6 Ups And 11 Downs From WWE Crown Jewel

Downs...

11. WrestleMania Rollup

Randy Orton Rey Mysterio
WWE.com

It might have been more than a decade ago, but once upon a time, Rey Mysterio versus Randy Orton was two-thirds of a WrestleMania headlining match.

Friday, they were a curtain-jerking five-minute act that ended with a botched backslide rollup.

While you could argue that they were holding back a bit because Mysterio still had further to go in the tournament, it’s ridiculous that they sleepwalked through a five-minute match that could have taken place at any house show. For the opening match of what ostensibly was a PPV.

Sure, both men are exceptional professionals, so the match wasn’t bad by any standard. But if you logged in a few minutes late and missed it, you didn’t miss anything. The post-match beatdown was more newsworthy than the entire bout itself.

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Contributor
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.