Well, that was a long night.
It was certainly a long and memorable night in Orlando. If you count the Kickoff show, it was over seven hours of wrestling. That is a lot to process. We had some interesting booking choices, shocking returns, multiple title switches and the biggest farewell possible.
With all of this in mind, I present my list of the top five most surprising moments of WWE WrestleMania 33:
#5 Shane McMahon has the best match on the card
Shane McMahon has a habit of showing up at WrestleMania and exceeding his limited experience.
He has had memorable matches with Vince McMahon, X-Pac and even the Undertaker, it usually was for the crazy spots but Shane always delivered. I expected another spot fest carried by the best wrestler in the company, AJ Styles for this match. I was wrong.
Also read: Ranking all the matches from WrestleMania 33
The majority of the match was technical wrestling and Shane did quite well. It had a good pace to it and had a lot of fun mat-based wrestling.
Yes, we got the traditional Shane jumping through tables and into trashcans but it was a quality twenty-minute wrestling match. And to end it with a Shooting Star Press? Wow. It started the show off with a fantastic opening match.
#4 The Veterans put over the younger talent
One of the biggest complaints some hardcore fans have with WrestleMania season is seeing the part-timers show up and take up main show spots from the full-time performers. This seemed to be the case with a Universal title match featuring two part-time wrestlers.
When you throw in a 47-year-old Triple H and a 52-year-old Undertaker in major feuds, it seemed that WrestleMania would be the showcase of the past again. Then the show actually happened.
I was pleasantly surprised that the part-time veterans actually put over the future. As mentioned above, the 47-year-old Shane McMahon had a good match and lost to AJ Styles.
The 50-year-old Goldberg did the job clean and lost to the 39-year-old Brock Lesnar who would at least be around in coming months to defend the title. Triple H did what he has done a lot in previous WrestleManias and put over younger talent again.
And shockingly but not surprisingly, Undertaker lost his second ever WrestleMania match and said goodbye. It was great to see the older guys do the job for the newer generation.
#3 Bray Wyatt loses
I feel really sorry for Bray Wyatt. He is likely the most interesting character in the WWE today and it felt like he had finally turned the corner with his clean WWE title victory at the Elimination Chamber.
When Randy Orton burned the Wyatt house to the ground it made sense that Bray would get some revenge over the arsonist.
Then he took a quick RKO and lost in eleven minutes. The winless streak for Bray Wyatt at WrestleMania continues. He is doing the reverse Undertaker. But hey, at least he had a bunch of bugs on the wrestling ring during his WWE title match so that is something.
Poor Bray Wyatt.
#2 The Hardy Boyz return
It isn’t very often that the WWE can still shock us and especially at WrestleMania itself.
I am sure a lot of us expected Jeff and Matt Hardy would be back after WrestleMania. It would have led to a quite a reaction at a post-Mania Raw or SmackDown. However, the truly surprising moment was when the music hit and the crowd lost it.
You just don’t see many surprising returns at a WrestleMania.
I honestly don’t know what I think of the match itself. But did it really matter? The fans loved everything they did and Jeff Hardy did his usual insane ladder spot. It was surprising to see The Hardy Boyz return and to see them win the Raw Tag Title was the shocking moment to add to it.
#1 The Undertaker retires
I had a lot of my friends tell me that there was no way that The Undertaker should lose to someone like Roman. I completely disagreed.
The Undertaker is 52 years old and was clearly limited in what he could have done in the ring at this point. He needed to lose his last match and put over a younger talent. In that regard, it was the right decision, despite how much fans didn’t like it.
The match itself wasn’t the best. If I called it sloppy, it would be an understatement.
Roman is a solid worker and did what he could but clearly, Taker was limited. That was not the surprising moment but it was sad that for a performer being as amazing as Taker is, he didn’t have a better farewell match.
I think that his last great Mania match was against CM Punk at WrestleMania 29. Part of me wishes he could have ended it all at that show.
The truly surprising moment of WrestleMania 33 or any WrestleMania was what happened after the match, with The Undertaker getting up and leaving all his gear in the ring.
After pretty much carrying WrestleMania for nearly three decades, it was an emotional moment. You knew it was over when he basically broke character and kissed his wife.
As we watched him literally vanish while the show ended, it was an emotional moment for sure. The Undertaker is arguably the biggest star in WrestleMania history. How could any other moment top this list? Thank you, Taker.
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