Wrestlemania has come and gone, and with it the professional wrestling world is officially shaken. After a year of rumors, speculation, and horrible booking. The end of the grandest stage of them all sent fans home with one hell of a performance from most if not all who participated at the event in some stellar matches. And the big finale featured one hell of a legitimately surprising ending, which has been lost on WWE for some time now.

Wrestlemania 31 is a 2015 professional wrestling Pay-Per-View, it is produced and ran by World Wrestling Entertainment via PPV and the WWE Network.

Wrestlemania has always been the glimmer of light in the otherwise dark year for professional wrestling fans (or those more specifically a fan of the WWE). With some ok, to great, to down right horrible booking throughout the year Wrestlemania is usually the only saving grace we have for some legitimate entertainment.  However, something seemed fairly off with Wrestlemania this year. Along with WWE seemingly phasing out the numbering for the event, the key storylines were horribly booked and built, and the match card didn’t look all that great to start with barring two or three matches. Yet, the the ending results of Wrestlemania 31 was an absolute hell of a ride, and an enjoyable one.

All photos used below are courtesy of WWE and WWE.com.

Stardust taking flight in the Intercontinental Championship ladder match.

THE GOOD: While not the most impressive match on the card, the Andre the Giant battle royal featured a fairly key moment that many were both expecting and hoping for; the break up of Miz and Damien Sandow. Sandow (going by Mizdow), had been doing some fantastic work with his gimmick of the mime assistant of The Miz. One of the few saving graces of weekly RAWs, Miz and Sandow worked excellent well together, and made the “A Show” fun whenever they got on camera together. After being robbed (according to some fans) of a push last year, it seems Sandow is back in favor with WWE Creative and is possibly on his way back to the top. Personally I was never much of a fan of Sandow until he was paired with Miz, but I understood the animosity fans had when his push was abruptly ended being a Money in the Bank winner.

The COO of WWE takes on The Franchise of WCW, starting a potential WWE vs WCW angle for next year.

From experience, I knew to expect a great match with the IC title ladder match, due to the MITB ladder matches always stealing the show at previous Wrestlemania shows. And as expecting the ladder match was fantastic. Featuring a lot of high flying and great power moves, Daniel Bryan came out on top as the new Intercontinental Champion. Making the start of the resurging of the midcard titles that have been booked horribly since the mid-2000s a reality. Speaking of which, John Cena; an established main eventer defeated the formerly undefeated Rusev to become United States Champion for the first time since 2005. And let me just say that Cena’s recent run in the mid/upper-card has been fantastic. I know, “Cena sucks”, but in reality he’s had some of his best work in years since stepping down from the main event scene sometime after last year’s SummerSlam.

WWE looks to reinvent it’s midcard with the help of Joh Cena as the ew WWE United States Champion.

The main event of Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship was actually fairly entertaining. Everybody knew Reigns was going to be booed from hell and back, but WWE stuck to their guns and kept the match as, for the majority that is. I know this is a late review, but the big news coming out of Sunday, was Seth Rollins; who had been main eventing for the better half of a year stole the show with his surprise Money in the Bank contract cash in, being not only the first to do so at Wrestlemania, but also being the first NXT Champion to become WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

The second to last ride for The Deadman?

THE BAD: The only bad things to really say about this year’s Wrestlemania, was that there was some questionable booking decisions (that mostly worked out in the end), and a few meh-ish matches on the card. Otherwise this year’s show was surprisingly stellar.

From Money in the Bank to World Champion.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: While the foundation appeared rocky, Wrestlemania proved to be one of the best WWE PPVs in months. The card had matches, that while questionable at first proved to be of fantastic quality from nearly top to bottom. Some matches did fall flat, but they were too few to give examples. And the ending sent a lot of fans home happy. Otaku Dome gives Wrestlemania 31 an 88 out of 100.