4 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 39 Night 2 (Review)

Linear, logical storytelling gets derailed, IC title match rules, EST delivers again.

by Scott Carlson
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WWE

WWE headed into WrestleMania 39 Night 2 with a huge leg up after an immensely successful first night. All they had to do was deliver some really good action from its talented wrestlers, stick the landing and this would go down as an all-time great Mania.

And then they got to the main event and self-immolated.

We should be talking about the flawless Intercontinental Championship triple threat, or Bianca Belair’s streak of WrestleMania triumphs, or Edge and Finn Balor delivering inside Hell in a Cell… but the narrative all focuses on the main event, where Roman Reigns inexplicably beat Cody Rhodes after the same, tired interference we’ve seen time and time again.

This isn’t just air coming out of a balloon. It also might not be the Hindenburg crashing (let’s not get too melodramatic here), but this was a colossal failure that will leave a bad taste in millions of fans’ mouths for some time. It would be Steve Austin losing at WrestleMania 14, or Daniel Bryan losing the opening match at Mania 30.

Sure, from a technical standpoint, Mania 39 delivered great action once again and overall was a rousing success. But the last thing fans saw is what is going to stick with them for a while, making this a huge miss of an event.

Let’s get to it…

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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.