WWE WrestleMania 37 Discussion

[iMoreland]

Night 1 (Saturday April 10th)

• Bobby Lashley (c) vs Drew McIntyre — WWE Championship

• Sasha Banks (c) vs Bianca Belair — SmackDown Women's Championship

• The New Day (c) vs AJ Styles & Omos — Raw Tag Team Championship

• Bad Bunny & Damian Priest vs John Morrison & The Miz

• Braun Strowman vs Shane McMahon — Steel Cage Match

• Cesaro vs Seth Rollins

• Billie Kay & Carmella vs Dana Brooke & Mandy Rose vs Lana & Naomi vs Natalya & Tamina vs The Riot Squad — Tag Team Turmoil Match, Winning team faces Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler on Night 2

Night 2 (Sunday April 11th)

• Roman Reigns (c) vs Daniel Bryan vs Edge — Universal Championship

• Asuka (c) vs Rhea Ripley — Raw Women's Championship

• Big E (c) vs Apollo Crews — Intercontinental Championship Nigerian Drum Fight

• Matt Riddle (c) vs Sheamus — United States Championship

• Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler (c) vs Natalya & Tamina — Women's Tag Team Championship

• Randy Orton vs The Fiend

• Kevin Owens vs Sami Zayn

[heatwillbeback]

99% sure we will be getting Bryan in a triple threat with Edge and Reigns at this point. After that match Sunday, I don’t think they have a choice.

[improper]

As of now this is a four match card. They really need to hit with some of the mid-card stuff or these two nights will be a slog.

[The_Brecht]

Rollins vs Cesaro will be on the card.
AJ Styles and Omos wil face The New Day for the tag titles.
Big E vs. Apollo Crews will probably happen
I hope there's some ladder match for the US title.

Can't see anything yet for the women tag titles and smackdown tag titles.

[Scott Hall]

The thing I'm looking forward to the most is..... having fans at a live show again that's gonna be special also
nice to take a break from the ThunderDome for a couple of nights.

I'm very curious to see what Bianca Belair can do on the "Grandest Stage of them all" to my recollection she hasn't
had that many big high profile PPV matches on the main roster or even NXT outside of maybe a couple so curious
to see how she performs in a high profile match like this.

Bad Bunny vs. Miz? I actually am kind of curious to see how good Bad Bunny is in the ring

Lashley vs. Drew... Gonna be your standard hard hitting match between two Alphas won't be match of the night
doesn't need to be. Thing I'm interested here is the finish I want Lashley to win and have a long meaningful tittle run.

Reigns vs. Edge (or maybe a triple threat with DB?) either way we all know Edge will win. Reigns has had a lot
of stinkers at WM and to be fair some of those matches might not be entirely his fault. His character work has
improved immensely but I still haven't seen much improvement in his matches. To be the "Head of the Table"
or the franchise player in WWE you need to deliver on the biggest stages and be great in the ring. Cena eventually
overcame being a bad worker to deliver in this role and Reigns needs to do that.

Asuka vs. Ripley - No offense to Charlotte but we've seen that match already. With Ripley this becomes way
more interesting. They need to pull the trigger and have her win the tittle at WM.

Orton vs. The Fiend... Oh god where do I begin? First I find Randy Orton one of the most stale, dull, boring
wrestlers in the world right now. A guy who's been the same character, cutting the same promos and having
somewhat the same matches for 15 years. I know the Fiend is a different character then Bray Wyatt but
I've seen this match before and I don't wanna see it anymore. I've also found this whole feud corny and cringe.

Rollins vs. Cesaro... I'm sure the smarks will eat this up. I've been down on Rollins for awhile now (used to be a big fan)
and I've never seen this god in the ring that so many people see in Cesaro. With that said they are close friends and
Rollins will be motivated to try and elevate Cesaro from obscurity once and for all lets see maybe they can steal
the show.

AJ Styles and Omos vs. New Day... I'm sorry but this is a complete waste of AJ Styles who at his age should be
in a high profile singles match especially when he was the MVP of last years Mania. The only interesting thing
about this match is what Omos can do in the ring.

Big E vs. Apollo... meh I just hope they give Apollo some cool Nigerian royalty fancy WM quality entrance.
I'm going to say Apollo wins as this feud is just getting started.

[improper]

I feel like Orton and Wyatt have been feuding for, conservatively, fifteen years.

[jakecronus8]

I’ll cut them some slack given the difficulty of doing 5 hours of live television weekly and the lack of excitement due to the absence of fans, but I think this is a card that just flat out lacks any juice.

The thought occurred to me as I was reading an article about what should be the main event that if there’s any debate and it’s not obvious, you clearly don’t have a main event caliber program at all.

By default I’d say the true main event goes to Roman as he’s had the best year, but I don’t think there’s much heat going into that match and not many truly believe he’s got a chance of dropping the title. If he ultimately does it would seem like a swerve for the sake of a swerve.

On the other side, I’m happy for McIntyre to get his moment amongst people, but truth be told I find him boring and bland as champ. Conversely I feel bad for Lashley as he fought for a long time in the business for his first (possibly only) title reign to be a month long transitional one. Raw is generally not great but he and the hurt business have been a highlight.

One good thing about shows like this is subverted expectations many times lead to entertaining shows. I expect Banks/Bel Air to deliver as well as Ripley and Asuka which feels so much more fresh and exciting than Charlotte/Asuka. E and Crews will probably have a good match but again there’s no heat as Crews just loses week after week. It’s too bad they’re not going to do the NXT championship as it was rumored. Balor/Kross feels like a big match. On the bright side, if they were given a mania spot the match would likely be cut down to 8-10 minutes to make sure Bad Bunny gets enough time for his entrance and match.

[Dominator83]

I’ll cut them some slack given the difficulty of doing 5 hours of live television weekly and the lack of excitement due to the absence of fans, but I think this is a card that just flat out lacks any juice.

The thought occurred to me as I was reading an article about what should be the main event that if there’s any debate and it’s not obvious, you clearly don’t have a main event caliber program at all.

By default I’d say the true main event goes to Roman as he’s had the best year, but I don’t think there’s much heat going into that match and not many truly believe he’s got a chance of dropping the title. If he ultimately does it would seem like a swerve for the sake of a swerve.

On the other side, I’m happy for McIntyre to get his moment amongst people, but truth be told I find him boring and bland as champ. Conversely I feel bad for Lashley as he fought for a long time in the business for his first (possibly only) title reign to be a month long transitional one. Raw is generally not great but he and the hurt business have been a highlight.

One good thing about shows like this is subverted expectations many times lead to entertaining shows. I expect Banks/Bel Air to deliver as well as Ripley and Asuka which feels so much more fresh and exciting than Charlotte/Asuka. E and Crews will probably have a good match but again there’s no heat as Crews just loses week after week. It’s too bad they’re not going to do the NXT championship as it was rumored. Balor/Kross feels like a big match. On the bright side, if they were given a mania spot the match would likely be cut down to 8-10 minutes to make sure Bad Bunny gets enough time for his entrance and match.

The 1st sentence hit the nail on the head, overexposure. When we were growing up, there was 1 main show a week, not every brand name was featured every week, and there were lots of matches where a Seth Rollins type, would beat up a jobber. That way, you still got your star featured, without giving away or using up a marquee match with him. Shelf lifes for feuds and matches were much longer. Thats what i liked about NXT when it was 1 hour a week on the Network with 4 or so PPVs a year. It gave the throwback "less is more" mantra, and it worked. Asuka had the belt for a year and a half, and NOBODY was sick of it. Do that on RAW or SD, and she'll be getting boo'd out of the building in half that time.

Eric Bischoff was ahead of his time. When Turner said they wanted to add Thunder, he was against it, saying that adding another show when they already have a 2 hour show, would over saturate the product. and hes right. Thats why everything now gets so stale so fast.

[jakecronus8]

^Right on about Bischoff.

I’m glad he’s finally getting into the hall. In my opinion he’s the single most under appreciated and important figure when it comes to where wrestling is today. If Nitro never destroyed Raw, the attitude era never happens which set off a chain of events leading to wwe being the worldwide property it is. Really seems like Eric got screwed over by a poor management system at Turner.

[The_Brecht]

RVD, Great Kahli and Kane also in the hall of fame.
Batista was also scheduled, but asked for a different year due to some personal reasons.

[Dr Positivity]

I assume the original plan was this?

Edge vs Reigns - Universal title
Charlotte vs Lacey - Raw Women's title
Asuka vs Ripley non-title
Bryan vs Rollins

What I can't figure out is what Vince envisioned as WWE title match 6 months ago cause Lashley going from US champ to WWE champ was clearly decided late and if it was McIntyre and Sheamus I think they would've shown them as friends for longer in 2020. Goldberg vs McIntyre at Wrestlemania instead of the Royal Rumble? Would have been a terrible choice, but Vince. McIntyre is probably doing a Shane o Mac storyline soon with their history but that couldn't have been the WWE title match. Maybe a long term McMahon storyline they could never really do with Reigns about McIntyre going from the chosen one to fired starting in mid 2021 leading to McIntyre vs HHH at next year's Wrestlemania. HHH doesn't cut his hair for a year in an attempt to look as much like 2002 version as possible.

[Dr Positivity]

I think McIntyre vs Lashley will be the first match while Banks and Belair will main event night 1. In some ways the first match is the big spot anyways since it's first with a crowd in a year (no kickoff show) and then they claim they made history with the main event match.

[The_Brecht]

The overflow of ppv has killed the magic Wrestlemania once had.
There should never be a ppv 3 weeks before Wrestlemania.

[reamily]

The overflow of ppv has killed the magic Wrestlemania once had.
There should never be a ppv 3 weeks before Wrestlemania.

They needed one to promote the build as it was very rushed in the first place..

[Dr Positivity]

I'm not sure I'll remember any moments from this build as much as last year's: Orton attack on Edge, AJ doing a promo against Mark Callaway, Cena promos with the Fiend, McIntyre giving Brock a million Claymores, or possibly even Bazler biting Becky's ear. But last year may have been a better than average build.

[tugs]

Am I the only one who wants to see an actual match for the 24/7 Title?

[Dr Positivity]

Good decision to make the Bad Bunny match a tag... let him stand on the apron most of the match and then do a cross body spot, it's fine.

[iMoreland]

Sasha v Bianca main eventing night 1

[tres]

I’m beyond happy that those 2 beautiful woman, Sasha Banks & Bianca Belair are main eventing Night 1 of WrestleMania! Great job on that WWE

[The_Brecht]

Am I the only one who wants to see an actual match for the 24/7 Title?

Yeah, give me an eight man ladder match with some of those dudes.
Could be awesome.