7 Match Star Ratings From WWE WrestleMania 40 Night 1
1. The Rock & Roman Reigns Vs. Cody Rhodes & Seth Rollins
Where to start with that main event, Jesus Christ.
The Rock's entrance was incredible, an all-timer, but it was easy to suspect that this match was going to take the absolute piss when Cody's lasted forever. They all took ages registering the crowd and doing next to nothing early, which was more than fine. If you can generate an amazing reaction and lock the crowd in simply by doing nothing, nothing is what you should do: the something that follows is often awesome after that. What followed wasn't awesome. Rock and Rollins and Cody and Roman paired off to work parallel, tedious walk-and-brawls lacking in anything that a brawl should summon: chaos, violence, creativity.
It was at this point you may have asked yourself: is this bad?
After that turgid spell, all four men almost politely worked a version of an entirely different but equally dull match back in the ring. Seth Rollins got his knee worked over for what felt like 15 minutes. Given that impossible but true run-time of 44 minutes and 35 seconds, that may have actually been the case.
It was at this point you may have asked yourself: is this absolutely terrible?
Seth's selling was inconsistent during the comeback, so this felt like a waste of time. Also, it was freezing in that building. This needed much more bombast. It was too cold to care about the fourth-least interesting member of the match. The bombast did finally happen.
Roman and Cody's chemistry remained fully intact. They dragged the fans back into it with elusive, dynamic work. The Rock took too much from the old WWE "make 'em wait, slow it down" premise but he took a Rock Bottom through a table when the babyfaces found their bottle. Roman smashing Seth through a barricade immediately after that was great. That, or it was just nice that something happened.
It was at this point you may have asked yourself: is the worst WrestleMania main event since the dreaded days of Triple H? But also class at the same time?
It was a legitimate 1 1/4* turd with three or four *** moments sprinkled on top. Rock pinned Cody with the People's Elbow.
Very weird.
Star Rating: ★★★