Robert S

Are you trying to say that I am turning 24 this year and not 44? (I was born in 1980)

Michael Hayes was 40 when has was managing the Hardys (he was 35 when he first appeared on WWF TV as Dok Hendrix), Matt is turning 50 this year.

Why not, sooner or later they could have their own Anoa'i-only brand, with Roman, and Jimmy, and Jey, and Solofa, and Naomia, and Jacob, and the Rock, and Simone, and Tamina (apparently her mother is related to the Anoa'is, I did not realize that), and Nia (yes, I know that she is not part of the family).

To all those people playing the "free at last" card: so are they telling me that you were working for decades at a place you hate for a boss you despise? Do they have no spine? I mean it's not like most of those people wouldn't have ways to make ends meet.

Wrestling was already booked that way in the 1920ies. From Ballyhoo! quoting Strangler Lewis' unpublished autobiography: There was a lot of funny stuff in the first couple of minutes of night 2: the bagpipe group playing Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie, Roddy Piper's theme CM Punk sitting next to Nise CM Punk Stephanie ending her promo with HHH catch phrase minus the "let's get ready to suck it" after spending a couple of minutes verbally fellating her husband in front of the audience

Am I the only one here who thought the main event was way, way, WAY too long? The first 25 minutes or so were a complete slog. I am shocked however, that the Rock made it through without ripping apart every muscle in his body. My favorite moment of the match was Rock dropping an f-bomb and the TV director muting something 10 seconds later. I thought the show was fine in total, some people are shitting on the Usos collision, I thought that match was okay enough. Though I wonder who thought that putting Naomi on Wrestlemania was a good idea. She has got to be the worst worker on the main roster. I guess she blew less stuff than at the Rumble, still, she should not be on national television let alone on a Wrestlemania main show.

Cagematch has two matches between the teams, two house shows in the summer of 85 (one in Syracuse, NY and the other in Orlando, FL). They were also in two battle royals, one them aired on TV.

Maybe he needs to slap someone's thigh while shacking their hand?

A Rock-Austin face-off now would be like a Hogan-Savage face-off at Mania 21 when Cena got his first title (or at least it would be if Cody would be ten years younger).

That name sounds like they are joining the drug game (or just "the game" ((c) The Wire), hmm... maybe it's an uncle Paul thing?). Though I am not sure if "WWE Speed" would work any better than IcoPro allegedly did (or rather didn't).

Let's see, the first that come to mind are Shibata, Mochizuki Jr. and Fujinami's kid. Ayako Hamada is still active, though only in Mexico.

A big issue (besides the stipulation and Piper being annoying as hell with it) is that Backlund is just not a good, entertaining heel in-ring. The character itself is fine, the work way below what he still could at this point. Just a week earlier, Backlund had a great five minute match with Jeff Jarrett where Backlund ended up playing the face.

There were only two reasons to have this match: to have Taker on the card and two shift the feud to Taker vs. Kama. Weird to have an MLB umpire as ref here, I can't find much about the backstory. Apparently the storyline was some fallout of the MLB strike ("Major League Baseball umpires were on strike at the time, but Larry Young was able to find work (...)" - wwe.com). Meltzer wrote the following about Young in the Observer: "a long-time pro wrestling fan dating back to the days when baseball Winter League umps shared the same apartment complex as the wrestlers did in Puerto Rico more than a decade ago".

Clever to have a team called Allied Powers debut against two guys with SS tattoos. There is nothing to this match, Bulldog and Luger don't harmonize at all, are off a lot in double-team spots. I suppose the main reason behind that team is "we have too many uppercard faces (with HBK turning the day after) in the singles division so let's form a team to face Owen & Yoko for the next five months on the road", though considering they used that match second from top, I don't see why the Gunns could not have been used in that spot (I assumed that the Gunns spent a couple of months being married to Men on a Mission but nope, they had only a couple of matches in south-east Asia and afterwards were stuck with the Blu Twins until October.

I definitely hated a lot of Angle's higher profile work in the post Smackdown Six era. I remember thinking that Angle-HBK Mania match being not just overrated but being plain bad. It would be interesting to go back two decades later to see if I was too harsh back then or if my opinion holds up.