8 Ups And 11 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 33

9. Not Ready For Primetime

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WWE.com

One year ago, Baron Corbin won the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal in his debut match at WrestleMania.

On Sunday, he battled Dean Ambrose for the WWE Intercontinental Championship during the Mania kickoff show. And boy, it has to be said, Corbin’s in-ring career might have already peaked. Ambrose and Corbin had a sloppy, bowling-shoe-ugly match (thanks JR!) with a dull brawl and botched moves. The crowd, hot for the Cruiserweight Championship match an hour earlier, seemingly dozed off for parts of the match.

We know that Ambrose is perfectly capable of having good-to-great matches, so you’ve got to lump the fault at Corbin’s feet. Thankfully, Ambrose successfully defended his IC title, meaning that Corbin not only left Mania empty-handed, but he underperformed and left a stinker at the biggest show of the year. That’s not a good recipe for future success.

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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.