The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Post-WrestleMania Programs

WrestleMania provides a certain kind of high for WWE fans—the biggest show of the year, bound to have some level of historical significance, at which major storylines were blown off or meaningfully furthered. But there is life after ‘Mania.

Those months after WrestleMania tend to be a letdown. Sometimes there are rematches. Sometimes a new champion moves on to lesser challengers to help establish the reign, or the reigning champ moves on to more forgettable programs. But then there are those times when WrestleMania gives way to new programs that spin out of what happened at the big show. This week, I’m counting down seven of the best new programs that WWE moved into in the aftermath of WrestleManias past.

#7. Roman Reigns vs. AJ Styles, post-WrestleMania 32

WrestleMania 32 was not a great one for a variety of reasons, one of which was the predictability factor at the top of the card. In particular, Roman Reigns’s long sojourn back to the world title paid off in about as traditional fashion as possible as he challenged the arch-villain of the company in a slog of a main event match to capture the title. To make matters worse, Chris Jericho had beaten fresh face AJ Styles in a match most of us figured Styles would and should have won. When a Fatal Fourway to name a new top contender appeared on Raw with Jericho in the mix, the indication seemed clear that he’d be the new top heel challenger for at least the month. While Reigns-Jericho would have at least been a fresh match up at the time, Jericho was both an establishment main eventer and hadn’t yet found his footing on this most recent WWE run, such that it was hard to get excited about him stepping into this spot.

Not only was the Fatal Fourway match quite good, but fans were offered the pleasant surprise of a Styles victory—an affirmation that the loss to Jericho didn’t mean he was going to quietly recede to the mid-card, and equally important, meaning that Styles-Reigns was the main event program du jour. While I won’t claim that their rivalry set the world on fire. Styles was exactly the exceptionally talented in-ring performer and fresh face that Reigns needed as an opponent to get his championship reign kicked into gear, not to mention that intrigue with The Club, culminating in a heel turn, helped push Styles from upper card mechanic, to a guy the fans were all too ready to embrace as a bona fide main eventer coming out of the summer.

#6. Hulk Hogan vs. Triple H, post-WrestleMania 18

By most accounts, WWE knew it was booking a dream match when it pitted The Rock vs. Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 18, but was nonetheless caught off guard by how ridiculously over Hogan was with the Toronto crowd, garnering a way bigger reaction than his opponent. I’ve never read anything definitive about what WWE’s original plans were, but regardless, transitioning Hogan into the title picture immediately after ‘Mania, despite having lost his match, was sheer brilliance to capture lightning in a bottle, and make the most of Hogan’s resurgent popularity that the WWE brass had to know full well wouldn’t last forever.

The result was another dream match a month later—a face versus face collision with Triple H putting the title on the line against The Hulkster. The beauty of Hogan feuds in his era is that so little needed to be done to make them feel special. Take an able-bodied Hogan, fresh off a face turn, and put him opposite any top player of the current generation, and it felt like a dream match. Triple H-Hogan delivered to the extent you could expect—a competent match with a huge crowd response—and put the strap back around Hogan’s waist for the last time.

#5. The Rock vs. John Cena, post-WrestleMania 27

This is a tricky program to quantify, because there’s a very real argument that it started before WrestleMania 27 with The Rock and Cena exchanging words (and even getting physical once before ‘Mania, and again at ‘Mania), and because there are such wildly differing opinions on whether this program was a success at all, let alone to what degree.

WrestleMania 27 wasn’t a great one and the John Cena-Miz main event in particular felt pretty lackluster. Just the same, in The Rock hitting Cena with a Rock Bottom to facilitate Miz’s win, the wheels were set in motion for The Rock’s return to the ring, and a showdown between him and Cena—not on Raw, not at the next PPV, but a whole year in advance at WrestleMania 28.

I won’t claim that the Cena-Rock matches at WrestleManias 28 or 29 were classics, but they did represent dream match scenarios and, particularly in the first iteration, a fascinating foray into a new style of storytelling that leaned heavily upon social media and just occasional appearances from the barely-even-part-time Rock. As a hardcore wrestling fan, this program wasn’t my favorite, but it also wasn’t for me. This program was designed to draw in the casual fan—the one who watched during The Attitude Era and who couldn’t necessarily name more than five active WWE performers, but most certainly did know the name John Cena. On that level, Rock-Cena was a success, and a historic post-WrestleMania program.

#4. Rob Van Dam vs. John Cena, post-WrestleMania 22

In early 2006, the bloom was off the rose for John Cena as the face of WWE. Fans had started turning on him en masse, ironically in spite of some very good performances opposite Umaga. When he was booked opposite Triple H for WrestleMania 22, the prevailing belief was that The Game would rescue us all from the doldrums of Cena’s dominant run, and we’d welcome at least a short-term return to the dominant player of the preceding five years.

But then Cena beat Triple H. He beat him in the main event, clean, and via submission.

Meanwhile, earlier on the card, Rob Van Dam shattered a glass ceiling when he won the Money in the Bank Ladder Match. In the weeks to follow, RVD found himself confounded by WWE’s constraints, his hardcore style further limited, and facing disqualifications for seemingly minor infractions. This all set the stage for him to cash in his MITB briefcase—just the second ever—not with a surprise run-in, but rather by scheduling a match on his philosophical home turf—in front of a raucous pro-ECW crowd at Hammerstein Ballroom at the One Night Stand PPV.

The atmosphere for RVD-Cena was electric, comparable to the better remembered energy around Cena-Punk at Money in the Bank 2011, but in a sense raw-er for the smaller, more violent crowd. This match up represented far more than the two performers involved and their characters, but rather two fundamentally different philosophical takes on pro wrestling, with Cena embodying the glossy, polished, family friendly WWE style, and RVD representing the grittier, harsher, hardcore ECW mentality which was perfectly suited to the relaunch of the ECW brand. RVD earned a truly exceptional pop when he pulled off the victory.

This program and its key match lose some of their luster in retrospect, given that RVD would blow his best opportunity when he got caught with drugs shortly after his big win, and given that the new ECW would quickly flounder with The Big Show and Bobby Lashley at its fore (though it would arguably regain ground and make the most of its time when it became more of a developmental brand later on). Just the same, after a WrestleMania main event that left lots of fans scratching their heads, RVD-Cena demonstrated that the powers that be at WWE still did have a sense of what they were doing and what the audience wanted.

#3. John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar, post-WrestleMania 28

For as epic as the program of John Cena versus The Rock was in terms of star power and long-term storytelling, it did leave a lot of questions marks in the aftermath of the first match between the two. Cena had been established as the star of his generation, fit to go head-to-head with The Great One and he’d come up short, seemingly neutering the full-time roster.

Enter Brock Lesnar.

While The Rock is a bigger celebrity than Brock Lesnar, Lesnar was little less unthinkable as a returning wrestler—a former main eventer who had left on poor terms, and had gone on to thrive as a legit MMA fighter in the interim. While The Rock’s return had engendered a certain doubt as to whether he could still hang in a WWE ring, the questions about Lesnar were different—not about if he could hang, but if he’d go into business for himself and actually murder somebody in the ring. It’s a mystique that, remarkably, still hangs around The Conqueror, allowing WWE to, for example, play with the idea of a worked shoot at the end of SummerSlam 2016, which saw Lesnar beat Randy Orton bloody.

With Lesnar back, it only made sense for him to go hunting for Cena, the face of sports entertainment. He fired the first shot, not via an extended promo like The Rock, but rather by storming the ring without speaking a word, and laying out Cena with an F-5. WWE followed that up with a series of unconventional, raw pre-taped promos that saw Lesnar putting himself over at Cena’s expense, trash talking in more the style of UFC than WWE. It all culminated in a superb match between the two at Extreme Rules, totally off beat for the brutality and blood, if underwhelming in its conclusion with Cena eeking out the victory. Fortunately, the two would revisit their issue a couple years later, with Lesnar booked as appropriately dominant.

#2. Shawn Michaels vs. Batista (and Chris Jericho), post-WrestleMania 24

The build to WrestleMania 24 featured the unique Shawn Michaels-Ric Flair program, which promised both an excellent match and Flair’s probable retirement from WWE, if not all of wrestling. It can be an awkward thing, however, for a top star to move on with his career after he has not only beaten but finished his rival of the day.

For Michaels, the better part of a year of epic storytelling was in store.

For in the aftermath of WrestleMania, Batista—an on-air and real-life protégé of Ric Flair, who had won his own high profile match over Umaga—held Michaels responsible for retiring The Nature Boy and was out for blood. The pair worked two very good PPV matches over the months to follow—the first with Michaels selling hurt only to steal the pin, the second with Batista absolutely decimating HBK in badass fashion.

An additional layer that pushes this storyline to such great heights—while feuding with Batista, Michaels was also contending with Chris Jericho as interviewer/investigator. Jericho was a face headed into this angle, and the lines grew grayer and grayer as he prosecuted Michaels and actually did find that Michaels had been dishonest in claiming he had a knee injury. So, while Batista moved on after he had crushed Michaels, the issue between Michaels and Jericho was only getting started and would ride out most of the rest of the year with their own increasingly heated blood feud.

#1. The Shield vs. Evolution, post-WrestleMania 30

After their debut at Survivor Series 2012, The Shield were the it group for the better part of a year, putting on fantastic matches and more often than not going over in high profile situations, all paving the way to their three big-time singles careers to follow.

By early 2014, though, the group was starting to lose a bit of its luster. While their program with The Wyatts was red hot, they came out decisively on the losing end of the exchange and teased splitting up. As it turned out, a face turn was in the works, and at WrestleMania 30 they defeated an Authority-backed trio of Kane and The New Age Outlaws in lightning quick, decisive fashion.

Meanwhile, at WrestleMania 30, Triple H, Randy Orton, and Batista all put over Daniel Bryan, offering the ultimate rub to wrestling’s ultimate underdog as he enjoyed a legendary night and celebrated winning back his WWE Championship.

So where to go from there?

As Bryan moved on to a middling establishment feud with Kane, before going out to injury, WWE made the most of Batista’s limited time under contract by realigning him with Orton and Triple H under the Evolution banner, reassembled to put the upstart Shield in its place.

While The Shield had had great matches before, and I’d argue their Elimination Chamber match opposite The Wyatts was their very best effort, their rivalry with Evolution was nonetheless their most epic effort as a unit. While Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose couldn’t yet be taken seriously as one-on-one opposition for any individual member of Evolution, the story being told was that if an exceptional young team working together, the gestalt effect of which was to overcome three great veterans. It happened first happened first at Extreme Rules, and then again at Payback in a No Holds Barred Elimination Match in which Evolution was largely, brutally dominant before The Shield surged to pick off their enemies one-by-one, and remarkably wind up sweeping the match.

This program arrives in the number one spot for providing two great matches that had never been done before (particularly well-timed to coincide with Daniel Bryan disappearing due to injury), and for functioning as a graduation for The Shield performers who would enter the singles ranks the very next night when Rollins turned on his teammates, after which point the three of them were often as not main eventers over the two years to follow.

Which programs would you add to the list? Alberto Del Rio vs. Dolph Ziggler post WrestleMania 29 and Bam Bam Bigelow vs. The Million Dollar Corporation post-WrestleMania 11 were among my runners up. Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.