Here’s what matters today in wrestling
Image Credit: WWE
We all wondered who the voice on Randy Orton's telephone was, and from what I saw in the days prior nobody got the answer right. Pat McAfee returned to WWE television in order to deliver an unhinged rant against small wrestlers working long matches and yearning for the days of the Attitude Era. Somehow all of Pat's complaints about the current wrestling that he previously fawned over when he was a commentator on Raw were the fault of Cody Rhodes, and Randy Orton beating Cody at WrestleMania will save the wrestling business. This led to a tiradefrom Cody later on the broadcast equating McAfee to Disco Inferno.
McAfee claims he wasn't scripted, and went on an equally unhinged rant on his ESPN show claiming there's levels to things and we don't get it and blah blah blah. Some are saying that Cody's response wasn't originally planned, but was forced by the tremendous negative response from fans commenting on social media. TKO higher-ups are credited with foisting McAfee on the WrestleMania build, and some people aren't happy about it. I continue to believe that WWE creative is more interested in making content for Unreal than coming up with a coherent build to WrestleMania.
I don't know whether all this news being reported about McAfee's involvement in the Cody Rhodes/Randy Orton angle is true or not. What I do know for sure is that the televised result wasn't particularly entertaining. There is an audience for McAfee's shitick, and WWE surely hopes that audience will show up for WrestleMania. Some of you may be part of Pat's demo, I am not. He's not my cup of tea, but I get it's WrestleMania season and that's when WWE brings in celebrities and pseudo-celebrities to take part in things. I usually don't mind except when it derails shows and makes them unentertaining like this unnecessary addition to the Rhodes/Orton angle does.
WRESTLING HEADLINES 👊🏽
•Note on Intercontinental Title Ladder Match at WrestleMania 42
Image Credit: WWE
Shoutout to my guy Robert Leighty Jr., who reviews Main Event for 411mania.com and might be the only person still watching the show on a weekly basis. It’s a nice idea on paper to actually have the show mean something and feature matches that lead to people appearing on WrestleMania. It would have been even nicer if Main Event had been mentioned at any point on Raw or SmackDown prior to throwing some random matches on the show and saying they were qualifying matches for a ladder match. Instead we got a graphic right after Penta’s announcement of the match on Raw with random people before the show actually aired on YouTube. I kind of want to give WWE a cake saying “At Least You Tried”, but I might dump it in the garbage can before consumption.
Image Credit: TNA
One of the things that I love most about lucha libre is the passion of the fans. On average, lucha fans are much more into things than your average pro wrestling fan. One of the things I hate about lucha fans is their insistence on supporting serial abusers like this piece of garbage. They turned against El Hijo del Vikingo in support of this guy that’s abused women in the past and will obviously abuse them in the future when he gets a chance. Stephanie Vaquer’s abuser is now one of the biggest stars in the Mexican indies. Why a large percentage of Mexican wrestling fans want to support that sort of nonsense, I'll never know. (Not that we here in the US are completely innocent of such things. As much as people want to whine & moan about “cancel culture”, there are certain people that deserve to be cancelled. Alberto is one of them.
MORE MUST-READ LINKS FROM 411MANIA 👇
→Hall's WWE Raw Review 4.6.26
→WWE Has a TKO Problem: Pat McAfee's Worked Shoot
→The Great Eight: Top 8 WWF European Champions
Yeah, not a lot of positive news this week! I can't help it, that's what I was served up and I have to be honest with my opinions on these things. Some weeks you end up with Pat McAfee & Alberto El Patron! Hopefully next week will be more fun as we get on the doorstep of WrestleMania.
Thanks for reading,
– Steve Cook