(If you just want the results of WrestleMania Saturday and have somehow not found them out yet, scroll to the bottom)
Welcome to the second and probably final article that I will be writing this weekend about my fantabulous trip to the desert.
Saturday kicked off with me skipping two miles from my hotel to the Las Vegas Convention Center for THE WWE WORLD, which is what they replaced Axxess with. Now if you’ve ever been to Axxess, it is remarkably similar, however they’ve modified it to where it now resembles Comic Con, as opposed to before when it was heavier on the WWE memorabilia and the meet and greets. They still have enough of that now, but they have now added panels, including one hosted by Sean Mooney talking about Becoming A Spectacle and a special live recording of the Steph McMahon podcast that she started with her friend.
Now I would be remiss if I didn’t note that I was there as an invited member of the media to tour the Topps “Feel The Pop” display. Before you get jealous, it just means I got to skip the line. With that said, the Feel The Pop display was full of some tremendous memorabilia, including Alexa Bliss’ Lilly The Doll and the actual, legitimate, original Million Dollar Title belt. Unfortunately everyone was on guard, so I could not deposit it in my clear bag and somehow sneak out with it. Nor could I really angle my camera and take a picture of the back of it to see the three real diamonds that are on there. (The story was Vince had 3 real diamonds put on the inside of the belt so if anyone asked DiBiase if the diamonds on the belt were real, he could say yes). From there we were taken to a small room with a pre-recorded video of Big E essentially welcoming us to the Topps and WWE Innovation Workshop. Following that we were brought into a dark room, which was lit up with a video of Jey Uso Yeet’ing before we left and were given a free pack of Topps trading cards. Overall, it was a fun experience and in my pack was CM Punk, Seth Rollins, Lyra Valkyria, Naomi and Andrade. Now it has been almost 30 years since I regularly bought trading cards, so it probably goes without saying that they have changed. However, I will say these are high quality and the art is a lot more vibrant than they used to be. I don’t know if this is a legitimate representation of what the cards will be, but the back of the cards is just their name, as opposed to stats. Overall, I would still call it a fun experience and it took approximately five minutes.
After that, I got to meet Andrade and hold in my sarcastic desires to ask if he regrets leaving AEW, walk through a Triple H display that was mostly full of his gear and robes over the year. It also had his 1997 King of the Ring crown and the tights he wore at WrestleMania XIX. Yes, of all the WrestleMania’s to display his tights from, he chose the one with the racist storyline where he said “people like Booker T” didn’t win World Titles. I got to sit at a booth and call 30 seconds of the Shawn Michaels-Steve Austin WrestleMania XIV match and sign a wall where everyone got to write a note to John Cena. I finished things up by watching the Steph McMahon podcast, mostly as an excuse to sit down for an hour.
From there I jumped on the WrestleCon shuttle to Allegiant Stadium and this is where the sole negative moment of the weekend occurred. I had purchased the WWE Priority Pass, which entitles you to a few things, including a dedicated VIP entrance into the stadium. I purchased a similar ticket last year and had zero issues. I pretty much walked up and right into the stadium. This year, however, they had sold an estimated 5,000-10,000 VIP tickets and only had one gate to let people in. On top of that, the gates were opened late, meaning there was less than an hour to go before the show and the majority of us still hadn’t gotten into the stadium. From what I can tell, everyone at least got into the stadium around the start, but a lot of people, including the two sitting next to me, missed most of the opener due to how long it took them to get to their seats. When in line, I asked security about this and was told this was the fault of either WWE or the stadium itself for opening the gates late. He went on to say that “if they opened the gates on time, we wouldn’t be in this mess”. An email to the WWE press team asking for a quote went unanswered.
WrestleMania itself was fun. The opener was great, the main event was great and the middle of the card was good enough, with El Grande Americano vs Rey Fenix being especially good. I should also note that I am aware he is a dick who got fired and sucked at MMA, but as a CM Punk fan for 20 years, his entrance for his Mania main event match made me cry. So from here, I will wrap things up and get ready for Night 2 of WrestleMania where, spoiler alert, Cody Rhodes will pin John Cena to retain the title.
Good night from Las Vegas.
WrestleMania Saturday results
Main Event Jey Uso submitted Gunther to win the World Title
New Day defeated War Raiders to win the World Tag Team Titles
Jade Cargill pinned Naomi
Jacob Fatu beat LA Knight to win the US Title
El Grande Americano pinned Rey Fenix
Tiffany Stratton pinned Charlotte Flair to retain the WWE Women’s Title
Seth Rollins defeated Roman Reigns and CM Punk
