Tuesday, March 19, 2024
EditorialThe New Day Hosting WrestleMania 33: Downgrade or Upgrade?

The New Day Hosting WrestleMania 33: Downgrade or Upgrade?

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Earlier today, TMZ broke the news and it was later confirmed that The New Day will act as the hosts for WrestleMania 33 on April 2nd.

Naturally, both times they spoke about it, the stable acted incredibly enthusiastic about the responsibility, bringing up how it’s something The Rock had done before and “if they’re having fun, everyone is having fun.”

Is it all sunshine and rainbows (or I guess, unicorns and Booty-O’s) or is this actually not so much of a good thing and rather, more of a sign of bad faith in regards to the trio?

Glass Half Empty

Looking at this from the more pessimistic and skeptical side, the first thing that popped into my head was “Wait, so they aren’t going to wrestle? They’re going from being the longest-reigning tag team champions in WWE history to not even being on the card?!”

It seemed like blasphemy. After all, this isn’t a situation where an injury is getting in the way like what might happen with Seth Rollins, nor is it a matter of them not being important enough to justify finding a spot for on the show. If WrestleMania 33 comes and passes us by and we saw no appearance from Steve Cutler, nobody would bat an eye, but this is The New Day and surely, they’re worth investing in as proven by their lucrative merchandise figures over the past year.

When you couple this with how dramatically they dropped off once they lost their tag titles, it’s not exactly been a great few months for fans of The New Day like myself. They’re either missing in action entirely or they’re wrestling a random match with no actual feud behind it, and now they aren’t even going to be prioritized at WrestleMania.

Worse off, it isn’t that WWE ran out of options, but rather announced this enough in advance that they clearly did not have plans for them even on the backburner. It’s a guarantee The Undertaker will be in a main event match if he’s healthy enough to wrestle, just as it’s a guarantee for Brock Lesnar, Triple H, and so forth. For it to be seemingly a guarantee WWE didn’t have an idea in mind of how to use The New Day for a match makes me suspicious that they might have lost interest in the team and are merely keeping them around as merchandise schillers more than an actual wrestling faction.

However…

Glass Half Full

If you’re looking at this from a more optimistic perspective, things can be completely different.

For example, what if the reason why WWE didn’t have The New Day in mind for a tag team match is because they already know the tag titles won’t be prioritized and didn’t want to saddle them with a match that could be bumped off the card?

Think about it. We’ve had matches over the past few years which were advertised and then pulled at the last minute. With Goldberg/Lesnar, Owens/Jericho, Undertaker/Reigns, Orton/Wyatt, Cena/Nikki/Miz/Maryse, Styles/McMahon, Ambrose/Corbin, Shaq/Big Show, the battle royal, and both the women’s championships somewhere in the mix as well as possibly some other matches and the standard downtime for backstage segments and such, do you really think the tag titles would be prioritized over anything else listed here if time were running short? It’s doubtful.

Maybe WWE looks at the Raw and SmackDown Tag Team Championship matches they have planned as being supplemental and on the potential chopping block, but they wanted to make sure The New Day had something to do to stand out just in case that would get nixed. Having them be the hosts would ensure at least one segment could be done with them and really, a promo is all you need if they have enough theatrics behind it.

Another good thing is just the general idea that they get to be the hosts of the show. Big name celebrities as well as The Rock and Hulk Hogan were given that job, so this might be more of a testament to WWE viewing The New Day as entertaining enough to be in the same league as them. If that’s the case, would you rather wrestle a random undercard match for the tag titles and most likely not win the belts or would you rather stand out among your peers as the hosts of the show, take the night off from bumps and still get to party and have fun? I know what I would choose, given those two options.

Plus, there’s nothing stating that they can’t actually still compete! Keep in mind that The Rock has shown up at WrestleMania over the past few years to interfere in the WWE Championship match between The Miz and John Cena, he had his segment with Ronda Rousey, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, and he even wrestled a match against Erick Rowan—albeit a super short one.

Who is to say The New Day can’t still compete in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal or in some sort of multi-team match for the tag titles if that gets announced? Even if they don’t have an official match, they could take part in some sort of action in the ring against three adversaries of some sorts.

The worst case scenario is that they just have one promo, and that alone could be the best thing that happens at WrestleMania anyway! With everything from ice cream to the Booty-O’s cereal to Francesca II Turbo to God knows what else they have up their sleeves, the promo is going to be much more interesting than anything they would do in the ring that we’ve already seen before, so we’re already getting the best element of what they could have possibly done at WrestleMania no matter if it’s one segment or multiple scenes throughout the night.

My Verdict: Upgrade

Although my gut reaction at the very moment I saw it was more along the lines of confusion and disapproval, when really thinking about it, the pros far outweigh the cons. I think this will be a good thing not just for The New Day and not just for the WrestleMania show itself, but for the rest of the roster as it allows for another tag team to be inserted into the spot Kofi Kingston, Big E and Xavier Woods would have filled.

So how do you feel on the subject? Is this something good for The New Day or is it a demotion because WWE couldn’t figure out anything else better for them to do?

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