Wrestlemania 40

It’s been a very long time since I’ve found myself invested in wrestling. Right around Wrestlemania 26 (I can’t believe that was 14 years ago) is when I bailed–Shawn Michaels was one of the main reasons I watched wrestling in my adulthood. Once he retired and was no longer a prominent presence, I began to fall off of watching wrestling regularly. I’d tune in every now and then, especially if my kids or niece and nephews showed any kind of interest. Part of the issue is it felt like WWE had become stale and there was so much lack of competition. I should have turned to the independent scene as that was where it seemed, I later learned, the freshness of wrestling was. Even something like AEW, the first real competition WWE has had in a very long time, only caught my attention for a moment or two.

Wrestlemania 40

Something about this year’s Wrestlemania–Wrestlemania 40–caught my attention. Not any singular thing, though I think the biggest factor was The Rock’s surprise heel turn (which, in 2024 and as a WWE Legend, is NUTS that he did it and that it worked). Admittedly, I wasn’t watching any of the shows leading up to “the big one”, but I was eating up the clips of The Rock taking me back almost 25 years (or more) to classic heel rock. It felt like the attitude area. The WWE suddenly seemed cool again. However, that alone wasn’t enough for me to tune in. It’s that Wrestlemania 40 was taking place in the greatest city in the world, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And not that it was just taking place in Philly or at The Linc, but that we’re in a very specific place on the timeline where Jason Kelce exists and there was a very real possibility he’d show up.

Spoilers, he did.

Yes, I’m saying retired Philadelphia Eagles center, Jason Kelce, is a HUGE reason I tuned into the 40th anniversary of Wrestlemania. But something else happened while watching and waiting for the embodiment of Philadelphia to show up… I enjoyed watching wrestling again. I’ve been gone a long time and the playing field is very different, but I had a good time watching something that I fell out of love with, from a spectator perspective, so long ago. Such a good time, that I returned for night two of Wrestlemania 40 (which is nuts that this event is an entire weekend now, but that’s a blog for another day). Such a good time, that I’m actually watching this week’s edition of Monday Night Raw that I DVR’d.

And, dare I say, I’m going to start tuning in more–and not just to Raw or Smackdown, but to NXT and even AEW. Perhaps the new Triple H era is what we needed to make wrestling interesting again.

Also, am I the only one who’s just finding out Hunter’s real name isn’t pronounced Lévesque?? That it’s leh-vehk??