9 Match Star Ratings For WWE WrestleMania 36 (Night Two)
5. Edge Vs. Randy Orton - Last Man Standing Match
A quick detour into the first person for a moment: I don't think I've felt as guilty for not enjoying a match as little as I did Edge Vs. Randy Orton's Last Man Standing palaver. They worked very hard. Preposterously hard. For that, they have my admiration, if that's the word.
This match - the blowoff to one of WWE's most intelligently-plotted storylines in years and years - was as dumb as f*ck.
It was dumb immediately. They obviously did not do this on purpose, but in a match fought between, agented and signed off by people who were there in 2007, how they arrived at a strangulation spot facilitated by gym equipment was something. They live in a bubble, but the Benoit tragedy burst it.
On a weekend on which our very perception of professional wrestling was challenged, this, for your writer's money, was the most uneasy transgression. It wasn't meta, it wasn't cinematic - it was an excruciating watch, a match based on attrition that never, ever ended. It was so painful for so long that it was like a late-19th century shoot, only gimmicked. Every spot provoked an anti-pop even in a match with no fans watching, which takes some bloody doing. Every spill sounded awful. There was no satisfyingly safe crunch of compressed sawdust; only the off-putting wince of sharp jagged metal, everywhere, and the pained grunts that absorbed it all.
A match this painful and dangerous had no right being as unexciting as it was. Danger exists for excitement. That's the only reason why the risk is worth taking in this performance art.
It felt like they hated each other, so there's that.
There's only that.
Star Rating: ★