WWE WrestleMania 33: 5 Ways to Improve on Last Year’s Show

WrestleMania 33, WWE.com

How can WWE make sure WrestleMania 33 is better than the last?

Our journey into WrestleMania grows shorter and shorter as the days go by, and with just over two weeks remaining until the WWE takes over Orlando, Florida for the 33^rd annual Showcase of the Immortals, a huge portion of the line-up has started to reveal itself over the month of March – with even more action yet to come.

This time last year, a big concern amongst wrestling fans was that it didn’t quite feel like WrestleMania yet. Perhaps the show hadn’t been hyped as much as it was in previous years, or perhaps the card just wasn’t up to scratch, but either way, that Christmas morning sensation that naturally comes with the biggest wrestling event of the calendar year just wasn’t quite as strong last spring.

It wasn’t enough to prevent over 100,000 people from filing into AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas, but that lack of overwhelming excitement may have led to the general consensus forming that while WrestleMania 32 may have been the biggest of all time – at least in terms of numbers – it certainly wasn’t the best.

As this year’s card continues to unveil itself, however, one can arguably say that the event looks better on paper than its predecessor, which is a good start.

But there’s certainly more that can be done to ensure that each individual aspect of the show can improve upon where the WWE went wrong in last year’s outing.

So what are the areas to work on for WrestleMania 33 to exceed 2016’s spectacle?

WWE.com

5. No Outside Interference in Women’s Triple Threat Match

We’re looking at the Raw Women’s Championship match here, since it seems WWE will focus more on this as its feature women’s match at WrestleMania. As it stands, Bayley will be defending the title against Charlotte and Sasha Banks, in a triple threat match quite reminiscent of last year’s affair with Becky Lynch in Bayley’s place.

That match-up last year set the wheels in motion for the WWE’s so-called “women’s revolution”, and saw three of the company’s best and brightest female athletes square off to be crowned the first WWE Women’s Champion as we kick-started a brand new era in female competition under the WWE umbrella.

“The Boss”, “The Lass Kicker” and the soon-to-become “Queen of Pay-Per-View” put life and limb on the line to pave the way for a future in WWE where women were on equal standing as their male counterparts. The only problem, however? The finish.

These athletes just spent fifteen minutes giving their all at the Showcase of the Immortals only for the finish to be determined by one of the participants’ fathers.

“The Nature Boy” Ric Flair had already been known for getting involved in Charlotte’s matches up to this point, but this was a pivotal moment for all three ladies to show what they could do without help. Having Flair grab Sasha to prevent her from breaking up the finish was a poor end to an otherwise brilliant match.

Related Story: Did WWE Ruin Bayley's WrestleMania Moment?

This year, this doesn’t appear to be a concern considering all three participants are without a manager – with Dana Brooke officially parting ways with Charlotte this week – so if there’s anything this triple threat will have over last year we can probably hope for a relatively clean finish. As clean as a triple threat can be, that is.

It’s highly unlikely that this bout will come close to the level of impact that Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte had last year but they can certainly learn from the match’s only mistake and have the winner actually emerge undisputed.

4. AJ Styles Gets His First Win at WrestleMania

AJ Styles’ opening rivalry to his debut year with WWE was a spectacular one.

Styles came in with a lot of hype following his triumphant emergence in the 2016 Royal Rumble match, and a seasoned WWE veteran like Chris Jericho made for the perfect rival for “The Phenomenal One”, who had been around the block everywhere in the wrestling business with the exception of the WWE – until now.

If there was one shadow cast over that opening few months, however, some say that Styles deserved to win his WrestleMania clash with Y2J that put the feud to rest.

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Sure, he became the No. 1 contender to the WWE Championship the following night regardless of his loss, but given how remarkable AJ Styles’ year happened to be, it would have been nice to say that he emerged victorious in his very first dance on the grandest stage of them all. This year, the story is a little different going in.

Styles is one of the hottest names in all of WWE right now, never mind SmackDown Live on its own, and he’s walking into WrestleMania to take on Shane McMahon.

They did well to sell this match with Styles’ callous attack on the prodigal son of Vincent Kennedy McMahon, even if fans are still disappointed to see him go up against a part-time wrestler as opposed to the champion of the SmackDown brand.

Whether the match turns out to be good or not, however, the end result should remain the same. AJ Styles is the only man that can really capitalize on a win here – what is Shane really going to do with a victory over “the face that runs the place”?

As far as the narrative goes, Styles has a lot to prove, even more so than last year’s encounter with Chris Jericho, and if you want to make this year’s WrestleMania mean something for his career, then it’s AJ’s turn to walk away with his hand raised.

Source: WWE.com

3. Let Dean Ambrose’s Creativity Come to Life

Last year’s WrestleMania was primarily booked with three feature matches in mind.

Triple H vs. Roman Reigns for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, The Undertaker vs. Shane McMahon inside Hell in a Cell with control over Monday Night Raw on the line, and Brock Lesnar vs. Dean Ambrose in a No Holds Barred Match.

The latter of those was perhaps the most mouth-watering concept heading into the event, given how sadistic “The Lunatic Fringe” was made to look in the build-up.

Dean Ambrose knew that he was going to get thrown around like a rag doll, so he enlisted the help of some of the industry’s most extreme stars of all time, adopting Cactus Jack’s barbed-wire baseball bat and Chainsaw Charlie’s iconic chainsaw as his own as he geared up to go to war with “The Beast Incarnate” in Dallas.

The bout had the potential to be one of the most over-the-top slugfests in recent memory, with some of the craziest spots we may have ever seen, but a certain someone’s lack of enthusiasm is what appears to have held it back.

The match fell miles below expectations, with very few of the weapons Ambrose introduced being put to use. The former WWE Champion would explain later on Steve Austin’s podcast that Brock Lesnar didn’t have any desire to go all-out in this match, showing very little interest in any of the ideas put forth by Ambrose.

This year, Ambrose will inevitably be squaring off against Baron Corbin for the WWE Intercontinental Championship at WrestleMania 33, and given how a lot of their physicality has come in backstage or behind-the-scenes settings, it would be appropriate if this was given a falls count anywhere stipulation.

So, why not let Dean Ambrose have the match that he wanted to have with Brock Lesnar, with “The Lone Wolf”? The animosity is certainly present to justify this being an all-out brawl that spans the entire arena, so it would feel somewhat poetic for this to be the hardcore CZW-style match that we expected twelve months ago.

It would also add a sense of versatility in a line-up filled to the brim.

2. No More Unnecessary Burials

Don’t take this the wrong way; there is always a great buzz in the air when a WWE legend is in the house – perhaps even more so when that legend happens to be arguably the biggest name in Hollywood today, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

But there’s a right way to do a one-off appearance and there’s a wrong way, and The Rock’s impromptu match against Erick Rowan at WrestleMania 32 was without question the wrong way to go about laying the smacketh down on Dallas that night.

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The segment itself was fun, and having The Wyatt Family interact with “The Great One” could have done a lot for them – even in defeat at the hands of Rock and John Cena – but having The Rock beat Rowan in the shortest match in WrestleMania history was unnecessary, and only served to make The Wyatt Family look like a joke.

What somehow makes this even more ridiculous is that we had a perfectly good example of how to book a legend’s return earlier in the very same night.

Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley and ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin came out to throw down with The League of Nations after they had won a match against the reigning WWE Tag-Team Champions. It made sense that an obviously fatigued group of athletes would fall to some of the most notoriously tough men to ever grace a ring mat.

But Wyatt and his men were fresh as daisies – and they were the ones to get the jump on The Rock – so there’s really no defending them in the way they got leveled.

Again, The Rock is a treasure to the WWE. He is now, just like he was when he was lighting up microphones and canvases in the Attitude Era, and it would be great to see him at WrestleMania this year if he decides to make his presence felt once again.

But here’s a tip; how about steering clear of the blatant burials of upcoming talent and instead utilize the time to either elevate their standings, or interact with someone of equal legendary status like Rock did with Triple H at WrestleMania 31.

WWE.com

1. Stop Pretending That Roman Reigns is a Babyface

The WWE’s incessant need to book Roman Reigns as the company’s top babyface was arguably the most prevalent issue with last year’s WrestleMania.

The people of Dallas had to sit through a near-seven hour show. To expect 100,000+ fans to maintain their energy for that long is a tall order, regardless of how big or monumental the show may be, and the way they ended things certainly didn’t help.

The event saw a plethora of the WWE’s most beloved faces achieve varying levels of success throughout the night, but they opted to save its prime position on the line-up for the biggest failed project of the modern era; Roman Reigns.

Simply put, people hate this man.

The guy works hard, and he’s a terrific athlete, sure, but no amount of strength and power is going to make people love this guy if their natural instinct is to boo him.

The problem here is that the WWE has been ignoring the blatant rejection that a vast majority of the fan base has been throwing in his direction for well over two years.

Last year, the company had to mute a lot of its WrestleMania main event simply because the fans weren’t buying Roman Reigns as their hero. Reigns is no Daniel Bryan, and the main event of the single-biggest WrestleMania of all time went down the tubes because the WWE was too proud to admit they were wrong.

This year, thankfully, the seeds may already be planted for Reigns to embrace the villainous demeanor in which he belongs as he preps to challenge The Undertaker.

Whether he wins or loses in this affair, Roman needs to be the bad guy here for this to be a commendable outing – one that could easily be The Undertaker’s last dance.

Reigns has shown plenty of disrespect to “The Phenom” in his proclamation that the WWE ring is his yard now, and in his dismissal of WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels’ advice to get his head in the game ahead of WrestleMania. Should he continue down this dark path it could result in a much-needed shift in character that could completely change the way we look at Roman Reigns as a top WWE superstar.

Next: 5 Reasons Roman Reigns Will Win At WM33

Yet another big-time WrestleMania match will be determined by how the WWE chooses to book Roman Reigns this year, and if the company wants to learn from any of its mistakes from 2016’s spectacle, let it be this one.