9 Live Observations From WWE WrestleMania 38 Night 2
WWE fumbles the follow-up for the second year in a row, even when Steve Austin almost saves the day.
It's still somewhat hard to parse the events of WrestleMania 38 Night 1.
On an evening where WWE structured a card similarly to how NJPW might put it all together, an AEW Executive Vice President was confirmed to have left his post for the buzz of being a Superstar once more and Stone Cold Steve Austin got in the squared circle for an honest-to-god-holy-sh*t-the-bell-actually-rung main event match against Kevin Owens, everybody left the Dallas megastructure with a sense that they'd witnessed pro wrestling history books ripped up before their very eyes.
If either night had a chance of doing this, it was the first one. Tonight's event was to be leveraged heavily on the shoulders of Brock Lesnar snd Roman Reigns and their winner-take-all main event. Could the company survive this up-and-down undercard on the good will earned last night. Would fans have the patience for it, not least if they'd been up late the night before toasting all the good times from the monumental event they'd just seen?
The night would ultimate decide for itself, though the omens were strange within the first fifteen minutes...
9. Triple H Returns
Starting hotter than Night 1, Triple H's unannounced arrival gave WrestleMania's second evening a more WWE-centric start than the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders had managed to do 24 hours prior.
This meant a lot to a lot of people, not least 'The Game' himself, who cut an emotional figure as he thanked fans for the support during his time off and symbolically left his boots in the ring to confirm a retirement that was sensible and inevitable.
'The King Of Kings' will forever have a complex legacy thanks to a strange route to the top of the industry and a host of absolutely rotten matches at the highest level for a very, very sustained period of time, but try having those long chats with those inside AT&T Stadium. Understandable sentiment notwithstanding, this was a monumental love-in and Hunter's welcome to the show was as good a way as any to kick things off.