Gimmick Some (Wrestlemania) Lovin': The Extreme Return Edition

Not pictured: the winners of the match, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. — Not pictured: the eventual winners of the match, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Things don't need to make sense to be great.

My Rating

So far, in our Wrestlemania-centric gimmick match rewinds, we've taken aim at matches that feel less like matches and more like promo segments with moves and a closing bell.

In all honesty, this one is more of the same but, unlike some of those other contests, it really works. WWE breaks its own pattern by making a huge return transpire on its biggest show, rather than the fabled Wrestlemania Monday edition of Monday Night RAW and, from that moment on, all story goes out the window.

As Diamond Dallas Page circa 2002 would say, "That's not a bad thing; that's a good thing!"

The build to this match was nothing special, and multi-team Wrestlemania contests (at least, those not involving Matt, Jeff, Edge, Christian, Bubba Ray, and D-Von) seldom have a build that truly matters. Like the matches with their own namesake pay-per-views (TLC, Hell in a Cell, Elimination Chamber), the Wrestlemania tag team match has stopped being about the match, or about the titles, or about any semblance of a story; it's about cramming as many stars onto a card as possible.

To paraphrase a line Ric Flair used about Wrestlemania X, Matt and Jeff had a match with a ladder, and three other teams just happened to be there.

With all three teams' storyline claims to the red leather and white gold equally flimsy, the addition of a fourth team makes about as much sense as the addition of the ladders; the fact that the fourth team is Matt and Jeff Hardy, though, finally makes the match feel like something special.

Few superstars on the main Wrestlemania card receive the adulation these two brothers receive; only Roman Reigns would get a louder reaction, but that was one which could be generously described as "mixed" (or, more accurately described as "a lot of booing"). All of a sudden, an overstuffed match with meaningless spectacle had an emotional hook; the dullest parts of the match seem to be anything not involving the Hardyz, as they play to very muted reactions (the Sheamus and Cesaro tandem count-along attack on The Club excepted).

Anyone predicting this would happen before Wrestlemania 33 began had to admit that it was mostly wishful thinking.

When the proudest sons of Cameron, North Carolina, come anywhere near a ladder, something special always happens; simply walking through the curtain here, they give legitimacy to a match which fans otherwise assumed would be a pre-show contest wrestled in front of a half-full stadium. Even knowing, 12 months after its first airing, that they would join and win the match, their entrance and victory were still enough to quicken this fan's heartbeat.

It's an easy 7.5/10. Is it a perfect, or even great, match? No, but it's great television, and the true definition of the Wrestlemania Moment WWE seems more intent than ever on manufacturing each year.

Meltzer Says

Dave goes ***3/4 here, which my math skills tell me is identical to my rating; even hardened critics have to be overjoyed fans sometimes, too.

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