WWE WrestleMania 34: Results, Highlights, Analysis, and Grades

Photo Source: WWE.com

WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal

Result: Naomi last eliminated Bayley to win

Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

Who’s bright idea was it to give Becky Lynch an entrance, then introduce “the rest,” but give Bayley and Sasha Banks their own entrances, too? That’s such a slap in the face to the “second tier” superstars. If it’s a battle royal, march everyone down to the ring at once, then start the match. If you want superstars to get an individual entrance, give them a singles/tag match.

Love the mob mentality at the start of the match to eliminate Carmella. Ms. Money in the Bank was a bit too cocky for her own good, and was unceremoniously dumped out by the field. Dana Brooke mocked Carmella’s ouster, and the group did the same thing to her. There’s no reason not to work together early on to thin the herd, great to see that as the strategy here.

And part of the mob? A contingent of NXT superstars – Peyton Royce, Dakota Kai, Kairi Sane, Bianca Belair, Taynara Conti, and Kavita Devi. Despite heel/face alignments, the “minor leaguers” worked together to prove they belonged just as much as anyone else. Belair, who hasn’t impressed me the way she has the majority of fans, it seems, hit a beautiful 450 splash on Sonya Deville. She got some good distance on it, too – maybe I’m wrong when I think she’s nothing more than a Willow Smith song?

The battle royal, for the most part, wasn’t much different than the men’s match. There weren’t really any crazy stave-off-elimination spots, no unexpected alliances (apart from NXT, which makes sense in context). Sasha and Bayley working together to get to the point of being “final two” is exactly how their breakup has been playing out of late. Neither one wants to totally give up on the other, so they keep coming back to each other.

The “I won but not really” spot with Bayley at the end would have made a ton more sense if it was a heel celebrating getting eliminated by a babyface. Even Bayley celebrating, only to be eliminated by a sneaky heel would have been better. Ignoring alignments all the time lessens the impact of certain moments. The best stories of all time – not only in wrestling, but in all art and literature and cinema – have a well-defined “hero” and “antagonist/villain.” Your hero can be flawed, your villain sympathetic to an extent – but the alignments are there for a reason.

Again, not a bad battle royal, but it probably could have been something more special than it already was. The fact that the match even took place is a testament to how far women’s wrestling has come in the past few years. And, maybe, the fact that the match was treated in the same, middle-of-the-road manner the men’s battle royal was is a sign that things are more equal than we already thought?