make Michaels look strong and maybe do something like have him give Flair the Sweet Chin Music and then have Flair bump the ref, low-blow Michaels while Michaels checks on the ref, have Flair put on the Figure-4, and Michaels taps out. Michaels is at a point in his career where he wouldn’t look bad at all losing to Flair and beating Flair doesn’t elevate Michaels because Michaels has nothing left to prove. I’ll speak more on why this makes sense later.

Undertaker VS. Edge
This match should go on last as the main event. Undertaker’s Wrestlemania undefeated streak is one of the few traditions left in pro wrestling that means anything. It hasn’t been duplicated and it’s one thing that, if maintained, nobody can take away from Undertaker. As a heel, Edge doesn’t need the title to get over. Maybe it won’t be 100% clean but I predict the parting shot for Wrestlemania to be Undertaker hoisting the belt with his eyes rolled back in his head.

Randy Orton VS. HHH VS. John Cena
I wish there were a way for all three men to lose this match. I don’t hate any of these three… I just think the three have faced one another enough that one more outing doesn’t mean much. I think HHH will wind up beating Orton so that he can face Cena one-on-one at a later date.

Now... getting back to Flair VS. Michaels. Here’s how I see it playing out. Flair beats Michaels at Wrestlemania and walks teary-eyed back to the dressing room having saved his career. Monday night on Raw, HHH will go to the ring to put over his title win. Cue Ric Flair’s music. Ric Flair comes out to the stage and puts over HHH’s win but then says that he wants to become a five-billion time champion and challenges him to a title match at Backlash. The next week on Raw the two men meet in the ring. HHH agrees to the face-on-face title match at Backlash to great applause. Flair then starts strutting and HHH waffles him from behind and turns heel. Then you’ve got a month of build-up for a HHH/Flair title match and then HHH beats Flair compelling him to retire.

Given how buddy-buddy Flair and HHH are I was totally surprised that Flair’s final Wrestlemania match didn’t wind up being against HHH. This way Flair can have one more big win on wrestling’s “grandest stage” and put over his friend HHH on his way out the door.