Wrestlemania 32 Started Great, Ended with a Whimper

by Vince Vandal

I’ve been an avid fan of professional wrestling for over 25 years. I caught the tail-end of the Golden Era, into the birth of the amazing spectacle that was the Attitude Era, which led into the era of Ruthless Aggression, and finally… the PG Era. The era where actual wrestling has taken a backseat to “sports entertainment,” whatever that even means anymore. I’m not the type of guy to catch every episode of RAW and Smackdown anymore like when I was growing up, because it just doesn’t have that spark that it used to. I’ll only watch the major events (Wrestlemania and the Royal Rumble) and catch highlights if anything of note happens in-between. That being said, I still like to see the culmination of the build-ups from the previous year at the “Grandaddy of Them All” (even though Vince doesn’t let anyone call it that anymore), Wrestlemania, and see how the company is holding up. So here’s my review.

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The Show of Shows: Being at Wrestlemania 31

The Granddaddy of them all. Wrestlemania.

I’ll start this off by stating how special this year’s ‘Mania was for me, mainly because my favorite wrestler ever, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, had such a huge imprint on the event.

Wrestlemania IV in 1988 took place in Atlantic City, NJ, not even 90 minutes from my childhood home in Philadelphia. We had plans to attend, but tickets were sold out, so the Spectrum — the local basketball stadium — had decided to open the stadium up and broadcast Wrestlemania on the JumboTron for a small fee. I was so excited, I had to go. My mother agreed and took my cousin Howie and me to South Philly for my first Wrestlemania moment. I bought a Macho Man poster, a foam finger, and a program.

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