The Sunday Papers

– WrestleMania is over and we’re into the new ‘season’ of WWE. If somehow you still don’t know the results, you can find them over at WWE.com. It’s old news now, but WWE posted a cool time lapse video of the WrestleMania set going up. The statue of liberty was the subject of an article at sun-sentinel.com, the most interesting part of which was that it weighed 17,000lbs. Insane.

– John Cena overcame food poisoning and a broken thumb to become WWE champion for the 11th time. Oh, and The Rock too. Rock’s side plates were removed from the belt and replaced by Cena-themed ones. An interesting article went up on WWE.com regarding the new design this week, showing sketches of what the belt could have looked like. Some aren’t too bad, but overall I think we got lucky with the one they settled on.

– Rock’s title loss was the least of his worries, as he suffered some pretty serious injuries during his match. He tore his abdominal and adductor muscles off the bone and according to Dave Meltzer also has a hernia. Meltzer reports that Rock won’t be getting the necessary surgery right away as filming for Hercules starts too soon and he can’t recover in time. Rock was scheduled to appear on Raw in a segment with Brock Lesnar to set the two up for the main event of WrestleMania XXX, but Rock flew home early on Monday due to his injuries.

– Brock Lesnar was also the victim of a WrestleMania injury, having been legitimately knocked out only a few minutes into his match with Triple H, which was mentioned on Raw by Paul Heyman.

– Triple H also got hurt, catching his arm during a table spot, but X-rays show only bruising and no break. For anyone wondering – and there were many on the night – the white stuff all over H’s torso during his entrance was from a fire extinguisher which was part of his smoky entrance. According to Hunter’s Twitter, he suffered second degree burns. Don’t ask why he felt he needed to unzip his pants to take this photo, or why Antonio Cesaro is sitting behind him.

– Even Shawn Michaels got hurt during that match, taking a blow to the nose that left him bleeding, but he also fortunately avoided a break.

– Raw on Monday was insane, as has become the tradition. The WrestleMania fans stuck around an extra day, including many international fans, and took over the show. They were trolled pretty hard early on with Cena mocking the long-standing desire to see a heel turn and Daniel Bryan being met with Dolph Ziggler’s theme music only to work Langston instead of the smarks’ favorite. But it was paid off not too much later as Ziggler cashed in Money In The Bank to become a two-time world champion. Huge pop for that. The plan for Ziggler to win on the post-Mania Raw was made weeks ago. A few superstars have tweeted about the win, a lot of which were handily collected by Doug here.

– Even more popular than Ziggler though, at least in a semi-ironic way, was Fandango. The Randy Orton v Sheamus match prompted many chants but the best of all came when they all broke out into an a capella version of Fandango’s theme song. This has become known as Fandangoing and has been picked up all over the world, which WWE.com has found worthy of listing it #9 on the 10 Greatest Fan Chants In WWE History less than a week after it started. Here’s the Houston Texans’ cheerleaders doing it, but for a full list you may as well head over to Fandango’s own Twitter page, which he does a great job of keeping updated. Fans have been buying the theme song on iTunes (where it peaked at #11), Amazon and other online retailers in an attempt to get it into the official UK charts later today.

– On the subject of entrance themes, Stephanie McMahon has been given a new one. This has led many to speculate that Steph will be making more TV appearances this year.

– For the first time, the entire Hall of Fame ceremony will be available online as a pay per view. It’s been up since Friday on WWE.com, on the WWE app and Xbox Live, and costs $8. For what it’s worth, the edited version was pretty good.

– Edge was interviewed for WrestleTalk TV, watch the video here.

– Maria Kanellis has done a couple of interviews too, one with Playboy that was recapped here, and one on the ringbellesonline.com podcast.

– And on the subject of podcasts, Steve Austin has started one. Yes, you read that right. The first is only half an hour long and consists entirely of Austin being Austin, including his thoughts on gun massacres. Apparently committing suicide after shooting someone is the coward’s way out and instead they should face the death penalty. Work that one out if you can. The second episode features Shawn Michaels. If that hasn’t sold you, you’re probably not a wrestling fan.

– Scott Hall has undergone successful surgery on his hip. Will has done a good job summarising.

That’s it for another week. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and join in live tweeting some wrestling shows. Let me know what you think of the column and if there’s anything you’d like to see added. Until then, keep watching the skies. I mean, keep watching these guys.