WRESTLEMANIA 33 BABY

IT'S WRESTLEMANIA WEEK BABY! It kind of both does and doesn't feel like this year, on the one hand the card isn't exceptional in terms of perceived match quality and some of the build has been a bit wonky, but on the other hand this show is getting off easy because it only has to follow the trainwreck that was Wrestlemania 32.

You can argue back and forth about whether last year's show was the worst ever, but honestly there's a convincing argument for it. It's hard to think of another show that highlights the creative failures of the product at the time more, not to mention it was seven god damn hours long with the final two being near unwatchable, so if nothing else it's definitely the hardest Wrestlemania to sit through.

BUT HEY, seven hours isn't too long when you have a better card right? Okay yes. It definitely is. Why are they doing this again. Well, that just means there's a lot of matches to get through! Every match will get a pick for likely winner and some jerk comment about whether I care or not. LET'S GO.

(CONFIRMED) PRE-SHOW MATCHES

ANDRÉ THE GIANT MEMORIAL BATTLE ROYAL - Lots of dudes

I like the idea of having a marketable annual battle royal at Wrestlemania to get everybody on the card in a spot that *sort of* means something, unfortunately they've done very little to make it feel anything other than the "jobber match" of the show and the confirmed relegation to the pre-show makes it impossible to care who wins. If anything can be done with winning this match at all, Braun Strowman can do the most with it, but honestly I don't care who wins this and neither do you. Although I'm sure that won't stop everyone from declaring the booking "genius" and "inspired" if someone from NXT gets a surprise win.

WINNER: Braun Strowman 

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: About the same as when there's an open pack of ham in the fridge about the go off and I think "hey yea I'll eat that"

SMACKDOWN WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP - Lots of gurls

The Raw women's division is desperate for more bodies and depth but at least they've done a good job building it around Charlotte, the Smackdown division is just a pack of women who all vaguely dislike each other and pass a title around. In many ways every Wrestlemania reflects the past year of WWE television so in that respect there couldn't be a more perfect match for this title than another random scramble. It's Naomi's hometown and this match was set up to make her competing in it a surprise so she's probably winning. 

Still, at least the Smackdown women's title got a match as opposed to the entire tag division being dunked into the battle royal.

WINNER: Naomi

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: That "it's better than nothing I guess" feeling when you find a three bar connection playing Marvel Vs Capcom 3 online

CRUSIERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP - Neville(c) Vs Austin Aries

Hopefully this match is positioned as the "main event" of the pre-show, or "main event of the kiddie pool" as Jim Cornette would put it. There's not that much of a story here outside of Neville being a dick and Aries being the cool new guy with both wanting the title, but you can expect a good match here so that's all you need. Slightly dreading that this is going to get turned into a "lumberjack crusierweight match" to get everyone else on the show and do a bunch of spots, but if not this should be a fun one.

WINNER: Austin Aries

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: When someone's dog jumps up you in the street and you can pet it without worrying about etiquette

MAIN SHOW 

TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP LADDER MATCH - Cesaro and Sheamus Vs Gallows and Anderson Vs Enzo and Cass

As is becoming more and more traditional for Wrestlemania cards this is yet another "ah, just throw something together to get them all on the show" kind of match. Still, ladder matches are never a bad spot so these guys could have done much worse. Cesaro and Sheamus could have been great but the Raw tag division simply hasn't given them enough to do, personally I would love to see WWE keep them together for a few more months to feud with Triple H's stable and actually let them be asskickers. Gallows and Anderson have been better since they got serious but there's still not much there, so as far as the tag titles go Enzo and Cass are the best choice for now.

WINNERS: Enzo and Cass

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: Same as watching Scott Pilgrim Vs The World for the eighth time, it's not going to blow me away at this point but I'll probably still have fun

INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP - Dean Ambrose(c) Vs Baron Corbin

This could end up being one of the sleeper hits of the night, Corbin's great when he's mean and Ambrose is at his best when it feels like he's fighting for his life. Sadly, unlike the Raw tag champions using a ladder on the go home show to upgrade their spot to a ladder match there doesn't seem to be any kind of forklift-themed stipulation for this one. Nice to see the Intercontinental title get a real match at Wrestlemania for once, although this feud could have worked without it with the winner getting to keep exclusive rights to the motorcycle engine in their entrance music.

WINNER: Baron Corbin

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: anticipating having a McDonald's strawberry milkshake but unsure whether you're going to get a brain freeze or not

UNITED STATES CHAMPIONSHIP - Chris Jericho(c) Vs Kevin Owens

Currently the HOT PICK to be the match of the night, these are two guys who will put on a show plus this has the best build of anything on the card by far. I do hate it when midcard titles get meaninglessly stuck to feuds that aren't about them, it does nothing for the belt but it does drag down a match that should feel main event worthy. Jericho's current stint with the company should be coming to an end soon so they need the belt off him, but it's not like WWE wouldn't do another title match on Raw the next night if needs be. Still, after the Goldberg debacle Owens needs this more than Jericho so there you have it.

WINNER: Kevin Owens

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: Knack 2's coming out this year baby!

UNSANCTIONED MATCH - Triple H Vs Seth Rollins

It's so hard to make any hard claims about this match because we don't know enough about Seth's injury. It could be five minutes long, they could drag it out with run-ins and angles, maybe Seth's healthy enough to get a decent ten minute brawl in WE DON'T KNOW. Samoa Joe's not on the card so we can probably expect an appearance from him and possibly also Mick Foley, and considering Foley's such a big fan of Joe and championed him for years it'd be neat if they had a little Wrestlemania moment together.

This could be a lot of fun if everyone involved is ready to play, otherwise this might get a little awkward. Seth's lost so much of his babyface fire at this point injury or no injury he can't afford to look bad in whatever this turns out to be.

WINNER: Seth Rollins

EXCITEMENT LEVEL: Knack's 2 coming out this year baby! But I don't have any friends to play co-op with...

RAW WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP - Bayley(c) Vs Charlotte Vs Nia Jax Vs Sasha Banks

Another case of "ah, we need a spot for all of them" and also the issue that we've seen all these women wrestle so many times that no singles match is strong enough for Wrestlemania without leaving somebody important out. There's nothing to be gained from putting the title back on Charlotte at this point and Nia Jax still doesn't feel fully cooked. Most likely scenario is Bayley barely survives last eliminating Sasha which leads to a program between them going forward, hopefully leading to a badly needed Sasha heel turn.

Although of all the title matches where it might not matter who wins because they'll do a title change the next night on Raw this one screams that possibility the loudest, so could go either either either way.

WINNER: Bayley
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: When you take that first bite out of a pizza but it's still too hot to eat comfortably

WWE CHAMPIONSHIP - Bray Wyatt(c) Vs Randy Orton

No idea what to expect from this one, we've seen them have multiple pay-per-view matches before and none of them were particularly good. Despite some real goofball segments it still feels like Orton's in autopilot mode and Bray's drifting, I don't expect anything bad but this hasn't clicked for me and it certainly doesn't feel like a headline match for Wrestlemania. Which is a shame because this has been building since Summerslam and that's not something they do very often anymore. 

The X Factor is Luke Harper who if there's any justice in the world will be making his appearance here and not in the god damn battle royal. Harper's potential to enter this feud for triple threats later on or feud with either man individually makes me think they might keep the title on Bray...at least for now.

WINNER: Bray Wyatt
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: About the same as most of Bray's big-but-not-as-exciting-as-they-should-be-pay-per-view matches 

REGULAR ASS MATCH - Shane McMahon Vs AJ Styles

Thought it was weird that they made a strong point on Smackdown that this was going to be a regular match and that meant AJ had the advantage, I assumed it was a given this would be made No DQ and turn into a garbage brawl. Terrified we're going to get some sloppy rehash of King of the Ring 2001 where late 40s Santa McMahon starts embarrassing the pro wrestler with hip tosses and headlock takedowns and such. 

I understand people being disappointed with this being AJ's Wrestlemania spot in the sense it's the worst guy he could possibly work with apart from maybe Enzo, but really it's not a bad spot for him. Shane (for whatever reason) is over and has some name power, and it says a lot that they trust AJ to carry him to a Wrestlemania quality match. Having said that, I'm not entirely convinced even he can, no matter how good his selling is he can't stop Shane McMahon looking like a character from Mount Your Friends when he does his shitty punches. 

I have this horrible knot in my stomach that Shane's going to win this via some goofy rollup scenario when AJ "gets too cocky", let's ignore that and pray for the best, yea?

WINNER: AJ Styles
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: The piddling thrill of driving way too fast over a speed bump knowing it's likely caused costly damage to your car

TAG TEAM MATCH - John Cena and Nikki Bella Vs The Miz and Maryse

One of the paradoxes of this year's card and part of why I think people are struggling to get excited is a lot of the good sounding matches have had garbage builds and a lot of the bad sounding matches have had great builds. I cannot exaggerate how much respect Cena and especially Miz for actually making me care about segments building towards this reality TV fuelled intergender tag match featuring a rematch of one of the worst Wrestlemania main events ever and someone who's not an active wrestler anymore. 

Having said that, I can't pretend to care about the actual match, it'll be fine but it's going to be a Smackdown tag match with some bonus awkward intergender spots. If this whole thing has been set up for Cena and Nikki to announce their wedding in front of a stadium crowd then...well...fair enough I suppose, I don't expect this to go too long and hey it's something different for the show. 

Regardless of quality this match will get a free pass if Daniel Bryan puts Miz in the Yes lock, surely that's a safe enough move for him to get away with?

WINNERS: John Cena and Nikki Bella
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: the mild irritation of having re-record game footage I need for a video but it's fine because it's only going to take like ten minutes

YARD ON A POLE MATCH - Undertaker Vs Roman Reigns

This is kind of thing I get side-eyed on the internet for but this is the match I'm most excited for personally. The build has been shockingly bad in a "wait, why is this even a match?" sort of way but noone's going to care when the gong goes off and the boos for Roman kick in. Undertaker's old but he's willing the get the piss beaten out of him for that Wrestlemania payday, Roman's had a string of strong pay-per-view matches and does violence well, plus he's just about small and athletic enough for Taker to be able to convincingly toss him around when it counts.

I think the match is going to be a lot better than most people are assuming it will be, plus Undertaker is my favourite wrestler of all time and I can't wait for him to get completely destroyed by the douchey chosen son of the old man. I really hope WWE go all in on this and let Roman kill him and have this be Taker's last match, I've pitched for years that if WWE were ever going to turn Cena heel a Taker Wrestlemania match would be the way to do it, this could potentially work even better. 

But if they chicken and have Taker win to squeeze yet another match out of him next year...uh...I suppose that would be fine too...

WINNER: Roman Reigns
EXCITEMENT LEVEL:  the same combination of thirst, angst and closure as writing my first and only love letter

BATTLE FOR THE UNIVERSE - Goldberg(c) Vs Brock Lesnar

THIS match, my god, THIS MATCH. As horrible as Wrestlemania 32 was during the build I was sucked into it in a morbid curiosity kind of way, so I appreciate that this year we've got a mostly solid card with one major morbid curiosity right on top. 

I don't care what Goldberg says on Twitter, the dude can't have a match. He's got no cardio, he's got two moves and one of them looks bloody awful, he was gushing in sweat and visibly gassed from taking one bump on Raw. This can't possibly go long, but it can't go a minute like last time either, and I genuinely have no clue how they plan to fill that time because they can't let them go out there and bump into each other like two malfunctioning tumble dryers 

It's not going to be good, but it sure is going to be SOMETHING. And really, isn't that what Wrestlemania's all about? I was going to be snarky, but it kind of actually is.

WINNER: Brock Lesnar
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: nailing a 3 mile per hour drift in a forklift truck

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Wrestlemania 33 has the usual Mania issues of a lot of the midcard matches feeling thrown together for their own sake and older, less capable workers hogging the top spots. Still, I'm looking forward to this show, most of it looks at least solid on paper and I enjoy how absurd this card would have looked just two years ago. I understand being disappointed with how certain talents are being positioned but I don't know where people got this idea that Wrestlemania is supposed to some workrate intense mega-event, this show has always been more about the spectacle than the in-ring action.

Seven hours is too long, but I think there's enough here to keep me going through it if I sneak in some quick power naps during Undertaker's twenty minute long entrance and whenever Shane's on offense.

Nintendo have fucked it again (maybe)

There's a problem with videogame discourse in general that it's far too insular, and I feel this leads to a severe lack of perspective when it comes to basically anything to do with Nintendo. Since they're no longer the leaders of the home console market there's constant unfounded concerns that they're about to collapse despite having a Scrooge McDuck sized money vault. Because their mascots are all cheeky chappy lovable they're treated as a friendly little brother figure despite being a soulless billion dollar corporation like any other. And as there's a strong overlap between Nintendo fanboyism and games journalism, all they have to do every year is announce a new Animal Crossing desktop background and everyone will declare they "won" E3 or TGS or the Slammys or whatever. I mean who doesn't like Animal Crossing...right?

If that came off as cynical well then there's two reasons for that 1) I'm sort of a jerk and 2) it's always worth pointing out Nintendo are not your friend, they don't need you to defend them and not necessarily every decision they make is a work of innovative inspired genius.

That leads me to their recent Switch announcements and look; I don't hate it, I will own one at some point in my life, it will probably have some hot games on it. I'm also not predicting doom and gloom or suggesting this new device won't be a success, it's just that I'm fairly sure it's not going to get Nintendo back on track after the Wii U.

A decade ago Nintendo make a big comeback with the DS and Wii; two relatively cheap devices released in a time before the Thatcher dream bubble popped and some people actually had money. Both had clear, simple, fresh controller concepts and released with some strong software that took advantage of said concepts. Some of the hardcore fanbase were upset that they were clearly not the target market with a lot of """casual""" titles taking up the lead lineup, but they were cheap enough where even those people could think "ah well, it's gonna have that new Mario on it I suppose".

Those were followed up with the 3DS and Wii U; two names that make sense to "gamer" people and exactly 0% of the rest of the population. The 3DS was the perfect name for a device if your goal is to confuse mums into not buying it for their kids, it also had to deal with that baggage about potentially melting children's eyes. The Wii U was...what even was the Wii U? Even the fanboys weren't sure what to make of it when it originally announced. It also confused people with its message of "you can play it and still let other people use the TV!" Wasn't one of the selling points of the Wii to gather families around the TV? Now Nintendo were telling the TV to ostracize the videogames back to the bedrooms where they belong.

Don't fucking @ me with links to the Metacritic page for the Wii U where there's 25 exclusive games with a 75%+ score, nobody cares about the Wii U. Well I kind of care, I had a lot of good times with it, but I'm a major videogame jerk, and my Wii U has still been unplugged for at least three months. You can argue the merits of the hardware or the games library all day long, but it's an absolute fact that the mainstream pop culture penetration of the Wii U was essentially zero.

However Nintendo have achieved mainstream success through other ventures, most notably Pokémon Go, which was popular enough for Monday Night Raw to reference it to appear hip so you know it was a big hit. It's too early to tell but it's looking like they might have enough monster hit in Super Mario run as well. In recent years they've also backtracked on their DLC policy and built add-on content models for Smash Bros and Mario Kart. Between their recent hardware failures and these successes, it looked like Nintendo were latching on to the idea that people care about their software more than anything else. We like their characters, their design philosophy, their fresh takes on established formats such as Splatoon, and maybe they should focus their new hardware on being the best software delivery service possible and not waste their time on a new Swiss army knife controller.

Before we knew any details the "NX" sounded great! A portable console that you can plug into the TV instantaneously sounded like the perfect answer regarding whether anyone actually needs another console in their life. All it needed was good software support, if they focused on getting a strong Virtual Console library and third parties to accompany their main titles we would have the best possible follow up to the good ideas buried within the Wii U! 

And look, it all still sounds good, I absolutely love the idea of a home/portable console hybrid, the ability to play a big budget console game in my hands was my favourite feature of the Wii U. But if you're going to focus on software (which Nintendo should be since they're not challenging Sony or Microsoft on hardware) then PRIORITY NUMBER 1 should be make the hardware as cheap and simple as possible. Instead, we have a $300 device with some confusing controller gimmick where it breaks apart into little pieces that both have motion controls and HD RUMBLE (I have minor panic attacks whenever the doorbell goes off, so my only interest in this feature is whether can you turn it the fuck off) and so on.

This controller "innovation" comes with a million questions; are Switch games really going that much motion control support? Do they expect you to break the controller apart while you're playing to use them? Is it just to support downloadable Wii games? Do they expect people to play those portably, y'know, have Resident Evil 4 set up with the little stand on the train and do the waggle quick time event in your seat? Or will the motion controls work like a Sixaxis and like...suck? Can the plastic wear away when you're separating and reattaching the pieces? Does it break easy? What do I do if my jerk kids lose them or my jerk dog eats them? Are they comfortable to use? With my giant man hands crush them to baby pieces? Will all games be able to be played both at home and as a portable realistically? 

You know what doesn't have any of those questions? A FUCKING XBOX CONTROLLER. Have buttons on the actual device, and bundle it with a cheapo normal controller for home play. If you want Wii games to work on this thing, make it compatible with the Wiimotes we already have! Instead the console price has been inflated with a bunch of potential extra huge costs for additional controllers and so on in the name of having a gimmick which only confuses the purpose of the console. You don't gimmick a gimmick, and this bollocks with detachable controllers only distracts from the hybrid nature of the console that should be its main sell.

Concerns about the controller, lack of games initially, Nintendo still being weird about online and the larger than expected price are going to slow down early sales, and considering I'm not convinced by the current third party support the fact that Nintendo haven't chosen to make a Wii-scale hardware push doesn't make me optimistic for the future. All it had to be was a Vita you dock into your TV with support for some legacy controllers for under £200 and I would have been on board regardless of what else they announced!

Pre-orders are selling out, and yes, you, lifelong Nintendo fan reading this and probably getting a little salty, I know YOU want one of these things. I want one of them too! Just not right now for that price. It's everyone else I'm worried about, a lot of people pointed out that the initial ad featured no children whatsoever, and between the high price and easily to lose expensive parts Nintendo do seem to have developed their least-appropriate-for-children console since the god damn Virtual Boy. My mum, who has a Wii and DS and plays them both fairly regularly, isn't going to want one of these things, people who want one dedicated games machine are going to be better off with a PS4/Xbone or maybe even a 3DS. So in its current form and at its current price, who is the Switch for?

The answer is, sadly, the core Nintendo fanbase, which doesn't seem like a problem until you realise that's all the Wii U was for as well and they seem to be on track to make a slightly better version of the exact same mistakes. And that's fine I suppose, it'll make money, people will like it, but with the quality of their output and genuinely exciting advances into mobile games I see no reason why Nintendo can't be a major pop culture force once again. For whatever reason, they seem content to hollow themselves out into a niche company and milk their already established fanbase forever. They've already proven they can make tons of money doing that, so good for them I guess! Still don't want any Amiibos though...

Right now, the Nintendo Switch isn't a console I'm excited for or see any kind of positive future in, it's just another piece of plastic I have to buy if I want to play the new Mario. Maybe I'm a jerk, but I think that's disappointing!