Kevin’s WWE WrestleMania 36 Night Two Review

WWE WrestleMania Night Two

April 5th, 2020 | WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida

Liv Morgan vs. Natalya

I don’t think this would’ve been on the card under normal circumstances. Maybe Liv/Ruby/Sarah. Anyway, Liv looked incredible here from a physical standpoint. In the ring, she also did her thing. She sold well and did a good job with making her pain come across to viewers. Being loud was a benefit here. She also showed off some pretty solid offense throughout. There’s something about Liv that just allows her to give off some serious star potential. I think she could be a top female star in the coming years. Her rope dropkick worked really well. She won after scoring three on a series of rollups after 6:24. Perfectly acceptable wrestling here. [**¼]

NXT Women’s Championship: Rhea Ripley [c] vs. Charlotte Flair

Quite for the choice for the opener. Lots of hype for this. Rhea was out in her WrestleMania whites. Charlotte started this with a ton of trash talk as she outwrestled Rhea at every turn. Rhea swung the momentum by getting aggressive and firing up. It was too much for Charlotte to handle at times. Charlotte capitalized on one mistake that put a target on Rhea’s previously damaged leg. Classic work from a heel with a leg submission. Rhea did a hell of a job selling, as even her offense was stunted due to the bad leg. Whenever Rhea got momentum, Charlotte just cut her off and worked the leg. It was simple, classic strategy. The finishing stretch was pretty great, as they went back and forth with some great exchanges, drama, and close calls. Charlotte won with the Figure Eight after 20:28. I don’t agree with the result but that was a banger. Charlotte is arguably the best big match wrestler in the world right now. She’s that good in big situations. Rhea was also great here. [****]

Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley

Lana looked like she did not want to be there. Nothing about this match had me excited to watch it but they seemed to work well enough together. They put on a competent match with some decent action in there. Lashley used his power but Aleister is just different enough to put him back on his heels and give him major problems. Lashley slowed the pace to his liking. He seemed to have this won but Lana wanted him to utilize the spear. Lashley was unsure of it and gave it a try, only to run into Black Mass for the loss in 7:16. Pretty good but totally forgettable. [**½]

Dolph Ziggler vs. Otis

This has one of the longest builds on the card. Sonya was out with Dolph, looking fantastic. Otis was out with a vengeance, hitting the ring quickly and causing Dolph to back away. It backfired, as Dolph used that to his advantage, goading Otis in to make mistakes. He held serve for a bit before the big man got going with some of the offense we usually see in his hot tag stuff. As Otis set up for the Caterpillar, Sonya got on the apron to distract the referee and Dolph kicked Otis in the dick. Dolph went for the cover and out came Mandy to slap Sonya. She attacked her, hit Dolph with a low blow, and Otis nailed the Caterpillar to earn the victory in 8:11. The match was fine in terms of action and it told the story that it needed to. It needed a crowd, though. The pop for Mandy would’ve been great. [**¼]

Post-match, Otis lifts up Mandy and gets the kiss he’s waited months for.

Last Man Standing Match: Edge vs. Randy Orton

It’s insane to see Edge competing again. You could see on Edge’s face that he was disappointed no fnas could be in attendance for this. Orton snuck in from behind disguised as a cameraman and hit an RKO before the bell rang. As soon as it hit, Orton nailed a second RKO. Edge escaped outside and that allowed them to use more of the Performance Center to their advantage. They brawled in the weight room and came up with a few creative spots. Like the ladder match from night one, I’m not going to lay out each of the spots but like I said, I appreciate how creative a few of them were. I saw a lot of people hated this but I didn’t. However, it was hurt by two things. 1) Going 36:41 is way too long, especially for this kind of match. 2) This stipulation always makes for a lot of lulls in the action, which isn’t what we want, especially when commentary is being quiet. Ultimately, this came to an end when they battled atop a production truck and Edge, originally torn on the idea, used a Con-Chair-To.  Cut this down by about 10 minutes and it might’ve been special. [***]

Shenanigans occurred and Gronk ended up as the 24/7 Champion.

WWE Raw Tag Team Championship: The Street Profits [c] vs. Angel Garza and Austin Theory

I’ll admit, I wasn’t able to watch most of this. I had to handle something downstairs. I came back up in time to see that things seemed to be going quite well. When it looked like the challengers would win, Ford broke up a pin with a Frog Splash. That allowed Dawkins to score the pin. I don’t know how long this went but I wans’t gone long so I’m gonna say it was under 10:00. After the match, they attacked the champs with the help of Zelina Vega until Bianca Belair made the save, which was pretty cool. [NR]

WWE Smackdown Women’s Championship: Bayley [c] vs. Lacey Evans vs. Naomi vs. Sasha Banks vs. Tamina

The main storyline coming in is whether or not Sasha Banks and Bayley’s friendship would survive this situation. I chuckled at everyone jumping Tamina because she was the “biggest threat.” That’s laughable. Bayley and Sasha worked together in the early stages. This featured some rough contrived spots a few times. I appreciated the callback to the Team BAD days, even if that wasn’t a stable I enjoyed. Everybody joined forces to eliminate Tamina about six minutes in. Around the 10 minute mark, Sasha made Naomi tap to the Bank Statement, leaving the friends against Lacey Evans. Bayley accidentally hit Sasha with a knee to the head, giving Evans an opening. Though it was obviously a mistake, Sasha got upset like it was intentional. That opened her up for the Women’s Right, eliminating Sasha around 13 minutes in. Evans got the better of Bayley until Sasha entered and delivered a Backstabber. Bayley followed with her finisher and retained after 19:16. This was a good match but it felt like something we’d see on a Smackdown instead of on WrestleMania. Quality wrestling and it advanced the important Sasha/Bayley storyline well. [***]

Firefly Funhouse Match: Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena

Honestly, I’m not going to recap this. It wasn’t a match but a case where Cena basically entered into a Freddy Kruger like dream sequence controlled by Bray. It included Cena’s RUTHLESS AGGRESSION promo, Basic Thuganomics, a Vince puppet saying, “THIS IS SUCH GOOD SHIT,” and Cena in an nWo shirt. Watch it, you won’t regret it. It was incredible. I love campy wrestling and this was beautiful. [NR]

WWE Championship: Brock Lesnar [c] vs. Drew McIntyre

Drew immediately hit the Claymore for a near fall. Brock hit an F5 and Drew kicked out at one. Two more F5s hit and Drew survived. He came back with three more Claymores to win the title in 4:28. There wasn’t much to this. Brock didn’t seem to feel like working as they hit their finishers and went home. Still, cool moment for Drew. I’m over the big finisher barrage in a short time. [*¾]

You can check out my night one review completely for free over at https://www.patreon.com/the_kevstaaa!

6.0

The final score: review Average

The 411

I liked night one a bit better but still found this to mostly be enjoyable. It had the best match of the two nights in Ripley/Flair and I found the Firefly Funhouse stuff to be an absolute blast. There are some other good things in there but a few things were either disappointing (Edge/Orton) or capped out at being pretty good.