10 Candidates For WWE's Bizarre Post-WrestleMania 37 Push
Ricochet? Rey Mysterio? Johnny Gargano? Vince McMahon pushes talents FAR stranger than that in May.
As has become an annual tradition, this article aims to guess at which under-utilised talent Vince McMahon will take an inexplicable glance at in the wake of WWE WrestleMania.
In 2016, Vince McMahon decided, with the help of Bob Backlund, to make Darren Young great again. Backlund felt that the former multi-time World Champion and future first-ballot Hall of Famer had lost his edge. In 2017, Vince strapped up Jinder Mahal to monetise his reach in a country that already included PPVs in the TV deal, and at the time lacked the broadband speed required to effectively run the WWE Network, which of course there was next-to-no incentive to purchase. In 2019 and 2020, Dolph Ziggler, who had stopped caring altogether, was positioned as a WWE Title challenger.
This year is different to most, in that 'Mania 37 is not front-loaded with creaking part-time stars who f*ck it all off the instant the last firework goes off. But that was true last year, and last year was weird too. Vince also pushed various warm bodies unable to locate the Performance Center fire escape who haven't been used since, like Brendan Vink, because his top stars kept mysteriously disappearing.
Vince is going to be honest with you, Lisa. He never did the tests.
Who's next?
10. Chris Masters
Something strange is happening with Vince McMahon, and if you want to get conspiratorial about things, it's likely that Bruce Prichard has something to do it.
Since Brother Love rocked back up in WWE, Vince McMahon has regressed to an old headspace. Regrettably, not one in which he was effective. That would take him back 21 years. Looking at the complexion of RAW and SmackDown in 2021, it is as if NXT never happened and never informed the main roster. Edge, Drew McIntyre, The Miz, Bobby Lashley, Daniel Bryan, Roman Reigns, Sheamus: all of these acts are at the top of the card, and none debuted in the NXT system. Under this theory, with one eye on the throne of the empire, Prichard is campaigning to undermine Triple H's decade of toil and vanish it altogether.
It's as if Prichard is whispering in Vince's ear when Trips isn't looking.
"Do do do Ricochet is too small...Well, you know, Andrade isn't fluent...Aleister Black just isn't connect-eeng motherf*cker...and then the Performance Center bell rang..."
With the exception of the Women's division, Vince is more likely to push a guy that the part-timers of the 2010s replaced rather than any name "promoted" from NXT.
With that in mind, Chris Masters - who at 38 might actually be too young, come to think of it - will get the big push in RAW's retro body guy division.