Wrestling

Wrestling

The Big 4

WrestleMania
SummerSlam
Royal Rumble
Money in the Bank
Chapter 1

The Project

It started simple enough: rewatch every WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Royal Rumble, and Money in the Bank, working backwards from the most recent show all the way to the very first. Rate every match. Review every match. No skipping, no shortcuts.

Chapter 2

The Execution

Turns out wrestling is an unbelievably varied medium. Ladder matches, cinematic brawls, technical clinics, comedy segments dressed up as fights — the format bends in ways almost nothing else on TV does.

Chapter 3

The Dread

And then the fun started running out. Bad wrestling is spectacularly bad. Negative-star matches exist for a reason. Three, five, seven-hour pay-per-views stop feeling like entertainment and start feeling like a hostage situation.

Chapter 4

The Downfall

Eventually the novelty of modern wrestling wore off completely, and Marvel movies and regular ol' films started looking a lot more appealing — more consistent, better made, and reliably over in under three hours.

Chapter 5

The End

So here we are. The WrestleMania project is done, and I'm genuinely happy with how the charts turned out. I have no plans to pick the rest of the Big Four back up — truthfully, I don't even watch wrestling anymore. Consider this section permanently retired.