Wrestlemania XXVII: Can you smell what the Rock was cookin'?

The Miz (c) v. John Cena (Elimination Chamber winner)

CM Punk v. Randy Orton

Alberto Del Rio (Rumble winner) v. Edge (c)

Rey Mysterio Jr. v. Cody Rhodes

Undertaker v. Triple H

Money In The Bank

rumours saying Big Show and Diesel v. The Corre

Jerry Lawler v. Michael Cole (w/ Jack Swagger) w/ Alex Riley as ref.

THE ROCK as Host. Dunno what that means other than lol cena.

Lawler always worth my time imo

It's wishful thinking, I know, but I'm not certain that Rock vs Cena won't happen. They're trying to make it look like there won't be a match (even though everybody wants to see them have a match), but they did the same thing last year with Shawn vs Taker. Finally they were both like "screw winning back the title, I'm fighting you instead" and it fit right into the storyline. The same thing can happen this year.

IOW, I don't understand the point of building up Cena vs Rock if they don't have any intention of making it happen (I know that Rock keeps saying that he's retired and has wrestled his last match).

Actually considering ponying up for the ppv this year, it's been a while since the lineup looked any good....the Lawler match promises to be a goodun....and the promise of Rock/Cena is too good to pass up.

(hi, guess who has been lurking, lol)

wow i wanna see michael cole wrestle!!!!!!!!!!111

imagine the rock will just turn up, do a rock bottom and people's elbow, and then leave, as always?

can I just say wtf @ The Miz going from being on The Real World telling everyone about how he wanted to be a WWE champion to him ACTUALLY BECOMING a WWE champion

like seriously, wtf

JBL is back :DDDDDDDDD Someone gonna get clothelined from heeeellllll. Hopefully through Faarooq in there sometime too, just to make me mark out.

Such a shame Sting v. Taker will never happen. His TNA contract has him with no time to debut for next year and I don't suppose they will make it to WM29.

I presume MITB will be Morrison, Kofi, Bryan, McIntyre, Kane, Evan Bourne, R-Truth and one of Mark Henry, Big Show, Santino, Kozlov, The Corre, New Nexus, Sheamus has nothing on.

ok stone colds return was about as perfect as could be. raw is essential atm.

I know right? How good? The takedown on JBL, pouring the beers all over Cole...it's like the Rattlesnake never left.

Hopefully all this Miz business ultimatley leads to him cutting in on The Rock v Cena and then getting creamed by The Rock. Or by the Rock and Cena.

So far every week of Raw I've been like :D!!!!!

i like that they are playing on the fact that no-one cares about the miz. however, they aren't making anyone care with just making him beat up cena every week. they are just making cena look shit.

yeah I know I'm not quite sure what the angle is there

JR saying there might not be a money in the bank, which sucks. MITB has p much been the best thiing about mania in the past five years while the gimmick ppvs annoy the shit out of me.

They need to make Rock vs Cena happen and stick Miz with someone else for Mania. Miz can get months of mileage of saying that Cena ducked out of their match because he was afraid of facing Miz, which can lead to a big money match somewhere down the line when people will actually care about this feud.

JR reappearance was pretty great.

Brian Christopher is just...god he is a walking facepalm. He looks like Guy Fieri!! And lol that he was completely out of breath for his whole speech.

coke'll do that to a fella

lol yeah, he should change his wreslting name to Hookers N Blow

I saw the Rock's movie Faster last night.. dude seems significantly more huge in the movie than he has in the ring in the pre-Mania run up..

Such a shame Morrison is being wasted on some Jersey Shore bullshit. Hope it is just a set-up to have Awesome Kong come in and fuck everyones shit up.

I watched the "True Story of Wrestlemania" DVD ... it's a bit of a puff piece, and I was hoping for more along the lines of seeing how the sausage is made rather than a history of all the biggest moments and matches. But it's still pretty good.

The Legends of Wrestling roundtable about it is much better for the sausage is made effect. And how WCW paid for it lols.

WrestleZone has learned exclusively the announce team, as of this evening, for Wrestlemania 27 will be Josh Matthews and Booker T, with WWE Chairman Vince McMahon's plan to have Jim Ross as the special announcer for the Lawler vs Cole, WWE Title, and Undertaker vs HHH main event as well.

"Everything may change 100 times between now and Wrestlemania," a key WWE insider told us this evening, "but right now Vince likes the idea of JR calling the main event and also he likes Josh Matthews and Booker getting the chance to step up and call the show."

Will be so happy with Booker T as commentator, with JR!

I think everyone is starting to believe that Rock will help Cena lose, making Rock v. Cena at SummerSlam happen.

Yay! JR <3

I'm glad there's only one more Raw til Wrestlemania...I'm kind of over the buildup now

yeah i haven't even bothered watching the last two and instead just caught recaps and skipped through to the best bits. cena is sooooo dull, only to be outdone by randy as a babyface.

Will watch on Monday for The Rock appearance in Chicago, but no doubt will be fast-forwarding through most of it.

http://i55.tinypic.com/6hrtbk.jpg

this was a good raw. shawn michaels! the rock! lawler going chairshot crazy! cm punk and del rio doing their ting!

Was mad that they had Rock taking a shot from Cena in their first go round but it'll make for an exciting WM. Loved the Shawn Michaels!

it was fine because it was a sneak attack. if it was face to face it would have been stupid.

Yeah I guess (kicks dirt)

That was a great go-home show for Mania, their best in ages IMO. They *need* to pay The Rock the $10M or whatever it'll cost to do the match vs Cena for next year's Mania. Miz has been amazing in this feud (especially considering the degree of difficulty of holding his own next to Rock-Cena) but Rock vs Cena is still the match that people really want to see.

Hacksaw Jim Duggan put a bowtie on his 2x4

edsbs edsbs
According to @JasonKirkSBN, last night at the HOF speech Hacksaw went on a long rant about terrorists while wielding his 2x4. #AMERICA

also i need video of stone cold riding in on an ATV

lawler has to call out the raw gm tomorrow... right?

holy shit @ Triple H & Undertaker

Can't believe they screwed up Lawler vs Cole! It was way too long, and what was the deal with the screwjob finish?

HHH vs Taker really suffered from trying to be too much like Shawn vs Taker I, but I really got into it at the end.

Cena's entrance was insane!

Atlanta hates both these guys, this could get interesting.

What a disaster

that ended pretty stupidly

and lol @ dead silence for Miz/Cena

Boy watching Taker was depressing. He has to retire, right? That dude looked in pain walking down to the ring. Surprised HBK didn't get involved - could have lightened the load a bit.

End was pretty shitty although at least it wasn't Wrestlemania 9'd. Pissed off about Sheamus/Bryan Danielson not making the card - that dude doesn't do bad matches.

Snooki was surprisingly athletic.

Best match of the night was Rey v. Cody. Don't see why everything had to feel so rushed. Or why MITB had to be sacrificied for an 8 man tag match when the likes of McIntrye and Kofi and Evan Bourne and Justin Gabriel could have been FUCKING AWESOME from ladders.

Pissed that they ruined the Del Rio angle just to make sure they had 1 face champion while the Miz was made a bitch by some retired fella (I know but still...).

Preferably want Cena v. Taker or The Rock at WM28, just so we don't have to see him as champion for another year - with a slow build up as Morrison as babyface v. Miz.

Also yeah wtf @ the Lawler/Cole match.

A WM9 ending would have been better that the ending we got. I don't think you can overbook a WM main event any worse than this. Everybody knew that the Rock was getting involved somehow, so the crowd was dead for the entire match and the match was so bad that by the time he did show up, nobody cared. The crowd couldn't even be bothered to boo the double count out finish. Why didn't they just have Rock cost Cena the match, without the restart? And if this was the ending they wanted, then what was the point of making Miz look like crap? Just book Rock vs Cena.

Rey vs Cody and Punk vs Orton were good and both got plenty of time -- I was worried that they'd get stiffed on time like Rey vs Punk last year. As far as match quality goes, they should have bumped the 8-man tag to the pre-show and had Sheamus vs Bryan in its place, but I guess they didn't want to screw so many guys out of a WM payoff. I think this was slated to go 7-8 minutes but they had to shorten it because they knew the show was running long.

yeah. it would have been so simple to make this a ridiculously satisfying wm as well, i can't believe they fucked it up so badly.

On the plus side, the stadium looked great, I loved the video cube over the ring and the huge video display by the entranceway.

It really boggles the mind how they could work miracles by booking Michael Cole FFS into a months-long feud that culminates in a WM match that people actually wanted to see, and then fuck up the payoff so badly.

Yeah the set design was SWEET, esp. for the early matches. Shame they then gave up using it for inflatables and stupid shit for Miz/Triple H coming out as Skeletor etc.

wtf was up with that Cena intro...holy shit that was WAY ott

personally the Triple H / Undertaker match was the biggest highlight for me, they sold the hell out of that thing. Sure they're old and it damn near killed the Undertaker lol but the hits they were taking, those falls... good rasslin

first time they've had a chair shot to the head in years - guess we are now entering the post- post-benoit stage.

http://ichlugebullets.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/wrestlemania-xxvii-quasi-liveblog-a-day-late/

I watched WM at a friend's house with 2 other guys, and we all agreed that it would have felt much much sadder and a much bigger waste of $$ if we had watched it alone. That said it was probably worth about half of the $$. That whole Snoop thing was O_o

this clip of HBK watching Undertaker/Triple H is pretty cool (I like the moment at the end between H and HBK)

http://www.prowrestling.net/artman/publish/WWE/article10017785.shtml

Dear god I would never give the McMahon family money. Especially when its so god damn easy to steal live sports coverage these days.

See also: Rupert fucking Murdoch and his cunty son who killed Rawkus records.

Dom was on fire with that WM review.

^^^

I had no idea Cody Rhodes was doing an Imaginary Deformed gimmick, and that they'd perceptively used that as an excuse to render his atrocious entrance music halfway bearable by slowing it down and taking the vocals out. Good match.

Not sure if HHH-Taker was an overbooked mess or a great schlocky horror movie starring old wrestlers. Did Triple H break his wrist near the start on the backdrop off the announce table? Too much Injury Respect Porn at the end maybe [unless he was really fucked up and I'm being disrespectful]

Miz-Cena stunk of Jericho vs HHH at WM18 from the start; not sure if Cena got injured but his Shawn Michaels brink-of-death selling four minutes into a match with a guy much smaller than him didn't seem to have much chance of reversing that, though it might have got reactions and been considered good in a different context and without the screwy finish

Think MITB might have turned that card into even more of an exhausting clusterfuck to be honest. Did anybody actually see Sheamus-Bryan from the undercard? Assume it would've been good but you can have too many 20 minute 1vs1 epics on a long show

My main concern for future developments out of all this is whether they can or will edit "Friday" so that it sounds like Rebecca Black is singing "Ry-derrr" and have that be Zack Ryder's entrance music for the rest of his career, regardless of how noteworthy his or Rebecca Black's careers come to be [sorry if this has already happened and that was the joke]

Edge-Del Rio, Rhodes-Mysterio, Orton-Punk + some overbooked violence inclines me to go thumbs up

Too much Injury Respect Porn at the end maybe [unless he was really fucked up and I'm being disrespectful]

Undertaker, I mean

YOU HAVE SET A RECORD THIS IS THE HIGHEST ATTENDANCE EVER FOR ANY ENTERTAINMENT EVENT EVER at the georgia dome

I dunno where I stand on that. Taker looked genuinely fucked and you could see them whispering to each other at a couple stages. Triple H def had to take control.

Zack Ryder is getting lots of internet coverage and seems to be working very hard for his gimmick - i'm kind of annoyed he couldn't have done more, maybe with Snooki.

I've been listening to the I Want Wrestling podcasts with people who worked on creative and they had the director of WM23 etc. on it and it is fascinating to listen to. I bet their judgment also coincides with everyone else in saying they fucked up big time. It's weird. You hear how they go through SOOOO many writers but many seem to understand they are fired for legit reasons. Hope the slate has been wiped clean after last night. Youth Movement needs total dedicated direction.

My WM28 dream card would... involve Sting walking away from the shit tip this summer with time to build up his and Taker's last match; Orton v. Cena ala Hogan v. Warrior at WM6; Miz v. Morrison as one of the few successful tag team break ups to work as a selling point since... holy shit Vince hates tag teams; Del Rio v. Sin Cara v. Rey; Awesome Kong v. Beth Phoenix as an actually dope womens match; Bryan v. Punk for internet marks and Kofi v. Evan Bourne v. Gabriel v. McIntyre v. Christian v. Rhodes v. Jericho in an IC/US title unification ladder match.

None of these matches will happen or happen properly.

The more I think about it, the more I think "face challenger who half your audience hates comes up against heel champion who half your audience considers the lesser of two evils; goes to shit double countout; biggest, most unturnable face of last two decades of pro-wrestling interferes in heelish way to help only mildly unpopular heel beat face then leaves the company again" is an underused finish

The Rock should win the title and immediately vacate it to make a movie, then come back at Summerslam as a sellout heel, immediately turn face because he's the Rock and win the title again; repeat until the Rock dies

lolz.

agree with dom on edge. in the past year he went from shitty face, to shitty heel, to turning on christian, to fighting with a laptop, to shitty face who took forever getting over shitty jobber kane to being bezzy mates with christian to breaking a window of a 'millionaire's' car. fucking hell he is so shit and fucking hell it was unsatisfying to see del rio sold short like that.

Sting would be what, 52, 53 by then? When it was being touted I just couldn't get my head round the idea that would work, or that WWE or most of their current fans would buy into him that much. I rescreened the sting vs ddp title match from nitro in 99 over the weekend though and that was still pretty great

(The flaw in my Rock plan is that he will become a Scientologist)

Well they both have to end their careers in the very near future. And 'most of the current fans' - would they be the same people who gave their best rating in years because a guy who hasn't shown up in nearly a decade went back on Raw?

can't really think of many non-Rock dudes who can do that though, and I dunno that '50 something in Crow paint who can't go any more will end the streak' is something they'd be confident hanging their hopes on regardless of the possible curiousity ratings spike

I like Sting though

The reversed finish and Cole not getting piledrivered into wearing a neck brace for the rest of his screen time with the company was a screwjob too far, by the way

JR IS ON RAAAAAAAW :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

fuck yeah!!!

xpost to ?...started listening to I Want Wrestling, interesting stuff - good tip!!

Cole came out in his lol wrestling gear and threw bbq sauce at JR, scaring him away. Was actually p lol

Watching Raw on a live American stream is a fascinating insight into how fucked up and fat and grotesque America is. Nothing like watching glorified body builders in between Snickers and Burger King adverts EVERYWHERE AND ALL THE TIME AS PRESENTED TO YOU BY ATTRACTIVE LADIES.

Hey guys Pizza Hut are offering you a tub of food for only 10 dollars.

Wrestlemania 27: A set up for Wrestlemania 28. Rock v. Cena is official. Good luck keeping up momentum for a year.

Al Snow is a trainer on Tough Enough :)

Nevermind. I can't read. ;_;

Al Snow was on the first one.

I still don't get why they didn't do Rock vs Cena this year, but I guess they can do some interesting stuff with a year to build the match. If/when Cena wins the title then Rock can screw him out of the title again, or screw other people out of the title so he can take it from Cena at Mania.

Dom's way OTT on Edge but face Edge is boring, it's true. He usually delivers in big matches but they're always in the good --> very good range. He almost never puts on great/classic/really memorable matches, which is sort of brutal for a guy in his position who's won the world title like ten times. Also, his matches are only as good as his opponents -- I literally can't think of a single guy who Edge elevated up to his level or rose up to main event status thanks to his feud with Edge.

I don't see why Rock v. Cena has to a FUCKING YEAR away but I guess Rock is so out of the loop in terms of remembering how to take bumps? And they don't actually have a proper story lined up?

Yeah that was the only reason I could come up with. Unless he has some other movie he's working on?
Seems like it could backfire on him though, people might get bored waiting? idk

They'd be dumb to do that match anytime other than WM, so it has to be next year. Maybe Rock didn't have enough time to get in shape to do it this year, or maybe they wanted to try something new and announce a match one year in advance. They already had a story -- Cena thinks Rock is a phony for walking away from wrestling when he got the chance, and Rock is all FU for talking shit about me while I've been away, let's fight. All the trash talk and making fun of each other's catchphrases is just icing on the cake.

I hope they keep it simple and won't ruin everything like they almost did with Rock vs Austin at WM X7, where Austin's wife was forced to manage the Rock and all that crap. Nobody cared about any of that, they just wanted to see the match.

So I guess Edge kept the belt so he could retire as champion? Glad to see a wrestler give it up before it gets awkward watching their slow descent towards death.

speech was kind of sad..must be hard to walk away so suddenly

But i guess he'd had numbness/twitching for a while now...still, hard to pull the plug so young when its all you really know

the millions in his bank account and spending half his career on the sidelines must have made it easier.

\O_o/

From his retirement speech, it sounds like they didn't know how bad it was at Mania. Maybe the plan was for him to lose the title at the PPV and take a couple of months off to rest.

No idea how bad his neck is compared to ticking time bombs like Kurt Angle, but like Edge said on TV, I'm glad he's getting out before he ends up in a wheelchair. Maybe he'll write another book now? His first book only covered his career through 2002.