The WrestleMania You Won’t Get

We’re on the Road to WrestleMania, which has come to mean making peace with the matches the WWE gives us and regretting the opportunities it didn’t seize. For wrestling fans this time of year is as much about the road not taken as the one the WWE chose. Yes, it’s Fantasy Booking Season. So here’s an opportunity for us all to get that fantasy booking gorilla off our backs. You know you do it. Nothing wrong with that. It isn’t hurting anyone and it won’t make you go blind. It’s a perfectly natural part of being a wrestling fan.

This column is going to lay out what my WrestleMania game plan would be if I ran the zoo. Obviously your plan is going to be better, so make sure you get that into the comments section. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. At the time I’m writing this, the Royal Rumble hasn’t gone down. Apologies if my future events have become your past events. For the record, if the WWE has veered in wildly different directions from what my plan would be, I’d invent a time machine that would take me back to before Vince McMahon mucked up the works.

Anyway, I don’t think I need to explain how fantasy booking works. So I’ll just get to it and lay out why my ideas are rampantly awesome.

WWE Title Match: Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Daniel Bryan

Starting off with the main event. Frankly, this match makes itself. No two guys get bigger reactions. Brock Lesnar is half man, half legend. Daniel Bryan is still riding the wave that carried him to the top at WrestleMania XXX. This wouldn’t require a complicated plan. Bryan wins the Royal Rumble while Lesnar retains his belt in the three-way match. It’s the match that was supposed to headline SummerSlam and it would be foolish to leave that money on the table. Also, since Lesnar’s got the belt, it’s even better. It’s David vs. Goliath. It would feel like an even more impossible mountain for Bryan to climb than last year. The WWE might veer in a different direction, but I think it would be terrible to give away Lesnar’s Streak-ending mojo prior to WrestleMania, almost criminal. Also, Lesnar has been wholly involved with John Cena since winning the unified title. Bryan never lost the belt, never got a rematch and he’s the company’s other leading (arguably top) face. He has to fight Lesnar for all the marbles. As for who should win, I don’t care. Either way the winner’s eating a curbstomp to close the show when Seth Rollins cashes in his Money in the Bank briefcase … and that’s when stadium goes bonkers and the Internet breaks.

Three-Way Match: Seth Rollins vs. Dean Ambrose vs. Roman Reigns

We need Shield closure and there’s a great story to tell here. You’ve got three would-be alpha dogs who used to run together. They need to scrap. It works with or without a belt or stipulation involved. The upside of a MITB stipulation is you could turn it into a ladder match. I wouldn’t do that because I think these guys don’t need a contrived reason to fight and because I want to use a ladder elsewhere in this PPV. The real key in the build would be to emphasize tension between Ambrose and Reigns. One of them should eliminate the other guy during the Royal Rumble and you can build it from there. At various points both Ambrose and Reigns acted like the other two guys were his backup singers. Rollins’ made a somewhat rational decision when he turned on them. One of the big upsides of this match would be, regardless of who wins, Ambrose and Reigns would join the long list of people who want not only Seth Rollins’ title, but his head too.

Last Man Standing: John Cena vs. Sting

I don’t have a problem with evil authority figures in the WWE. It even makes sense since these are the people who actually run the company and most people don’t like their bosses. My problem is they’re lousy at being evil. For instance, say you’ve got two different enemies you want to eliminate. Why not make them do your work for you? You can just stand back and enjoy the carnage. Right now it looks like we’re headed toward a Sting-HHH match that I don’t particularly want to see. Is it really going to make former WCW fans love the WWE to see a washed up Sting beat HHH? Why not make WCW’s last icon face the true Mr. WWE, John Cena? Make Cena jump through some hoops to get Sting a WrestleMania match. Have Sting come to the ring and say he wants a piece of HHH? Then Trips can do something really evil. “You want a match at WrestleMania? You want to prove yourself on the biggest stage in this industry? You think you’re good enough to beat the man?” After Sting yesses to all of that, then Trips informs Sting he’s got his wish, only everyone knows John Cena is the man here in the WWE. Then pile on the stips: last man standing, Sting wins and Cena never gets another title shot, Cena wins and Sting never wrestles in the WWE again. Hey, that sounds epic.

Intercontinental-U.S. Title Unification: Rusev (c) vs. Dolph Ziggler (c)

Ziggler’s a tough book for me here. I want to give him something big, but I’ve got DBry in the main event against Lesnar. Rollins is occupied with post-Shield hostilities. It’s tough to find a heel and a match worthy of Ziggler’s spot on the roster. Bray Wyatt? Randy Orton, though he seems to be in a face turn? Sheamus if he goes darkside? I mean, Zig could have a great IC Title match with Wade Barrett and you’d get no complaints from me, but that feels like it’s less than the occasion demands. Compounding the problem is Rusev easily could keep his unbeaten streak going until SummerSlam and a possible WWE Title match. Do you want to have either one of these guys lose a big one? It would be easier to have Rusev win a meat collision against Ryback at WrestleMania. Ultimately I come down in favor of putting on the biggest spectacle. The two secondary titles both rebounded a bit in 2014, but they’re still a confused mess without a brand split. Time to unify them. Rusev could get serious heat by unifying them and then destroying U.S. belt. Dirty, rotten heeeeel. The match might steal the show, which has become Ziggler’s gimmick. As long as it’s awesome in the ring, he should be fine.

Bray Wyatt vs. Randy Orton

Bray needs to beat a top tier guy. Orton needs to be in a crazy program where he can go mental in all the best ways. They pair nicely. For all the stick Orton gets, he works well with most everyone and he’s put over plenty of other guys. If you had to identify one guy as being an example of the hybrid main event style the WWE supposedly wants, Orton would be the pick. That’s more than just lip service when they say if you could build a wrestler from the ground up, you’d get Randy Orton. They believe it and they may not be wrong. No one would build Bray Wyatt, but he’s kind of awesome despite that. It would be the WWE’s true prototype vs. the man who wants to tear down everything you thought you knew. I’m pretty sure the match itself would be a blast and Wyatt’s mind games would activate Orton’s twitchiness. They could push each other into unexpected territory, bringing a main event feel to a mid-card match. I know there’s Undertaker rumors swirling around for Wyatt, but after the miserable match that ended the Streak last year I’d wait at least one more year before bringing back Taker. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and it would make his eventual return feel like a bigger deal if you don’t necessarily expect it.

WWE Tag Team Title Ladder Match: Usos (c) vs. Dust Brothers vs. New Day vs. Cesaro/Kidd

Tag teams and ladders go together like baseball and hot dogs. I’d say make this a TLC match, but since there’s a TLC pay-per-view it steals that thunder. No complaints if they want to add plunder, but the ladder is the magic object here. Someone needs to climb that thing to glory. The Usos are the current tag team gold standard in the WWE. With or without the titles, they’re working WrestleMania. The potential challengers are in flux. The Ascension just arrived and I think it’s fair to say things hardly could be going worse for them. Miz and Mizdow had a mini-run, but a split and a feud would seem to be their more logical path. I have nothing against Los Matadores, but they’re a second tier team on their best day. I picked these three teams to challenge because they’ve all got ring chops. I want a Holy Shit match that re-energizes the tag division. These guys can deliver it as they’re some of the best workers in the company.

AJ Lee vs. Stephanie McMahon, Career vs. Implants

The divas division is a hot mess and that won’t change between now and WrestleMania. It’s a shame that the women of the WWE can’t elevate themselves above being filler match material, but that’s apparently all they are in the mind of Vince McMahon. No point in forcing a Divas Title match onto the card. Maybe you do something on the pre-show. Yet Stephanie McMahon vs. Brie Bella as stand-ins for their husbands oddly worked at SummerSlam. You know who else has a husband, one that has real life beef with HHH? That would be AJ Lee. Rumors continue to circulate that she’s headed out the door soon. I don’t know if those have any validity, but why not leverage them either way? AJ starts getting in Steph’s way, screwing over the Authority’s plan for the boys. Why? Because she’s bored and she likes watching things burn. This leads to a match where Stephanie puts a career stipulation on AJ. AJ then wins the right to name a stipulation for Steph. Since the Authority is coming after the thing AJ prizes the most, the thing she pursued her entire life (her wrestling career), AJ is going to take things that mean the most to Steph: the Million Dollar Twins. It involves the two highest profile women in the WWE. It’s outlandish. It’s campy. It’s never been done before. Basically it’s everything you want in a filler match. Steph does something underhanded to get the win and then either AJ is gone for real or she can pull a shock return in the summer.

Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, This Time with Extra Sauce

Last year’s ATGMBR went better than expected. Cesaro bodyslamming Big Show over the top rope turned out to be a legitimate big moment. The problem was the follow up. Cesaro drifted aimlessly and he’s now hoping to reignite his career in the tag ranks. That’s so much less than his grand ATGMBR moment promised. I’d do the match again at this WrestleMania, because it gets the entire roster onto your biggest show and it’s better than your standard filler. Yet the stakes need to be raised. The winner should get a WWE Title shot at a future non-Big Four PPV. It could be Payback or Extreme Rules or Money in the Bank. The last one kind of appeals to me because it’s like money in the bank for Money in the Bank. It also gives the ATGMBR winner ample time to burnish his credentials as a threat to win the belt. As for who should win: an evil Sheamus, Bad News Barrett, Sami Zayn, Mizdow. You could go in a number of different directions.

That’s my card. Eight matches because apparently I must do everything in eights (like I’m Dick Van Patten). Dependent on your worldview my idea either are brilliant or they suck. You can let me know why, but make sure to throw your own into the mix. Working through the WrestleMania booking we want is a big part of coming to terms with the WrestleMania booking we get.