WWE WrestleMania 23 (2007)

THE BIGGEST WWE DVD RELEASE OF THE YEAR: It’s the biggest event of the WWE year, when the Superstars of Raw, Smackdown, and ECW come together to create moments of immortality featuring top superstars John Cena, Batista, Lashley, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Edge, Randy Orton, Kane, Rob Van Dam, and so many more.

It was a Wrestlemania

That's pretty much how I can describe it. While watching it, it felt better than it actually was, but rethinking back, it was nowhere near the level of the previous two years' Wrestlemanias.

Money in the Bank
Edge vs Matt Hardy vs King Booker vs Jeff Hardy vs Randy Orton vs Finlay vs CM Punk vs Kennedy Kennedy
It came and went, and was above average, and it was short, and it was not as well-put together as the previous two years. The most memorable high spot of course is the ladder spot with Jeff jumping onto Edge laid out on a ladder propped between the ring apron and the guard-rail, breaking the ladder in half. It actually managed to look and sound better as a Youtube clip than on the event itself. Crowd was almost completely dead for most of the beginning, and barely gave this ladder spot the pop it deserved. (7/10)

Kane vs The Great Khali
(0/10)

WWE United States Championship
MVP vs NO ONE WHO'S NAME DOES NOT RHYME WITH "BRIS END LAW"~!
This one had a surprise twist in that MVP actually managed to out-wrestle the technical wrestler here, putting on some almost Angle/NO ONE chain wrestling as was seen in Wrestlemania X7. The problem was that the crowd was completely dead for most of this (Just like Benoit a few months later, OH SNAPSZ~! Terrible joke), and the match wasn't as long as it should likely have been. (7/10)

World Heavyweight Championship
Batista (C) w/o BASKETBALLS~! vs the Undertaker w/ Druids to waste five minutes with piped-in chanting
Smackdown main event practically a curtain jerker as the third match on the card? BAAAHAHAHAHAH! This was one match that felt better when watching it than it actually was. Further retrospective reflection shows that the Undertaker carried most of the match, as he did with Mark Henry in Wrestlemania 22, but this was no classic match. (5/10)

ECW Originals vs NEW BREED
Tommy Dreamer, Sabu, Sandman, Rob Van Dam vs Marcus Cor Von, Elijah Burke, Matt Striker, Kevin Thorn
The match almost made me cry as the audience was absolutely DEAD for the entire first half of the match. No pops for anyone but Rob Van Dam. This is just to show you just how much the WWE cares about pushing the ECW originals and getting the crowd behind them (hint, not at all). The audiene finally started to make noise at some point in the middle. Mildly entertaining match killed by total crowd apathy and piss-poor hype buildup. (6/10)

A note on the matches thus far and to come, considering how this crowd is supposedly recordbreaking 80,103 people, I expect a damn lot of noise from them, and thus far they're behaving like a half-empty 2,000 full arena; it didn't sound anywhere near as loud as 80,000 people at any moment in the event.

BATTLE OF THE BILLIONAIRES~!
Vince McMahon | Umaga vs Donald Trump | Bobby "Lindsay"
How painfully stupidly awkward this publicity stunt was. And it -was- a publicity stunt. Not hard to believe how badly WWE was doing at this point in time ratings-wise that they needed to do this. Seeing Donald Trump pretend to be interested in wrestling and the soap opera-ish kayfabe of it was embarassing. Seeing Trump awkwardly clothesline Vince McMahon, and do a piss-poor job of selling Stone Cold's stunner was embarassing. The match itself was straight out of Umaga's Royal Rumble match against John Cena --- Umaga utterly squashed Bobby Lashley, but since McMahon's an idiot who kept screwing with Stone Cold rather than let Umaga kill Bobby Lashley, Stone Cold flips and beats up Umaga so Lashley can steal a win.

Seriously, the ending was never in doubt; you honestly think uptight Donald Trump is going to be shaved bald instead of Vince McMahon? Say what you will about McMahon as a promoter or a booker, but he is an amazing boss in that he will go all-out and do anything to entertain people, even if he goes overboard by inserting his character into places it should not be (ie, the center of the Invasion angle, overshadowing the fatal four way at Wrestlemania 2000), he still puts his body on the line all the time. He is as Alexander the Great was; right there in the front lines with his men. He does everything he asks his wrestlers to do, from wrestling to high spots and bumps to humiliation. I commend Vince McMahon for that, but I cannot commend stupid stunts like this match was. (2/10)


WWE Women's Championship
Ashley vs Melina. Who the hell cares who was champion to start?
Reviewer "Cryza" says that the Women's championship should never be defended at Wrestlemania. I would have argued against that if it weren't ASHLEY MASSARO wrestling in this garbage match. But for the time being, as the WWE hires more models and less female wrestlers, it will be a fact that women's matches will almost always suck. (0/10)

WWE Championship
John Cena (C) vs Shawn Michaels
Since this was deep in the reign of Superman Cena as the undefeated "exalted one" who would never lose the championship to anyone short of God Himself, and even then he would need an immediate rematch the next day to win it back. Many superstars have been booked in this sort of way but unlike them all, Cena did not have the wrestling skill or the charisma to back it up.

At first I thought it was just an occasional occurrence, but this match is the third instance in which I saw John Cena's strength---getting beat up on.

John Cena has this amazing ability to bring out the very best in his opponent; in making them beat on him so thoroughly and passionately that it feels like the bookers make you eat their underwear when Cena wins it after his opponent puts on a match of a lifetime performance.

Wrestlemania 21: JBL puts on the absolute best match of his life, dominating Cena for a good 90% of the match, only to lose in an ass way after having been on the dominating end for the last few minutes.
Royal Rumble 2007: Cena gets more offense in, but Umaga just sells MONSTER HEEL to new heights and levels in the absolute best match of his career, but SUPER CENA NEEDS TO RETAIN, DAMMIT! Invisible white boy rapper with square jaw and monkey face = MONEY~!

And so in this match, the very same Shawn Michaels who in the last year's Wrestlemania I called a great entertainer but a poor wrestler, puts on a spellbindingly entertaining wrestling match, with absolutely unbelievable psychology (Michaels wants to shake Cena's hand at the beginning, Cena refuses, Michaels absolutely brutalizes him and screams at him, slaps him around, mocks and taunts him, then refuses Cena's handshake at the end), and while Cena put in even more offense than at the Royal Rumble, he was still little more than a stumpy roid ranger who did little more than F-U's, clotheslines, punches, and generic hoss offense, while Shawn Michaels MADE this match. (7/10)

And just like the Smackdown main event at Wrestlemania 21, Cena gets his ass beat by an opponent who goes all out like an exterminator using a laser death ray on a cockroach or a soldier using an air strike to take out a single enemy soldier, and yet STILL Super Cena wins it, because he's John Cena and Vince McMahon cannot bear to have him be pinned by anyone.

And the crowd mirrored this sentiment, as in the beginning HALF the people were for Shawn Michaels, and HALF were for John Cena, and by the middle of it, almost EVERYONE was for Shawn Michaels, and only the kids were still for John Cena. You could clearly tell the tones of the crowd, as the cheers for Shawn Michaels were louder, lower, and throatier, while the cheers for John Cena had virtually no bass to them, and were too high to include women.

On the whole, the matches were decent enough for a Wrestlemania, but the overall booking was subpar, the crowd was pathetically out of it for almost everything but the main event, and there was way too much in the way of filler and time-wasting like repeating overly-dramatic hype videos and the 10 minute entrances before the BATTLE OF THE BILLIONAIRES~! match. October 22, 2008

Lo mejor con Donald Trump

Super bueno estuvo.

el undertaker y donald trump lo mejor del evento

cena apestaaaaaaaaa October 1, 2008

WRESTLEMANIA 23

WRESTLEMANIA 23 BROUGHT OVER 80,000 FANS TO DETROIT.

WWE CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
SHAWN MICHAELS VS. JOHN CENA
WINNER JOHN CENA 28 MINS

WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH
UNDERTAKER VS. BATISTA
WINNER AND NOW 15-0 THE UNDERTAKER

BATTLE OF THE BILLIONAIRS
BOBBY LASHELY WITH DONALD TRUMP
VS.
UMAGA WITH MR. MCMAHON
LOSER WITH A NEW BOLD HEAD MR. MCMAHON
WINNER DONALD TRUMP

MONEY IN THE BANK LADDER MATCH
EDGE VS. CM PUNK VS. KING BOOKER
VS. JEFF HARDY VS. MR. KENNEDY VS.
MATT HARDY VS. FINLAY VS. RANDY ORTON
WINNER MR. KENNEDY

ECW ORIGINALS VS. THE NEW BREED
WINNERS ECW ORIGINALS

LUMBERJILL MATCH FOR THE WOMENS TITLE
MELINA VS. ASHELY
WINNER MELINA

KANE VS. THE GREAT KHALI
WINNER KHALI

UNITED STATES TITLE MATCH
WHATS HIS NAME VS. MVP
WINNER WHATS HIS NAME June 2, 2008

A great Wrestlemania

I'll always have a soft spot for this WM, purely because it was the first WWE PPV I ever saw. I got into the WWE fairly recently, around January 2007 when we finally got Sky, the TV provider who shows WWE programming. I had to wait until my mother wanted to order a PPV (she watches too), and WM happened to be the first one.

And I genuinelly thought this was a great show, it was better then WM22 and better then this year's WM24, in my opinion.

This collector's edition tin case version is the one I own, it was the same price as the DVD on it's own so I thought I might as well as get it. I like the snazzy case, it looks really cool. The 3 DVDs are also cool.

How about a run down of the matches, then?

Money In The Bank match (Jeff Hardy vs King Booker vs Finlay vs CM Punk vs Mr Kennedy vs Matt Hardy vs Randy Orton vs Edge)
A great way to begin the show, with this fast paced high flying match. It was a pretty good match - but out of 4 MITB matches to date, I think it's 3rd best (WM21 was the best, followed by WM24). The moment where Jeff leaps off the ladder onto Edge is amazing though. I didn't like Kennedy at the time, so I was unhappy he won. But overall, a solid match. (3.5/5)

Interpromotional match (Kane vs The Great Khali)
This match was boring. Kane did the best he could with a bad opponent, including an amazing moment where he bodyslammed Khali, but overall this match was disappointing as it's hard to find somebody who can make Khali good. (2/5)

United States Championship (Chris Benoit vs MVP)
I am not even going to mention the obvious and just concentrate on the match. This was a rather good match, and proved MVP can wrestle and can last the distance. Chris showed why he was a great in ring competitor. Another solid match. (3.5/5)

World Heavyweight Championship (The Undertaker vs Batista)
In my personal opinion, this match is vastly overrated. It was voted 2007's best match, but I disagree. Yes, it was a very good match but it wasn't the best of last year. There were some amazing moments and of course Undertaker winning was a highlight, but it was overhyped. Still I liked having Taker as champion, so it gets a high rating. (4/5)

ECW Originals vs New Breed
This was the only ECW related match on the card and it didn't really live up to the hype. I'm glad the Originals won though, but I was hoping for more hardcore moments. Just average. (3/5)

Battle Of The Billionaires Hair vs Hair Match (Bobby Lashley w/ Donald Trump vs Umaga w/ Vince McMahon with Stone Cold as Special Guest Referee)
This match was a lot of fun, you can't deny that. It was great for a laugh and had loads of comedic moments. It was classic having Stone Cold as the referee as he wasn't afraid to get involved in the match. Everybody knew Vince would lose, but it was still hilarious to see him get his head shaved. A funny gimmicky match that provided some comic relief. (4.5/5)

Women's Championship Lumberjill Match (Melina vs Ashley)
I love the women's division, but this match wasn't WM standard. It was nothing compared to Mickie vs Trish from WM22. I dislike Melina and Ashley needs to go and learn how to wrestle better. The best bit was at the end where all the divas began brawling. This was just a match to calm everybody down before the main event. (2/5)

WWE Championship (John Cena vs Shawn Michaels)
Definitely without a doubt, the match of the night for me. But I may be biased as John & Shawn are my two favourite wrestlers. But this match was legendary, only matched in brilliance by their hour long match in London a couple of weeks later. Shawn dominated most of the match, working on John's leg for most of it. After the referee got knocked out, chaos ensued. John got the win with the STFU. An absolutely EPIC match and a well deserved main event. (5+/5)

This set also has the whole Hall Of Fame ceremony on disc 3 which I like to watch to see the superstars in the audience xD
Disc 2 has extras - the best being the pre WM match, a tag team lumberjack match - Ric Flair & Carlito vs Gregory Helms & Chavo Guerrero, a rematch from No Way Out with Undertaker & Batista vs John Cena & Shawn Michaels and the segment where Bobby Lashley shows off Vince's bald head to the crowd on Raw (lol the bit where Vince tries to hide under Lillian's dress and Bobby rips it off is hilarious xD).

Overall, a strong Wrestlemania with a great main event and a funny gimmicky match that holds it at 5 stars. Also the DVD is superbly made and I love the tin case. 5 starsd May 13, 2008

Best Pay Per View

This is the best pay per view i have ever seen in ages, probably the best wrestlemania ever, also the theme song is awesome by Saliva ladies and gentlemen and even everything else is great about this wrestlemania and its damn worth your money. January 27, 2008

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