10 Things You Only Learn Attending WWE WrestleMania Live
2. The Difference Between The Manufactured WrestleMania Moment...
Triple H Vs. Batista was a strange match to watch live.
The Wrestling Observer tells me that it lasted 24:43, but in my heart of hearts, I know it went over an hour. I was there. I finally know what Bruce Prichard has been saying all of this time. I was there. You can take your corroborated reports, your objective measure of time, and you can stick it. That match went over an hour.
FDM.
And yet, Big Dave's big daft meme face will, eventually, come to overshadow the prolonged periods of lying around doing absolutely nothing. This was a match that encapsulated the modern drive to engineer a WrestleMania Moment. Big Dave's expressive look of comical cross-eyed fear will live on in GIF form forever more, and it was one of precious few spots to generate a huge reaction. How could I not pop? Dave Batista just got his nose ring pulled out while doing an impression of Leslie Nielsen.
Presumably planned the second Batista attacked Ric Flair, we'll see this bit as part of Batista's Hall Of Fame highlight package. It was, technically, a 'WrestleMania Moment' - but one we will appreciate far more in retrospect, layering it in a weird irony.
In contrast, the show's true Moment was an actual Moment: something those in attendance cherished within itself...