WrestleMania 32

[Matt D]

They should just have Teddy Long come out and make a smackdown tag match. The crowd would go nuts for him.

[Exposer]

Strowman's problem is that he's bumped for Tommy Dreamer like anyone else who might bump for Tommy Dreamer, has been neutralized multiple times during Wyatt matches including being put through a table like an annoying pest by Taker/Kane, and spent months in Adam Rose' posse dancing with the Exotic Express.

[Death From Above]

Kane and Taker already killed the Wyatts

 

Why do some people persist with this utterly ridiculous lie?

[Alucard]

[Coffey]

On paper, that Wrestlemania card could be one of the worst I can think of. I don't see how that card sells more than 93,000 tickets.

[Johnny Sorrow]

, and spent months in Adam Rose' posse dancing with the Exotic Express.

Seriously? Don't be a dum dum.

[fakeplastictrees]

LOL@ THAT WM card. WM for the longest time has just been Raw held in a bigger venue and this year it looks like its going to be the icing on the cake. Rollins, Cena, and Sting are hurt. I understand that, but that doesn't mean you book Taker/Strowman and Wyatt/Lesnar with HHH maineventing the whole thing. Fucking Christ. Is it REALLY that hard to toss together a card with some type of intrigue? The rumored Jericho/Ambrose match just makes this all the more frustrating. Hopefully none of this comes to pass.

[Lust Hogan]

I think Taker vs. Sheamus would be good.

[DMJ]

I just don't get why they don't make life easier for themselves and just have Taker/Miz.

 

Have him boast that he is going to retire the Undertaker. You have him gloat and gloat and, for good measure, also verbally attack the whole state of Texas and Dallas in particular (again, I feel like a Hollywood-type like Miz would be perfect at that). Then, at Mania, Taker comes out and destroys him in an 8-minute squash.

 

1. This puts a guy like Miz in a showcase match. Even in a loss, Miz comes off as a bigger deal than in a multi-man. Plus, his mic work is good enough to have him carry the load of the match on RAW and SD when Taker isn't there.

 

2. I'm a Taker fan, but I'm not so blind as to believe he's going to deliver many more "classics" or that he should be expected to do insane feats of strength and agility. Taker squashing Miz can give us "the hits" - the Deadman's entrance, the heel cowering in fear (Miz's quality facial expressions will be great here), Miz hitting the Finale only for Taker to do a sit-up, a Tombstone/Last Ride finish that Taker can deliver without injuring himself.

 

3. Thinking longterm, if Strowman is going to become a major player, it's not going to happen by April. It may not happen by next April either, but I'd be willing to wait and see on it. Braun Strowman is an unproven commodity/non-draw right now and two and a half months from now, I don't see him being more than that. 12 months from now? Definitive victories over a number of performers? When he's got more experience/confidence/presence? There is potential for him to be a big deal. (And, just to add, I'd say the same for a guy like Luke Harper, who I love. If it was going to be Harper/Taker, I'd still call it a bad idea because, like Strowman, Harper isn't hot and doesn't have the ability to "get hot" as quickly as The Miz)

[FMKK]

I think Taker vs. Sheamus would be good.

 

I think that would be an entertaining match but Sheamus, like the rest of the WWE midcard, has been booked into oblivion to the extent that I don't think the general audience would buy him as a viable opponent against Taker.

[Strummer]

PWI also reporting they pitched Batista on being the special ref for HHH v Reigns and he turned them down

[Coffey]

These problems will never go away because WWE absolutely refuses to make new guys & keep trying to bring back old people... like the above mentioning of Batista. Or The Rock or The Undertaker. Meanwhile, when they do choose someone to put in a bigger position, they choose people like Braun Strowman. This has Giant Gonzales written all over it again.

 

They were doing good things with Seth Rollins but he got hurt. Roman they seem to keep getting cold feet on & won't book him strong. They book him strong enough to anger some fans but not get the other fans on-board all the way. It's really weird. They need to spend all of 2016 post-Mania doing absolutely nothing but making guys like Bray Wyatt, Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns, A.J. Styles, Rusev & Big E. Don't have any of them touch one another. Don't have any of them lose. Just have them constantly winning matches over people like Dolph, Jericho, Big Show, etc. Never losing on PPV. Rarely wrestling on TV. Make them feel special. Then by this time next year maybe they'll be able to create some intrigue by putting a couple of them against each other.

[BigBadMick]

Sounds great Coffey but there's Raw and Smackdown every week.

[FMKK]

Sounds great Coffey but there's Raw and Smackdown every week.

They have a huge roster of undercard guys that basically never interact with anyone above their station. Use them for squashes. I see no reason why Ambrose couldn't squash Adam Rose, Bo Dallas, Heath Slater etc. rather than work against another star for example. Or one week have him a do a promo and no match. Heat up feuds with injury angles that actually take guys off TV for a week or two and play them up as significant. There are ways around overexposing guys if they used a bit of imagination rather than booking by rote.

[Loss]

Companies with just as much or almost as much TV as WWE have kept guys apart as long as they have wanted to keep them apart.

[Parties]

There’s what, eight a half weeks to go? Realistically the public should know the card by the end of the Monday after Fastlane. Which is in 2 1/2 weeks and seems to be serving no purpose beyond setting up Roman as title contender and Wyatt as Brock’s opponent.

The degree to which they dislike/don’t care about anyone outside of their top five guys is amazing. So many good workers who they're just gonna dump out of that battle royal and be done with for another year.

I don’t even hate Taker-Strauman. It’s stupid and there are twenty other guys who should have the spot, but I agree with the sentiment that Taker needs to fall back to Earth and stop being viewed as the Workrate Epic guy. He’s 50 and should be moving into a nostalgia role to the extent that he’s used at all.

[Coffey]

I think back to Lucha Underground. Sure, they only have an hour, not like... five that they have to fill. But even the people that weren't doing anything, they found them something to do. All the people that had their arms broken by Pentagon, Jr.? They came back & had a match against each other, with something on the line. Then the one guy lost his mask and turned heel on Sexy Starr. Even the jobbers were given something to do.

 

If WWE would just give everyone something to do, they wouldn't have any trouble filling up the TV time. People like Fandango, The Ascension or Jack Swagger rarely even make TV. They have people down in NXT that are ready to be called up.

 

The whole star Vs. star for every match thing was due to the Monday Night Wars, from like, what, 19 years ago? You're not really battling to win quarter hours anymore. They need to be making stars. Some jobber squashes wouldn't be the end of the world. Maybe not bringing in local guys to lose every week like they did with Ryback for awhile but having designated jobbers wouldn't be so bad. Like the Social Outcast.

 

They gotta at least TRY. They can't just keep hoping stars from yesteryear will always be there to bail them out. They have an entire creative team that gets paid to come up with this shit. If they can't come up with something, fire their asses & get someone that can.

[Matt D]

Despite the injuries, this somehow feels like it was the year to have a Wrestlemania VII sort of card with 15 matches with programs and insert interviews and an events center hosted by Renee and one of the matches being BAMF vs Matadors/Torito. The sheer novelty of everything being made into a big deal and everyone having a program would have made the sum feel far greater than the parts, and they need the sum to come together this year, because they just don't have the parts.

[Loss]

If you look at their most successful WMs (14 and 23), they've usually not waited to finalize the main event until after the February pay-per-view. There is no reason they can't just make it known HHH-Reigns is headlining now. Do they really think there's more interest in Wrestlemania if for now, people think it might be HHH-Ambrose or HHH-Brock instead? HHH defending against Ambrose as the last guy in the Rumble would make a much better Fastlane main event, plus I could see them tricking enough people into thinking they might do Reigns-Ambrose at WM and do a shock heel turn to set it up or something. Add Brock-Reigns as a semi-main finishing what they started last year and their supposed goal of making Fastlane not just a holdover show suddenly has some legs. I don't even think HHH defending the title is the best WM main, but if they're going to do it, that seems a better route there. You could even do a fuck finish for Roman-Brock one more time to set up a match where there must be a winner sometime after Reigns wins the title, similar to how it took three Bret-Diesel matches to get to a winner.

[Coffey]

Another added bonus of having jobber matches is two-fold: one you can re-establish finishers. Like how everyone always has to kick out of an Attitude Adjustment nowadays so you never buy the first one winning the match anymore. Well a jobber doesn't have to kick out of one.

 

Second, you can win matches with other things. Like the top rope Snowplow that Kevin Owens has been doing, or when Cena was doing things like the Springboard Stunner or Code Red. If you beat a dude with that, when you do those moves in bigger matches, the false finishers mean something & people will actually buy-into them instead of just knowing that they're 2-counts which takes away any heat/intrigue from them.

[Grimmas]

Coffey is really spot on.

[FMKK]

Sadly, these things require a level of thought that WWE absolutely don't want to put into their shows.

 

I recall seeing quite a few people, including myself on other sites, saying that the WWE part-timer model is unsustainable and they they would need to sacrifice one Wrestlemania to establish new stars. It's funny that circumstances, namely injuries, have basically presented them with a chance to do that and they aren't going to take it.

[Alucard]

I like the Taker/Miz idea as well as Taker/Sheamus, moreso than Taker/Strowman. I feel like Sheamus has been built up enough to be somewhat credible and has enough signature moves to create some solid near falls, especially after hitting multiple Brogue Kicks and having seen even Reigns go down to that. While I feel Miz not being totally squashed but putting up a solid fight could go a ways to making him closer to the top heel he used to be rather than a joke since I think he can still be pretty useful.

 

 

Despite the injuries, this somehow feels like it was the year to have a Wrestlemania VII sort of card with 15 matches with programs and insert interviews and an events center hosted by Renee and one of the matches being BAMF vs Matadors/Torito. The sheer novelty of everything being made into a big deal and everyone having a program would have made the sum feel far greater than the parts, and they need the sum to come together this year, because they just don't have the parts.

 

Agreed, for what's supposed to be the Biggest WrestleMania Ever from an attendance standpoint, having a huge card would've made it feel that way much more than how it looks to be going.

 

 

If you look at their most successful WMs (14 and 23), they've usually not waited to finalize the main event until after the February pay-per-view. There is no reason they can't just make it known HHH-Reigns is headlining now. Do they really think there's more interest in Wrestlemania if for now, people think it might be HHH-Ambrose or HHH-Brock instead? HHH defending against Ambrose as the last guy in the Rumble would make a much better Fastlane main event, plus I could see them tricking enough people into thinking they might do Reigns-Ambrose at WM and do a shock heel turn to set it up or something. Add Brock-Reigns as a semi-main finishing what they started last year and their supposed goal of making Fastlane not just a holdover show suddenly has some legs. You could even do a fuck finish for Roman-Brock one more time to set up a match where there must be a winner sometime after Reigns wins the title, similar to how it took three Bret-Diesel matches to get to a winner.

 

And agreed. That double main event would create a lot more suspense than the predictable triple threat. And I love the idea of Roman beating Brock there but not decisively so after he beats HHH at Mania, his first defense is Brock in an Extreme Rules match to finally settle the score. I dig Triple H as champ but the worst thing about it is that he's not going to defend it even once until he loses it. Just hate the predictability there as even the Rock defended once against Punk.

[sek69]

The main reason I could see Taker not wanting to do a match with Strowman is that, yes he's had programs with big lugs before, he's 50 years old and way more broken down than he was when he was facing guys like Mabel in 1995. I wouldn't be surprised if he wants someone who can hold up their end of the deal a little more at this stage of his career.

 

Plus is Braun f'n Strowman. I know Vince has his big guy boner in full effect but even he gives up on big guys when they are as bad as Brauny is. I don't see this as a match that would launch him to super stardom.

[sek69]

Also doesn't winning the title and not defending it until the big show where everyone expects him to lose it back make HHH the 2016 version of Ron Garvin?