So Wrestlemania 29 has come and gone, and the sports entertainment world has begun to lull back into its usual routine. The spectacle has largely diminished back to its subdued weekly complacency. This was never more evident than the night after Wrestlemania where the New Jersey crowd spent much of the three hours flaunting bizzare antics, from football chants to dancing to Fandango's theme song. WWE and the commentators attempted to play this off as a side-effect of the Wrestlemania hype and the palpable "excitement" in the air, but the truth of the matter is that the night after Wrestlemania was downright boring, save for a few interesting spots. There has been rampant debate that Raw was better than Wrestlemania, but I don't see how this could possibly be the case.
WWE pulled the old "bait and switch" with John Cena coming out to defend his newly won WWE title, and everyone expected a "real" challenger to emerge, but instead Mark Henry made his way to the ring, which, while impressive, did little to excite the fans. Then, to further frustrate the audience, Cena's open challenge was foiled Vickie Guerrero and changed to a #1 Contender's Match.
Meanwhile, Randy Orton and Sheamus fought to see who would get their hands on Big Show after the latter cost the two a victory over The Shield at Wrestlemania. The crowd proceeded to do the wave over the entire match. Once again, WWE chalked this up to an excited crowd, but the bottom line is that no one in that audience cared which of these individuals took at swing at Big Show, but now Big Show was out of the picture for the night.
WWE frustrated the crowd even further by not having Triple H or C.M. Punk present at the event. Instead, we were promised that Punk would have a response to his loss at the hands of The Undertaker next week, while Paul Heyman threw out yet another challenge to "The Game" on Brock Lesnar's behalf, this time for a Steel Cage Match at Extreme Rules. Is it just me, or is this official "challenge" formula getting old? I mean, isn't this the exact same storyline as every Triple H/Lesnar match since the two collided last year at Summerslam? Correct me if I'm wrong.
So after being grossly short-changed, the fans finally get some vindication when Dolph Ziggler finally cashed in his Money-in-the-Bank briefcase against a weathered Alberto Del Rio to become the new World Heavyweight Champion. This got the biggest reaction of the night.
Over the next several weeks, Raw and Smackdown have gotten better. Triple H showed up to accept Brock Lesnar's challenge for Extreme Rules, a speechless C.M. Punk has virtually disappeared from the WWE landscape, while "The Deadman" has returned to help Team Hell No fight The Shield (granted, to no avail).
It will be interesting to see what WWE does to freshen the product this year. I love to watch Dolph Ziggler and Chris Jericho tear down the house as much as the next guy, but we've seen that match a few times already, and the only new face on the scene has been Fandango, who WWE would like to think has "taken the world by storm", when in reality it was his theme song people are interested in, while the character himself is poorly developed and holds almost nobody's attention.
All that being said, I found Wrestlemnia 29 to be thoroughly enjoyable. It's always breathtaking to see the sheer breadth of the event, packing almost 80,000 fans into a single venue for an even that, like the Wrestlemanias that have come before, is larger-than-life.
The results of the matches were largely as expected. The one exception, of course, was the Tag Team Championship Match between Team Hell No and Ziggler and Langston, which of course, was simply a setup for Ziggler's eventual victory the following night.
The WWE shows some promise as the new year begins. If Lesnar sticks around after his feud with Triple H, he could provide some nice competition for some of the more established talent like Orton. C.M. Punk is most likely due for a hiatus, and it will be interesting to see when he comes back and what new angle he will be presenting. And of course, with The Undertaker embroiled in a feud now with The Shield, the countdown is on to how long he will be around before disappearing until Wrestlemania XXX.
And, just like Christmas, it's hard to finish one monumental event without wondering what next year will bring. Perhaps the most specualation surrounds The Undertaker. Are we seeing the final year of in-ring competition for "The Phenom"? Will Wrestlemania XXX be his swan song, and if so, who will be his final victim? Will Punk be looking for a rematch ala Shawn Michaels and Triple H?
However, perhaps even more interesting is the rumor of Wrestlemania XXX's main event. Some sources have suggested that we will see the long-sought after C.M. Punk vs. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin confrontation. While WWE hasn't mentioned this first-hand, they teased it quite heavily during their promostion of the WWE '13 video game, which allowed players to pit the stars of today against the legends of the "Attitude Era". Austin himself has claimed that he still has two or three good matches left in him, so the question is, will we see one (perhaps Austin's final) at Wrestlemania XXX against a man many claim is his modern-day counterpart?
We can speculate all we want. This is half the fun of being a WWE fan. But the bottom line is we still have a long way to go before we can even think about Wrestlemania again. So the real question is what will WWE do to keep us watching until it gets here?
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