There are less than two weeks until WrestleMania 33, and admittedly, I’m a nervous wreck. Call it what you will – my inability to trust what WWE puts together or my nervous Jewish mother intuition. I have a real concern that April 2 will go down as either one of the greatest events in company history or that it will turn out to be one of the biggest flops in recent memory.
Excuse me while I take a deep breath here.
As of right now, there are matches with “potential” to steal the show. There are wrestlers who still don’t have dance partners, and fans still have no idea which match will main event WWE’s biggest pay-per-view of the year. Maybe that doesn’t matter, but what does matter is that WWE must deliver on its biggest night in such a way that Monday is not used to overcompensate for bad booking.
Roman Reigns appears to be “The Guy” who will send The Undertaker into retirement. Chris Jericho and Kevin Owens are set to battle over the U.S. Title and make their divorce final. John Cena and Nikki Bella will consummate their love in a mixed tag team match with The Miz and Maryse. Randy Orton will try and take down Bray Wyatt and crush WWE’s best backstory. And the match I want to see more than any of them, Neville will battle Austin Aries for the Cruiserweight Championship.
There is plenty of reason to be excited about going to Orlando, but my inner cynic says there is plenty of room for error. It’s quite possible I’ve been listening to my grandmother’s voice in my head. She never had a positive thing to say.
The one thing WWE has going for itself right now is that the angles that the company has created have depth to them. Matches are being sold and fan engagement is fairly strong. But as we all know, it takes one incident to ruin the buzz. And for those of us who will be in Orlando, the last thing we want is to walk out of Mickey’s Paradise feeling like we were cheated.
I’m also not all that excited about the idea of Hulk Hogan showing up, mainly because his last trip to Central Florida scarred me for life with that damn show Thunder in Paradise. I just got over counseling for that. Remind me to send him the bill.
If WWE can successfully bridge the events of April 2 with a road to SummerSlam that not only makes sense but is entertaining, then I am sure my fears will be alleviated. As you can tell I don’t have much confidence in that, but I’m trying.
What the company does in the next week or so will determine whether this show is fantastic or cringeworthy. The fact that Braun Strowman doesn’t have a match yet and the idea that AJ Styles is wrestling his boss leads me to believe this will be a mixed bag of chutzpah.
The next 11 days are going to be stressful for me and possibly other wrestling fans. I sure hope this event kicks ass and makes me feel secure about the future. I would hate to wait until Monday, April 3, for everything to come together. Something tells me there will be a meeting of the minds around midnight to discuss everything that went wrong and how the company can quickly fix it.
That’s not what fans want to think about, but in my world, it’s a reality. I’ve never been a half empty type of guy when it comes to professional wrestling, but this event, no matter how hard WWE is trying to build it as the biggest and the best, isn’t making me feel like I’m going to be amazed like I think I should.
David Levin
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