WrestleMania used to be like Christmas to me.  But this year, for the first time, I can barely muster up a jot of excitement about it.

Part of that, I know, is that I don’t watch WWE religiously anymore.  I try to catch the odd Raw here and there, and watch every pay-per-view, but I’m not all-in and there for every storyline and character the way I once was.  AEW long ago stole my heart on that front.  My regular weekly watch is Dynamite and Collision, but before you say that my enjoyment of the rival brand is the cause of my growing sourness towards my first love, 

I offer you the example of my wife.  She is too busy in the week to put in the mandatory four to eight hours needed to keep on top of the “weekly episodic programming” wrestling offers at a bare minimum but she never misses a PPV.  She has a long history with WWE, so already has a pre-programmed buy-in for many of their characters and events, and with AEW she rarely keeps up with the product, yet every AEW pay-per-view she is on the edge of her seat in utter enjoyment.  When we decide to put on a WWE offering, usually she only half-watches, preferring to do some Lego to it or maybe get on with some work.  

Why?  The answer is simple: the quality of wrestling in WWE just isn’t up to the standard set by AEW.  AEW really is “where the best wrestle”, and it’s not just that because they are the best technically in the ring (although they are).  They are the best at setting up the story and psychology of the match they are showing you within the ring so you can buy-in immediately to who the characters are, who the good guys and bad guys are, and what the story of the match is.  With WWE, not only is the in-ring product more boring, but often the storytelling takes place outside of the ring.  Once between the ropes, the grapplers tend to just go through the motions towards the (often predictable) finish.

So although feeling down on WWE in January, I tuned into the Royal Rumble hoping it would energise things a bit and kick off the road to WrestleMania.  But, as I have previously written, I was only left cold by predictable Rumble victories, uneventful Rumble matches, and a lot of filler.  Roman Reigns picking CM Punk for his Mania title match in the following weeks was the first twinge of something exciting as I had feared a dreary re-telling of Cody’s story in the works and the possibility of Reigns/Rhodes III.  Longtime Punk fans like myself will never forget that The Shield were originally Punk’s shield against Ryback, and the history between the two – including from last year’s WrestleMania – has a lot of possibility around it.  

But despite that match, nothing else in the weeks following the Rumble really grabbed my attention.  I can’t stand that Brock Lesnar remains a going concern in the company despite his being named in the ongoing lawsuit around alleged sex trafficking and abuse in the company.  I don’t care about his open challenge.  And Liv Morgan versus Stephanie Vaquer will no doubt be a good match, but little has really elevated the Mania feud between them.  Morgan won the Rumble and picked her.  End of story.  

So I had high hopes that last month’s Elimination Chamber would somehow sort everything out and really kick the road to WrestleMania into gear.  Two Chamber matches where anything could happen, and even a potential spoiler with the Finn Balor/Punk title match if the company decided to do something interesting, bring back Demon Balor, and take the title off Punk early…

But, alas, the Chamber event was just kind of there.  Although I was pleased to see Rhea Ripley win the women’s event (and their chamber match was match of the night), it still felt a bit like going through the motions just to get to the only title match possibility that had sufficient drawing power for WrestleMania.  Cargill/Ripley will be a great match.  But we know how WWE does this stuff – either Ripley takes the title back and we feel the Cargill push is over, or Cargill retains and the company continue to do nothing much with her but have her around, taking photoshoots and wrestling only very briefly.  Neither option fills me with joy because both avenues expose the problems with WWE’s scattershot booking in general.

I was glad Punk retained in Chicago, and liked seeing his wife, AJ Lee, win the women’s IC title.  But, being in Chicago, both outcomes kind of seemed obvious and more like a feel-good story for the crowd than for anything WrestleMania related.  And the men’s Chamber match served only to remind me how busted the whole Vision storyline is these days with all the injuries, how annoying Logan Paul is, how done I am with LA Knight, how much better Je’Von Evans and Trick Williams would do in AEW, and how little creativity the company show in these multi-person matches compared to their AEW rivals.  

I did really like the Randy Orton win, and didn’t see it coming.  And I like the old school feel of Cody/Randy at WrestleMania.  But, again, WWE’s plans being so frequently leaked meant that even this swerve was written on the wall predictably the moment Orton’s hand was raised.  As I write this, last night at SmackDown, Cody won his title back and the foreshadowed Cody/Randy match appears to be happening.

It was hardly the John Cena heel turn last year’s Chamber event ended with.  But even that, we now know with hindsight, led us nowhere.  It was just a meme, to be shared, go viral, and eventually be completely ignored.  Do WWE even know how to write storylines anymore?

All I know is that as it now stands, instead of looking forward to “the Grandaddy of ‘em all” and the “showcase of the immortals”, I am finding myself perplexed there is still over a month before WrestleMania weekend.  The latest WrestleMania I can remember – almost at the end of April – and I have no compelling reason to watch it besides an unkillable historic obligation ingrained into me after too many decades of habit.

A lot of fans obviously feel the same, given the questions around ticket sales for the two day event happening, for the second year in a row, in Las Vegas.  Having attended a previous ‘Mania, I know from experience how costly these things are, especially if you add in a Raw, Smackdown, NXT, or any other events around the main show(s).  And my Mania was only a one day event.  To do it once can be justified as a sort of bucket-list, once in a lifetime, thing.  But to ask the same thing of the same city two years in a row seems crazy, and is proving to be so.  Even die-hard fans are thinking twice about running back a re-run of last year because they already did it.  Maybe it’s time to sit this one out and just watch at home?

It doesn’t help that most fans who usually attend the Mania events are already planning on sitting out the event next year too, given that WrestleMania will be coming from Saudi Arabia in 2027.  A controversial decision even before America and Israel decided to throw the Middle East into even more turmoil than usual with their illegal attacks on Iran.  Given Mania is only in Las Vegas this year because the original venue fell through, I wonder if the Saudi project might also collapse if things worsen in the region and we will be facing a third consecutive Vegas Mania in 2027?

All I know is that Mania these days feels more about selling a package holiday to tourists in order to fleece them out of as much money as possible than it does a well-considered wrestling event, supposed to be the pinnacle of that year’s storylines.  WrestleMania is no longer where “the best wrestle” their best match of the year, it is the place where the most well-paid wrestlers squeeze as much out of sponsorship deals as possible and put on a glitzy television spectacle that cares little about the quality of wrestling in the ring, or the intellectual investment of the fans.  As long as they have the fans’ money, that’s all that matters.

Meanwhile AEW continue to build long-term storylines and compelling characters and put on banger after banger, both in terms of weekly television programming and in terms of their well-spaced pay-per-view offerings.  With Revolution only a week away as I write this I am way more excited about what will go down between MJF and the Hangman, or between Mox and Takeshita, than I am with any of the potential WrestleMania matches currently scheduled for a month later.  Hell – I was more excited about last week’s Dynamite matches of Thekla/Rosa and MJF/Knight – than I am about this year’s WrestleMania.

While I know the company have over a month to build interest for the event, and make this year’s Mania as exciting as it can be, even if they do, it feels unforgivable that their flagship event, which they know is coming every year, feels so underwhelming a month out and two PPVs into their build up.  But hey – at least they had that Stranger Things episode of Raw, right?  

Tommaso Ciampa seems more and more like a genius every day.

Until next time…

DaN McKee

www.everythingdanmckee.com

My book, Anarchist Atheist Punk Rock Teacher, is available from Earth Island Books and wherever you get your reading material. You can also buy a copy of Hardcore Horror there and read my short story “a dull boy”.

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