5 Worst WrestleMania 36 Moments

As with any WWE event, us wrestling fans love to pick apart their biggest show of the year and judge their efforts based on their lowest points. It’s a horrible trait really, one that I personally try and remove myself from whenever possible by instead choosing to focus on the highlights and the WrestleMania moments that will live forever in highlight reels and history books. But for those pessimists out there who want to know what best to avoid, then I’ve also got you covered.

For every Boneyard match, there’s a dirty finish. For every emotional comeback, there’s a Rob Gronkowski segment. What I’m trying to say is that the event that was simply too big for just one night could have been reduced to just the three hour special if they were willing to cut out all this chaff.

Unfortunately WrestleMania suffered all round thanks to the difficult situation they put themselves in, everything we saw could have been come across completely different if there were hundreds of thousands of rabid wrestling fans in attendance, instead, all we had was Michael Cole trying his absolute best to communicate the usual hype of WrestleMania season.

In this piece, we look at the 5 worst moments from WrestleMania 36. Make sure you drop your own personal lowlights and vent some of that wrestling fan frustration in the comments below.#

 

5. GronkMania

I don’t go into the annual spectacle expecting the WrestleMania host to be the star of the show, nor do I expect them to do anything at all, I mean, what even is the reason behind having a master of ceremonies? This year saw the official WWE debut of former NFL star Rob Gronkowski, best known for jumping the guard rail at WrestleMania 33 and for being a bit of a tool. He certainly lived up to the latter.

To the great dismay of wrestling fans around the world, Gronk was given more screen time than most other previous hosts. Gronk and his best bud Mojo Rawley, who has now returned to his original ‘hype meathead’ gimmick, gave a running commentary to the night’s events and tried to inject some life into the preceding. I won’t take too much away from their ability to seem genuinely interested, but it was just unnecessary.

GronkMania ran wild when he pinned his BFF to capture the 24/7 Championship. Rawley, who had cost Gronk the chance of pinning R-Truth on Night 1, was chased about the PC by various NXT hopefuls, leading to the host creating his own WrestleMania moment by diving off the same balcony that Elias had ‘suffered back injuries’ from.  It was mind-numbingly typical of WWE to pull off this sort of angle when they’ve reeled in a celebrity for WrestleMania. Don’t get me wrong, Gronk’s involvement didn’t ruin WrestleMania, it was just somewhat of an inconvenience, like a mouth ulcer or an itch you can’t quite get to.

 

4. Elias’ comeback gig

King Corbin hit the ring in the opening act of Night 1, expecting Elias to no-show his scheduled match after Corbin sent him careening off Gronk’s balcony a week prior. In these sort of situations, there’s always one of two potential outcomes; either a dominant babyface hits the ring to deliver some vengeance on behalf of their fallen comrade, or the opponent resurfaces for a valiant effort against their rival. In this case, it was the latter, but the moment fell completely flat when Elias’ acoustics rang throughout the PC.

Michael Cole did such a terrible job of putting over the ‘shock and awe’ of Elias battling through the injuries to face down the King at ‘Mania. Obviously the moment suffered from the lack of crowd response, moments like that are best reserved for when there’s a crowd that’s particularly hot for the babyface in question; Steve Austin being the master of these comeback scenarios.

WWE could have, and should have pulled an audible on this booking. Instead of giving Elias the surprise arrival spot in front of only the commentators, they could have either extended the feud and saved Elias’ return for a later date, or have Elias sneak attack Corbin, maybe taking a leaf out of Randy Orton’s book by disguising himself as a cameraman.  What if’s aside, this moment was a bit of a disaster for ‘The Living Truth’, maybe next year Elias will finally get the encore he deserves.

 

3. Pre-ShowMania

WrestleMania was bolstered with a bunch of matches torn right out of an episode of RAW or SmackDown. WWE had to scramble to fill two nights worth of WrestleMania, which is a tall task when they choose to only focus on a select few superstars at a time, with a sizeable roster like theirs, it’s tough to book everyone into a programme that seems worthy of the ‘Mania spotlight.

Big attractions like Aleister Black quickly found themselves panic-booked into matches that fans had zero interest in, matches that proved to be a detriment to the momentum of the show. It almost seemed like some of them should have been reserved for the pre-shows, giving them ample time to put together a decent match involving two superstars who rightfully deserve to be featured on a WrestleMania but didn’t really have much going for them at the time.

You would have thought certain traditions would have been penned for the pre-shows this year, the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal for example, but instead we were given even more chaff in the form of Gulak/Cesaro and Natalya/Morgan, two matches that also had absolutely no build. Not taking anything away from those four superstars, but they could have used those two matches to at least give fans a reason to tune in to the pre-show for each night.

 

2. NXT Loses

The NXT Women’s Championship acted as the curtain jerker for Night 2 of WrestleMania 36, pitting Rhea Ripley against the winner of the 2020 Women’s Royal Rumble, Charlotte Flair. This was a hard one to predict, as we weren’t sure exactly which direction WWE were looking to go with their third brand, whether or not they’d want to integrate it further into the main roster by having one of their biggest talents jump ship after WrestleMania season, but it seems like that was the case, as Flair walked away with her second NXT Championship reign.

‘The Nightmare’ has arguably been the most popular female star since Becky Lynch, developing a huge fanbase in the little time she spent between leaving NXT UK and starting her feud with Shayna Baszler last year. Ripley more than deserved this opportunity to make history, becoming the first NXT superstar to defend an NXT title on a WrestleMania card. Although perhaps she should have done more than just show up.  The loss to Flair was crippling for not just Rhea’s career but also NXT as a brand.

Despite steamrolling over the main roster at Survivor Series, NXT looked pretty weak coming out of WrestleMania. Not only did Rhea take the loss, but so did the team of Angel Garza and Austin Theory, as did Shayna Baszler – who was being presented as the next big thing in Women’s wrestling.  Hopefully Charlotte will do big favours for NXT in the long run, but for now I can’t see this as WWE flexing on what they still consider to be their developmental brand. NXT could have came away from WrestleMania even bigger than they were heading in, giving them a ton of momentum for the next few weeks while they air their scheduled TakeOver: Tampa content.

Instead, Rhea Ripley will return somewhat of a failure and the status quo of Charlotte Flair and the rest of the main roster S-tier superstars remains the same.

 

1. Dirty finishes

One thing that stood out to me as the downfall of this year’s WrestleMania was the incredible amount of dirty finishes and open ends left in its wake. WrestleMania is meant to act as the season finale for WWE’s year, providing fans with satisfying conclusions to some of the biggest rivalries, wrapping up loose-ends and readying new superstars to carry the company through to the next WrestleMania. Nine times out of ten, they achieve this goal, this year however, it was a totally different outcome, with the majority of the blockbuster results being given an asterix thanks to some foul play.

I count 7 matches in total that were given some sort of dirty finish, mostly in favour of the victorious babyface. It almost suggests that these matches were simply the middle point of their feud, with a bigger, better pay-off coming down the line when WWE can finally return to the norm of putting together a show with a decent crowd.

With Becky Lynch, Elias, Sami Zayn, Bayley and John Morrison all being booked with tainted victories, it begs the question of why WWE thought that it was going to provide fans with satisfying finishes to their respective feuds.  In the meantime, all of their opponents look pretty weak in the process. Shayna Baszler especially, who pretty much had the match in hand until Becky pulled the classic bridge-pin reversal of the choke hold. ‘The Queen of Spades’ was potentially about to explode into superstardom, but thanks to this dirty finish, any chance to her achieving that status is now in question.

I’m sure many would argue that this doesn’t do any harm to her ability to take the title off Lynch at a future pay-per-view, but quite frankly, her moment was meant to be at WrestleMania, and now she’ll forever be seen as the superstar that couldn’t quite get the job done when it mattered most.  In some cases, the dirty finishes work well with the on-screen character. It’s hard to argue in the cases of Sami Zayn and Bayley, who both act as the kind of heels that rely upon outside interference and underhanded tactics, but regardless, it hinders on WrestleMania being the spectacle it is.

Instead of being cheated out of them, fans should be rewarded with wrestling that’s free from the typical dramas found on weekly TV. It cheapens the matches and leads fans to realise that WrestleMania is just another WWE produced event, rather than something special that deserves the hype it gets.  Maybe I’m just being overly touchy and WWE have grander plans in place for those who did take a footnoted loss, perhaps when crowds are hopefully welcomed back in the Summer, we’ll see the satisfying conclusions we should have received at WrestleMania.

On the bright side, at least Drew McIntyre won, right?