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WWE WrestleMania 33: Let’s Get Creative with the Main Event

By Carl Gac

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How can WWE put on a masterpiece in the main event of WrestleMania 33?

It’s not too much of a stretch to say that last year’s WrestleMania main event was a little underwhelming. It was a convoluted story line, that took up far too much tv time and pushed a part-timer into the top position of the card. Several other men would have been much more deserving of the main event match on the biggest show of the year for WWE.

The fact that the whole premise of the match was to get the WWE Championship back around the waist of Roman Reigns, well that made it stick in the throats of many as well. For months we’d seen Reigns sticking two fingers up towards Triple H and The Authority. Reigns ended up winning the WWE Title at the Survivor Series in 2015, he was then made to defend his title as part of the Royal Rumble match. Reigns lost his title at the end of that match to his arch nemesis Triple H.

In a move that should have cemented Reigns further as a massive babyface, we in fact saw the crowd turn against him even more, and cheer the new (heel) champion Triple H. The following months Fastlane pay-per-view saw Reigns face Dean Ambrose and Brock Lesnar in a triple threat match, with the winner becoming the number one contender to Triple H and his title.

Inevitably, Reigns won that match and would head to ‘Mania in Dallas to regain the title he had lost at the Royal Rumble. Despite all the holes in the plot. Despite the fact that fans around the world had shunned Reigns at every opportunity since the dissolution of The Shield. Despite the fact that WWE knew that when Reigns walked out for that main event he would likely be booed out of the stadium. They did it anyway.

Reigns walked out of WrestleMania 32 with the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, after a lackluster run to the biggest night of the year. The match wasn’t the worst match ever, it just didn’t warrant being the main event on the greatest stage of them all. It wasn’t a match that anyone was particularly desperate to see, and the outcome was more or less obvious the moment that Triple H won the title at the Royal Rumble.

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It’s unquestionable that as we go head on down the Road to WrestleMania 33, WWE has so many options for the WrestleMania 33 main event. It doesn’t have to be a predictable, creatively shallow, average match. This time last year, WWE was missing something. It was missing options of how to close out their biggest night of the year, the same couldn’t be said in 2017.

Many in WWE watched the main event of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Wrestle Kingdom 11, given how many of them tweeted about it. and were envious of the outstanding main event match on that card. Back on January 4th, IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada defeated challenger Kenny Omega to hang on to his title.

It was a match that almost broke the internet, with many who saw it calling it one of the best professional wrestling matches ever. It received rave reviews, with Dave Meltzer, of the Wrestling Observer, giving it six stars on his five-star match rating scale.

Can you imagine any match in a WWE ring garnering such a fantastic reaction, on a global scale no less? WWE has a number of men who could rival Okada and Omega on an in ring scale. All that needs to happen is a little bit of creative booking. Vince McMahon needs to allow the men in the match a little bit of freedom to think outside the box.

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The most important thing, though, could be the insistence not to have one of the part time “mega stars” hijack the top spot of WrestleMania (I’m looking at you Goldberg, Lesnar, Undertaker and John Cena). Those men are all important cogs in the machine that is WWE, and will be important features of WrestleMania, they just have absolutely no need to be anywhere near the actual main event spot.

Whilst we head towards this year’s edition of the Royal Rumble, WWE wants us to think that probably three men have an actual chance of winning the match. Those three men are The Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, and Goldberg. All three faced off in the ring to end this past week’s episode of Raw, all three are being pushed above the men who will be expected to carry the Raw brand on a full-time basis.

Aside from those three men, there’s not a massive selection of possible winners to chose from. You have Braun Strowman from Raw, or The Miz from SmackDown but both could be seen as much as massive long shots as they could be favorites.

The only other realistic option could be whoever ends up with the coveted number 30 spot. The fact that it hasn’t once been mentioned on tv in the buildup tells you that it’ll be a surprise entrant. I’m here to tell you that that surprise entrant will, in fact, go on to win the Royal Rumble, and it will be Finn Balor.

Finn Balor has been out of action since suffering a shoulder injury during his match with Seth Rollins, during the main event of SummerSlam which had the Universal title on the line. Balor won the match but had to relinquish the title the following night on Raw, with Kevin Owens ultimately winning the title in a match with Rollins after some interference from Triple H.

Kevin Owens heads into the Royal Rumble and a match with Roman Reigns, with that Universal Championship on the line. The caveat in that match sees Owens’ best friend Chris Jericho positioned above the ring in the shark cage, to stop Jericho from interfering in the result of the match. Owens needs to walk out of that match still holding the Universal title.

Following that match we have need to see the Royal Rumble end with Finn Balor coming out in that coveted number 30 spot, winning the match and heading for the main event at WrestleMania. The following night on Raw, Balor and Rollins come face-to-face. Rollins apologizes to Balor for causing the injury that left him out of action for the better part of six months. Just when it looks like Rollins is walking away from Balor, the former Shield man attacks Balor and tells him that Balor doesn’t deserve that main event at ‘Mania.

As part of the attack, Rollins screams that he’s taking Balor out of the match because he’s Triple H’s boy, and Rollins wants payback for Triple H causing him to miss out on his chance in the Royal Rumble match. The following couple of weeks sees Rollins attacking Balor at every occasion.

With Fastlane approaching, and with Balor furious at the attacks by Rollins, Balor tells Triple H that he wants a match with Rollins. Triple H tells him that he can have that match, but he has to put his ‘Mania title shot on the line, and it has to be a Falls Count Anywhere match. The match goes down at Fastlane, with Balor coming out victorious after hitting the Coupe De Grace from the stage to Rollins on the floor below.

Also at Fastlane, Owens faces Chris Jericho in a title vs title match, after Owens declares that he no longer needs Jericho at his side. That news infuriates Jericho and he challenges Owens to the match, with that ending in a double count out when they wipe each other out at ringside.

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That leaves us with Owens, the Universal Champion, vs number one contender Finn Balor, as the main event of WrestleMania 33. Both men are former NXT Champions, and with ‘Mania set to come from Orlando the home of NXT, it seems fortuitous that both men will be in this massive match.

In the buildup to the match, we see some of the best promos that WWE fans will have seen for a long time. Both men are seen training at the WWE Performance Centre, with both men selling this as the match of their careers. WWE does a great job of selling this as a fight of epic proportions.

On the night both men are sent out with Vince McMahon and Triple H telling them to leave everything in the ring. Don’t forget WWE is looking for this match to be as well received as the Okada/Omega match from Wrestle Kingdom, if anyone can do that it’s Kevin Owens and Finn Balor.

The Universal Championship match goes on after we’ve seen Goldberg/Brock Lesnar III, Reigns vs Cena and AJ Styles vs The Undertaker for the World Championship. Owens and Balor put on the perfect match, with both men putting on the match of their lives, in front of their NXT peers and the eyes of the entire wrestling world.

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Balor walks out of the match with the WWE Universal Championship firmly within his grasp. The final vision of WrestleMania sees Balor on the top rope, holding the WWE Universal Championship and the crowd lapping it all up. A far cry from the final moments of last years ‘Mania, when the crowd booed the newly crowned WWE Champion, Roman Reigns.