6 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 42 - Saturday (Results & Review)

4. Two Tales Of One Match

The main event really was a tale of two halves: a slow, plodding, boring affair that played out largely to silence, and a bloody, ga-ga-infused spotfest. Let’s talk about the first half.

Once the Pat McAfee Show ended and the retired NFL punter was stretchered out of the stadium, the match began proper, and heel Randy Orton was in full effect, sloooowwlly going through his shtick. Every so often, a good match was threatening to break out, but Orton pulled it back down.

How slow was this first half? The match itself clocked in at about 23 minutes, but it felt much longer because the McAfee silliness and glacial sequences early on made it feel twice as long. One would think a feud between two guys with 20 years of history would have a lot more juice behind it, but alas, it wasn’t to be.

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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.