BLEACHERS BREW EST. MAY 2006

Someone asked me how my blog and newspaper column came to be titled "Bleachers Brew". It's like this, it's an amalgam of sorts of two things: The bleachers area in the stadium/arena where I used to sit when I would watch baseball, football, and basketball games and Miles Davis' great jazz album Bitches Brew. That's how it got culled together. I originally planned on calling it "The View from the Big Chair" that is a nod to Tears For Fear's second album, Songs from the Big Chair. So there.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Six things to take from Wrestlemania 32



This appears on philstar.com

Six things to take from Wrestlemania 32
by rick olivares

The 32nd instalment of this annual classic was much better than last year’s show. Let’s count the six ways that made it good.

The Women’s Heavyweight Championship match stole the show.
When you think about how the Miesha Tate-Holly Holm or Holly Holm-Rhona Rousey MMA matches have captured the imagination of sports fans, then even if this is only sports entertainment, the first ever Women’s Heavyweight Match in WWE history shows that women are legit headliners.

That Triple Threat Match between Charlotte, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch nearly stole the show! Their wrestling skills are undeniable and it had a great plot! However, you can really see how NXT has given the WWE a shot in the arm with great and talented wrestlers who are ready to take pro wrestling to a whole new level.

Best match of the evening if you ask me. And you should see Bayley and Asuka’s match at NXT. Wow!

Shane O’Mac made that Hell In A Cell match
You can always say nepotism when the McMahon children (46-year old Shane and 39-year old Stephanie) would get involved in WWE matches but you have to admit, they sure made it interesting being being extensions of the heels. As for Shane, from his early days fighting X-Pac to getting involved with father Vince’s feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin to battling Test, his wrestling skills have greatly improved. He’s been willing to do the dirty work from getting hurt to jumping from the opposite top rope to 20-foot high elbow drops during Hell In A Cell. 

The match versus the Undertaker… Shane made it. The Undertaker’s best days are clearly behind him. Shane’s willingness to mix it up, deal the Deadman the figure-four lock, and crash from high up the cage made this a memorable one! 

Been a Shane O’Mac fan and this one made me even a bigger one.

It’s time for Roman Reigns to turn heel
It’s rather embarrassing that for quite a while now, the WWE has been trying to turn Reigns into the next face of the company. But it hasn’t worked. With John Cena winding down and Daniel Bryan out who will it be? Who has the command of the crowd like the Rock? 

Seth Rollins has the talent, the microphone skills, and the hardware but you really can’t have a heel (Stone Cold Steve Austin was an anti-hero) as the face. And that begs the questions — why not a woman like Sasha Banks? 

If not, there’s Finn Balor although he has yet to make the big jump to Raw or Smackdown.

But back to Reigns… he could be a spectacular heel. That helped the Rock become a superstar (although after a while no matter how much he tried to rile the crowd everyone just loved him). He just needs to work on his mike skills.

It’s always good to see the greats.
Stone Cold Steve Austin. Mick Foley. Shawn Michaels. Didn’t that make the hair on your skin stand up? And the Rock! And one of my favorites — although he isn’t on the level of those four aformntioned greats — even made a one gig comeback… Diamond Dallas Page. With the WWE’s roster decimated by injuries, the greats sure showed they can pack some punch.

Now if WWE Creatives only made the League of Nations’ win even more dastardly so the legends could have really put them in their place… that would have made it even better.

AJ Styles’ time will come.
It was good for Chris Jericho to win over AJ Styles. Chris has been magnificent for the WWE since he came over from WCW. This was also a reward for his loyalty. AJ Styles’ time will come. But they better build on this match rather than have it as a one off or it will have been wasted. It would be interesting to see what the WWE has in store for Styles, the former TNA star.

The undeniable effect of NXT on the WWE roster
That Battle Royale was fun! Diamond Dallas Page, Tatanka, and Shaquille O’Neal! Baron Corbin’s win though gave the event a fresh twist. And the NTX roster made quite an impact with Charlotte, Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, and Baron Corbin figuring well. And there’s Kevin Owens among others.

I love how NXT has changed from a disregarded wanna be-TNA to a supercharged and powerhouse event that in many ways is even more entertaining the the main WWE shows.

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