7 Ups And 3 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 39 Night 1

by Scott Carlson

1. Paying Things Off

WWE WrestleMania 39 Rhea Ripley
WWE.com

There is a universe where Logan Paul and Dominik Mysterio winning would actually make sense from a storyline point of view. But there really was no world – expect Vince McMahon’s – in which Charlotte Flair and the Usos retaining their titles would have been logical or acceptable.

Thankfully, none of those things happened. Rather, Seth Rollins, Rey Mysterio, Rhea Ripley and Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens paid off their respective storylines by winning their WrestleMania matches Saturday, sending fans home happy.

It’s crazy to be praising WWE for doing logical storytelling with its match results, especially since they love to tell fans that they “tell stories.” But we’ve been burned for far too long by WWE inexplicably making dumb decisions at big events, leaving fans confused and even angry. And with Vince backstage at 'Mania, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t think at least a couple of finishes could have been changed to suit the old man’s whims.

Instead, Rollins put down the social media maverick, Rey taught his son a lesson, Ripley had a star-making performance, and KO & Sami fulfilled their destiny and brought down a big part of the Bloodline. Just an absolutely magical night from a company that loves to tell you they deliver but rarely do to this extent.

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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.