WrestleMania season is well and truly upon us, and now the only thing any wrestling fan is interested in is the Grandest Stage of Them All, The Daddy of the PPV, The Greatest Show on Earth.
This presents a bit of a problem for me because, to be honest, I’m not a big fan. I used to love it. WrestleMania X was fantastic, and all through the Attitude Era was great stuff, but the last three or four years? For me, not so much…
Don’t get me wrong. I will be watching. Maybe not live, but I will watch. In all honesty, it’ll be more because I watch wrestling than because I’m desperate to see what should be the wrestling highlight of the year. And the worst thing of all is that the WWE know that. They know with absolute certainty that people will buy the PPV just because it’s WrestleMania.
WrestleMania should be an event where the best of the best face off. The whole card should be packed with quality matches, and wrestling fans all over the globe should have been anticipating this event ever since the Rumble. The sign has been in place, and while wrestlers pointing at the sign seems to have been replaced with them simply looking at it, the effect should be the same. But it isn’t.
I should point out straight away that this is not going to be another article about why Daniel Bryan should be in the main-event. I like Bryan, I like his work, and he’s super-hot with the crowd. I don’t particularly want to watch Batista and Orton in the main-event, and Bryan is probably the man who should have been in there instead of Batista. But he isn’t, at least not yet, and plenty people have already had their say on this.
What I think has happened, and where WrestleMania has gone wrong of late, is that WWE started to believe its own hype. That this is the Greatest Show on Earth.
Viewer wise, and I get that it’s a PPV, it attracts around the same TV audience as an episode of Deal or No Deal. It will attract less viewers than most English Premier League games and, in fact, for a sporting event, you’d struggle to find one with worse figures than WrestleMania. I know it caters to a niche market, but realistically, it’ll have a similar audience to any episode of Impact. So what makes it such a big deal?
Prestige is the only thing it has going for it. No wrestler has ever talked about his “Royal Rumble Moment”, but do it at WrestleMania and you go down in history. Or at least you used to.
And that is one of my problems with WrestleMania. WrestleMania Moments don’t really happen anymore. The ladder match between Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon, Andre getting slammed, Flair retiring, the Bret vs Shawn Iron Man match…. Even Hulk pinning Yokozuna was memorable, but ever since HBK retired, there has been no “Mr WrestleMania”.
That in itself could just be put down to the natural order of things, but for one man in particular, this seems to be a problem, and that makes it a problem for everyone.
HHH has never really had his WrestleMania moment. Or if he has, I missed it. He’s had some good matches, and some important ones. Winning the WWF Undisputed Championship from Jericho, the fatal-4-way with Rock, Show and Foley, and his Hell in a Cell with Taker were pretty good, but not stand-out matches.
Compare that to his best mate HBK, who boasts more WrestleMania moments than you can shake a stick at.
And that’s where another problem lies. HHH, to me at least, looks pretty determined to finally have that match, the one that steals the show. It was rumoured earlier this year that he’d be facing the now-departed CM Punk. But now, he’s switched to the other fans favourite…the man who’s not in that main-event – Daniel Bryan. Or is he?
I have to admit that I accept the logic behind the HHH/Bryan match, at least to some degree.
HHH has been orchestrating the Downfall of Daniel, and in years gone by, that would have been a perfectly valid reason for Bryan to want that match. The same could be said of the match he had with Bray Wyatt at the Rumble – the match that kept Bryan out the Rumble, and so out of the main-event at Mania. The reasoning behind it was sound. I get it.
What I don’t get is why HHH is now seemingly in the same bracket as the Undertaker. Only wrestling at the big PPVs (admittedly HHH will probably do more than one) is acceptable for the Phenom, but only because he has the Streak. That Streak gives his return validity. Everyone wants to end it, and no-one probably will.
HHH has no such streak, he has no real (pardon the pun here) pedigree at WrestleMania, yet every year, he picks an opponent who he thinks can help him to deliver “his moment”. He tried it with Taker, twice, but neither match lived up to the legendary HBK v Taker matches. Punk topped HHH last year as well when HHH tried to do it with Lesnar, and failed…miserably.
So this year, the HHH Express rolls into Yes town, in search of his defining WrestleMania Moment. He may even get it. Daniel Bryan is certainly capable of helping him to deliver it, but the point is – it doesn’t really matter.
HHH has had a fantastic career. He’s held the WWE/World Championship more times than most. He’s married in to the company and he’s got a job for life. I’m not saying for one minute that Hunter is, or was, not a great wrestler. He was. But…his search for that elusive Mania match, the one that everyone talks about the next day, that is the problem.
Even if we accept that Bryan was never going to be in the main-event, there are other wrestlers he could have faced. Wrestlers who could have benefited from a match with Bryan, and wrestlers who could have ensured Bryan had a “must-see” match.
Roman Reigns vs Bryan in a number one contenders match – I would watch that. It could have been the match that ended the Shield. Cesaro v Bryan – I would watch that. It could have been the match that ended the Real Americans.
It would even have made more sense if HHH had fed Bryan to Taker, telling him he has a chance to prove that he’s more than a B+ player by beating the Streak, then watched him lose and doing the “I told you so” thing. But no. HHH wants one more shot at the WrestleMania Moment, and in WWE, what HHH wants, HHH pretty much gets.
When you add to all of that, the fact that the card is still to be finalised and we’re less than four weeks away from WrestleMania. Every match on the card should be in place by now, and the greatest build ever should be going on. This is the big carrot for signing people up to the Network, and with less than four weeks to go, we still don’t know the full card. We may suspect we know, but in Vince Land, that’s not always what we’ll get.
Given that the main-event is between two heels, and heels served with a large side serving of apathy from the WWE Universe, you’d think the rest of the card should be in place, and being pushed to the heavens (like the merch on the MFX Podcast), but it’s still to be made public. How do you convince anyone to buy the Network on the strength of a PPV without a card? And don’t get me started on the streaming problems you are likely to face…
Now I know this is not in my usual light-hearted style, and I appreciate you all came to see me write that way. But truth be told, I really get annoyed when WrestleMania season rolls round and Hunter inserts himself into the card like he’s a big deal.
He was a big deal, and should be remembered for what he was – a good wrestler who made the most of what he had. Not a man who spends his time chasing the limelight after it has gone. Who knows, now I’ve got this out of my system, you may get something funny next week.
As always, anyone wishing to comment can do so below, and you can follow me on Twitter @GrantCookDFC.
Again, I’d always recommend the MFX Podcast for all your NSFW wrestling podcast needs, and thanks to the awesome Brick for being an artistic inspiration. And of course, I would highly recommend all the other writers here on SLTD who do a fantastic job of showing me what I don’t know about wrestling.
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