WRESTLEMANIA 35

Ken Hoffman reports from WrestleMania's record-breaking bash

Ken Hoffman
Apr 8, 2019, 2:34 pm
Becky Lynch became the first undisputed Raw and Smackdown women's champ in a controversial finish. Becky Lynch/Facebook

This article originally appeared on CultureMap.

Defending champions were an endangered species on April 7, as only two of 10 title-holders escaped WrestleMania 35 with gold belts still around their waist. When the dust cleared well into Monday, April 8 morning at sold-out MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, Kofi Kingston was the new Universal champion, Seth Rollins was WWE champ, the "Demon" Finn Balor was Inter-Continental champ, and Braun Stroman practically launched Saturday Night Live players Colin Jost and Michael Che into orbit to win the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal.

A beer-drinking, villain-boo-ing, souvenir-buying crowd of 82,265 fans saw "The Man" Becky Lynch become the first undisputed Raw and Smackdown women's champ in a controversial finish to her match against "Rowdy" Ronda Rouseyand "The Queen" Charlotte Flair. It sure looked like Rousey's shoulders were off the mat when the referee counted 1-2-3. This one could be headed to the Supreme Court — right behind the Democrats' effort to get President Trump's tax records. Good luck on both.

MetLife Stadium, home to the NFL's New York Giants and New York Jets, was rockin' and 'cringin' during a brutal "No Holds Barred" match between "King of Kings" Triple H and "The Animal" Batista. Triple H grabbed pliers and ripped a ring from Batista's pierced nose. Yeeoww! Triple H ultimately triumphed when "Nature Boy" Ric Flair tossed a sledgehammer into the ring and Trips used it to dispatch Batista. Pliers, hammers … Chip Gaines on Fixxer Upper doesn't have this many DIY tools.

The "Greatest Stage of All" grossed $16.9 million, a MetLife Stadium record.

The press box was jammed with hard-hitting journalists from 68 countries, who dined on All-American hot dogs, barbecue brisket, Philly cheesesteaks, and chocolate chip cookies. If anybody believes that media is the enemy of the people, let me set you straight. After the matches, the line for the train to Manhattan was backed up to Snooki's place on the Jersey Shore, and there weren't nearly enough Uber drivers to go around. Drenched in a pelting rain, I bummed a ride from a Newsweek writer and got back to my hotel at 2:30 am.I didn't know that Newsweek was still around.

The biggest pop during the "Showcase of the Immortals" celebrated Kofi Kingston's long-time-coming victory over arrogant, pedantic WWE champion "The New" Daniel Bryan. It was Kingston's first singles title in his 11-year career.

Continue reading on CultureMap to find out who won the Women's Battle Royal.

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Born with a comic book in one hand and a remote control in the other, Cory DLG is the talent of Conroe's very own Nerd Thug Radio, Sports and Wrestling. Check out the podcast replay of the FM radio shows www.nerdthugradio.com!

This week is usually one of the more fun weeks in the WWE schedule, the week of the Super Star Shake Up. Some wrestlers from each of three major brands, Raw, Smackdown and NXT shuffle around and make "debuts" on the other shows. This year was a little less exciting.

The changes to Raw weren't really all that major I feel like, moving AJ Styles, The Usos, Andrade, Rey Mysterio and The Miz over to Raw really just feels like they took the top half of Smackdown and slid it over to Raw. The call up of The Viking Experience - yes that's right another terrible gimmick tag team - didn't really make things much better. This does explain why The Usos dropped the titles to The Hardy's on the Smackdown after WrestleMania after having them keep the titles on WrestleMania, but honestly, the Raw Tag Team division is crowded and not exactly exciting. Finally revealing that Lacey Evans, Ricochet and Aleister Black are all officially on a roster is great news but adding all three to Raw is a little odd simply because they've been previewing all three on both shows and now they're just all three on Raw. Perhaps the oddest choice here though is breaking up The Riott Squad.

It was announced that Liv Morgan is now going to be on Smackdown, which means that the Riott Squad, which is the only female faction really and honestly it's a good one, is now dead. I'm a huge Liv Morgan fan. I really like her look and she wrestles well in matches but honestly I don't know how she will do in singles competition and speaking of singles competition, I think one thing the shake up did was add some clarity to the WWE's choice to combine the belts. I think you'll see most of the women's tag matches on Smackdown as now they moved two more tag teams to this show last night with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville and pairing Asuke with the newly called up Kairi Sane and the Iconics were already a Smackdown team. Which means most of your single's women's competition will be on Raw where Becky Lynch already has a rivalry going with Lacey Evans. The addition of Finn Balor, Roman Reigns and Elias are all great additions to Smackdown; these guys need more room to breathe and letting them get more time on the now way less crowded Smackdown main roster will be for everyone's benefit.

Overall this was a solid shake up but the delivery just wasn't there as a lot of these announcements were made by the announcers due to the fact that a lot of guys had travel issues and couldn't get to Montreal in time to appear on this week's shows.

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