Thursday, March 28, 2024
EditorialMarch to WrestleMania 38 Preview: Crash Course Recap of Everything Else

March to WrestleMania 38 Preview: Crash Course Recap of Everything Else

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WrestleMania season is the time of year where many casuals jump back into WWE, but are completely lost about what is going on. While some start rewatching around Royal Rumble and take part in the entire Road to WrestleMania, others need more of a crash course to cram at the last minute. Hence, we’re in the March to WrestleMania, and I’m here to give you a tl;dr recap of what you need to know.

Part 1 – World Titles | Part 2 – Midcard Titles | Part 3 – Tag Team Titles

All the championships have been accounted for, but there are plenty other spots on the card. This post will be a short breakdown of “everything else” and the miscellaneous grudge matches and feuds shaping up for WrestleMania 38.

The Miz and Logan Paul vs. The Mysterios

In January, The Miz was feverishly feuding with Edge. Their match at Day 1 turned into a Mixed Tag Team Match at Royal Rumble, featuring Maryse and Beth Phoenix.

And then, poof. The Miz is wrestling Dominik Mysterio on Raw, and that’s the start of this feud.

Essentially, what you’ve missed is that from January 31 onward, this storyline has boiled down to The Miz being a typical heel and The Mysterios just continually being at odds with him. There isn’t much actual “story” so much as they’re feuding because they keep interacting with each other and that’s about it. They don’t like each other. The end.

Rey Mysterio beat The Miz at Elimination Chamber and The Miz’s response was to call upon Logan Paul to be his tag team partner and challenge The Mysterios to a match at WrestleMania.

Since then, The Miz and Paul have jumped The Mysterios and talked trash about Cleveland.

You’re all caught up.

AJ Styles vs. Edge

Speaking of Edge and the simplicity of how much of this year’s WrestleMania build has played out, once The Miz had moved on, Edge needed something else to do.

He quite literally cut a promo about how he needs WrestleMania and WrestleMania needs him, so he wants someone to challenge him. After a week or so, AJ Styles came out to be that guy. Then, Edge turned heel and destroyed him with some steel chairs.

Following this, we’ve heard from Edge several times about why he did that. The reason is your standard “I need to stop catering to the fans and just worry about my own success, which means I’m a bad guy now.” excuse. He’s changed his music and has blue lighting now, since WWE hasn’t learned any lessons from The Fiend or Sin Cara.

Next time around, we should hear AJ Styles cut a typical babyface promo about how Edge is a jerk and he’ll beat him at Mania, most likely.

Drew McIntyre vs. Happy Corbin

Since being drafted to SmackDown, Drew McIntyre has been sitting around with nothing solid to do. It seems WWE potentially wanted him to feud with Jeff Hardy, if not just to set up a No. 1 contender’s match to be sacrificed to Roman Reigns, but plans changed when Hardy…well, we’re not sure what Hardy did, but he took his exit from the company.

McIntyre’s course was redirected to being annoyed by Happy Corbin and Madcap Moss. The latter was his opponent for WWE Day 1, wherein McIntyre suffered a cervical neck strain and contusions. He would likely miss a few months of action and possibly be back for WrestleMania.

Lo and behold, he powered through the injury recovery process and was back in time for Royal Rumble. Sadly, WWE didn’t have anything else for him to do, so they effectively decided to stretch this feud out for the next few months and just have that finish (hopefully) at WrestleMania.

This meant that McIntyre fought Moss again, at Elimination Chamber in a Falls Count Anywhere match. He beat him, again.

Then, he fought Moss a third time on SmackDOwn, and beat him, again.

Since then, he just keeps threatening to beat the two of them up, wielding his sword a few times to be extra threatening, while they run away. Sometimes, Jinder Mahal and Shanky do some extra enhancement talent work and are beaten up by McIntyre to show how more powerful he is and to give Corbin and Moss time to run off.

Everyone is just killing time until McIntyre destroys Corbin while the crowd in attendance gets some concessions or goes to the bathroom, since this match is among the most useless and both parties deserve to be doing something better.

Kevin Owens / Stone Cold Steve Austin

Kevin Owens and Seth Rollins were vying for the WWE Championship heading into 2022 and started to become buddies that had each other’s backs. The game plan, according to their promos, was that one of them would win the title and face the other at WrestleMania. It was a pact, of sorts.

Both came up short when Brock Lesnar was inserted into the match and derailed all plans of anyone on Raw coming close to that belt, save for Bobby Lashley’s temporary “gotcha surprise swerve” reign that was quickly undone nearly immediately after.

As a backup plan, Owens and Rollins tried to capture the Raw Tag Team Championship. They failed, meaning they were running out of time to find a spot for WrestleMania.

Owens had the idea that he would call out Stone Cold Steve Austin for an appearance on The Kevin Owens Show, which is the culmination of weeks of Owens trashing Texas.

Austin accepted the challenge, and the wording of this ever since has hinted at it being a match without outright saying it. This could mean any number of things. There’s a chance—albeit very, very slim—that WWE just changes this before WrestleMania and officially declares it a match, and they want to save that surprise to keep momentum going closer to the show. Or, perhaps there is some sort of legal reasoning why they don’t want to call this a match. Maybe Austin isn’t cleared to compete, but he’s cleared to “get physical in some fashion” and it’s just going to be what we would imagine it would be, which is a promo that ends in a Stone Cold Stunner.

My guess is on the latter. I don’t think people should be getting their hopes up for an actual bell ringing and this being constituted Austin’s return match.

Another side element to this is that Rollins tried to hijack this and make it about him by usurping Owens from his own show. He wrestled Owens for the right to have this spot and lost. Maybe that means Rollins is going to get involved somehow, or this is just a bump in the road and he’s doing something else.

Sami Zayn vs. Johnny Knoxville

Johnny Knoxville was set to enter the Royal Rumble, which Sami Zayn took offense to. Why should he be involved when he hasn’t earned it?

Knoxville then took advantage of a tussle around the ring to toss Zayn over the top rope, which was enough to grant him a spot in the Royal Rumble and officially kickstart this feud.

Since then, Zayn’s had numerous segments where he’s tried to beat Knoxville at his own game, doing a Jackass-style homage called In-Zayn. However, he continued to chicken out at his stunts unless Knoxville went ahead and zapped him with a cattle prod himself.

Zayn crashed the premiere of Jackass Forever. As payback, Knoxville crashed Zayn’s celebration for having beaten Shinsuke Nakamura for the Intercontinental Championship (after weeks of waiting for his title opportunity, due to Nakamura being injured). Knoxville challenged Zayn to a title match at WrestleMania.

Then, things took a turn. Ricochet was randomly put in a title match against Zayn and captured the championship due to some interference by Knoxville. Zayn failed to regain the title, and now, the match at WrestleMania has no belt on the line.

It remains to be seen if WWE did this just to avoid having the title in the mix as Knoxville is scheduled to win and they won’t want him being champion or to spoil that by classifying this a non-title match, or if there are actually any plans for Ricochet as champion. My guess is he was the best option to just swoop in and take the belt when they needed someone, and they hadn’t thought this through to just not have Zayn win the belt in the first place.

Pat McAfee vs. Austin Theory

Rumors were flying that Vince McMahon would be booked in a match at WrestleMania against Pat McAfee. Then, it was announced Vince would be appearing on McAfee’s show, and it all seemed like the puzzle pieces were coming together.

Surprisingly, though, no angle happened. Vince answered questions and wasn’t in character. He then offered McAfee “a match” at WrestleMania, which McAfee accepted.

Prior to this, Austin Theory had suggested he should go to McAfee’s show and be there in case McMahon needed him for some reason. He wasn’t, but that idea would carry over into the announcement that Theory would be facing McAfee.

This is just completely random, it seems. Since then, Theory’s picked fights with McAfee, but the fact that McMahon wanted McAfee to fight at WrestleMania in the first place hasn’t been addressed, nor has it made any sense why he would pick him to face Theory or vice versa. McMahon’s been absent from this after the interview.

In all likelihood, there is no reason. They just were pitching ideas, liked this, thought it didn’t interrupt the other plans for other matches, and signed off on it with the bare minimum happening to “justify” the match with a “storyline”, if you can call it that.

TL;DR – McAfee is granted a match. Theory says “you’ll fight me.” Then, Theory and McAfee hate each other now and keep going at it.

You’re not missing anything if you’re missing Raw and SmackDown, these days. All of this can be easily digested in the video package that will air both during the pre-show and before each individual match at WrestleMania itself.

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