The One-Liner Review: WWE WrestleMania 33

The IWC is filled with snowflake ratings and recaps for big WWE events … but that’s a lot of work. This isn’t one of those columns. What follows is one line (or so) about every wrestler or team who worked WWE’s WrestleMania 33 event. These are the stray thoughts and pointless musings that filled one lazy man’s mind while watching the event.

Austin Aries – Hit the best top rope missile dropkick I’ve ever seen. He should do a Ted talk on how to nail that move.

Neville – Bad enough to yank the curtain on the pre-show, then they ran a commercial in the middle of his match. Not just any commercial, a commercial for WrestleMania during WrestleMania. It’s like not really being at WrestleMania at all.

Primo – Got the same Mania bonus as everyone else in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal (ATGMBR) for one second of work.

Kalisto – Serious question, how far could BRAUN throw Kalisto if he really tried?

Heath Slater – Needs a new home improvement project to renew his in-ring focus. I suggest a Sunsetter retractable awning.

The Usos – Are Smackdown tag team champions and were in this match, and if you blinked, you missed them.

Goldust – Acted liked he wanted another piece of Big Show after he got tossed, Totally incredulous he had been eliminated from a battle royal as if this wasn’t the 1,000th time this had happened to him. That’s a pro.

Simon Gotch – Why didn’t they have him square off with BRAUN using an old timey boxer pose? “Sir, I challenge you to fisticuffs!”

Konnor – Konnor had to go early because they needed space in the ring. He was bad for the feng shui.

Viktor – Viktor had to go because he’s the Boo-Boo to Konnor’s Yogi, and they needed to go get themselves some pic-i-nic baskets.

Big Show – He’s enormous, age 45 and still surprisingly nimble. I don’t think we appreciate just what a freak of nature he is. Andre died at age 46 and he’d been largely immobile for years before that.

Tian Bing – Don’t know what the WWE’s plans for him are, but I damn sure know what his entrance song should be.

BRAUN – How dare they gang up on our big, beautiful boy. All BRAUN ever wanted was to continue his unchecked reign of terror, and then to head over to Disney to enjoy the “It’s a Small World” ride for the rest of night.

R-Truth – There should be a Vegas line on when we see him next. He had gone three months between television appearances until the ATGMBR teaser last Monday.

Aiden English – He’s so anonymous I’m thinking he could have just leaned back in a corner and everyone would have ignored him. Maybe he could have brought along a book for some light reading.

Curt Hawkins – Apparently it wasn’t a good night for all of Zack Ryder’s former tag team partners.

Curtis Axel – He’s like the white S.D. Jones. The Axe Man clearly is capable of more, but he’ll never be asked to do it.

Epico – Lasted more than five minutes, and I doubt anyone saw that coming.

Dolph Ziggler – Spent the whole match skinning the cat. Literally might have gone out on his 9th and final life.

American Alpha – I remember when tag teams were good in battles royal (check out Hammerlock knowing proper pluralization rules). See: Hart Foundation, WrestleMania 2.

Bo Dallas – Oddly, he would not have the worst night for a member of the Rotunda family. No one is on the Internet today railing about Bo’s performance.

Rhyno – When I was young and I tried to draw people and I couldn’t get human proportions right, everyone I drew kind of looked like Rhyno.

Tyler Breeze – Widest gap in the WWE in terms of the difference between his ring attire and his position on the roster. If he dressed like the jobber he is, he’d have to wrestle in a modified grain sack.

Fandango – I feel like it’s all been downhill for him since he split with Layla.

Mark Henry – His grown hand-child should have rushed to ringside to catch him.

Luke Harper – I don’t know if I can get behind him having semi-organized hair. Grooming and hygiene detract from his character.

Apollo Crews – Needs to take out a personal ad, something along the lines of: Tag team partner wanted, must have personality and mic skills, I could be the hot tag you’ve been looking for.

Titus O’Neil – The quality of a battle royal has an inverse relationship to the amount of time Titus lasts in it. In this ATGMBR, he lingered a long time.

Sami Zayn – The only guy left with anything like a story for being there and he gets dumped by a Game of Thrones hill tribe extra.

Killian Dain – Time to play Name That Hill Tribe. Does Killian Dain belong to the Stone Crows, the Burned Men, the Black Ears, the Moon Brothers or the Painted Dogs?

Gronk – If they want the most over moment in the history of New England, have Gronk stomp a mudhole in Roger Goodell.

Jinder Mahal – The unhindering begins.

Mojo Rawley – Goofy as he may be, people are picking up what he’s putting down. We should all be half as excited about anything as he is about everything.

Dean Ambrose – Not gonna lie, I’m awesome at power naps, and I took one in the middle of this match. Woke up just in time to for Ambrose’s outta-nowhere win. Feels like I missed nothing.

Baron Corbin – Made the classic mistake of telling Ambrose that now he was going to end the match. Next time shout, “All right, I’m just going to dick around for the next ten minutes!” Then, sneak attack. Kids today don’t understand psychology.

New Day – Love the Final Fantasy inspiration, but don’t they wrestle?

AJ Styles – Imagine you run a wrestling company and you employ a five-star talent. Think you’d put him in an epic five-star clash? Nope, let him yank the curtain against an aging novelty attraction.

Announce Table Roulette – If you had the U.S. announce table going first, you win.

Shane McMahon – All he wanted to be was a garbage man, but his dad insisted he go into the family business. Wouldn’t even let Shane play Duke “the Dumpster” Droese. Yet now garbage cans are his secret power.

James Ellsworth – According to Snickers (which has redefined identity as we know it), Ellsworth is just Charlotte when she’s suffering a sugar crash.

Chris Jericho – Using the power of WrestleMania, he kicked out of Kevin Owens’ pop-up powerbomb finisher.

Kevin Owens – Extra points if he slaps some Canadian plates on his U.S. Championship belt.

Nia Jax – Draws a big relief chant from the audience when she gets eliminated.

Sasha Banks – We all thought they had a heel turn planned for her. Turns out they had nothing planned for her. The greatest trick WWE Creative ever pulled is making people believe it exists.

Charlotte – The turnbuckle giveth and the turnbuckle taketh away.

Bayley – For that moment when you realize that just because it happened at WrestleMania doesn’t make it a WrestleMania moment.

DDP – Little known fact, he’s still stalking Sara Undertaker.

Rock’n’Roll Express – They look really old, reminding us that rock’n’roll itself is suffering a near-death experience.

Rick Rude – If there’s an absterlife, he’s surely there.

Teddy Long – Oh, that’s right. The WWE used to be fun.

Beth Phoenix – Deserves a life-sized statue made of gold for attempting to make Kelly Kelly look like she could wrestle.

Kurt Angle – Got to be thinking he’s the same relative age as half of the WM33 card.

Cesaro & Sheamus – On point with the matching tuxedo kilts. Easily at the top of the Mania best-dressed list. Yet the simultaneous clubbing forearms and Cesaro swings ranks as one of the great achievements in human history, right next to the discovery of penicillin and the invention of the airplane.

Enzo & Big Cass – Maybe the best thing about these guys is how much Corey Graves hates Enzo.

Anderson & Gallows – Now free to pursue their Chad 2 Badd and Tex Ferguson personas.

The Hardy Boyz – The “delete” chants at the start of the match were spectacular, but that contest needed Vanguard 1 preventing other teams from claiming the belts. Smartest thing Raw could do is give Matt two segments a week to do whatever the hell he wants.

Jerry Lawler – Because when you want to kick an intergender tag team match up a notch, you bring in Jerry Lawler to make corny dad jokes.

Miz & Maryse – They’ve been nothing but excellent for the past year. It would be a crime if Miz doesn’t win the WWE title in 2017.

John Cena & Nikki Bella – The thing with proposals is they’re supposed to be surprising and touching. This was manufactured and really awkward.

Triple H and Stephanie – Doesn’t matter how awesome your entrance is, your kids still won’t think you’re cool.

Seth Rollins – What if a match is really good, but the crowd is getting sleepy? Because if you watch WM33 with the volume off, I’m pretty sure Rollins-Trips is the match of the night.

Bray Wyatt – Totally would have caused Orton’s head to explode if, after the maggots and worms video projections, he had gone with adorable baby bunnies.

Randy Orton – Needs three more world title wins to catch up to Cena and set up their battle for #17. That’s going to be a thing. The WWE loves fake records.

Goldberg – Proudly wore the WWE Doritos Spicy Nacho Championship belt to the ring.

Brock Lesnar – Credit to the match production on this one. They booked Hagler-Hearns.

Alexa Bliss and Carmella – The moment when they found themselves alone in the ring and began shrieking at each other and awkwardly trying to wrestle should go down in women’s history right next to the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.

Mickie James, Becky Lynch and Natalya – Did a number of cool things in a compressed period of time. Smackdown really ought to do a women’s Money in the Bank match. These three would kill it.

Naomi – Should have shown up with a pack of neon Rose Buds.

Roman Reigns – No one’s going to be popular retiring the WWE’s most enduring icon, but what could you put Roman Reigns against and have him be the popular choice? For instance Roman Reigns vs. ringworm. You know, at least there’s a pill you can take for ringworm.

Undertaker – Now that his storied career seems to be over, I prefer to think it ended at WrestleMania 29. I can officially say that’s the last I saw the Undertaker.