The nine craziest things that went down at WrestleMania 33

Scott Keith

The nine craziest things that went down at WrestleMania 33 image

Going into the biggest show of the year, the buzz was pretty minimal, but you never know what Vince McMahon and WWE can pull out of their bag of tricks. And they had quite the bag this year, as WrestleMania 33 produced some memorable stuff over the six-hour running time.

MORE: WrestleMania results: Undertaker loses, Lesnar wins

Mojo Rawley wins the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal . . . ???

Yes, this was a thing that actually happened at a WrestleMania. Braun Strowman and Big Show were eliminated early and the remaining goofs and jobbers proceeded to have one of the worst battle royals in WrestleMania history. The final three were Mojo Rawley, Jinder Mahal and the big fat guy from Sanity in NXT, so this tells you the level of thought that was put into this thing. And then the finish saw football star Rob Gronkowski getting involved and facing the wrath of an 85-pound security guard who apparently wasn't smartened up to the match finish. Mojo eliminated Jinder to win and the world groaned in unison.

Shane McMahon remains alive

Despite the presence of a roller coaster outside the stadium, Shane surprisingly did not jump off it, or any other high places for that matter.  He and AJ Styles actually went out and had a normal wrestling match, which was pretty darn good thanks to Styles being really great at pro wrestling. Shane did pull out the Coast to Coast and flung himself off the top rope and through the announce table, but that's considered low-risk by his standards. I still don't see what the point of this match even existing was, but I certainly can't fault their effort here.

The Hardy Boyz return

In the twist that everyone knew was possible when a ladder match was announced, the Hardy Boyz made their surprise return to WWE as the fourth entrants in the RAW tag-team title match, although without the Broken Matt/Brother Nero characters that are in legal limbo at the moment. And just to rub salt in the wounds for TNA, they won the tag-team titles in their first match back, with Jeff jumping off a ladder while Matt grabbed the titles. Despite the lack of Senor Benjamin and Matt deleting things, this was a fantastic "WrestleMania Moment" and a great match. Once they left TNA this return was pretty much a formality, because there are only so many years of earning potential left in Matt and Jeff, but it's so rare to get legit feel-good moments that don't seem like they're manufactured for Twitter purposes or written for a reality TV show.

MORE: Hardy Boyz shock WWE Universe, make surprise return

John Cena proposes to Nikki Bella

Hey, speaking of manufactured reality TV moments . . . Well, this was not really that crazy of a moment, I guess, since it was teased and built up for months. But more importantly, Miz got to be the biggest babyface on the show for the first time in his career as the crowd went nuts for him for the entire match and booed everything Cena did. Once again WWE completely miscalculates its own audience, since the women who watch "Total Bellas" on E! don't translate to the arenas or the wrestling shows. They were shooting for Randy Savage proposing to Elizabeth in 1991, but Cena ain't Randy Savage.

That being said, if Jake "the Snake" Roberts comes out of retirement to crash the wedding reception and attacks both Cena and Nikki with cobras, I'll take back all the bad things I said about this.

MORE: John Cena offers Nikki Bella a different kind of ring

Stephanie McMahon goes through a table

Although the Seth Rollins vs. Triple H match was nothing to write home about — picture Triple H working Rollins' injured knee for 20 minutes — the finish was certainly notable, as Stephanie tried to get involved and got shoved through a table by her husband as a result. Given that comeuppance for Stephanie's character is something that seemingly only occurs every five WrestleManias or so, this was a big moment for the fans and a nice capper for the match.

Bray Wyatt projects wacky videos onto the matw

This would certainly qualify as a "crazy thing." So, really, Bray Wyatt's apparent plan to beat Randy Orton involved having an evil movie projector showing clips of maggots and worms on the mat while Orton made his comebacks.

Yes, this was actually something that occurred in the WWE World Championship match that was supposedly headlining WrestleMania. And then, and I know this will come as a shock, it didn't work. Orton just won cleanly with the RKO and beat Wyatt like he was nothing, anyway. They were trying something very different here, and it did not work. At all. 

Brock and Goldberg leave it all in the ring

In what was certainly Goldberg's retirement match, he and Brock Lesnar went out and had a crazy, exciting video-game fight of a match, basically consisting of trading suplexes and Spears for four minutes before Brock won with an F5. People were expecting smoke and mirrors, but instead Goldberg took 10 German suplexes like a man and made up for all the minute-long performances this year thus far. It wasn't good or anything, but it was far more exciting than most of the second half of the show was, that's for sure.

A whole lot of titles changed hands

Out of the nine titles currently recognized by WWE, five of them switched holders at this year's WrestleMania:  The Raw tag-team championships, the WWE Universal Championship, the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, the SmackDown Women's Championship and the U.S. Championship. For those who think that belts are losing their prestige these days, that's a heck of a good bit argument on your side.

Undertaker is 23-2

In what might possibly be Undertaker's last match — for real, super serious this time, you guys — he lost cleanly to Roman Reigns and his Spear in a giant dog of a main event. But don't worry, I'm totally sure that this will be what Roman needed to get over that hump and turn into the top babyface superstar that Vince has always wanted him to be, no matter how many people boo him. Totally.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable show despite things completely faling apart in the second half and the whole thing seemingly dragging on for longer than the annual Jerry Lewis Telethon. But man, they really need to treat this like the final movie in a YA trilogy and split it into two parts or something.

Scott Keith

Scott Keith Photo

Scott Keith is the overlord of Scott's Blog of Doom at www.blogofdoom.com, and has authored 5 books on pro wrestling, now available on Amazon and in discount bins near you! He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with his wife and ridiculously cute daughter.