Friday, March 29, 2024
EditorialWWE WrestleMania 33 Matches Most Likely to be Bumped from the Card

WWE WrestleMania 33 Matches Most Likely to be Bumped from the Card

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Quite often, WWE overbooks the WrestleMania card and has to struggle to figure out a way to accomplish everything that was previously advertised.

Sometimes, their solution is to bump things from the main card to the pre-show. Other times, those segments are hacked to bits and given virtually no room to actually do anything, with WWE following it up by having a rematch on the next Raw, SmackDown or even the next pay-per-view. Sadly, there are also instances where a match will just be cut entirely and not happen in the slightest bit.

The best case scenario is always for the game plan to go off without a hitch, every match/segment gets adequate time, it’s all amazing and the fans walk away from the show exhausted and at the same time, pumped up with anticipation of what’s to come next, but that’s very rarely ever the case.

This year, there are already more matches announced than before and it’s a guarantee they won’t all see proper time on the main show.

To give you an indication of just how crazy the lineup already is, there are 12 matches in the book along with the “Unsanctioned Match” between Seth Rollins and Triple H and there still isn’t even a SmackDown Tag Team Championship match on the card, nor something for Samoa Joe or Braun Strowman to do unless both of them are in the battle royal, bringing the total to at least 14 if not 16 matches, on top of the antics of The New Day as hosts and all of the other filler.

In comparison, last year had 12 matches with 3 of them on the pre-show and one of them only lasting six seconds long. WrestleMania 31 before that had 9 matches with 2 of them on the pre-show. Even less, WrestleMania 30 had 8 matches with one on the pre-show.

Clearly, there’s no chance in hell WrestleMania 33 is going to have 16 or even 14 matches without putting a number of them on the pre-show at the very, very least, which is something that many fans consider to be a downgrade or even an insult, particularly as those matches are sometimes missed by the crowd not getting to their seats in time or viewers at home thinking they could skip the kickoff.

So with all this in mind, which matches do I think are in the most danger to suffer some kind of drawback, whether it be bumped to the pre-show, given virtually no time at all or possibly even being taken out of the card entirely?

SmackDown Tag Team Championship Match — Cut Entirely

This is absolutely 100% the match that I feel stands the most chance at not even existing, which is strange, considering it is the only championship that wouldn’t be defended on the card.

For some reason, WWE has neglected the SmackDown Tag Team Championship over the past few weeks. One episode of SmackDown saw Jason Jordan and Chad Gable not appear outside of Talking Smack, where they expressed frustrations over not getting a chance to settle their score with The Usos or really do anything. The following week after that, neither tag team was on the show, nor even on Talking Smack. Fast forward a bit more and The Usos are suddenly the tag team champions, asking Daniel Bryan on Talking Smack where their match at WrestleMania is. He essentially laughed and avoided answering it.

Of course, we know Daniel Bryan doesn’t actually have any power to create matches, but since the response wasn’t something along the lines of “we’ll figure out who will face you” or “I’ll let you know that next week”—the last episode of SmackDown before WrestleMania, mind you—it seems like a match just isn’t going to happen at all.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t some huge travesty. It’s a problematic byproduct of the brand split to create too many titles and then not have enough room to accommodate all of those belts along with the non-title feuds. Still, it’s strange that only one championship would be ignored to this level, particularly when the tag team division on SmackDown earlier in the year was doing great.

They did run into a problem, though, in that we’ve seen all of the tag teams compete against each other so many times that nothing is interesting anymore. In this particular case, The Usos and American Alpha just had their title match. A rematch isn’t going to spark any interest whatsoever and it’s unlikely people would rather see 15 minutes taken out of other matches on the card just to be opened up to allow this onto the lineup. Likewise, a multi-team match would just feel like unnecessary clutter when there are already so many similar matches on the card and we’ve seen numerous 8 or 10-man tag team matches on SmackDown throughout the past few months, too.

At this point, it seems like The Usos, American Alpha and the rest of the tag team division on SmackDown are going to have to hope for spots in the battle royal or they might just be sitting the pay-per-view out entirely.

Raw Tag Team Championship Match — Bumped to Kickoff

While the tag team division over on Raw is in a much better spot than SmackDown’s, I still have to imagine this match is a guarantee to be bumped to a pre-show bout.

WWE simply has never valued the tag titles as much as anything else and if you look at the people involved in this match in particular, none of them are too important to put in this role. Enzo Amore and Big Cass are guys who were bumped from a good portion of the NXT TakeOver shows, Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson went from making a big splash to being put on the backburner for many months at a time, and Sheamus and Cesaro are textbook examples of two singles stars who had nothing better to do, so they were paired together.

All three teams have a certain level of success to them, but they just don’t take priority over any other matches on the card. While you in particular might have zero interest in seeing John Cena and Nikki Bella against The Miz and Maryse, or you plan on using Roman Reigns vs. The Undertaker as your bathroom break, you can bet your ass WWE feels the complete opposite.

This is also the match that I feel has the second-most chances of being taken off the card completely, seeing as the SmackDown tag title match doesn’t even exist right now. If WWE is already at 13 matches just with the upcoming official announcement of the Triple H vs. Seth Rollins segment and they feel they need to cut corners, this is on the chopping block.

Cruiserweight Championship Match — Bumped to Kickoff

Because it is a newer championship and the potential for this to be something a little different in style (as well as potentially just better) than the other matches on the card, I think the Cruiserweight Championship match between Neville and Austin Aries is pretty safe in comparison to the tag titles when it comes to being 86’ed.

However, I do think it’s another guarantee that if it happens at all, it will be on the pre-show. It hasn’t been the case every single time, but there are multiple instances where the Raw and cross-branded events since the draft have relegated the cruiserweight division to the kickoff, which is understandable considering how it’s essentially a tertiary brand in and of itself.

When figuring out which matches can go on the pre-show, WWE has to weigh the appeal of the match against everything else. They’re not idiots and they know the number of viewers for the kickoff isn’t comparable to the main show, so the matches that get sent to no man’s land are the ones WWE feels will upset the least amount of people in case they missed out on it. Since 205 Live doesn’t have the same audience as Raw and SmackDown, it’s a no-brainer for them to make this one of the sacrificial lambs.

Ideally, they’re also smart enough to use this to their advantage. Neville and Austin Aries, if given proper time, can really put on an amazing show. Assuming Aries wins the championship, this would be a fantastic way to start WrestleMania with a ton of energy that can carry over into the regular festivities. Also, this means they can already have the purple ropes and everything else set up in advance, cutting down on the time necessary to adjust the ring for the regular matches.

Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal — Kickoff or Time Shortage

There have been three previous Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal matches and none of them have had great spots on the WrestleMania card.

The first was in an oddball location, as the night started with Daniel Bryan against Triple H, which was followed by a short squash by The Shield and then the battle royal, which preceded the much more important Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena fight. Effectively, it was the continuation of the bathroom break from the match with The Shield.

ATGMBR #2 was relegated to the pre-show. Enough said about that.

Last year, it was sandwiched between one of the marquee matches with The Undertaker vs. Shane McMahon and then the bathroom break filler segment with The Rock and The Wyatt Family, again, effectively being a bathroom break match itself.

Knowing the track record and coupling it with how we only have one more episode of Raw and SmackDown left before WrestleMania and there are still only FOUR men announced for this match (Mojo Rawley, Apollo Crews, Big Show and Curt Hawkins), it’s clear this year’s battle royal is not something WWE wanted to dedicate much time or many resources toward.

The past three winners didn’t really receive much of a push from standing tall at the end of these matches anyway, so it’s not like we’re talking about the WWE Championship changing hands on the pre-show. This is still a shame to hear, though, especially considering how it might be the only thing someone like Braun Strowman does on the card, and possibly the final sendoff of Big Show, who wasn’t able to get his match against Shaquille O’Neal.

Unsanctioned Match — Short Time

With Seth Rollins going into this injured and the stipulation being as vague as it is, this definitely won’t be the 30-minute fight we all probably were expecting to see when it was first teased a few months back.

As it stands, I’m firmly convinced this will run around the same length as The Rock’s segment from last year or Hulk Hogan’s promo with The Rock and Steve Austin at the beginning of WrestleMania 30. Triple H and Seth Rollins will start to brawl, Samoa Joe will come out (and probably not have any matches) and then Finn Balor will come to Seth’s aid. The four of them will fight each other for just long enough to make the fans feel like they saw something special instead of a glorified Raw promo and that will be it.

We already know Goldberg and Brock Lesnar won’t be wrestling long, so that should come to no surprise, and there’s a good chance Roman Reigns and The Undertaker will be kept short due to Undertaker’s injuries, but the problem with keeping this brawl between Rollins and Triple H too long is that the dynamic of a regular match is thrown out the window without a referee, if that’s the way WWE plans on doing this. Without a referee, there will be no pinfalls or submissions to give the fans a sense of direction and progression. It will just be a back-and-forth beat down and in the past, when those have gone on too long, they tend to get frustratingly boring. For the sake of efficiency on multiple platforms, it’s best to keep this on the shorter side.

Those are just my thoughts on the subject, but which matches do YOU think are in the most danger to be cut from the card? Drop those predictions in the comments below!

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