WrestleMania is up to 63,000 tickets sold out and topped over $5 million in advanced sales. The expected final number is 78,000 attendance for $5.7 million.
It looks unlikely that The Undertaker will lose to Batista at WrestleMania. The original plan months ago was for Batista to win but there is a lot of negativity about him now. People feel they are lucky the crowd has not completely seen through him and that he’s got nothing going for him other than his look and tenure as a top guy. Many on the Smackdown brand resent him for things he has said about them back when he was on Raw, while the fight with Booker T did not endear him to anybody. The feeling is that he was hand-picked for stardom first by Jim Cornette, then by Vince McMahon, and had the benefit of working closely with Triple H and Ric Flair, but he doesn’t have any true passion for the business.
Mick Foley is not expected to have anything to do with WrestleMania this year. He was trying to get a match on the show and was at one point considered to be Donald Trump’s rep but there are people internally trying to block his comeback at Mania because of certain things written in his new book, The Hardcore Diaries, which chronicles his return in 2006, the feud with Edge, the One Night Stand build, and the feud with Ric Flair. The book is being promoted on TV similar to how Eric Bischoff’s was but Foley is not expected on TV for it. He doesn’t say anything bad about people in it but does express disappointment with how Vince and Brian Gerwitz treated him at points.
Credit: Wrestling Observer newsletter (click here for subscription information)
