Spectacle doesn’t even seem the right word for what is happening in Dallas this weekend. This is full-blown pageantry of epic Super Bowl sized proportions. As Ric Flair, the grand patriarch of today’s wrestling world said, “We’re not quite to Super Bowl impact yet, but we’re getting close.” Starting yesterday, with the Fan Expo at the Hyatt Reunion in Dallas and continuing with the WWE Hall of Fame inductions today and then of course the event. The thing. Jerry Jones opens his AT&T stadium to the 32nd annual WRESTLEMANIA which will be broadcast worldwide on the WWENetwork on WWE.com. Even with the www., the WWE is broadcast in 180 countries around the world so this is now really a global enterprise on par with any sporting event anywhere else in the world. OK, so it’s a sports “entertainment” event. That debate aside, there is no way to downplay the giganticness of this weekend.
HHH v Roman Reigns, The Undertaker v Shane McMahon in a fan favorite “Hell in the Cell” match, and maybe most importantly not one, but two Divas matches.
As storylines go, the HHH/Reigns match is well hyped and should be the best of the night. Most of the wrestlers here this weekend that I talked to kept referring to this match as being the most pivotal. If HHH, a boardroom exec in WWE and still a damn fine wrestler beats Reigns, his days in the WWE are numbered. It’s no secret that WWE hasn’t had a “most popular” poster boy for a while and needs one. Following the likes of the great Hulk Hogan, John Cena, The Rock, and even the anti-hero Stone Cold, are really big shoes to fill. Does Roman Reigns have that kind of draw? Even after about a year of build-up by the WWE to make Roman the next big man on campus, I have to say no, sorry, I just don’t see it. The fans are hard to sway as well. A groundswell of support for Dean Ambrose has the WWE execs trying everything to make Roman Reigns more palpable to their audience. This could be a long weekend for a lot of people in the WWE.
Shane McMahon, son of the WWE owner/founder/god Vince McMahon, is having a very public spat with his dad about the direction of the company etc. etc., so Vince offered him control of RAW, the premier weekly WWE show, if he could win a match at WRESTLEMANIA. Shane agreed and Vince said “OK, wrestle The Undertaker in his favorite type of match, Hell in the Cell.” For those of you who do not know, a Hell in the Cell match is a classic steel cage style match (no holds barred/no DQ) that has the added bonus of escape from the cage does NOT end the match. The cages used to be chain link fencing but they have grown into a steel barred 20 foot high cage that is intimidating to see much less be inside. I’m sure in a venue as big as AT&T, there will be a lot of action outside, on top of the cage for the fans. The Undertaker loves these matches and hasn’t lost one…ever. It will be interesting to see how that script plays out.
WRESTLEMANIA has always been the venue of truly historic matches. Hulk Hogan body-slamming Andre the Giant in 1987 to gain the world title that truly solidified the Hulkamania phenomenon, The Rock v Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1999 and my personal favorite, Triple H as Conan the whateverhewastryingtopulloff ten years ago. This year is no different. The historic matches this year involve newbies. Ladies to be exact. Now lady wrestling is nothing new but the face of it has definitely changed. Long gone are the days of The Fabulous Moolah and Mae Young. Even the early days of WRESTLEMANIA saw lady wrestlers such as Wendy Richter and Leilani Kai but they were little more than a side show put on the card to allow fans a beer run and a bathroom break. This year there is not one but two upper card matches involving the “Divas”. The first being a tag team match and the second being the defense of the DIVA World Championship by none other the the daughter of living legend, Ric Flair, Charlotte.
Charlotte and her opponents are ‘graduates’ of NXT (kind of Triple ‘A’ ball in the wrestling world) and they all appeared in the WWE about the same time. Charlotte is a beautiful poised young lady who is well aware of her pedigree and all that comes with it. Also, much like her father before her, she’s a bit of a turd in the ring. She wins, sometimes amid controversy, and this is what sets up her debut at WRESTLEMANIA. She retained her title in a dubious match then interfered with the contender match between Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks. Oops. Now she has to wrestle both of them at the same time to retain her belt. This match is historic because it is upper card and featured. Thanks to the likes of Rhonda Rousy for legitimizing female bouts in the UFC, the WWE has followed suit. This is a great outreach to the girls in the crowd. It says that if you work hard and put in your hours, you will get noticed and will get the rewards. Charlotte says she is pleased with what is happening this weekend but looking forward she wants to get to the point where, like Rousy v Holm, she wants a PPV with the Divas on the Main Event. More power to you, Charlotte, I hope you get it. Listening to Ric talk about her, you sense the genuine papa pride he is experiencing right now. I am betting tears will come when he walks her down the aisle for her match but that’s just me talking as a dad myself.
The rest of the card on Sunday is filled with new talent mainly because so many of the superstars are currently injured. John Cena told me this morning that he’s “…in heavy negotiations with his doctors about releasing him to participate” on Sunday. As of now, it’s a no-go, so he will be a spectator at WRESTLEMANIA for the first time ever in his career. An unsolicited piece of advice, John? Watch the movie “The Wrestler” and contemplate where you want your body to be in ten years.
In 1984, Ric Flair battled Kerry Von Erich at Texas Stadium. Almost 60,000 were in attendance. At the time, that was double anything that wrestling had done before that. Yeah, wrestling shows filled arenas, but stadiums? Unheard of at the time. Three years later the WWF filled the Pontiac Stadium with 93,000 proving that wrestling was a big draw. This event sells itself on its name. There will probably be 100,000+ fans in Jerryworld on Sunday, even though the card doesn’t really deserve it. But that’s okay, because the show is going to be bigger, the crowds are going to be bigger, and the spectacle is going to be bigger because, let’s face it, this is Texas.
sounds like it is going to be a fun event