WrestlePalooza, the first under the WWE banner has concluded, and there’s a plethora of people with mixed feelings.
WrestlePalooza on ESPN
WWE aired their debut ESPN Premium Live Event Saturday, September 20th on ESPN+ platforms. Formerly best known for being an ECW event from the 90’s, WWE now owns the WrestlePalooza trademark and they have used it for the first time, for what they hyped up to be a big-time premium live event. On paper, the show had stars from past and present all lined up to put on the best show they possibly could.
AJ Lee’s return, wrestling for the first time in 10 years alongside her husband CM Punk, to take on Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch in a marquee match. Plus, WWE Champion Cody Rhodes taking on Drew McIntyre with the WWE Championship on the line in the main event. But, up first, John Cena continues his retirement tour to take on Brock Lesnar. Two box-office stars going at it, regardless of what people think of a certain beast for his real-life antics, he is a ticket seller, and that’s what kicked off the show.
Despite WWE knowing that they will receive backlash towards Brock Lesnar for his involvement in the Vince McMahon sexual misconduct case, he is back. Fans already aren’t too intrigued with seeing Brock because of those accusations, so, it won’t make it much better when they have Brock go into this match and absolutely destroy John Cena and defeat him very decisively, not really letting John Cena get much offense. Fans were immediately disappointed when Brock won the match fairly quickly, feeling like John Cena‘s retirement run has been squandered. To make matters worse for WWE, they put this match up against the main event of AEW’s All Out Pay-Per-View, which made it easier for fans to just wait until Brock was off the screen in order to tune in. And for those who did tune in, the results weren’t to the liking of many fans. But, with that out of the way, would the show get better?
The Usos took on Bron Breakker and Bronson Reed in what turned out to be a Special Guest Referee match with LA Knight in charge. Because of this, Knight allowed this match to turn into basically a no-disqualification match. Chairs, tables, and even some blood on Jey Uso, the match ended up being an entertaining one. Despite the dud of an opening match, things began to turn around. The Bron’s got the win, which wasn’t much of a surprise, but not a bad thing, either.
The vacant Women’s World Championship was on the line next. The former champion, Naomi, had to vacate due to pregnancy, and now IYO Sky and Stephanie Vaquer battled to crown a new champion. In what was not a surprise to me, this ended up being the best match on the card, in my and some others opinions. Stephanie Vaquer ended up picking up the win with a picture perfect Spiral Tap that had the crowd in awe. Congratulations to Stephanie, she’s been on a tear.
Now, we’re ‘cooking’ as the kids say, right? Well, up next, the return of AJ Lee after 10 years. AJ made her return with her Chuck Taylor’s on-foot and her crazy side ready to explode. Punk and AJ battled Seth and Becky, which ended up being a chaotic match, in the best way possible. Was there some ring rust for AJ Lee? Sure. Maybe a little, but that’s to be expected. Despite that, she exceeded expectations and had a really fun match, with a satisfactory ending when AJ Lee made the dastardly Becky Lynch tap out to her signature black-widow submission.
Right before the main event, Undertaker made a surprise appearance and made his way down to the ringside area where he met Stephanie McMahon in the crowd. They joked around together before Undertaker revealed that Stephanie McMahon is the first inductee into the 2026 Hall Of Fame. Stephanie genuinely seemed shocked at this moment and seemingly didn’t know this was about to happen, good for her.
A small card, but the main event was next. Cody Rhodes defended his WWE Championship against Drew McIntyre in the main event. With a match that surely would be seen as very heated between the two, I thought it did start a bit too slow for my liking. It did speed up towards the end, but after being claymored, beaten, battered and bruised, Cody Rhodes retained the title in an okay match. The issue here isn’t fully that the match wasn’t great, but the result. I personally didn’t see Cody losing this, but a lot of fans did and immediately voiced their displeasure with Cody Rhodes winning. Now, I’m not naive to the fact that a lot of the live crowd does like Cody and the kids certainly cheer for the man. But, the online community has raged against Cody Rhodes. Right as the three count hit, fans blasted their displeasure all over social media, some even going as far to say Cody Rhodes “sucks” and wishing the “Cody Rhodes Experiment” would end. This is nothing new to Cody, and not anything new from the Internet wrestling fans. But, this is the type of thing that happened to Cody in AEW. The fans desperately craved for Cody Rhodes to turn heel and switch things up and do something different. Instead, he remained a good guy until he was hated and then he left and went to WWE, where he kept the same baby-face hero character. Now, is that catching up to him in WWE, too? Will fans turn on Cody fully? It could only be a matter of time until the internet hate turns into live crowd hate and Cody starts to become boo’d. Drew McIntyre being a fan-favorite has only ignited everything and added fuel to the fire. Leaving the fans with a sour taste in their mouths to end the first event on ESPN was definitely a choice.
Overall, was the debut on ESPN a dud? Did the first ever WrestlePalooza fall flat? There’s a case to be made for both. Triple H hyped up this show to be, in his words, “Awesome” and a “New Era” with many shocks and surprises, as well as a “larger than life spectacle”. The only surprise we got was Stephanie and Undertaker, but that was more-so a surprise for Stephanie herself instead of the fans. And if it counts, Pat McAfee returned in the opening match to do commentary. Big shrug.
Brock Lesnar’s destructive win over John Cena was a surprise, but not one that was welcomed. And Cody Rhodes’s getting a win, while it wasn’t a surprise to me, somewhere were shocked to see him retain and also not happy about it. But on the positive side, a lot of the matches were good, and the in-ring action was solid. And yes, the women stole the show. If we look at this 5 match card as a cheese burger, the meat, the cheese, it was good! A good solid burger, but it just happened to have two stale buns with the opening and ending matches. Everything in the middle was good. But the bookends left a lot to be desired. While everyone has their own opinions, and this is just mine, Triple H’s attempt to build this show up as a game-changer fell flat. It wasn’t extravagant, it wasn’t shocking, but it was solid. A decent show that had the good and the bad. In the words of the late Aaliyah, dust yourself off, and try again.
What did you think?
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