The 8 Ball: Top 8 Ways to Make WrestleMania 33 Better Than WrestleMania 32

Top 8 Ways to Make WrestleMania 33 Better Than WrestleMania 32

Hey, you might have heard this thing called WrestleMania happened last weekend. Like the previous two Manias, I thought the build to the event was severely lacking. Yet unlike the previous two installments, WM32 did not deliver on the day. Worst WrestleMania of the 21st century? Maybe. A strong contender for the worst in more than a decade, dependent on how you feel about WM27. Maybe you liked it a bit better. Even so, the WWE can do a lot better. The goal for WrestleMania 33 should be to get the WrestleMania 32 taste out of our mouths.

Yet you can’t just snap your fingers and decree that it will be better. That’s where the Magic 8-Ball comes in. This week it determines what the WWE needs to do to make WM33 an unqualified success.

8. Raise the Stakes

The one element of WM32 the WWE got absolutely was the Women’s Championship. They dropped the divas bullshit and built a hot match around three talented wrestlers going after a belt that hopefully ushers in a new era where the women work inside an action division. The build to the match had been solid, but the new belt made it feel even more consequential (though the rebranding of the division should have been introduced weeks earlier). Something extra was on the line. That’s the way it should be at WrestleMania. The E has Night of Champions where every belt is on the line and other big events built around specialty match types (e.g. Hell in a Cell). You’ve got to put some extra mustard on the hot dog if you want to make Mania stand out. They tried with Undertaker and Shane. The Lucha de Apuestas model of having extra stips riding on the match is a good idea, and it’s nice to see something other than hair vs. mask. They botched the angle – Undertaker’s WrestleMania career on the line came as the result of a throwaway promo from Vince and it never made sense why Shane was in the match rather than a wrestler who represented the kind of change Shane supposedly wanted to bring. For a better WM33, put some actual logic behind the stips and have them contribute to the match psychology. If it’s a non-title tag team or faction match, you can always make it so that the losers have to break up. Now you’re fighting for your existence. It would provide similar drama to March Madness, where college seniors literally playing like each game could be their last. Make tweaks like the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal (ATGMBR) winner gets a WWE title shot at Payback (or the next night on Raw). For the WWE World Heavyweight Championship decree that the loser can’t challenge for the title again for another year. Place a cost on losing on the industry’s biggest stage. There really shouldn’t be any such thing as a normal match at WrestleMania. If it’s not extraordinary, it shouldn’t be on the card. Mania should be the night where the winners win biggest and the losses cost you the most.

7. More Awe, Less Shock

I don’t want to rag overly much on Zack Ryder winning the Intercontinental Championship for a day. He’s been given a raw deal for four years and the ladder match itself was an enjoyable spotfest. It felt good to see the guy catch a break. Yet it’s already come and gone. Talk about a fleeting moment. It was a surprise for the sake of being a surprise. Shaq entering the ATGMBR might prove to be the more important shock moment if it leads to a WM33 clash with Big Show. For the record, if Show is going to be in anything but the ATGMBR, might as well be in a goof match with Shaq. Maybe make it a drag match between Shaquita and Paulina. Why be half stupid when you can be all stupid? John Cena showing up to beat on some Wyatts didn’t exactly set off the epic meters. HBK, Stone Cold and Foley teaming up was … well, I’ll get to that in moment. My guess is WM32 will be remembered for New Day’s entrance, Triple H’s entrance, the best women’s match in Mania history (to date) and Shane’s crazy fall off the cage. We didn’t get dramatic storyline shifts or legendary matches. The bar for a good Mania should be that you’re insisting that people who missed it have got to see the awesome stuff that happened. WM32 is instantly disposable. The WWE needs to think bigger next time out.

6. Win Back the Fans

WM32 surely made the WWE a megaton of cash, but the larger trends for the company are disturbing. Viewership of its weekly programming continues to slide year over year. Monday Night Raw is now the worst show on television. Week in, week out it’s terrible. Even worse, fans at televised shows are angry. Live audiences are crapping all over what they’re being fed. If we go through another year of the company trying to make Roman Reigns happen and the talent in the midcard going to waste, then more viewers will disappear, the fan resentment will grow and WM33 will be infected by that toxicity. It doesn’t have to be that way. The WWE has talent galore. It can push the women’s division to new heights. It can give us drool-inducing matches (Rollins-Nakamura, Cesaro-Owens, AJ-Cena). The tag division has improved (New Day rocks!) and is liable to get stronger when American Alpha and perhaps Aries-Roode hit the main roster. Cesaro just came back and Rollins, Cena and Orton should be returning within the next few months. I suspect the angry and disaffected fans stick with it because they see the potential and don’t want to miss when the E makes good on that potential. Maybe this storyline with Shane is headed somewhere and the product gets a shakeup. The doldrums need to end.

5. Lose the Attitude

Bringing back Attitude Era stars at WrestleMania has become the new cheap pop. I get why they do it (money) and a cheap pop is still a pop. Yet it works better when it’s contained within its own shell like HHH vs. Sting at WM31, which turned into DX vs. the nWo. That was fun. We got our nostalgia match and then the show went on. At WM32 we got an extended Attitude invasion. Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold and Mike Foley hijacked the New Day-League of Nations match. Undertaker fought Shane McMahon in a match that can be described as “Why?” The Rock came out, talked forever (and I love Rock, but shup up) and ultimately made the Wyatt family look like shit. The Dudley Boyz were on the pre-show, Chris Jericho in the midcard and HHH in the main event. WrestleMania, brought to you by Geritol. I understand injuries laid waste to the card for this WrestleMania, but on wrestling’s biggest stage the WWE needs to sell the product it has, not the product it had. You know what happens the day after Mania? Most of those older guys go away, along with the fans who only care about those older guys. What we’re left with is a pack of younger guys who’ve been made to look like the B team. The WWE has to start telling the story that today’s wrestlers represent a whole new level of danger. Seth Rollins threatening to break Edge’s neck last year was brilliant. Stepping into the ring should be treacherous for older, broken down guys. It’s way past time that youth be served.

4. The Road to WrestleMania 33 Starts Today

By “start today” I don’t mean they should plan specific matches a year out. Guys get injured and crowd reactions change. Yet because of that, it’s important to make as much of the roster as possible look viable. For instance, a few weeks ago the E remembered it had Dolph Ziggler on the roster, as it intermittently does, and it looked like he might be given something of prominence to do. That didn’t materialize, because Vince’s ADD keeps getting worse, but Ziggler is the sort of upper midcard guy the company needs to keep fresh so that fans will give a damn about what he’s doing come WrestleMania. The League of Nations is another case in point. There’s four guys who should be fearsome heels and they’ve been made to look like schlubs. The level to which the WWE botched Del Rio’s return borders on the criminal. He’s the most famous Mexican wrestler on the planet and he was an afterthought at a WrestleMania in Texas. That should have been impossible. We have models for how midcarders can arrive at Mania with momentum. The New Day guys reinvented themselves and won over legions of fans. Kevin Owens delivers every time he’s in a ring or handed a microphone. They don’t win every match, but they’re in a position where they can be believably pushed. With five hours of weekly television to fill, plus a dozen big, Sunday events, plus a growing number of WWE Network special cards, 50/50 booking is inevitable. Somebody’s got to lose and it can’t be just the unlucky bastards in the Social Outcasts. Yet you can lose and not be made to look like an idiot. Sheamus could have been cast as far more menacing when he had the MITB briefcase and the League of Nations should have been a heavy-hitting faction. Bray Wyatt should occasionally win something and have his twisted plans come to fruition. Make people believe in the talent on the roster and then it becomes a lot easier to put together matches for the promotion’s biggest show.

3. Steal from NXT Sooner

The universal opinion of last weekend was the best match out of all the wrestling cards on offer was Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Sami Zayn. To its credit, the WWE had that match. Unfortunately it wasn’t on the WrestleMania card. I thoroughly enjoy NXT TakeOver events. I fully expected TakeOver: Dallas would outshine WrestleMania, which it did (and it wasn’t close). Yet there was no good reason not to have that amazing Nakamura-Zayn match on the WrestleMania card. Mania now plays to a smark stadium crowd. That audience knows who Nakamura is and it would have marked out for him. For those that didn’t know Nakamura, some promo videos leading up to the show would have done the trick. Then WrestleMania would have been giving us the match of the weekend instead of TakeOver. The Raw after WrestleMania is turning into the NXT debut show, which is fine for the Vaudevilliains and Apollo Crews. Yet Enzo Amore grabbing a microphone at WrestleMania and running down the Dudleyz would have been a hell of a WWE debut. Credit for having Baron Corbin win the ATGMBR. Mania is a fantastic hype generator, using it to showcase the new blood flowing into the roster makes a frightening amount of sense. If Manny Andrade is on fire in NXT in late 2016, figure out how to get him onto the WM33 card. If there’s another big international signing (e.g. Kazuchika Okada) give him the express pass to Mania. Next year we ideally should be praising NXT TakeOver: Orlando, but raving about WM33.

2. Best in the World

Other wrestling feds can’t compete with the WWE’s production values and marketing. It would take a decade or two of wild success for them to get anywhere close to the money the WWE can drive into its product. Yet there is one place where the smaller feds not only compete, but win: match quality. The WWE has an obnoxious amount of talent. It literally collects the top wrestlers in the business. Yet it does a piss-poor-to-inconsistent job of setting them loose. Dean Ambrose and Brock Lesnar just had a match that will go down in history as also having happened at WrestleMania 32. No one is better at squandering talent and under-delivering in the ring than the WWE. WrestleMania ought to be the place where the WWE settles all ringwork arguments by making it clear it stages the best pro wrestling anywhere on planet Earth. There should be no such thing as less than a *** match at Mania. We should be exhausted by the parade of excellence they put in front of us. Part of that is recognizing the right matches. HHH and Roman Reigns are both capable of having a stellar match, but probably not 1v1 against each other. Shane McMahon deserves props for still being willing to do an insane spot, but he and Undertaker are way past their primes. Kalisto vs. Ryback practically screams Battleground. Sometimes a match will look good on paper and miss (Jericho vs. AJ), but the matchmaking should be done with an eye toward giving us the best pro wrestling action we can see all year.

1. Give Us a Hero

I don’t mind a WrestleMania card dominated by heel victories, especially if it tells a great story. Yet WM32 failed to give us a hero in two of its three main matches. Fans got behind Triple H a little bit, because damned if they were going to root for Roman Reigns. Undertaker-Shane was a strange match all the way around and it was kind of lose-lose from the fans’ perspective. Dean Ambrose is the most popular guy on the roster. Fans cheered for him, but they also like it when Brock Lesnar breaks people. So they took his loss way too well. What WM33 needs is a unifying figure, someone fans can get behind and be thrilled if he wins and crushed if he loses. That’s what made WM30 stand out. Daniel Bryan had the WWE universe behind him. It stood out from a decade of John Cena, split audience bullshit. Seth Rollins’ cash-in at WM31 got a similar reaction. First, because we’d never seen it before. Second, because he wasn’t Roman Reigns. Didn’t matter that he was a kayfabe heel. At that moment the stadium became unapologetic Seth Rollins marks. WM32 ended with fans wanting to light the confetti bomb on fire and then drop it on Reigns. The mission for WM33, and they’ve got a year to do it, is give fans someone they can scream for until they’re hoarse. If Vince McMahon can find a way to make that Reigns, more power to him (spoiler: he can’t). Yet WM32 suffered because we didn’t have someone to call our hero in that ring to close the show. It’s a glaring mistake that never should be repeated.