Welcome back to another Monday Morning Q&A where I toss out some questions to get a feel of how you guys and gals are feeling about certain topics.
So here are 5 questions I’d like to toss out for this week. I’ll give my answers, too, but the key here is that I want to know what YOU think! So make sure you chime in!
1) Out of ROH Supercard of Honor, NJPW Sakura Genesis, the WWE Hall of Fame, the Slammy Awards, NXT Stand & Deliver and both nights of WrestleMania 40, which show are you most excited to see this week?
Easily WrestleMania, of course. But since the lineup of Saturday and Sunday haven’t been officially declared yet, it’s hard to distinguish between the two which has the overall best set.
Granted, I’m assuming more emphasis will be put on Night 2 given the two title matches we know are confirmed.
I won’t be watching Sakura Genesis at all. Supercard of Honor is something I’ll admittedly only have in the background for the purposes of updating you guys on the site with some general win/loss notifications coverage. The Hall of Fame is a lackluster class this year from my point of view as I don’t know anything about Thunderbolt Patterson and I’m not some avid fan of The U.S. Express or Muhammad Ali, and while The Slammy Awards are super fun and I’m glad they’re bringing them back, I think they should have saved this for SummerSlam or, better yet, the true end of the year like my Smark Out Moment Awards.
I’m sure Stand and Deliver will be fun, even if a few matches aren’t my top of the line picks. But can you really go with that over WrestleMania? At least, I can’t.
2) Do you expect any more matches will be added at the last minute to the WrestleMania card? If so, what?
I’m very surprised we still don’t have any confirmation about The Pride against Final Testament. Clearly, Bobby Lashley’s crew will seek vengeance upon Karrion Kross and his legion for their continued feud and their interference costing The Street Profits their shot in the Six-Pack Ladder Match for the tag titles.
Most likely, I’m expecting it to be a Six-Man Tag Team Match with Lashley, Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins against Kross, Akam and Rezar, while B-Fab and Scarlett are just ringside to get involved, rather than true parts of the bout in mixed-tag format.
However, if I’m booking things, I’m having the best of both worlds. I’d go with a Philadelphia Street Fight element, turning this into a Tornado Tag Team match. That would allow B-Fab and Scarlett to be more involved and let everyone use weapons to differentiate them from the Six-Woman Tag Team Match and even the Mysterio/Lee vs. Escobar/Mysterio tag match that will surely have LWO and Legado Del Fantasma involvement.
Other than that, given the lineup of the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, I don’t think we’ll see any more matches added to the WrestleMania card. This would give the two nights an uneven amount of fights, but that’s fine, given how some matches will assuredly go longer and something on Night 2 could just take up as much time as 2 matches on Night 1.
3) If you could book a women’s version of the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal for this year, using the remaining female Superstars who aren’t already on the card, who would you give the win to?
Not only do I think they should do this, and I keep pitching the Chyna Memorial Battle Royal being its name, but I think this year offers a few potential names that would make sense to win.
Had she not already been announced for the six-woman tag, Jade Cargill would have been my go-to option. Taking her out of the equation, though, and also eliminating all the injured or inactive people (Charlotte Flair, Tamina, Raquel Rodriguez, Shotzi, etc) there are still around 20 names on the main roster who could compete for this honor.
Obviously, I’d count out names like Valhalla, Xia Li, and the lower-totem folk. It’d be just too weird and pointless to see Katana Chance win this, for instance, as the go-to question is “Well, why not Kayden Carter?”
My top 5 I would lean toward would be, in order, as follows:
- 5) Michin – Just to give her SOMETHING, as they never want to push her sustainably. Maybe this could turn things around.
- 4) Maxxine Dupri – With the storyline being that she’s awful in the ring, having her win this would be a sort of funny moment that WWE often does. She has her fans, too, so they’d be happy.
- 3) Tiffany Stratton – What better way to get her momentum going than to have her beat out all the other women and be given a trophy just weeks after she joins the main roster?
- 2) Liv Morgan – She’s among the most popular women on the roster right now and a lot of people are upset that she’s not fighting Rhea Ripley. Giving her this win would ease some of those woes.
- 1) Nia Jax – She’s done a much better job this time around than her last run. In an effort to keep her strong, as well as keep consistent with her being the biggest woman in the match (and therefore the hardest to eliminate, and the most Andre/Chyna-esque of the lot), I would probably book a situation where Morgan and Stratton are duking it out and Jax takes them both out.
4) No one has been announced yet to sing America the Beautiful for WrestleMania this year. Given how this was a Vince McMahon thing, do you think they’re doing away with it entirely now that he’s out of the picture, or do you think WWE is just waiting until this week for some strategic purpose or because they’re still hammering out a deal?
Given how WWE has made announcements to the biggest show of the year VERY late to the game in the past few years, I don’t know if this is just another “down to the wire” last minute announcement we haven’t heard yet.
However, given how they DO like to announce celebrity involvement in advance enough to gain traction on social media, and how this isn’t something they can really wing on Friday afternoon or anything, maybe there is something to this.
After all, this will be the first WrestleMania without Vince’s hands on it in supposedly any way, and it’s the first one with TKO oversight. The board could have sat around, talked about how that wasn’t necessary and it just eats into the time of the show and cut it entirely, or they might want to have the proper national anthem play.
At this point, I would be surprised if suddenly, either at a random time on social media or on Raw, they just announced one or two artists that will perform.
5) With everything going on related to Diddy in the media right now, and Meek Mill’s association with him, do you expect WWE to continue with Meek Mill being part of WrestleMania, or will they cut him out due to not wanting to cast more eyes on them via the Vince lawsuit and all that bad press?
If I were WWE, I would certainly just 86 him from the festivities. It’s interesting that nothing’s happened regarding Sylvester Stallone yet (at least, not advertised), and maybe all that was planned was for Meek Mill to do some intro video package to fill in for Stallone or something. But that’s all speculation. As far as I’m aware, they haven’t announced anything for what Stallone would have done (if the rumors were even true), what Meek Mill is supposed to do, and if there’s any correlation.
But I can’t imagine there being any substantial role Meek Mill would have taken part in. Even if it were to be the intro, they can surely do another. It doesn’t have to be some million dollar expenditure. Doing two cool intros does make it feel more epic, but they can get away with a lot less. Hell, if you want me to mark out, on a personal level, I have no fandom of Meek Mill, so that means nothing to me—but if you give me the old school WrestleMania theme and have the generic voice over guy talk about the history of the event over 40 years, showing clips of past great moments, you’ve already sold me.
Like most things, WWE has to weigh the pros and cons. Is what they planned for Meek Mill so worth keeping that the potential risks don’t overtake it? Would it cost too much to replace him? Or is the possible bad press going to be too much to handle and nixing it is a better tactic? Only they know what’s in store, but I’d lean more toward thinking the company should stay away from any bad publicity they can avoid—particularly this weekend.
Shout Out Note: Keep in mind that you still have time to enter my giveaway contest of Rocky Maivia Funko Pop vinyl figures if you want to try to win one of those!
Let us know your thoughts about these questions by answering them in the comments!
