There was a time when WrestleMania felt special; it felt magical. An event that culminated a year’s worth of drama, storytelling, and feuds into one epic three-plus-hour display of the greatest professional wrestling on the planet. My first live WrestleMania was XIII, defined not by the ho-hum main event between The Undertaker and Sycho Sid — but the undercard no-holds-barred match between Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin, which left a blood-covered Austin passed out in the center of the ring, and regarded to this day as one of the greatest Mania matches ever.

Legendary WrestleMania moments kept rolling through my mind over the two-night course of WrestleMania 42, in equal parts nostalgia and utter despair. A near-constant reminder of how far this once-great event has fallen. The “Showcase of the Immortals” and “Grandaddy of Them All” is barely on par with a low-tier event from two decades ago. Nothing lasts forever, and after WrestleMania 42, we’re on the verge of that Old Yeller feeling where WrestleMania, at least the idealized version in our heads, needs to be put out of its misery.

Let’s establish very quickly that this has nothing to do with the talent. This was unquestionably two days of everyone doing the best they could in an absolute ass situation. Over the course of two nights and over six hours of “wrestling,” we only saw two matches last longer than 20 minutes. Meanwhile, we had SIX of the 13 matches end in less than 10 minutes. That isn’t enough to tell a story in the ring. It’s not enough to have an ebb and flow in the action. No performer can put a cap on a year-long rivalry with seven minutes in the ring.

But hey, at least we got advertising! Lots, and lots, and lots of advertising. If you’re into trailers and brand synergy, then WWE has got you covered! From deifying the Hulk Hogan documentary on Netflix, to the Street Fighter movie, to Mortal Kombat 2, and everything in between — this was the Super Bowl of brand alignment. Everything is manufactured, nothing even has the slightest veneer of realism, and when someone brings out a table, you best believe it’s because Slim Jim is the official table sponsor of WrestleMania and some TKO executive promised them X number of showings over the weekend.

Even at its very best, this show made very little sense. Before I depress myself anymore, remembering what WrestleMania used to be, let’s get on with reviewing this year’s debacle.

The USOs and LA Knight defeat The Vision and IShowSpeed

This match is only going to be remembered for the fact that IShowSpeed was better in the ring than he had any right to be. This isn’t going to be some Logan Paul-esque turn to wrestling, because Speed doesn’t have the WWE size to ever work in this company. Still, the match had some high spot fun. At the end, I was more wondering why the hell LA Knight is resigned to the celebrity show opener when he’s one of the most organically over wrestlers in the company.

Easily one of the bright spots of the weekend in terms of match quality, but this really got on my nerves. Fatu and McIntyre worked a hell of a match, made even more impressive by the fact that they were only given 14 minutes of ring time. Still, if you bill something as an “Unsanctioned Match,” it comes with a tacit understanding that things are going to get violent. There was no blood, no high stakes, nothing that told us why this match was so dangerous. It was all pretty ho-hum on the extreme-o-meter, but at least Fatu managed to put McIntyre through the Slim Jim table for the win.

Brie Bella and Paige defeat The Irresistible Forces, Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss, and Bayley and Lyra Valkyria

This match was decided the second Nikki Bella came out on crutches, and Paige was her replacement. Just an utter waste of time as a match that took many of the best women’s wrestlers in the company, put them all in one match, and gave them seven minutes to decide a tag championship. It ended up being a total affront where everyone was more concerned with getting their moves in than having a cohesive match. Paige is back… and the crowd goes mild.

It’s a match that happened. Full disclosure: I wrote about all of night one, then realized I totally missed this match on the card, so I double-backed to write about it. That’s how unmemorable it was. This was clearly about the ends justifying the means, because the only point of this was to get the belt on Becky. They did that, and nothing that led to it happening is worth thinking about ever again.

This was the best match on the card for the night, and for the most part, it lived up to the billing. Gunther is incredible, Seth is fantastic — and while this match should have gone for longer, they did the most with the 17 minutes they had. I don’t love getting Bron Breakker involved, because Gunther and Seth can carry this match without an additional pop, but the aim was to clearly keep Seth looking strong in defeat, so he can start a long program with Breakker. I’m not sure what Gunther’s role is anymore. He is unquestionably the most talented, technical, brilliant big man WWE has had in forever — but he’s going to be totally passed on for someone we’ll talk about on night two. It’s a shame.

I had high hopes for this, and maybe there’s an alternate timeline where it worked — but in this universe, the women only had six minutes to work a match for the FRIGGIN’ WOMEN’S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, telling us how little WWE regards this best, or its female wrestlers. I’ll buy that perhaps Liv still isn’t 100% healthy, but that doesn’t excuse how rushed this match felt.

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. I can safely say that I have never seen an important wrestling match operate for 20+ minutes and manage to make absolutely no sense the way this shit show did. There was absolutely no internal logic to the match, as if it were conceived by 20 different people at once, and they shared everyone’s ideas.

It seemed like we were going to get the overbooked mess out of the way early with Rhodes taking out Pat McAfee and then Jelly Roll dropping an elbow on him. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

The weirdest part of this match was that, whether real or not, Randy Orton displayed a back injury for the entirety of the match. This was weird because he was supposed to be the heel. Then Cody worked his back with forearms, delivered a low blow, poked Randy in the eyes — which are all heel tactics. If the idea was that Rhodes was willing to do “anything to win,” it missed the mark. Yet, that still wasn’t the weirdest part of all this.

Orton, who for 25 years has been renowned for his instincts and awareness, RKO’d the referee when it made zero sense. McAfee came down the ramp as the replacement, but then SLOW COUNTED an Orton pinfall — which made no sense. Then Orton RKO’d McAfee — which made no sense. Cody won, and maybe, just maybe, we were going to get a heel turn from Rhodes as Orton tried to hand him the belt?!

Orton punt kicked the champion to establish that he’s the heel, Cody is the face, and the crowd was cheering that Rhodes got his head kicked in because they’re so tired of him holding the belt. This was the single worst WrestleMania main event of all time.

This was the obvious result we all saw coming, but I don’t think anyone thought this would be four minutes long. One of the most anticipated matches of the weekend fell flat because there was just no thought put into this. There’s a very real chance Brock can’t physically go for more than five minutes at this point, but it was still just a little sad. We got some good power moves, and a predictable ending. Femi is a future megastar, and this match established it.

I’m giving an extra half-grade for Femi winning in dominant fashion, and another half-grade for Brock retiring.