9 Ups And 11 Downs From WrestleMania 32

3. Preserving The Status Quo

the undertaker shane mcmahon.jpg

So after weeks of playing up the idea that Shane McMahon could usher in a new era for WWE, and that the current leadership was destroying the company nothing changed. Shane McMahon played the role of a maniacal stuntman and lost a cartoonish Hell in a Cell match to the Undertaker.

There really should not have been any way that McMahon hung in there with Taker without some sort of serious assistance. And no, a triangle choke doesn€™t count as €œserious assistance.€ The rumors of Goldberg interfering is more along the lines of thinking. If anyone thought this was a €œrealistic€ battle and that Shane had Undertaker on the ropes, then you suspended disbelief for that one match more than most wrestling fans do in a year.

But putting aside the silliness of Shane McMahon kicking out of a Last Ride and a chokeslam, and powering out of Hells Gate, let€™s recognize what the result of the match means: nothing changes. Shane€™s play for power failed, and the Authority will continue to rule over WWE. This, after weeks of the babyface telling us what we all already know, that the product is stale.

But hey, Undertaker can wrestle at next year€™s WrestleMania, so yay.

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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.