WrestleMania 31 Thoughts

I dig wrestling and I greatly enjoyed watching the big show last night.  Here are my thoughts on a few of the biggest moments from WrestleMania 31:

Daniel Bryan wins the IC Title
Chris Jericho is my favorite wrestler, so I have a lot of love for this belt.  Putting it on Bryan was an obvious call, but it was the right call.  He'll do a lot with and for that championship, and he earned it in a match where there were some massive bumps.

John Cena defeats Rusev
Call me a prude (can you be a wrestling fan and a prude?) but it's hard for me to get behind fat guys who wrestle barefoot.  That doesn't do anything for me.  It's worse if the guy is billed as a Russian patriot and he's actually Bulgarian.  Like, dude has a tattoo of Bulgaria on his shoulder.  Rusev aside, I'm a fan of Cena and I liked seeing him getting the win and scoring the U.S. Championship.  Score one for the people who wear shoes.

The Divas Tag Match
Paige is awesome.  A.J. Lee is pretty damn cool.  The Bella Twins are okay.  Why wasn't the Divas title on the line at the big show?  I wish the WWE liked their Divas as much as their fans do.  This tag match was okay, but these ladies deserve more--especially Paige.  I like Paige.
I like Paige a lot. 

Sting finally made it to WrestleMania

Sting vs. HHH
I liked Sting when I was a kid.  I cooled down on him once he started aping the Crow, but it was still cool to see him wrestle in the WWE.  I have several friends who are crazy about this dude, and I kept joking that it would be really cool if HHH kicked him in the gut, hit him with a pedigree, and scored a victory in the first thirty seconds of the match.  It seemed like a safe enough joke because I knew the match would go long and there was no way that Sting would be booked to lose this one.  Well, what do you know?  The WWE stuck it to WCW once again and Sting lost by pinfall in an overbooked (but entertaining) match that saw a lot of old dudes get involved.  There was a cheap finish followed by a baffling show of respect that was supposed to make fans feel better about Sting losing, but it made no sense.

HHH: Great match, Sting.  I respect the hell out of you.

Sting:  Hell yeah, bro.  The feeling is mutual.  The way you had all your cronies come out to interfere in the match was awesome.  The NWO came out to help me because we were always bitter enemies, but you had one more dude in your corner than I did.  Then you hit me in the face with a sledgehammer to win the match.  I respect the hell out of that.

HHH: Let's shake on it.

Sting: Word. 

If there's a silver lining, maybe the fact that he took the L means we'll see more of Sting in the WWE.

Bray Wyatt vs. The Undertaker
I'm glad the Undertaker won this one and he looked pretty good.  A lot of people were worried that he would be on his last legs, but he appears to have some gas left in the tank.  Wyatt did a great job, but that's no surprise.  He cuts too many promos and he talks way too much, but he's damn good and it showed

The future is here.

Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar for the Heavyweight Championship
(Seth Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase in the closing minutes and stole the victory)
I wasn't as hyped for this match as I should have been because Reigns is still a work-in-progress, but it was actually one hell of a match.  Rollins showing up at the end was a nice move, and the last few minutes of this contest were flat out awesome.  The fact that Lesnar and Reigns killed it was probably overshadowed by Rollins walking away with the belt, but this was a top-notch main event that many were expecting to be rather lackluster.

All in all, it was a solid WrestleMania with some surprise developments and several quality matches.  I'll be curious to see the fallout on tonight's RAW.

The World's Smallest Jerichoholic

Yes, he's playing WWE '13

 My son Asher's love for wrestling is phenomenal.  The little guy isn't even 2 yet, and he's utterly fascinated by the WWE.  He'll settle for TNA, but RAW and Smackdown are definitely his favorite shows, and he's always up for a WWE Pay-Per-View.  The bizarre thing is that even though I'm pretty much a lifelong fan myself, I really didn't force it on him at all.  I figured we might get there one day, but Kris and I thought he would be into cartoons and such at this age, and while he does have a fondness for Spider-Man, nothing tickles his fancy like wrestling. 

The little guy is glued to the screen when it's on.  He claps.  He says "uh-oh" a lot, and he raises his arm triumphantly when someone he likes wins a match.  Incidentally, he picked up the raising his arm bit from a Steve Austin feature we watched on Netflix, so he celebrates a victory in Texas Rattlesnake fashion.  He doesn't understand why we can't fast-forward through the commercials (we like our DVR a lot) and he gets very frustrated, repeatedly grabbing the remote control and crying out for Jericho during each and every commercial break.  Ah, the cries for Jericho.  That might be the strangest part.

As a child, I started off with Hogan and Macho, and then in the late 80s and early 90s, I was all about Ric Flair.  Chris Jericho hit my radar in a big way when he went heel in WCW, and when he become a WWE superstar, he quickly became my favorite.  Has been ever since.  Yet I wasn't about to force Jericho on my kids (yes, even my girls, Alaina and Taryn, ages 7 and 5, are wrestling fans) and I thought it would be a little strange for my little fella to be rooting for a heel anyway--which Jericho was working as when my main man Ash started taking interest.  So, my wife and I got him a big stuffed Cena and basically pushed Cena and Sheamus on him.  I guess he could tell who the old man was pulling for, however, and he followed suit.

Asher frequently wakes us with his "Jericho" nonsense, and he will gladly club either of us in the face with a remote control while saying it just to make sure we get the hint.  He could watch Jericho 24/7, and I've lost count of how many times he has watched the Jericho set the WWE put out a few years ago.  Trust me, we're both eager for the next one.

Now, he's also saying Cena, Ryback, and Big Show these days, so he is branching out, but he remains the world's smallest Jerichoholic.  It's a little strange perhaps, and he's much better at picking up moves than adhering to the "don't do this for your own safety" warnings the WWE frequently dishes out, but it's also pretty adorable.  And the kids has taste.  Jericho's surprise return at the Royal Rumble took us all by surprise, and I don't know if I have ever seen the little guy so transfixed.  Not only that, but Jericho is doing some of his best work ever, and while most of his finest stretches came as a heel, he's killing it as a face these days. 

Who knows?  Maybe it's time to buy the little guy a stuffed Y2J . . .

Bonus:  In a strange coincidence, Chris Jericho has a son named Ash, which is what my wife and I call Asher.  Now, we didn't name our son after his son, but I think Chris and I are both fans of the Evil Dead franchise.  My wife isn't, and she didn't realize why I was so quick to agree when she suggested Asher as a name and noted we could call him "Ash" for short.