WWE WrestleMania 39 Sunday review: A story unfinished

I want to begin this review by relaying what Triple H had to say about the finish to Roman Reigns vs. Cody Rhodes Sunday night at WrestleMania.

“It’s always interesting to me when people say how could that happen, or how could they do that in that moment,” he said. “It’s almost perfectly spelled out in this story, to finish the story. In the WWE, the story never changes. Tomorrow night on Raw at the sold out Crypto Arena the story continues, the story takes another chapter. We just got to the end of the chapter. But the story continues and that is where the story gets interesting to me.”

That’s nice. Here’s the problem.

Timing is crucially important in telling a story. You need to hit the high peaks at the right time and provide a satisfying conclusion at just the right moment. For all intents and purposes, after a year telling the story of how Cody Rhodes wanted to do the one thing his father never did and recovering from a torn pectoral muscle just in the nick of time for the Royal Rumble, this year’s WrestleMania absolutely was the right time for Cody Rhodes to finish his story, to win the title, and have the moment that everyone in that building desperately wanted.

It didn’t happen.

The two had an excellent, WrestleMania-level main event with good wrestling and some strong near falls towards the end. The finish had Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn run off the Usos, allowing Cody to hit Roman with the bionic elbow, Goldust’s uppercut, and was supposed to end things with three crossroads when Heyman jumped up on the apron at two. Solo Sikoa, who had been ejected earlier in the match, came out and gave Cody the samoan spike. Reigns hit the spear, and that’s it.

There’s a sense of trust built when getting behind storylines because you want them to end when it makes the most sense. When you break that trust, it’s very easy to lose interest altogether. The time for Cody to win was Sunday, and it didn’t happen. He could win next month, SummerSlam, maybe even a year from now in Philadelphia, but here’s the problem: the people wanted it on Sunday. And they didn’t get it. And my feeling is a lot of people on Sunday suddenly stopped caring about the story being told. And it’s very hard to get those people’s trust back once you tell a flawed tale.

Baffling finish aside, this was a great show. Not as good as the first night, but there was plenty to like. Just not the ending.

Brock Lesnar vs. Omos was short, and that’s good! It did not need to be ten minutes. Omos kept control for most of the match (good so he doesn’t have to sell) until Brock cut him off, gave Omos some suplexes, then F5’d him for the win. You couldn’t ask for a better match between Omos and Lesnar. A minute more would have made this much worse, so kudos to whoever produced it.

The women’s showcase tag team match had some cool moments. Nothing was exceptional, but this was a well-worked match with some cool spots. Ronda and Shayna won, so I would imagine they get a Women’s Tag Team title shot whenever Ronda fully recovers.

Gunther vs. Sheamus vs. Drew McIntyre was glorious violence, just as expected and one of the highlights of WrestleMania weekend. Just brutal stuff, stiff shots, just clobbered one another. I don’t think this was as good as the Sheamus/Gunther series of matches from last summer, but it wasn’t far behind. These three know the kind of match people expected from them and they more than delivered. I can see these three fight each other forever and it will be good every single time.

Bianca Belair vs. Asuka was a classic world title match. The SmackDown title match from Saturday was better, but this was still great. The last few minutes of this was AWESOME, with Asuka putting Belair in the Asuka lock. Belair escaped, deadlifted Asuka and planted her with the KOD for the win. This was interesting, as I thought maybe Asuka had a chance of winning. I also have to mention Belair’s entrance with the Divas of Compton dance troupe was wonderful, definitely a highlight from both shows.

I wasn’t going to write much about The Miz and his hosting segment, but let me tell you what I was doing as this happened. I had heard The Miz was going to do something, so I went to the bathroom. As I was washing my hands, there was a big pop, something had happened. I exited the bathroom and literally right as I sat down Shane McMahon blew out his quad doing a leapfrog spot. He had returned and put himself out of action for at least half a year in like two minutes. As crazy as this is, Snoop Dogg saved the day, acted quick on his feet, and pinned The Miz after a people’s elbow to save the segment. This was the best, most incredible WrestleMania segment ever and all of the above was 100% true.

The Hell in a Cell match was good overall, but the few minutes where they had to stop the match to stitch up Balor, who took a ladder flush in the face, kinda hurt it. Once they got back it got pretty heated and good. Balor did a great coup de gras off the middle of the cell. Good stuff overall, though it got hampered a bit.

With that, WrestleMania ends. The funny thing is if Cody had won, I was all for naming this as one of the best WrestleManias of all time. And in the end, this was still an excellent WrestleMania weekend, with so many tremendous matches both nights. But I’ll end with this: when telling a story, you gotta know when to deliver at the right moments. They didn’t do that here. But like Triple H said, the story continues. And if what’s next is truly interesting and more compelling than just having Cody win here, I’m eager to see what this.