3 More Ups And 3 More Downs From WWE WrestleMania XXXIII

2. Concert Wastes Time

WrestleMania 33 Pitbull
www.wwe.com

No disrespect to Pitbull and Flo Rida, but if you can find 10 fans who watched WrestleMania for the mini-concert featuring both performers, you’d have to ask if they’re related to them.

There’s nothing wrong with incorporating live music into Mania – it’s a tradition that goes back decades – but this new trend of grinding the show to a dead halt so musicians can perform just stretches out the show unnecessarily and becomes a zone-out moment for fans watching on TV.

Previously, bands would play wrestlers’ theme songs to accompany them to ringside. Think Living Colour with CM Punk at Mania XXIX, or Motorhead playing Triple H down to the ring at X-Seven and XXI, or Limp Bizkit for Undertaker at XIX. All of those performances were part of the actual show and thus kept the attention of wrestling fans (you know, the people paying to watch the PPV).

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.