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After last year’s disappointing and far-too-average WrestleMania 23, I was almost afraid to watch this year’s biggest PPV event of the year, in case I would be disappointed yet again. Yet despite even the seemingly ridiculous Big Show-Floyd Mayweather match, WrestleMania 24 turned out to be one of the best editions of the annual PPV event in quite some years.

The matches that were not expected to amount to much were played appropriately for comedy, and the matches that were expected to be huge and meaningful were given plenty of time to play out. For a show that lives mostly out of travel trailers, this year’s WrestleMania delivered the goods in a way that it hasn’t for several years.

Signs that we were in store for a solid WrestleMania began early as the Money In the Bank match was given an unexpected twist ending, with underdog C.M. Punk getting the rub and the win over favorites like Chris Jericho, Mr. Kennedy, MVP and John Morrison. That match was given almost 14 minutes to play out and featured some of the best spots of the night.

I cheered when the Batista-Umaga match was kept mercifully short. Batista winning was just another example of WWE trying to convince a completely unconvinced fan base that SmackDown is just as good, if not better than, Raw. No way. All it convinced me of is that the company isn’t spending enough time establishing Umaga’s credibility as unstoppable, and also that they remain committed to overhyping Batista, who’s simply far too overrated for a man with such borderline mic skills and mat skills.

Kane defeating Chavo Guerrero in about 10 seconds to win the ECW title was an unforgivable crush and only continues to demonstrate how little the company cares about the credibility of the ECW brand.

But the Ric Flair-Shawn Michaels match was given a solid, heart-pounding 20 minutes plus to develop, allowing these veteran showmen to prove why they’ve had such lasting careers in sports entertainment. It was everything one could ask for in a retirement match for a man of Flair’s standing in pro wrestling history.

Hopefully, he’ll never tarnish the memory of this match by coming out of retirement for “one more run” endlessly, like Terry Funk sadly chose to do. The Flair-HBK match was my personal favorite of the night and, all by itself, made WrestleMania 24 one of the best in recent memory.

The next indicator that we had a legendary WrestleMania on our hands was when the company swerved everyone on the WWE Title match and, instead of putting the belt back on John Cena, or - heaven forbid! - giving Triple H another title run, the victory was given to Randy Orton, extending his run as a true heel champion and making him anything but an “interim champion.” While the triple-threat match played out nicely, receiving over 14 minutes of air time, it would have been even better had it been given another five minutes or so. Still, the match was hot from start to finish and the surprise ending of keeping the belt on Orton was a refreshing change of pace.

Then, WWE completely shocked me by giving the Big Show-Mayweather match nearly 12 minutes to play out, and managing to make such length seem legitimate despiet the David vs. Goliath matchup. Somehow, they allowed Mayweather to survive the onslaught of the Big Show in a credible fashion that didn’t rob Show of his overwhelming physical threat status. And even though Mayweather earned the improbable win, he did so in classic WWE style by delivering a brass knuckle punch to Big Show’s jaw for the win. All in all, what could have been a crush or a joke match turned out to be a whole heck of a lot more entertaining than last year’s Hair-vs.-Hair match between Vince and Donald Trump, as well as their in-ring seconds, Batista vs. Bobby Lashley. This year’s Show-Mayweather bout turned out to be a far better way to draw mainstream headlines, and deliver an entertaining match at the same time.

The showstopper was the 24 minutes given to Edge and the Undertaker to decide the fate of the World Heavyweight Title. Apparently, the company’s obsession with selling SmackDown as the superior brand over Raw continues, as this match initially held little interest for me. Yet Edge is a legit heel and Taker is a solid worker, even if he is a bit long in the tooth these days.

Given the storyline of Taker’s “undefeated at WrestleMania” streak, the match held a fair amount of suspense, since the question was weather the company was finally ready to pass the torch and allow Edge to be the superstar to end Taker’s WrestleMania streak, or if they were still committed to pushing Taker as a legit title holder/contender.

Given ‘Taker’s win, the fans went home happy at the end and time will tell whether Taker will hold the belt until at least SummerSlam, or if he’s just being used as an interim champ while WWE reshuffles the SmackDown deck to reinvigorate that show after it has been festering for ages.

Personally, I think MVP is the future of SmackDown; but not this time out. Overall, several matches were terrific or even legendary, and the show finally lived up to being the top PPV in the WWE calendar year, after seeming a bit too average - recently and especially last year. Well done, at last, WWE.

Could the biggest heel wrestler of the last year or more, Umaga, be moving off WWE Raw to the SmackDown brand? That’s the word on the street; the move is expected to take place sometime within the next month or two, now that WrestleMania is over.

This is a time of year when WWE typically likes to shuffle the deck and freshen up all its brands. With SmackDown apparently set to move from The CW to MyNetworkTV in the fall, a changeup to make the SmackDown brand stronger is long past due.

The makeover started at WrestleMania, with Undertaker winning the World Heavyweight title from Edge. With a new champion, new opponents will be needed and the Umaga character, a primitive, force-of-nature style of heel, would make an ideal foe if ‘Taker’s run is to be an extended one.

Although often portrayed as a beastial, monstrous heel, Umaga has lost most of his meaningful matches in the past year for storyline purposes and has become overused and less of a threat on RAW; by moving the Branson golf-loving heel to SmackDown, the company has a chance to rebuild Umaga’s character from the ground up.

Time will tell if this rumor is accurate, but Umaga’s WrestleMania match against SmackDown’s Batista for brand supremacy, which Umaga lost, would seem to set the stage for a brand-switch move.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson reappeared at the WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony, his first appearance on a WWE broadcast in possibly a year, and if early indications are accurate, it may be his last appearance for quite some time.

The Rock, now a big-time movie star, owes his current fame and success largely to the exposure of his early WWE career. However, at the event intended to honor his father and grandfather for the time they spent in WWE, The Rock apparently presented himself, both on-stage and backstage, as above everyone else he used to work with.

His Hall of Fame induction speech ran exceptionally long, and was primarily a comedy routine making fun of and belittling current WWE stars, none of whom he warned ahead of time about the jokes he had planned. His comments on his father and grandfather were, by comparison, brief and lacking in much detail or heart.

The Rock did not attend WrestleMania, showed up just in time for his speech, and left immediately after it was over, blowing off nearly all the WWE personalities with whom he used to be close, including pal Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The Rock’s bad behavior drew much ire from the current roster of WWE personalities, and is a good indicator that the next time the WWE and The Rock cross paths, it may be a couple decades down the line, when it is The Rock himself who is being inducted. Fans offering up everything from their life’s savings to their bathroom faucets in trade for Dwayne Johnson to make a return to the WWE ring may be placing their hopes in an extreme unlikelihood.

Eddie Graham, as well as Jack and Gerald Brisco, have been added to the 2008 WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony scheduled for next Saturday, prior to WrestleMania. The induction ceremony, sure to be more pleasant than going through drug rehabilitation, may be a calmer, less controversial one than in recent years.

In addition to Graham and the Briscos, this year’s class includes Ric Flair, Mae Young, and The Rock’s dad and grandfather, Rocky Johnson and High Chief Peter Maivia. While Graham ran the Florida promotion that secured the Hall of Fame status of his brother, Superstar Billy Graham, as well as spawning the career of the American Dream, Dusty Rhodes, even Graham is not expected to be as controversial a choice as some recent nominees.

In recent years, WWE has thrived on inducting deserving candidates who had reason not to like McMahon or WWE, such as AWA founder Verne Gagne, Nick Bockwinkle, and Bret “the Hitman” Hart. None of this year’s nominees are expected to be McMahon-haters, which should guarantee a smoother ceremony, but also guarantee a far less interesting broadcast.

As a conept, and even to some degree in execution, last Monday Night Raw’s main event, pitting John Cena and Randy Orton against the entire Raw roster, was a fun challenge. My only complaint is the brief amount of time given for the match to develop and play out. It needed another 10 minutes, at least, to really deliver a great ring psychology payoff.

Still, the concept, delivered by Triple H as the third part of the “triple threat takeover” of Raw, part of promoting the triple-threat main event title match at WrestleMania between Orton, Cena and Triple H, is a fascinating one, and ought to be tried again sometime with more airtime given to the match. It played out like a fine bottle of Riedel, but was all-too brief.

About the only way to improve on it, in fact, would be to somehow have Jeff Hardy be one of the principals involved in facing the entire Raw roster; few people deliver better in-ring psychology in their matches than Jeff Hardy.

I haven’t been a big fan of the tired, old storyline involving WWE Diva Maria and one-time InterContinental Champ Santino Marella; the abusive. controlling boyfriend vs. compliant beauty storyline has been done to death over the years, with probably Macho Man Randy Savage/Miss Elizabeth and Marc and Rena Mero being the most successful iterations of it.

Yet I must say that it doesn’t require the services of a CAT5e to suss out the in-ring improvements Maria has shown; her recent matches finally have her pulling off enough convincing moves to rank her right up there with other battlin’ WWE divas like Candace Michelle, Mickie James and Melina. Sure, none of them really measure up to the days of Lita and Trish Stratus, but hey… those days are long gone now.

Ric Flair has been giving great matches lately, thanks to the “next time you lose, it’s your retirement match” storyline, and last Monday night’s street fight with Mr. McMahon was no exception. No one wears the crimson mask to greater effect than Flair, and although he’s ridiculously old to be winning so much, he’s been giving some of his best in-ring performances in years of late.

Although popular thought has Flair losing to Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania to put the final swan song on his career, it would be fun to push the storyline past WrestleMania, I think. It’s not like Flair is a man just out of drug rehab; he’s in top form for a many of his age, and could probably ride this storyline until SummerSlam next August.

See, thing is, Flair has now won enough that he ought really to be considered a number one contender for the WWE title, if he wins his match at WrestleMania; what better way to send Flair off into his final sunset than to have him fact whoever is champ after WrestleMania, win the title, and carry it for a few PPVs before finally losing the title and retiring at SummerSlam? The 17-time world champ deserves one final, career-capping title run, if you ask me.

Chris Jericho is one of my favorite “mic men” in the WWE. He can cut devastating promos, but is seldom well-utilized by the WWE. After a hiatus of a couple years, when it was announced that Chris would be returning to the WWE, I was hoping the absence would mean that he’d returned to become a more integral member of the Raw roster, but after an all-too-swift and minor program against WWE Champ Randy Orton, Jericho was quickly shuffled off to the second-tier of Raw superstars and, last week on Raw, was reduced to jobbing to the Big Show to advance a storyline he wasn’t even involved in, the Big Show-Mayweather clash at WrestleMania.

Seems like Y2J’s absence hasn’t resulted in better booking, despite the hype surrounding his return; at this point, Jericho would be far better off on SmackDown where he could almost immediately become a big enough draw to be the top challenger to Edge’s title, rather than continue to be lost in the shuffle on Raw, which has too many top names to accommodate them all. Sure, I didn’t expect WWE to dedicate a wall of engraved plaques to Jericho’s honor upon his return, but I was hoping he’d receive better treatment than he has thus far.

It would take a huge truck and a Jobox to come between the WrestleMania clash between the Big Show and Floyd “Money” Mayweather. With a $20 million unconditional guaranteed payday for Mayweather, and a certain amount of pride on the line for the Big Show, one might expect the clash to be epic.

Truth is, though, the match simply won’t be credible if it’s not a crush of Mayweather. With Big Show tipping the scales at 440 pounds, he’s almost three times as big as Mayweather at 156. I expect Mayweather will get his WrestleMania moment of getting in a good jaw shot on Big Show, but I think expect Show slam and sit on Mayweather for the quick win. Anything longer would be too much of a stretch.

One of the original female wrestlers, Mae Young, who first stepped into a Memphis wrestling ring in the late 1930s/early 1940s and occassionaly makes a guest appearance on WWE programming even now, has been selected to be one of this year’s inductees into the WWE Hall of Fame.

The class of 2008, as announced so far, also includes Ric Flair, Peter Maiavia and Rocky Johnson.

Young, who only about 10 years ago was involved in a Raw storyline in which she “got pregnant” by WWE wrestler Mark Henry and, in a rather disgusting resolution, gave birth to a slime-covered hand (as in, “give the woman a hand”), wore maternity clothes and everything to put the sketch over the top; and she has frequently been used, alongside fellow geriatric WWE Diva Fabulous Moolah, as the foil to some of the seemier WWE sketches and plotlines.

Despite her use over the last decade or so as comic relief, Young was a barrier-breaker in her day and the Hall of Fame induction is certainly a legitimate selection. Congrats, Mae!

Everyone’s talking about Floyd “Money” Mayweather vs. the Big Show like boxer vs. wrestler is something that’s never been done before, yet the tradition extends all the way back to Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki back in 1976. Inoki wasn’t allowed to use any wrestling moves. Other famous boxer-wrestler tilts from years past include Andre the Giant vs. Chuck Wepner, Muhammad Ali vs. Kenny Jay, Muhammad Ali vs. Gorilla Monsoon, and more recently (and embarrassingly), Bart Gunn vs. Butterbean.

Many boxer-vs.-wrestler matches end up being pretty embarrassing for the wrestler in question. Andre vs. Wepner involved Wepner being tossed from the ring and left in such condition that he had to use shower chairs after the match. Ali vs. Inoki ended in a draw, a finish that satisfied fans from both sides somewhat at least. But Gunn vs. Butterbean ended in less than a minute and left Gunn with no respect and, ultimately, no career after that. Gunn was about half the size of Butterbean.

The Mayweather vs. Big Show tilt looks to be an Andre/Wepner style mismatch, only worse… this time for the boxer. Mayweather stands 5′8″ and weighs around 155. Big Show is right around 7 feet tall and still weighs around 420. So Big Show has well over a foot and nearly three times the weight as Mayweather; Big Show’s open hand is nearly as big as Mayweather’s head.

What this likely means, in addition to a $20 million payday for Mayweather, is another embarrassing episode in boxer-wrestler history, rather than anything approaching a legit mixed martial arts contest. There are only a couple ways I see this going down.

First, it could be a crush by the Big Show, with him completely dominating and quickly defeating Mayweather. Give the size differential, this would be believable as a finish, but would do nothing to help Mayweather’s career as a boxer.

Second is even more embarrassing for sports entertainment in general and the Big Show personally; and that would be for a man of Mayweather’s size to take Big Show down in flukey but similarly swift fashion.

What I don’t see happening is a longer, more legit match; the injury risk to Mayweather is too great, and given his upcoming boxing title defense in August, it’s unlikely Mayweather would agree to anything like that. So no matter who gets squashed here, I expect it to be a blink-and-miss-it event that will disappoint and annoy fans of both wrestling and boxing.

Still, Vince McMahon always knows how to get the non-wrestling sports press talking right around WrestleMania time every year; last year, it was McMahon vs. Trump in a hair match; this year, it’s Mayweather vs. Big Show.