WWE Wrestlemania 36 - Boneyard Match - AJ Styles vs The Undertaker

WWE Wrestlemania 36 - Boneyard Match - AJ Styles vs The Undertaker

I was bored and not interested by the rest of the show, but I did catch this.

I've always been a fan of wrestling matches outside of the ring. I loved the Austin/Booker T supermarket fight. I was intrigued by DDT's attempt at it in an office building and I liked some of their matches at camp sites as well. While DDT got a lot sillier with it than I would have, it's a neat concept. I've written up matches like that myself for fun.

What differed here was that it wasn't done live and really had movie-style production done for it. The match could have been done live and really wouldn't have lost anything had it been done that way, but it was done this way to cover Taker's physical issues.

I really enjoyed it. Both guys played up to their characters. They did things you would expect them to do and we probably got a better match/segment than we would have gotten live. The match/segment also was believable for the most part, atleast in a wrestling sense, minus the teleporting. I didn't see the need for that.

Already, I am seeing a lot of people call for more of these and for these to become the norm. That's a bad idea. This same match wouldn't have worked with a Dolph Ziggler or a Kofi Kingston. This match needed a really strong character/gimmick to work. The match also benefited from still being fresh. As we talked about above, there were similar things done, but, few people saw them. Everyone saw this tonight.

It was hard for me to watch this and not think this was the future of wrestling or at the very least was a lifeboat for something that declined and gotten very stale. But like anything else, the more its done, the less special it will be and the less effect it will have.