WrestleMania 41: Returns, crowning moments, and controversy

Photo courtesy of Diego Serrano / Wikimedia Commons

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) held its forty-first installment of the iconic WrestleMania event. WrestleMania is the company's biggest event of the calendar year. It can always be counted on to deliver memorable moments, along with some of the year's best matches. In 2020, WrestleMania became a two-night extravaganza, now taking place on both Saturday and Sunday rather than the traditional Sunday-only event. This year's installment of WrestleMania continued this pattern and was interesting, to say the least.

Nights one and two saw many championships change hands. To kick off the weekend's festivities, Jey Uso finally captured a world title after 12 years by beating Guther. This was only Gunther's fourth loss since he debuted in the WWE. Immediately following the world championship match, the New Day tag team of Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston won their twelfth tag team championship over The War Raiders, composed of Erik and Ivar. 

Later in the night, Jacob Fatu captured his first singles title in the WWE after he bested LA Knight. Although it wasn’t a championship win, Seth Rollins winning the triple threat in the main event against Roman Reigns and CM Punk is certainly a crowning moment. Seth Rollins was the least likely to win this match going into it, as he was the least popular among the three participants. 

Furthermore, CM Punk and Roman Reigns had ties with manager Paul Heyman when Rollins had no prior connection. This made Paul Heyman’s title-defining choice to end the match one that shocked watchers. To the surprise of everyone, Paul Heyman betrayed two of his best friends to side with Seth Rollins and help him win his first main event match at WrestleMania.

Night two also saw new champions crowned. Dominik Mysterio won his first singles title on the main roster, pinning fellow Judgement Day member Finn Balor in an awesome fatal-four-way of Bron Breakker and Penta. Becky Lynch and Lyra Valkyiria also won gold on the night when they beat Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez to win the women’s tag team championships. 

The duo would lose the titles to Morgan and Rodriquez on Monday Night Raw the next night. The biggest title change of the weekend, however, goes to the legend John Cena. John Cena ended Cody Rhodes’ WWE title reign for a record-breaking seventeenth time. This era-defining match was very confusing, but more on that later. 

There were also a few returns throughout the weekend. Total Nonstop Action (TNA) world champion Joe Hendry returned to the WWE for the first time since the Royal Rumble event in January to accept Randy Orton’s open challenge. Hendry lost in a relatively insulting five-minute match. 

Becky Lynch returned in the previously mentioned women's title match after being away from the company for just under a year. Becky Lynch is one of the company's biggest stars, and the fans are very obviously happy for her to be back, but the Becky Lynch title win after just returning experiment hasn’t ever seemed to work. 

The biggest talking point of the weekend has to be the controversy. The show was underwhelming after a streak of entertaining WrestleMania when the company changed its creative structure. A lot of the blame can go on the main event of night two. 

John Cena is in the last year of his career, and asking him to go out and do a long one-on-one match is a lot to ask for. On top of that, The Rock is really why John Cena and Cody Rhodes were even fighting in the first place. The Rock was an integral part of this storyline, and having him not even show up to affect the match is a huge misfire. 

The WWE is also making some of the silliest mistakes possible. Insisting Steve Austin ride his quad as fast as possible to the ring was bound to cause a problem one day, and it certainly did when a fan fell after he crashed the quad into a barrier on his way to the ring. 

The same night, a WWE crew member ran over a fan with a golf cart outside Allegiant Stadium. Combining these accidents with the horrible public relations, or PR, of WWE employees, such as Paul Heyman, could be a massive problem for the WWE.

Even though there were ups and downs throughout the weekend, WrestleMania was still an entertaining event. The WWE is used to fans coming out of Wrestlemania with nothing bad to say, so having this consensus that Wrestlemania was good but slightly underwhelming is an unfamiliar position that the WWE will have to deal with. The road to WrestleMania 42 is officially underway.