The Three Wiseasses Guide To WWE Wrestlemania 31

Columns, Top Story

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It’s Wrestlemania season, and you know what that means… Game of Thrones is premiering soon and the weather will be getting warmer.  This year that’s what you need to be excited about.  Nevertheless, I, James “DDP Yoga” Sawyer thought the readers deserved a preview with the three biggest wiseacres on the site.  Myself, BD “I do CrossFit AND DJ” and David “Bodybuilding PhD” Spain.  Also, autocorrect somehow changed the wiseasses to wiseacres above and I’m leaving it because occasionally it’s fun to curse like a pensioner.

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Pre-Show Match

WWE Tag Title 4 Way

Cesaro & Kidd (c) vs The Usos vs Los Matadores vs Big E & Kofi Kingston

Hey, remember last year when Cesaro was also on the pre-show?  For his sake, I hope he doesn’t.  Chances are slim for a reappearance later in the card here.  And hey, he’s joined by Tyson Kidd, Big E and Kofi Kingston!  Isn’t that… nice…

Also, I know the above picture is from last year.  It’s called social commentary, fools.

Loser:  Fans of Cesaro, Kidd, Kofi, Big E and Xavier

Spain: Interesting fact: you could cut exactly one half of the teams from this match and it would be worth watching. I know I’ve said this for well over a year now, but Los Matadores make me want to smash my head into whatever hard surface I can find until I die or the match stops. The New Day experiment has been…not even a gigantic failure, really, considering we never really knew what it was supposed to accomplish. So, you know, if neither of those teams end up getting involved in the match for its entirety, I’m sure it’ll be a pretty good one.

Winner: Cesaro and Kidd (why throw away some great future title matches on this pre-show?)

BD: I heartily endorse this pre-show event or product.  (translated, I forgot about this until the last minute and I’m too busy bragging about CrossFit or trying to come up with some new Skrillex remixes or whatever the fuck I do in my spare time)

Winner: everyone who likes a good 4/4 beat

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WWE United States Championship

Rusev (c) w/Lana vs John Cena w/America’s Hopes & Dreams

Sawyer: I can’t really say anything snarky about this, I admire their booking so far.  Rusev beat Cena at Fastlane so badly they had to carry Cena to the back.  He did it with crotch-related shenanigans (also the name of my leaked sex tape) so people finally have a reason to think Rusev is a heel.  Because winning cleanly, consistently beating up Jack Swagger and dating Lana seem like face characteristics to me.  I mean, there’s absolutely no way Cena’s losing this time, but at least it took him two tries to beat Rusev.

And he’s competing for the United States Championship.  See, this is how they need to be using Cena nowadays.  Putting new heels over and bringing legitimacy to secondary titles.  I’ve never been as rabidly anti-Cena as some around here.  Yeah, the guy is overexposed but he still sells t-shirts and is probably the best “face” of the WWE they’ve ever had.  More than a decade on top and no spousal abuse or hard drug scandals, that has to be a new record… for any athletic company.  So I for one welcome our new midcard Cena overlords… may he feud with the Rusevs, Kevin Owens, and Cesaros on their way to the top of the company.

Winner: Cena

Spain:  Okay, do all you Americans get as patriotic as Cena does? Because, swear to God, I cannot grasp that concept. I’m in Britain, and I’d freely agree with any Russian who took shots at our shitty political make-up, the massive child-sex conspiracy that apparently every agency we own has been endorsing and Jeremy Clarkson. So…I guess I’d still be fine with this match being just about the championship rather than another physical paragraph in this nationalistic debate y’all have been having with this Soviet dude.

Actually, the match itself will be pretty decent. Rusev provides a good, physical opponent for Cena (probably the most intimidating since Umaga), and he’s at least been treated more respectfully than Bray ever was. I’m resigned to the fact that Cena is going to end another streak and be on top of that mountain for a little longer and, honestly, I think there’s an argument in favour for one of those big pops when Cena wins. And let’s not forget that if Cena does take the gold, he’s going to elevate the fuck out of that belt, which means that some contenders working with could end up getting a hell of a rub. So…yeah, I guess this is something I’ll manage to get through without too much eye-rolling. As long as John doesn’t do something embarrassingly patriotic for his special WrestleMania entrance…oh God, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Winner: John Cena, but not in as irritating fashion as usual

BD:  People hate John Cena so much now that Americans cheered for the Putin supporter at the last PPV. That’s going to happen again here, on a much larger scale, and on a much bigger show, so I’d be lying if I said I understood why this match was taking place. And if you think the reason is match quality, then you obviously didn’t see FastLane.

Winner: John Cena

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Seth Rollins vs Randy Orton

Sawyer: I haven’t really been keeping up with this feud… or almost anything, but it makes sense.  Orton was the old chosen one of the Authority, Rollins is the new.  Orton is capable of good matches, and Rollins is probably neck-and-injured-neck with Bryan for best pure wrestler in the company now.  Both guys look sleazy, like the wrestling versions of Axe bodyspray and Maxim magazine.  I dunno, I’m looking forward to it.

Winner: Rollins

Spain: So, here’s another feud with some actual build. And some goddamn vicious build at that. I guess I’m holding out for a Rollins cash-in, which I suppose might involve a loss on his part in this match so it technically counts as ‘unexpected’. I really hope that they can make the fight itself as nasty as the beatdowns they’ve been laying on each other, as this is one of the few matches that have actually been built up via genuine interaction. Not really much else to say about this besides: just another one I’m actually interested in and, as always, Randy Orton is at his most entertaining when he’s a face doing despicable things.

Winner: Randy Orton, and Seth will cash in during the next couple of weeks

BD: Orton is really hit or miss with me, and I’d be lying if I said I was hoping Rollins, who’s my favorite wrestler of the moment aside from Brock Lesnar, would have something more fun to do. But Orton can bring it sometimes, so let’s hope this is one of those times. Anyway, it should be the best match on the show, similar to how Punk / Orton was the best match on the show from 27… but just like there, that’s not saying much.

Rollins should win. That’s kinda obvious.

Winner: Seth Rollins

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Intercontinental Ladder Match:  Bad News Barrett vs. Dolph Ziggler (sigh) vs. Dean Ambrose (sigh) vs. R-Truth?! vs. Luke Harper vs. Daniel Bryan (really?!) vs. good booking

Sawyer: You know, it’s not even like the Intercontinental championship is bad, it’s just that they’ve spent years devaluing it and we all know Dean and Dolph should be in the main event fairly consistently already… and Daniel was!  Daniel main-evented this very PPV just 12 months ago!  And here we are.  If Dean and Dolph can use the belt to elevate both it and their careers, like it used to be used for, then great.  It’s historically been shown to be a springboard to people like HBK, Triple H, Stone Cold, The Rock, Jericho, etc.

R-Truth is still employed?!  And able to be on Wrestlemania?!  Nothing against the guy, but he’s been treading water at best since his heel turn way back in 2011, which was awesome, that ended for no reason, which wasn’t awesome.

And what’s Luke Harper’s gimmick now that he’s not a member of the Wyatt family anymore?  Or Erick Rowan’s gimmick for that matter?  “Hey, we’re backwoods True Detective-type creepers… just no longer affiliated in the same group as the main backwoods True Detective-type creeper.”

Winner: Bryan, I guess

Spain: Okay, this could honestly be the match of the night. There’s some seriously good talent in this match, and a ladder match is going to be a great exhibition of this. Ambrose, Ziggler, Bryan and Rhodes are going to be responsible for the best moments of the match, and I’m at least encouraged by the fact that Barrett’s been laying motherfuckers out a little more, considering his incredibly poor treatment as of…ever. I am, however, pissed that Bryan’s in this match when he could be doing almost anything else, although considering Vince’s ‘fuck you and like what I fucking say you like’ attitude, we’re probably lucky he didn’t wind up in the Memorial Battle Royal.

I sort of hope Ziggler walks out with the belt, considering that his championship matches were pretty fantastic and he actually seemed able to use his champion status to elevate himself and the title. Let him have some matches with Bryan for it (the match this past SmackDown is all the justification you need for that) and he’ll be at main event level in no time.

Winner: Dolph Ziggler

BD: Well, at least Goldust and Cody didn’t get their own match. I’m guessing they knew it wouldn’t get much reaction, and they are probably right. For the record, I’ve never enjoyed watching Goldust in the ring more than I do now. That he’s this good at this age is impressive. But let’s face facts here – Dusty forgot to use birth control once in the 70’s and once in the 80’s, and one of those accidents came out with some talent. One out of two really ain’t bad, especially given how bad a lot of wrestling kids can be.

In case you’re having trouble with how subtly I’m tiptoeing around my point, Cody sucks ass and is boring as fuck, is what I’m getting at here.

Barrett sucks. It’s nice that the rest of you have just kind of gotten over this whole “Barrett is awesome now!” thing, but you still have to admit I was right about him… again. R-Truth made it on? Good for that dude. I also feel like while people have been watching the Bryan / Lesnar / Reigns plane crash, that they’ve turned their heads away (albeit understandingly) from the Ambrose train wreck. Dude was on fire last year, and didn’t I read he outsold Cena in shirts? I also thought he had feud of the year with Rollins. Now they got him doing this? Dropped ball. Ditto with Ziggler, although that’s been the case for years so it’s nothing new.

It’s a shame they couldn’t have broken Harper, Ziggler, Ambrose and Bryan out into their own matches, which is what I figured they’d do. But those guys are all great fun to watch, so this should be okay.

Winner: Daniel Bryan

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AJ Lee & Paige vs The Bella Twins

Sawyer: I mean, I guess a Fatal 4-Way would’ve fit better here, although they probably didn’t want to repeat it from the tag match on the pre-show, because if Los Matadores weren’t on the card people would go fucking apeshit.  This could actually turn out pretty decent if they give them time.

Winner: Bella Twins

Spain: Kind of a shame that the Divas Championship is the one title that’s not being defended at this show. Still, they’ve actually done a decent job of giving a motivation for this feud: it’s the cheerleaders vs. the alternatives, and a match for the Divas at WrestleMania that isn’t a battle royal or a live-action music video. I’ve naturally got a lot of faith in AJ and Paige, and Nikki has been impressing me with how much improvement she’s shown in the ring. I haven’t seen much of Brie, but she had a decent match with Stephanie McMahon, and it’d been a while since that woman stepped between the ropes. Honestly, this is one of the matches I’m happy with, although a title match with some top contenders would have been good as well.

#GiveDivasAChance

Winners: Paige and AJ

BD: Bellas are horrible. AJ and Paige are not quite as horrible, but also not very good. So this should be a fantastic match.

Winners: The fans

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The Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal (feat. The Miz, Curtis Axel, Ryback, Fandango, Adam Rose, Zack Ryder, Jack Swagger, Titus O’Neil, Darren Young, Konnor, Viktor, The Big Show and Kane and who knows, probably some guys walking in front of the venue about twenty minutes before the show)

Sawyer: Wait, we’re still doing this?  I just thought it was a nice way to pay tribute to Andre at the thirtieth anniversary of Wrestlemania, doubling as a way to get Cesaro over huge.  I guess it was halfway successful (through no fault of Cesaro’s.)

I just don’t see the point in this, besides a “let’s get all the charity cases on the card” angle.  The first one had Cesaro as a surprise entrant, his only time as an official “face” after turning against Jack Swagger, and him winning after lifting The Big Show over the top rope.  This would have, in a fairer universe, led to Cesaro getting pushed and winning feuds against some established superstars and later catapulted at least into some kind of singles title run and the upper midcard/lower top card.

And we’ve already got Money In The Bank as a “this is the next guy we’re gonna push” match, since that replaced the King Of The Ring.  So again, don’t see the purpose in this besides trotting out the old folks and giving one last paydays to some likely near future endeavors.

Winner: Ryback?

Spain: Ah, hell. Look, I think Battle Royals can be really well done when the participants and length of time are in the match’s favour. Look at the World Heavyweight Championship Battle Royal on SmackDown in 2006: that was an excellently done match, back when SmackDown was still almost a show in its own right, rather than the afterbirth of RAW (yeah, I fucking said it). But this is a world away from that: it’s Kane and Big Show, whose only asset is ‘man, they’re really big’; it’s a whole lot of jobbers and guys with nothing else planned, if the pre-Battle Royal Battle Royal on RAW was any indication, and there’s Ryback.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Ryback’s set up to win but, even if he doesn’t and they swerve us, I won’t be surprised. Because this is a dumb match and a pretty disrespectful way to honour someone (yeah, when I die I want a bunch of losers fighting to own a creepy-ass trophy that looks like me every year. Actually…actually, I kind of want that) and it’s full of people I don’t care about. If had wound up on the pre-show, then at least we’d have all been honest about what this is.

“Winner”: Ryback

BD: This match will surpass all other matches in terms of reminding me what Darren Young looks like.

By the way, I’m all for fondly remembering passed wrestlers once a year, but why did they wait 20 years to start, and then give him every single year? Yes, I know, Andre threw out a bunch of football players and Bret Hart to win the one at WrestleMania 2, but let’s start remembering some other wrestlers. “The Owen Hart Memorial Battle Royale”? “The Eddie Guererro Memorial Battle Royal”? “The Shaemus’ Career Battle Royal”? (And no, since you’re going to ask, I’m never going to stop reminding you how many of you yelled at me that Shaemus would be main eventing WrestleMania by over a year ago.)

Anyway, given what Cesaro reaped as a reward all of last year for his win (I see his ascent up the mountain now includes teaming with Tyson Kidd for some reason), I’m not sure why anyone wouldn’t just throw themselves over the top rope as soon as this starts. Maybe that’s how they’re weeding out the dumber wrestlers, like how they electrified those cupcakes on The Simpsons.

How am I supposed to predict a winner on that basis, exactly? I can see Miz, Swagger, and Axel getting electrocuted a LOT during an electrified cupcake experiment… but I doubt anyone would do as well as my prediction, plus WWE is like a disgruntled ex when it comes to CM Punk.

Winner: Ryback

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Sting vs. Triple H

Sawyer: A combined century will be in the ring in this match… woof.  I was never a huge Sting guy, though I appreciate his effort and I’ll always remember his match against Jeff Hardy at Victory Road fondly.

Some people think they’ll have Sting go over so he can face Undertaker next year… why?  At first collar-and-elbow lockup they’d both explode into dust like vampires.

Sting and Undertaker are old, is what I’m saying.

Winner: Sting & the legacy of southern wrasslin’

Spain: I’ll admit that I’ve never actually seen a Sting match. I know, right: not old enough to have been a WCW fan back when I got into wrestling properly (to put this in context, the first PPV I ever saw was SummerSlam 2002 when I was eleven years old). But I get it: he’s a big deal, and I’ll likely go back and check out some of his matches with Flair before this show in an effort to create any form of hype for myself.

Triple H, on the other hand, formed a huge part of my wrestling experience. My parents weren’t over-fond of me watching this barbaric sports entertainment programme back when I was a tender lad of fourteen, so the very act of watching it without getting caught doing so required huge amounts of dedication. And considering that Trips’ hold on the championship was fucking vice-like back then, I spent a lot of time really putting in the effort to watch, in effect, a show about him.

But I can’t get excited for this match. By the way, this is going to be a general theme of my thoughts in general as we get into the main event matches, so get used to reading that. Triple H is capable of putting on a good match with the right opponent. I didn’t much care for his Lesnar matches, other than the massive satisfaction of watching that son of a bitch I hated from 2002 – 2006 get his arms broken, but the Undertaker matches were pretty decent. All in all, I don’t think Hunter should be wrestling anymore. I could have happily watched him hang up his boots after that Undertaker Cell match, but life’s not that fair.

Sting…okay, I’ve seen (at this time of writing) a few punches, two Scorpion Death Drops and a Stinger Splash. And, based on what that looked like, I’m not confident that this guy can put on a good show. Back when people wanted him to face the Undertaker, we never pretended it was for any reason other than ‘those two guys in the same ring at the same time’. We didn’t kid ourselves that the match would be good, because we knew it wouldn’t be. This match is going to be like that, except without us caring about the fact that both Triple H and Sting are in the same place at the same time.

Jesus, this is optimistic, isn’t it?

Winner: Sting

BD: I think it’s okay to be a fan of someone and still not want to see them wrestle at 56 years old. I’ve always liked Sting, and I actually do think he’s aged fairly gracefully in wrestling years. And he hasn’t been active for a while, which means he is either in very good or very poor shape, and nothing in between. I dug seeing Sting at Survivor Series, and it’s cool to see him in WWE. But for me personally, I don’t really need to see that extend to a match.

I could actually pretty much say the same about Triple H in terms of being a fan and not wanting to see the guy wrestle anymore. I’m not saying I mind seeing him on the show, he’s a good bad guy, and in the ring I always thought he was good, but as can happen, the last few years he’s not been much fun to watch in the ring. Those Undertaker matches are ridiculously over-rated and the Brock matches made me pine for his matches with Steiner.

My buddy Joel from Classy Ring Attire said it best… that they continue to push that this is a match 14 years in the making. That said, perhaps if it were 14 years ago, or even 5 years ago, I’d be excited. I’m not dreading it, but let’s just say my expectations are low. And if you don’t know who the winner is, then there’s a good chance you’re one of the types that think HHH is going to shoot on Sting for an old WCW beef or something equally asinine.

Winner: Sting

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Bray Wyatt vs. The Undertaker

Sawyer: So let me get this straight… either Wyatt loses, proving that as a fresh, 27-year-old man he can’t beat someone who will be 50 at Wrestlemania, or The Undertaker loses, which is no big deal because he lost last time so the shock value is over.  I think the real loser here is the audience.  The only possible redeeming factor in this would be if Wyatt beats him so thoroughly that Taker retires and the legend of weird, cartoony-level persona is passed onto Bray.

No disrespect to The Undertaker, he was one of my first favorite wrestlers and someone who legitimately freaked me out as an 8-year-old, but time is the greatest opponent of all and I’d rather see him go out when he doesn’t need a walker to do an “Old School” off the ropes.

Winner: uh…Taker I guess

Spain: This is one of those ‘if’ matches.

As in: ‘this match would be amazing if it had happened five years ago’ (Undertaker gets younger; Bray time-travels FYI).

Or ‘this match would be great if the streak was still going’.

Or ‘I’d be really psyched if the Undertaker had just shown the fuck up at least once’.

In reality, which we unfortunately live in, they’ve built this match on Bray talking and a chair catching fire, and what’s on the line is that Taker’s streak might get a little more sullied. The difference between 21-1 and 22-0 is earth-shattering in WWE terms.

22-1 and 21-2? Who gives a fuck? Not me, and if you do, then you need help but don’t deserve any.

Undertaker can’t go like he used to; he and Lesnar proved that. And whilst Bray can put on a good showing, I don’t think one guy can carry a match above a certain level. We’re not even getting the tension that comes from every near-fall of the match, which was the part I loved most about the Streak matches.

For the first time in years, we’re going to get bored during an Undertaker match.

What world is this?

Winner: The Undertaker, who I don’t think has to lose a match ever again after last year.

BD: God, do I fucking hate watching a lot of Bray Wyatt matches – before you start sending me comment-bombs, let me just say that his WRESTLING matches are fantastic, particularly when he has the right opponent. But much like I said about Sting… and Triple H… I don’t need to see Undertaker wrestle anymore, AND that Undertaker is not the guy that’s going to give Wyatt that good wrestling match. Which means it’s going to be some more overly contrived horror-movie bullshit. And that makes my stomach turn.

Man, last year around this time was when my cousin and her husband got into wrestling, so they invited me to watch WrestleMania, right? They fucking LOVE this Wyatt guy. And it’s not like I don’t like him, so I didn’t mind, but then he started doing his whole “HIT ME WITH THE CHAIR EMBRACE YOUR DARK SIDE JOHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNN” and I remembered why the Wyatt character’s more “supernatural” acting made me want to stick my wet dick into an electrical socket. And then he did that lame crab-walk thing and the 6 people I was watching with, most of them strangers, we’re all like “OH MY GOD THAT’S SO CREEPY AND AMAZING” and I was like “… just kick him in the face, idiot.” You should have seen the looks I got.

I remember posting about that on here. I got comments like “you have to put yourself in the moment, if you were Cena, wouldn’t it make you think OH MY GOD WHAT AM I DEALING WITH HERE” and I was like “… no. It wouldn’t, and even if it did catch me off guard for half a second, the dude is trapped in a yoga pose and unable to protect his face, so why have I not kicked his fucking face in already?” Cena stood there like he was waiting for Wade Barrett to main event WrestleMania one day. (And no, since you’re going to ask, I’m never going to stop reminding you how many of you yelled at me that Wade Barrett would be main eventing WrestleMania by over a year ago.)

… okay, those last paragraphs got away from me. The point is, I hate overly contrived horror movie bullshit with lame special effects in wrestling, and that’s what this is going to be. The ONLY thing this match has going for it for me is that it’s not overly obvious who’s going to win, and that can be fun. Despite what others have said, I don’t think a win really hurts (and it definitely doesn’t kill) Wyatt here. Actually, I think it could help him with some of his overly contrived horror movie tortured character that you all seem to love.

Winner: The Undertaker

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WWE Championship Match

Brock Lesnar (c) w/Paul Heyman vs Roman Reigns (with Vince’s sweaty desperation)

Sawyer: This will likely be the best match on the card, if you like watching Wrestlemania ironically or for trainwreck purposes.  If the WWE really want to hedge their bets, this won’t be the last match on the card, unless they want to end their most important PPV with their next John Cena skipping the first few years of being popular and moving straight ahead to being divisive and overexposed.

Brock might stealthily have the best gimmick in the company as “guy who really, truly gives zero fucks.”  He doesn’t need money, he lives a Ron Swanson lifestyle of killing animals for their meat and fur with his bare hands.  He doesn’t care about his legacy, and he’s like a real-life version of Marv from Sin City so absolutely no one in the back could rough him up on McMahon’s behalf.

Seriously, good for Brock.  He’s fucking over Vince twice for all the guys who never got a chance to.  He’s karma in a crew cut.

Winner: Lesnar, especially since they announced him re-signing this week

Spain: I have been saying literally for months now that there is a right and a wrong way to build Reigns. For a while, WWE stumbled blindly down the wrong way: dumb jokes for the kids, getting helped out by the Rock, having everyone go: ‘well, fuck, isn’t Roman Reigns the awesomest guy ever?’ Now, finally, it seems like we’re approaching the right track, just way too late and not enough. Reigns has had some moments where he looked like a total badass. He kicked out of a move that even Cena couldn’t at Fast Lane; he’s decimated the Authority singlehanded and has, recently, flattened the fuck out of Henry.

But the whole chip on his shoulder thing is a little lame: Roman doesn’t need some kind of mission to prove himself; he needs to say that he’s the baddest motherfucker in the business, and he wants the belt so he’s taking the belt, and if Lesnar has a problem with that, he’ll rip out his larynx and make Heyman eat it.

Look at the way they treated Lesnar during his recent interview: he sat in a chair and talked about how he loves destroying people, and that he can destroy anyone, and Reigns is a dead man, whilst Heyman says that if anyone tries to screwjob his client, then Brock will walk out of WrestleMania with Vince’s and Hunter’s corpses over his shoulders. There was an air of otherness about Lesnar, because nobody else in the WWE is psycho enough to have ‘kill everyone’ as their motivation. If Reigns wants to be seen as a viable threat, he should be meeting that level of antagonism instead of just saying ‘I think I can; I know I can’.

Maybe it’s because WWE wants us to relate to that guy: to empathize with him and so more easily give them our money. Well, I’ve got news for you: I stopped wanting to be a professional wrestler when I turned eighteen, and I really don’t feel like I have much in common with WWE employees other than a love of weightlifting and a pretty obscene calorie intake (bulking is fucking hard). I don’t even want to be able to empathize with the guy who holds the biggest belt in the industry; I want that guy to be standing on a tower of skulls, bathed in blood and howling his dominance to the taller towers of skulls around him. I don’t want to see myself and my own occasionally-shaky confidence staring back at me when I look at Reigns; I want to think ‘that guy could rip my arm out of its socket and beat me to death with it’. This is wrestling, people!

We keep saying that Bryan should be getting the shot and, God in heaven, I wish he’d gotten it, but do you know who else would have made this better? Randy Orton. Orton wouldn’t be talking about he’s just as good as Lesnar; he’d be spending every spare second trying to hospitalize the gigantic bastard before they even got to WrestleMania. And none of this is helped by the fact that Reigns and Lesnar are going to meet for the first time the week of WrestleMania. It’s just not the ideal way to build to a main event, especially when they’re trying to get Heyman to make it seem personal.

Honestly, I think that this is symptomatic of the wider problem of the use of part-timers. Yes, having the main events featuring big guys on a ‘one night only’ basis is a great way to get numbers up for a PPV. But when you’re trying to build a long storyline and tradition, having a guy who’s there for a few times a year isn’t going to cut it. The big three matches of WrestleMania this year feature two guys who show up every week in an active capacity: Roman and Bray. Undertaker hasn’t been here for a year. Lesnar has been better, but tragically underused for building a WrestleMania main event. Sting has yet to wrestle a match yet, or appear for longer than five minutes at a time. After this year, the experiment has to end. WWE has some great talent, and they should think about how to utilise it. This could be the Undertaker’s last match; Brock’s thinking of leaving and who knows how long Sting’s going to stick around? The Monday night after WrestleMania needs to signal some serious change, and some serious appreciation for the employees they have under contract.

To sum up, I’ll finish by saying what I’ve been saying for a while now: they should have planned it better; they had all of the resources and time to make it better and they had us all letting them know how they could have made it better.

WrestleMania, this year, is not going to be very good. And I’m not going to get a sense of vicious satisfaction out of that, either. Because what might have been would have been awesome. Because we’re missing out on moments we’ll not get another chance to see. Because this show could have benefited a lot of superstars and, by extension, their employer. Because really, this Sunday, we’re going to be watching an entire wrestling company cut off its nose to spite its face.

Now somebody tell me just how that’s best for business.

Winner: Roman Reigns

BONUS Desired Result: Lesnar, who then falls victim to a Rollins Cash-In.

BD: I have no idea what I can say about this match that hasn’t already been said. Personally, I love Brock and am sad to see him go if he is indeed leaving, but if he wants to go do UFC then I say good for him. Brock has had some great matches since he’s been back, so I’m rooting for him, but obviously he’s losing here, probably even if he’s not leaving. Best case scenario, he wins but then Rollins cashes in. I love Rollins too, so I got no issue there.

I also like Roman. He’s not my favorite guy, but I got no problems with him. WWE is really screwing him by putting him into the position he’s in right now and the way they’re doing it, so I’m expecting a HIGHLY entertaining crowd here. Nothing wrong with that. Poor Roman – but, if he’s got a problem with it, then one wonders why he hasn’t looked at management and been like “the fuck?”

Tough to say how this will be wrestling-wise – both guys have had good matches with more entertaining wrestlers, but not sure how they’ll do with each other.

Winner: Roman Reigns

In conclusion, thanks for reading, we look forward to LL Cool J’s heel turn and the possibility of a twenty-minute concert by either a has-been or someone we’ve never heard of.