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The storyline her is simple, yet compelling.

The Undertaker has a 17-0 streak at WresteMania coming into the night; and this is two WMs in a row for ‘Taker and Michaels to face off against each other. Taker is 45 and Michaels is 44, but Michaels put his career on the line if he fails to end ‘Taker’s victory streak at WM.

Classic wrestling storytelling. All in-ring stuff without the contrived storylines. And the in-ring execution was Wii-worthy. Energetic, epic and memorable as to veteran performers offered their all.

With nearly 26 minutes to tell their story, the match had an appropriate WrestleMania epic feel, and although the outcome wasn’t the hoped-for upset, even if it means Michaels is off Raw for a while, this was certainly a worthy match for him to go out on.

For a match 13 years in the making, the long-anticipated Bret vs. Vince match failed to live up to the pre-match hype. Instead of a somewhat competitive display, the “double-screwjob” angle with the entire Hart Family serving as McMahon’s lumberjacks… and immediately turning on Vince… made little sense in its timing.

Worse, however, was the in-ring execution. Now 64, McMahon is no longer able to pull off a convincing in-ring presence. While his match with Hart made storyline and business sense, McMahon simply isn’t up to the job the way he was twelve years ago when he was regularly facing off with Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The entire match had Bret on offense and McMahon barely made a recovery, let alone ever got any offense going enough to put the outcome in doubt and add some drama to the event. As a result, I’d have enjoyed myself more spending that time buying new office furniture.

Hart himself is no spring chicken, either. At 52, he is at an age where he might be in shape enough to take bumps convincingly the way McMahon did twelve years ago when he was 52, but to dominate an opponent like this? Not convincing. The match lacked energy and called to mind the tired, plodding pace of the Verne Gagne-Nick Bockwinkle AWA matches of the mid-1980s.

With Randy Orton facing off against both members of Legacy, I was looking forward to this match more than most of the undercard, simply because Orton is in his prime and both Rhodes and DiBiase seem primed to be the next Orton, even if DiBiase is noticeably more polished at this point than Rhodes.

The actual match was more fun that a room full of custom plastic cups! Although it lasted around nine minutes in all, Orton’s in-ring storytelling helped sell the energy and enthusiasm of the younger duo.

Rhodes too a wicked Punt from Orton that may signal a hiatus from TV, and Orton got the win and appears to be headed toward becoming Raw’s top heel, even though this match drew some babyface heat to him. DiBiase lost, but appears ready for the next phase of his career. A lot could be determined about where that will take him in a couple weeks, when Raw holds its annual Draft Lottery event, mixing up the roster.

Just looking at the field of Money In the Bank match participants, it’s hard to pick a favorite. After all, you have some guys who are obviously not “in it.” Guys like Finlay, Mark Henry and Kane. Those guys will fill up memory cards with all their “jobs.”

But who among the more realistic prospects could be the best wiinner?

There’s last year’s winner, C.M. Punk. Then there’s Christian, Shelton Benjamin, Kofi Kingston and MVP.

Of that field, I’d have to say I favor MVP; he’s been a great young talent on SmackDown and seems Raw-worthy to me. He has the cocky attitude you want in a good heel, and yet a shiftable enough personality that he could be turned face easily.

Punk winning it two years in a row could be fun; and Christian could be a good holder of the honor, if you want him to work a program opposing Edge. Time will tell who will actually get this honor, but it’s nice that it’s not too obvious.

And at WrestleMania this year, the big opponent for Chris Jericho will be… three men, all WWE legends and all past their prime. In a special handicap match, Y2J will face off with Jimmy Snuka, Roddy Piper and Ricky Steamboat.

He might get a better match out of a set of Plum trees. Not a one of these guys is still in even his 40s.

Of course it’s bound to be disappointing considering what the rumor mill threw out there: Steve Austin, Ric Flair, Mickey Rourke, even Hulk Hogan. None of them came to fruition. While the handicap match is sure to be a setup for making the fracas seem more competitive, it’s just disappointing considering the alternatives.

Where’s Mick Foley when you need him, Vince?

Oh yeah. Pissing his legend away over on TNA.

Here it is! Enjoy!

The appeal of the 30-man, one winner match is still a winner after all these years, and this year’s edition played out quite well. With Randy Orton facing a firing by the McMahon Family, he had his bags packed and seemed resigned to his career ending.

To have Orton be the eighth entrant and the last man standing at the end made storyline sense and set him up well to make his WrestleMania main event more meaningful to him than any match he’s ever wrestled. That will mark him as ultra-motivated going into a match against John Cena wherein the outcome might otherwise seem a no-brainer.

Cena-Orton has long been thought to be the headlining main event of the future; well wake up, Bubba, it’s 2009 and the future is now. Better take those Canon cameras to WrestleMania with you, because this clash between these two at the biggest of all PPVs could become the first of many over the next few years.

You know, looking back over the main matches at WrestleMania again, I’d have to say that my favorite match was still the WWE title match between Randy Orton, Triple H and John Cena. While the Flair-HBK match had way more emotion, the truth of the matter is that the WWE Title match just had more youth and energy.

You don’t have to be a futures broker to see that John Cena and Randy Orton will be WWE mainstays for some time to come. The question here is where the next big stars are, who are lining up behind them.

I still like the long-term potential of Ken Kennedy and MVP, and Jeff Hardy isn’t exactly new, but his solo work in WWE since returning from TNA is like a fresh start for him. My main complaint, though, is that in both WrestleMania and now the upcoming Backlash, WWE continues to insist on overpromoting the inferior SmackDown brand.

Let’s face it; Raw is where the action is. Let’s start structuring the PPVs to reflect that, shall we?

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.

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.

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.