Worldwide Wrasslin’ Focus: WrestleMania 32 guestimations

WrestleMania 32 is this weekend, and barring a big swerve, Roman Reigns will (finally) be beating Triple H for the title in the main or semi-main event. This has left most smarks angry. I’m somewhere between there, and dejectedly meh about it. At this point, Reigns winning a title is like having to sit through a dentist appointment. You realize it has to happen, but the whole time, you just kind of wish it was over so that you could move on to better things.

When it comes to wrasslin’ and “better things,” pretty much everything else on the Mania card is more compelling. The Hell in a Cell cage match with Shane vs. The Undertaker, for the future of Raw, could go either way, and there will likely be a crazy spot or two during the match to get excited about. The Triple Threat divas’ match has a good chance to be the best women’s wrestling at Mania ever. (Damning with faint praise, but still.) The intercontinental title ladder match should be a good spotfest, even if some of the star power has been reduced because of injury. And, the two non-title singles matches – Ambrose vs. Lesnar, Styles vs. Jericho – should be excellent. Even the three-on-four handicap match between the New Day and the League of Nations should be fun because of the former’s antics.

Anyway! My predictions for the card, preshow matches listed with a P, predicted winners in bold, as listed on Wikipedia:

1P) Kalisto (c) vs. Ryback. Kalisto has been having good matches as the champion, even if the WWE has done its best to diminish the stature of the U.S. belt, downgrading it from Cena’s open challenges to Del Rio’s lukewarm reign to Kalisto now being on the preshow.

2P) Total Divas (Brie Bella, Paige, Natalya, Alicia Fox and Eva Marie) vs. BAD & Blonde (Lana, Summer Rae, Naomi, Emma and Tamina). I’m going with the latter, solely because Total Divas is probably on the verge of cancellation, and Lana is making her in-ring debut, unless I’m mistaken. I mean, that would have been a bigger deal six months ago, when she was actually a hot draw and paired regularly with Rusev. It means far less now that she’s significantly cooled down. Regardless, it’ll be a lot of fun to hear the crowd crap all over Eva Marie, and I’d be shocked if she didn’t take the pin.

3P) The Usos vs. The Dudley Boyz. I’m thinking that either Golden Truth (Golddust and R-Truth) get into this match and win, or, there is some sort of contested or DQ finish. This seems like a kind of “who cares?” feud, with the Dudleys or Usos biding time until they can face New Day as a heel team this time.

4) Triple H (c) vs. Roman Reigns. It seems somewhat crazy that the WWE would let the crowd crap all over Reigns for weeks, and then, to have him lose. I think it’s almost certain that he wins, although I’m still holding out hope that there is a swerve of some sort or that he turns heel. (And if he turns, then you could have the Usos turn as well and kind of make them relevant, in an Edgeheads way.)

5) Dean Ambrose vs. Brock Lesnar (street fight). This one could honestly go either way to me. Yes, Lesnar is a monster, but they’ve established that Ambrose is going to be bringing a bunch of dangerous weapons. Plus, Ambrose is currently the most-over face on the roster, and he does need to win some of these matches if the crowd is going to take him seriously as a top guy. If the WWE doesn’t give him a win here, I think it really hurts his long-term value.

6) Shane McMahon vs. The Undertaker (Hell in a Cell). If you’re going based on future value, I think a couple months to a year of Shane on WWE programming is way more valuable than the Corporation, which has kind of run its course. Plus, since he is a McMahon, you can have Shane turn at some point and go heel anyway.

7) Charlotte (c) vs. Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks. It doesn’t really feel like they’ve done enough to establish Sasha as the Queen Bee of the division, so Charlotte could definitely retain and they could push the title change to another PPV. For example, maybe Charlotte pins Becky, which sets up the one-on-one between Charlotte and Sasha at a future PPV.

8) Kevin Owens (c) vs. Sami Zayn vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Zack Ryder vs. Sin Cara vs. The Miz vs. Stardust (ladder match). Wikipedia’s listing of the participants is also roughly the order I’d put their chances of winnings, although it’s more like 60, 30, 10, 2.5, 2.5, 2.5 and 2.5 percent to me. If Owens doesn’t retain – and I think he will and should – then Zayn will get the belt. In recent weeks, they’ve been showing Owens to be ruthless and opportunistic, and I think that happens again here – He’ll slither in at the end and snag the belt.

9) AJ Styles vs. Chris Jericho. This has been a fun, intense feud, and this should be the blow-off match. Jericho is the part-time performer, so it doesn’t make sense for him to win. This should free up Styles to get involved in the world title or IC title picture.

10) Andre the Giant Battle Royal, announced participants: Heath Slater, Curtis Axel, Adam Rose, Bo Dallas, Big Show, Kane, Tyler Breeze, Mark Henry, Jack Swagger, Fandango, Damien Sandow, Darren Young, Konnor, Viktor, Goldust and R-Truth. The WWE loves its giants, and inexplicably, the Big Show. I think he gets the win. Kane would be my second choice, with a surprise entrant (Brawn Strowman? Cesaro? NXT guy?) being my third option. Of anyone else in the field, I’d pick Henry, even though he’s been buried lately, because they could give it to him as a sort of “Going Away” or retirement award. (The dirt sheets have been reporting he’s done after his contract expires at Mania.)

11) The New Day vs. The League of Nations. It’s a non-title match, so the League could win. However, they probably shouldn’t, since its members are kind of “meh” and I think it does more good to keep the New Day as strong as possible. (Side note: I also really like that a few weeks ago, Xavier Woods got the pin in a match, since they’d been keeping him solely as the comic relief manager for so long.)

From top to bottom, this is a strong wrestling card on paper, with average to weak storyline / booking interest. I’m hoping some legends and surprises spice things up, but the WWE’s track record on that lately has been very mixed.

C.M. Punk is smarter than you. (The WWE, not so much.)

I continue to enjoy what the WWE is doing with C.M. Punk on Smackdown. On Friday night, a hot crowd thought they would finally get to see Punk, the cultish leader of the Straight Edge Society, without his trademark hair. Finally, after months of running his mouth, the arrogant purist would get his comeuppance!

However, in a brilliant move, he instead wore a mask to the ring and broke out in a wide, psychotic grin. This was a great decision in my opinion, since it allows Punk to maintain his arrogance, and it keeps the crowd hot for the eventual "reveal" on his hair, which I imagine will happen at the next pay per view.

Unfortunately though, Punk was by far the highlight of the show, as several other aspects of it fell flat to me. The main event was a good match between Mysterio and the Undertaker, but because they're both fan favorites without any existing issue between them, the crowd was pretty mellow on the whole affair.

For a few brief moments, I thought they were going to have Undertaker do a heel turn on Mysterio, but this didn't develop. This wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to me, since Smackdown lacks a #3 heel along the same stature as Swagger and Punk, neither of whom is considered a guaranteed money guy yet. There are some decently developing heels behind those two, in Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler, but neither is established enough to me. Meanwhile, the show has plenty of faces without Undertaker - Mysterio, Big Show, Kofi Kingston, Christian, Matt Hardy and MVP are all guys I can see as credibly involved in the title picture, given their past successes.

In a continuation of an angle seemingly only I like, Laycool mocked Beth Phoenix, and also WWE fans for questioning how they can have two titles. "I've got 99 problems but Beth ain't one!" McCool and Layla are both ridiculously annoying in their current roles, and as such, they're the only interesting wrestlers the WWE has in the Smackdown women's division. (Sorry Kelly Kelly and Tiffany - You're both incredible eye candy, I just wish the writers could give you a personality or a gimmick or an angle, instead of imagining what your naughty bits would look like in a cheerleader outfit.) On Raw, Maryse holds a similar role, although Eve at least has some potential. Gail Kim has been completely buried since coming over from TNA, but I imagine she doesn't mind the paycheck too much.

The rest of the show featured a so-so tag match between Kingston-Show and Swagger-McIntyre, Christian being teamed with Hornswaggle (ugh!), and MVP jobbing to Luke Gallows. None of these were that compelling, so grading on the usual curve for Smackdown, I can only offer praise for the Punk and Laycool segments.

Grade: C

Stuff you're probably not interested in: WWE Bragging Rights review

[Left] Chris Jericho pictures are always appropriate.

I wasn't really sure what to write about today, but then I realized that I haven't written about professional wrestling in a good, long time. Don't read on if you still want to watch WWE's Bragging Rights! While I realize most of you aren't wrestling fans at all, maybe you'll find this interesting anyway.

Opening match: Miz vs. Morrison was a fun match with some good action, even if I didn't like the finish, which was Miz pinning Morrison clean. Sure, he did a kind of dirty move by shoving him during Starship Pain, but I'm not sure what the finish accomplished. I can't see the Miz getting pushed further just yet, and he get the best of Morrison in their last confrontation (the draft), so I thought Morrison would be going over.

Diva tag team match: The diva tag match was interesting until the finish, when it looked like Beth Phoenix and Melina screwed up. Maybe that was just my perspective though. I did like the sort of odd tension between Phoenix and her fellow heel, Michelle McCool. They would make for an interesting heel stable if it weren't for the Beautiful People in TNA, of which they would be a clear copy of.

World Heavyweight Championship fatal fourway: This match for the WHC wasn't that great. I'm believing the Internet reports about Taker being seriously diminished in terms of health more and more, because this match only went about 10 minutes. Undertaker won after a tombstone piledriver, and after Rey and Batista broke up each other's pins during the match.

After the match was over, Batista savagely attacked Rey, instantly turning him heel. While I think Batista turning heel is good for his character, which was getting stale as a babyface, I don't like it from an overall standpoint. This means Punk is on his way out of the title picture after the next match / short program with Taker, barring a huge upset, setting up Batista vs. Taker around Royal Rumble time. They did have good matches in 2007 and 2008, but it still feels stale to me. Also, given Taker's health concerns, who knows if that can continue?

Seven on seven, Team Raw vs. Team Smackdown: This was better than I thought it would be, although I was annoyed to see Kofi Kingston take the pin. I also thought he went out pretty weakly - All he got was a chokeslam from Show, and about 30 seconds passed before Jericho actually got the fall. At least have Jericho do a Lionsault or something, because the Chokeslam is more of a secondary finisher for Show now, and a rising star like Kofi shouldn't be pinned on it.

Iron Man match: Finally, this was surprisingly good. It looked like Cena got legit busted open, all the pinfalls made it interesting, and they did a good job of portraying Orton's utterly psychotic nature. His look of madness in the last two minutes was incredible, although with the finish, I'm not sure where they go from here. Maybe have Orton get even more ruthless? Just have him beat the crap out of people backstage for absolutely no reason, until even Legacy / Priceless (and specifically Ted Jr.) feels the need to stand up for him.

And with the win, there is now absolutely nothing for Cena to do. DX looks like they're going to be busy with JeriShow, any kind of match with Orton would be stale, and the other heels on the roster - Swagger, the Miz, Masters - don't really seem to be anywhere near Cena's league as a competitor.

Maybe the WWE will actually take my advice and go with a Kofi Kingston vs. Cena match, face vs. face, for the PPV. Or maybe they'll go old school and have Cena and Taker each lead a Survivor Series team at the PPV. You could the GMs pick each team, and Cena's team would be faces - Cena, Kofi, Evan Bourne and MVP. Smackdown would be a mix, maybe Taker, Morrison, Punk and Ziggler / Estrada. To provide an incentive for the winning team, all the surviving team members would be entered into a match for the championship belt on their brand.

At some point, you have Punk get Taker DQed, followed by Taker "removing" Punk from the match, setting up their program for the next PPV. At that point, maybe Morrison is the only guy left, and he fights valiantly against the remaining members before getting pinned by Cena eventually. They shake hands at the end, everyone is happy, the end.

p.s. I was disappointed that there was nothing from ECW on this show. What gives? It's got the best wrestling week in and week out on WWE programming now.

And also, the Chris Jericho picture is from here.