The annual superbowl of wrestling is finally here. The biggest date on the wrestling calendar is set to make history in New York tonight, as for the first time in its over three decade history, the women of the WWE will headline WrestleMania in the main event. Pre Show: Cruiserweight Championship: Buddy Murphy (c) vs Tony Nese Result: Neese wins the title after a great match with the running Neese. Women’s Memorial Battle Royal Announced entrants: Asuka, Carmella, Naomi, Lana, Mandy Rose, Sonya Deville, Nikki Cross, Dana Brooke, Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, Sarah Logan, Mickie James, Zelina Vega Result: Carmella gets the surprise win after eliminating Sara Logan last. WWE RAW Tag Team Championship: The Revival (c) vs Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder Result: The Major Brothers strike gold ending Hawkins losing streak after Hawkins pins Dawson with a rollup. Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal Announced entrants: Braun Strowman, Michael Che, Colin Jost, Andrade, Apollo Crews, Titus O’Neil, Tyler Breeze, Jinder Mahal, No Way Jose, Bobby Roode, Chad Gable, Kalisto, Gran Metalik, Lince Dorado, Bo Dallas, Curtis Axel, Heath Slater, Rhyno, Viktor, Konnor, Mustafa Ali, Shelton Benjamin, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson, Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, Otis, Tucker, EC3 Result: Braun clears the field last eliminating Jost and Che. MAIN CARD WWE Universal Championship Seth Rollins vs Brock Lesnar (c) with Paul Heyman Result: Seth slays the Beast after a brutal pre-match beatdown. Seth is the new Universal Champion. AJ Styles vs Randy Orton Result: AJ Styles picks up the win after a phenomenal forearm. WWE Smackdown Tag Team Championship: The Usos (c) vs The Bar vs Rusev with Lana & Shinsuke Nakamura vs Aleister Black & Ricochet Result: The Usos retain after a double splash on Sheamus. Falls Count Anywhere The Miz vs Shane McMahon Result: Shane gets the win after a superplex off a scaffold results in Shane landing on top of Miz. WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship Sasha Banks & Bayley (c) vs The ICONIIICS vs Nia Jaxx & Tamina vs Beth Phoenix & Natalya Result: The ICONIICS steal the pin from Beth Phoenix to become new champs. WWE Championship Daniel Bryan (c) vs Kofi Kingston Result: Kofi Kingston gets a much deserved title win, and the crowd explodes with joy. United States Championship: Samoa Joe (c) vs Rey Mysterio Result: Joe wins via submission in quick time. Roman Reigns vs Drew McIntyre Result: Roman wins via pinfall. No Holds Barred Triple H vs Batista Result: Triple H gets the win after a pedigree. Kurt Angle vs Baron Corbin Result: Corbin wins pretty easily to send Kurt into retirement. Intercontinental Championship: Bobby Lashley (c) with Lio Rush vs The Demon Finn Balor Result: The Demon takes the gold. Winner Take All Women’s Championship Ronda Rousey (c) vs Charlotte Flair (c) vs Becky Lynch Result: After a lengthy match, Becky gets the win seemingly out of nowhere with a rollup on Rousey. The show goes off the air with The Man celebrating. Where to watch WWE WrestleMania 35 in South Africa As ever, it will be live on SuperSport. The kick off show will start at 0:00 on Monday morning with matches beginning at 2:00. All of this will be on SuperSport 4 with repeats on SuperSport 9 from 17:00 on the same day.<doc-sep>In a way, it was fitting. The journey to WrestleMania 35’s first ever women’s main event was so twisty and overly complicated, of course the ending of the match itself would follow suit. Ronda Rousey went for her Piper’s Pit finisher on Becky Lynch, in the wee hours of Mon., April 8 local time in New Jersey. But due to damage to her leg inflicted by Lynch and Charlotte Flair throughout their “Winner Takes All” Triple Threat - and a reportedly legitimate broken hand - Lynch was able counter into a crucifix pinning predicament and pick up the win. Problem was, Ronda’s shoulders weren’t on the mat for the referee’s entire three count. Michael Cole initially announced it as if they were, but when Rousey argued with the official on camera, he and his announce partners Corey Graves & Renee Young discussed the possibility it wasn’t a clean pin before quickly shifting to focus on Becky winning. Cole: Shoulders down... SHOULDERS DOWN! Graves: She did it! Becky Lynch! Cole: Ronda Rousey doesn’t think her shoulders were down. Graves: I mean, I would think it would be worth a replay, but Ronda Rousey was looking for Piper’s Pit, to her credit it looks like Becky Lynch was able to shift her weight and pin Ronda’s shoulders to the mat. Young: I think Becky got her there! Cole: Well Ronda Rousey has suffered her first pinfall loss in WWE. Becky Lynch takes it all tonight! The Raw and SmackDown Women’s titles! A replay aired which confirmed both Rousey’s shoulders are off from the canvas when the ref first slapped the mat, and her right one might be up when his hand hits for the third time. But Cole & Graves casually acknowledge it before again focusing on the official outcome. Immediately after the show, word hit Twitter from several sources that the finish was botched. Some of those reports seemed to put the blame on the referee, and some even claimed Rousey wasn’t supposed to be involved in the decision. Most agreed Ronda wasn’t pleased with how it went down: More from @colohue: Match ended too abruptly, Becky was still meant to win. "Accident's happen. The ref's continued a count after a kick out. He hasn't delayed between the 2 and 3 like they're supposed to and Becky hasn't let go in time for Ronda to kick out. "#WrestleMania — Kristen Ashly (@KristenAshly) April 8, 2019 The finish didn't happen as planned. Rousey wasn't happy after, either. Thought the situation made her look bad, apparently. — Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) April 8, 2019 According to a source in #WWE, the ending to the WrestleMania main event was not the planned finish. The end was a botch, and the referee thinking Ronda’s shoulders were down counted to 3. Ronda was not happy. #WWE #WrestleMania #WomensEvolution — Brad Shepard (@TheBradShepard) April 8, 2019 But on Wrestling Observer Radio, Bryan Alvarez and Dave Meltzer claimed that wasn’t the case at all. The only snafu was Rousey not being able to get her shoulders down for the entire count: Alvarez: ... as Ronda goes for her Piper’s Pit and Becky turns it into a crucifix - with Ronda’s shoulder up by the way, which was the only botch in the match, or the only botch in the finish. And pins her! Meltzer: ... what happened was not a botch in the sense of, that was the finish. Because people were out there going, ‘The referee screwed up, counted when he wasn’t supposed, Ronda’s mad’ - none of that’s true. But she wasn’t supposed to get the shoulders up. That was just - it just happened. You know, it wasn’t like she was - I don’t believe for a second that she was trying to play a game like some of the old time guys used to do where they didn’t want to do a job and they’re kinda like pressured into it so they’ll kinda raise their shoulder up to kind of tell everyone, ‘Oh I’m doing a job I don’t wanna do.’ I don’t believe for a second that she’s doing that. But whatever it was, her shoulder ended up coming up and they called attention to it which I thought was really weird. Which - backstage I know that because people did not know the commentary. I know people who were not even aware of this. Because I was going like, you know: ‘They called attention to the fact that her shoulder wasn’t up,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh. Well...’ And I don’t know if that’s Vince’s call. I don’t know if Corey Graves did it on his own because that’s what the replay showed, but the fact that they did the replay to show it makes me think it was in the production, that production called for it. But, you know, that was the screw up. The screw up was that she was supposed to be pinned, like really pinned, as opposed to this thing... My personal theory in the aftermath was that the finish was intentionally ambiguous so that WWE and Rousey could play more “work or shoot?” games like the ones which occurred after Lynch tweeted a picture of Ronda’s husband Travis Browne and reports flew that the then-champ was actually upset and might try to hurt The Man the next time they were in the ring together. The question in this case would be whether or not Rowdy had played a “game like some of the old time guys used to do” which Meltzer suggests. But I was probably overthinking it/giving WWE too much credit. What really happened? We’ll likely never know, which is part of the beauty of this weird, wonderful thing called pro wrestling.<doc-sep>WWE.com And that's a wrap on WrestleMania for yet another year. This year's Showcase of the Immortals wasn't a Mania for the ages by any means, but against the odds, booking largely delivered the crowd-pleasing results fans were hoping for. Yet as has become an increasing issue with WrestleMania in recent years, the overall show was excruciatingly bloated, with this year's edition clocking in at almost 7.5 hours (including the kickoff show). Does anyone, other than the WWE, really need their flagship PPV to be this damn long? The 16-match card was rife with middling filler that sapped the crowd's energy and made for some noticeable lulls, especially later in the event. And while even the worst WrestleMania is still an exciting time for wrestling fans, this year's show perhaps more than any other would've benefited from trimming four or five matches and keeping the overall run-time down to a more manageable 6-ish hours (which is already quite the time commitment). Still, fans got most of the big victories they were hoping for, and there was enough solid wrestling on offer to make the overall product worthwhile enough. Keep those fingers crossed that some of the more pleasant surprises aren't quickly undone on TV, though...<doc-sep>
Last night, Becky Lynch won the first-ever women’s match in WWE history to main event a WrestleMania. “The Man” defeated Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair for the RAW and SmackDown Live Women’s Championships. The Irishwoman picked up the victory with a controversial rollup pinfall victory over “The Rowdy One.” Just hours after her victory, Lynch appeared on WFAN Sports Radio’s “Boomer and Gio” show, alongside WWE Champion Kofi Kingston. The pair discussed their respective WrestleMania moments from last night inside MetLife Stadium. Lynch was asked about Rousey arguing with the referee after the match finished, complaining that her shoulders weren’t down for the three count. When Boomer asked Lynch if Rousey disputed the finish, “The Man” said Rousey knows she was defeated: “Was she disputing anything?” Lynch said. “No. What can she say? She knew I beat her.” Lynch went on to reveal that Rousey’s mother was in attendance, and was upset with everything she had been saying about her daughter. The new double champion had some words for momma Rousey: “Her ma was there,” Lynch said. “She was a little upset about all the things I said about her. And I was like, ‘Your daughter had it coming. Now get her out of here!” With her victory over Rousey, Lynch said that the former UFC star’s tourist visa in her industry has expired: “This is my sport,” Lynch said. “This is my turf. This is my territory. Ronnie’s a tourist in my industry. She’s a tourist in my industry. And now her tourist visa has expired. She can get out of here. Related: WWE Stars React To Becky Lynch’s WrestleMania Main Event Win