No Way Out – The Aftermath

We are now definitely on the road to Wrestlemania after a wild and exciting No Way Out PPV from Las Vegas last night.

If you read my preview before you watched the show you wouldn’t have been shocked by many of the results but there was an awesome little surprise in there and some well executed matches and storylines over the course of the longest running (time duration of show from start to finish) PPV outside of the big four for some time.

So as I thought may happen it now looks almost certain that we are going to see a three way for the title at Wrestlemania with Randy Orton keeping hold of his title and HHH winning the Elimination Chamber. This also means that at last we have a heel defending the title against a face at a Wrestlemania after a couple of years of Cena defending. The good thing with HHH is that even though he is a fan favourite he doesn’t have the face characteristics like Cena so we have three strong and different characters going in to it.

Now the chamber matches were for number one contenders spots but they didn’t mention if they were title shots for Raw or Smackdown or if it was like winning the Rumble when the winner can choose which title to go after. But with what they have building on the Raw side I don’t see HHH switching to face Edge or Undertaker switching to face Orton.

The RAW chamber wasn’t just good for HHH as although no sensible person would think Hardy was ever going to headline Wrestlemania they managed to build him to the point some fans thought he was going to win so that will stand him in good stead for the long term. It also now frees Michaels up to retire Flair at Mania and Chris Jericho to continue his feud with JBL. The only problem with this is that it could mean that we have to see a Hardy / Umaga storyline again which wasn’t the best first time round.

The WWE are now trying to do anything to build Randy Orton as a heel and to try and get people to cheer for Cena. To keep hold of his belt Orton hit the ref to get himself disqualified and the one thing that fans hate more than anything is a cheap finish to a match especially a title fight at a main event. This is what is referred to as cheap heat and to me is lazy booking but like I say at the moment the WWE will do anything to get people on Cena’s side.

As predicted the Smackdown chamber match was on early and was nothing to write home about. Good to see Undertaker going over as I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing him against Edge at Wrestlemania, the only thing is where does this leave Batista?

As predicted Edge went over easy against Rey Mysterio but this was helped by the fact that Rey got injured at a live show a few days prior to the event. Although the match was short and predictable what happened after the match is what everyone is going to be talking about today and watching on YouTube.

After the Edge / Rey Mysterio match the Big Show made his return to the WWE which if you read all the internet forums you would have known that he resigned with the company some weeks ago and if they wanted to involv him in Mania they had to do something with him tonight and do something they did.

Now Mania has been in the past famed for its use of celebrities like Donald Trump and Pamela Anderson well last night we found out which celebrity was going to be making an impact this Wrestlemania and in a move reminiscent of Wrestlemania 14 in 1998 when Mike Tyson got involved the WWE delivered again with boxing champion Floyd Mayweather.

Floyd was in the front row to support Rey Mysterio and after the Big Show beat on the beaten and injured Mysterio Floyd and his entourage jumped the ring. Now all you wrestling geeks will know that the Big Show left the WWE to pursue a career in boxing which didn’t happen for him. So after a stand off Big Show knelt down in front of Floyd so that he was on his level and Floyd delivered four vicious shots to Big Show looking to have broken his nose to be then chased through the crowd by an angry and bloody Big Show who was stopped by Shane McMahon.

Now the storylines and angles that seem to get fans attention are those yjay the fans can’t tell if what is happening is real or not (like the Edge / Matt Hardy feud of 2005) which this angle did brilliantly. Some people think Floyd wasn’t suppose to go that far with his punches but I think it was a well orchestrated idea by the WWE to get fans talking and to get a heated feud between the two. Look for there to be some sort of boxing match between the pair at Wrestlemania.

No Way Out was a great example of why WWE are head and shoulders above TNA at the moment is because of the A-List stars they can get to work with them and the way that they can get even non wrestling fans and the international press talking about what happened on their show.