WWE WrestleMania 33 review: What we learned, takeaways, future projections

United States Championship Match

Chris Jericho (c) vs. Kevin Owens

What we learned: I think we learned here that the countdown still works as the crowd popped huge for that during Chris Jericho’s entrance. But seriously, I think we learned that Chris Jericho at 46 years old is still one of the best in the business.

This match started a little slow, which was a little surprising to me given the hatred these two were supposed to have for one another, but after a few minutes, this turned into a pretty entertaining bout. Each guy was able to hit their signature stuff and I really dug the cannonball on the outside of the ring from Owens. Man, that guy really is a great athlete. But Jericho kept fighting back and hit a really impressive hurricanrana from the top rope. 46-year-old guys should not be doing the things he’s doing.

Owens eventually locked Y2J into the Walls of Jericho and I always love when guys use their opponent’s finisher. Jericho nearly tapped at one point but was able to escape and locked in one of his own on a counter to another cannonball. Great spot there but not nearly as good as Jericho turning a Pop Up Powerbomb into a Codebreaker, which I thought was extremely well done. It looked like he had a three count but Owens was able to get one finger on the bottom rope to stop the count. That was pretty great.

The action spilled to the outside from there and Owens was able to hit the powerbomb on the apron and rolled Jericho back inside to get the victory. I still think this match could have been a little bit better but this was still a very good match. At this point, I was still liking WrestleMania 33 as we got two pretty solid bouts to open the show.

What’s next: It’s likely that Jericho is going to be taking some time off soon to tour with Fozzy so I’ll be interested to see whether or not this goes any further. The next pay-per-view is a RAW pay-per-view and it is called Payback, so perhaps we get this match one more time, but the right guy did win here. Owens has a good chance to finally bring some importance to the United States Championship if it’s done correctly and I hope this title reign is booked a little better than his Universal Championship run. There’s also the possibility that Owens looks to regain that title now as well seeing how that’s what he said he would do after disposing of Jericho.