The ESPN era of WWE has begun with tonight’s WWE Wrestlepalooza show from Indianapolis. Mixed bag kind of show for me. Some things I liked and others I didn’t really like. This was also my first experience with the ESPN Unlimited subscription. It’s definitely expensive to be a WWE fan now a days to watch everything between all the streaming services they are on now. We’re now in for $29.99 a month to watch WWE shows on the ESPN app. You can get the bundle of course with that, Disney Plus, and Hulu which feels like it softens the blow a little bit on the price. Some will obviously go the VPN route and pull their cost level down. My experience with the app itself was mostly positive. Stream looked solid. I did have one freeze up but that very well was likely my internet instead of the app itself.
WWE definitely made a big deal out of this debut on ESPN. Tons of programming today across the ESPN landscape. It is wild to see WWE airing on ESPN as ESPN used to not want a thing to do with wrestling so it’s wild how far we’ve come with that. Brand new “Then Now Forever” opening video for the show and it looked very well produced. They also ran a big history video to open the show in the building complete with pyro going off with moments from the video which looked amazing. Video also tied a lot of moments to ESPN’s history as well. Triple H opened up the show in the ring welcoming everyone. Pat McAfee is brought in as a guest commentator as we had him and Tyrese Haliburton representing Indy there. Opening match was John Cena and Brock Lesnar. I loved the John Cena entrance with the kids. Why we haven’t been doing this with Cena the whole time as the regular Cena character is beyond me but here we finally are. Just feels like we’ve wasted so much of Cena’s last year with the heel turn that was a waste of time. Just let Cena be this John Cena that fans just want to love on for his retirement. The Cena and Lesnar match was a letdown for me. It just felt like a Lesnar semi squash match. Multiple F5’s. Cena never really made a comeback. I think I just expected a back and forth match and it felt more like domination instead. Maybe they are setting up a Cena rematch in the future but we’ll see. They showed a bunch of kids crying in the crowd after Cena had been destroyed. I thought well, kids crying isn’t the best start for this show. Tag match with The Usos and The Vision was fine. When The Usos entered to their old music, I said, oh no, tell me they aren’t going to take away the Jey Iso entrance. Then, we went back into the regular music and the entrance looked awesome as always. LA Knight as the special referee in the match. We had the moments of Knight and Jay still having issues with one another. Vision get the win. At this point, I thought the crowd energy had kind of faded off from the beginning of the show. I texted someone that I knew that was at the show and asked him, did the Cena squash take the energy out of the building? He said it might have dropped the energy some in the building slightly but energy was still there. Ok good and good to know. That gets us to Iyo Sky and Stephanie Vaquer for the vacated women’s title. It was good and a match I was really looking forward to. They had a very fun match and clicked well. I felt like Iyo pulled the crowd back in when she started playing to them. Then, they rolled with it putting on fun performances. Big moment with them putting the title on Stephanie. I liked the respect moment after the match. So, that sends Stephanie off to feud with new challengers. Iyo will feud with Asuka from how it’s been looking. Next was the match that I was looking forward to the most as an AJ Lee fan. That was the in ring return of AJ Lee and I loved this match. They dragged out the drama of AJ getting the hot tag into the match and once she was in there, she was in the rest of the way. I enjoyed the back and forth with each team trying to top the other. The heels constantly just trying to find ways to cheat. The crash through the table looked nasty. At the end, it turned into who was going to be able to top who last. Hitting finishers. Hitting each other’s finishers. Ultimately, AJ Lee tapped out Becky Lynch with the black widow for the win. Big pop here cause I’m thinking if AJ takes a fall on her return, I’m going to be a cranky fan. LOL. It was fun to see Punk and AJ team up. In 2025, it’s wild to see AJ Lee in a match again. Lately, I thought she might just do a one time thing but for her to be around long term is just great. I’m a happy AJ Lee fan tonight. Match of the night there for me but I’m biased. The main event with Cody and Drew was solid. Cody gets the win to retain the title. I think with them closing the show, I was expecting a big return or something else instead of just a regular match. Triple H this week had been promising big surprises on the show so I think with this match closing the show instead of the AJ Lee return, I was on alert for a big moment to close the show. Maybe a return after the match. Just felt like with them closing the show with this, I thought they’d do something for a big buzz to close the first ESPN show. Nothing other than a usual post match celebration. Solid match with Cody and Drew. The surprise we did get was The Undertaker making an appearance and going to talk to Stephanie McMahon in the front row. It felt so awkward at first where I joked and said is he just doing a podcast here or what. LOL. Then, we got to the surprise delivery of him telling her that she’ll be the first member of the WWE Hall of Fame in 2026. You could tell it completely caught her off guard with the moment. Congrats to Stephanie on her upcoming induction!
Overall the show was ok. I think I just expected more out of it especially with it being the first ESPN show and with Triple H hyping surprises. For me, the show is about AJ Lee. I got her in ring return so I’m happy cause of that. With these shows basically being $30 now, WWE is going to have to make sure to deliver shows that hit with fans cause you’re asking a lot of fans now with this price tag.
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