This is the final part of the three part blog of my journey into professional wrestling and why I am so excited about my journey to Dallas and Wrestlemania 32.
Getting Back into Wrestling
Having not watched Wrestling properly since Summerslam 2005, I found myself incredibly out of the loop come 2011. It was only a conversation with a work colleague called James (who would became my best friend) that re-stoked my interest in Wrestling. We ended up stoking a friendship over our mutual love of wrestling. We then arranged to watch Wrestlemania XXVII at his house with another wrestling fan. Suffice to say, I don't remember very much from the event (let's be fair, it wasn't a great event) but seeing the product again was great, especially The Rock lighting up the Georgia Dome.
I would carry on watching Raw and Smackdown, but not pay-per-views (as at this point, Sky had started charging for them) and missed the infamous Money in the Bank PPV in 2011. I saw CM Punk's "pipe bomb" and believed it was a real life attack against the McMahon's rule of the WWE. I had to catch up with the result of the PPV online and was shocked that he had beaten the WWE's golden boy in John Cena. I carried on with the tradition of watching WWE Wrestlemania events with James. We also attended 2 WWE Live Raw tapings in London at the O2, something that I will go into in another blog. We had also made plans to fly to America for our first Wrestlemania trip.
2013
2013 was a brilliant year in Wrestling for me. I was able to purchase the Royal Rumble PPV, which I watched with great delight. I had brought into The Rock returning to wrestle, but I couldn't help think that John Cena was an inevitable pick for the Royal Rumble victory, and I couldn't help think that the result in The Rock's match was also inevitable, considering the Rumble match was not the last match on the card. I still didn't care though, it was really exciting watching The Rock return to action. The fact that Cena had won the Rumble meant that I knew The Rock was winning the title, but I was still very happy to see that result.
When Wrestlemania 29 came along, we were sat watching the PPV still not knowing that we would in 3 years be seeing the granddaddy of them all live in person, We watched as The Shield, a team of talented superstars on NXT, beat the more established superstars Big Show, Randy Orton and Sheamus. We watched the Wrestlemania debut of Fandango, shocking the world by beating Chris Jericho, and we watched as Brock Lesnar was defeated by Triple H, a result that should not have happened. Then the main event. The second showing of the "Once in a lifetime" match of John Cena vs. The Rock. There was no way The Rock was going to win for the 2nd year in a row, especially as he was WWE Champion. It rang true, when Cena defeated The Rock to become champion again. Also in 2013, myself and James flew to Los Angeles to watch Summerslam, but again I will cover that in another blog.
2014 Onwards
Following on from this, I would lose interest in watching WWE Raw. The shows format of 3 hours became very difficult to watch and would make for lacklustre shows on more occasions than not. So at that point I solely concentrated on watching PPV's, including The Royal Rumble in 2014. I was aware of the backing Daniel Bryan had been receiving (having been at Summerslam 2013 and seen it for myself) and like many WWE fans watching that PPV, I was bitterly disappointed with his treatment by the WWE. No reaction however was stronger than my sense of shock over what happened at Wrestlemania XXX, when Brock Lesnar defeated the unbeaten streak of The Undertaker. Like most (if not all WWE fans) I believed the WWE would never end the streak, however, ending it to Brock Lesnar made sense due to his monster billing (if you forget the fact that Brock had lost at Wrestlemania 29 to Triple H). A show of rollercoaster emotions, Wrestlemania XXX was the best Wrestlemania I had seen since WM XVII. This was also the first Wrestlemania to feature on the WWE Network, which made it easier (and cheaper) to watch WWE PPV's.
I carried on watching the product (a product that was decreasing in quality) on an inconsistent basis, catching up on the results from Raw like I had done for a while, via the internet. When I saw that Brock Lesnar (who had returned to WWE after defeating the streak) was challenging John Cena for the WWE Championship at Summerslam 2014, I became excited to see the beast incarnate defeat the WWE's golden boy. The match (if you could call it that) was a demolition, which cemented Lesnar's place at the top of the WWE. I wasn't as bothered as some were when the WWE Title kept disappearing off television (as I was only watching the PPV's), however I was disappointed to see the WWE had not done a good job of building up the Intercontinental Belt. Also, like every WWE fan, I felt the 2015 Royal Rumble was a travesty, again the WWE showed us that they would continue to push superstars onto us with very little build-up. In this case, Roman Reigns was the chosen one, taking over the mantle of John Cena. The ending to Wrestlemania 31 was fitting and very exciting, and it made the title relevant again.
During this time, NXT had developed as a creditable alternative to the WWE product. However I didn't watch NXT for the same reasons I didn't watch Raw. I felt that too much WWE programming was ruining the product, and as James and I knew we would be going to Wrestlemania 32 at this point, I wanted to keep the product as fresh as I could do. I even got to the stage were I didn't watch every WWE PPV, so I missed (amongst other things) the surprise return of The Undertaker to cost Brock Lesnar the WWE Title at Battleground 2015. I did however watch Summerslam 2015 (an event that was rapidly becoming an high quality PPV comparable to Wrestlemania) and Hell In A Cell, to see the Brock Lesnar vs Undertaker storyline finish. I was not so thrilled with Survivor Series however. I believed that Bray Wyatt should have won the encounter with the Brothers Of Destruction.
What will 2016 hold for me as a professional wrestling fan? Having watched the Royal Rumble and seen AJ Styles enter, Triple H win the WWE Title, and Sasha Banks set up a Wrestlemania 32 match with Charlotte, I believe this has the potential to be the best year in wrestling for a while. 2016 marks the first year I will attend a Wrestlemania event and a overseas Raw. 2016 could mark the ending of an epic career (The Undertaker) and the start or continuation of multiple epic careers (Finn Balor, AJ Styles, Seth Rollins). Wrestling has always been an unpredictable art though, so predicting it will not be an easy task.
Thank you for reading my 3 part blog on being a wrestling fan. I hope you liked reading it as much as I liked writing it. Follow me on Twitter @MalingoIsHere. New blogs will come every week.
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