10 WWE Superstars Set For A Big Push Following WrestleMania 42
Analysing who's next in line in WWE - featuring Sol Ruca, The Street Profits and Danhausen?!
Never before has the 2-night format for WrestleMania struck such a divide down the middle of WWE. The market-leaders hit Las Vegas' Allegiant Stadium for the second year running last weekend.
Discourse surrounding CM Punk and Roman Reigns' epic clash over the World Heavyweight Title, Oba Femi squashing Brock Lesnar in a meat-slapping hoss fight, and Rhea Ripley guiding Jade Cargill to her finest performance to date resulted in significant and heartfelt praise being thrown towards a historically scolded Paul Levesque. The problem, and it really is a problem: All of that was on the Sunday, sitting neatly alongside a brilliant Intercontinental Title Ladder match, a fun Sami Zayn vs. Trick Williams fight, and a fine 'Street Fight' between Dominik Mysterio and Finn Balor.
The Saturday was garbage. Rotten, chewed-up and spit out, 2019-like garbage.
Mercifully, the Raw after WrestleMania has somewhat returned to its glory years, with the arrival of fresh faces, the teasing of major first-time matches, and a level of optimism for the future not seen for almost 2 years.
Forecasting the immediate future of WWE hasn't been this easy for a long time - and, omitting newly-crowned champions for obvious reasons, it starts with one of NXT's biggest success stories in history...
10. Oba Femi
Oba Femi sprinted past Brock Lesnar in a brisk 4:46 to open WrestleMania Sunday, used his mandatory post-show interview to call out Roman Reigns, and ended his career-defining week by opening the Raw after 'Mania with a stern, 4-word promo that drew immediate comparisons to Roman's own brief promo following WrestleMania 33.
It's almost too obvious that WWE is putting all its eggs into Femi's basket - and it's about to rule.
What benefits Oba right away is that Roman, the new World Heavyweight Champion, has affirmed he won't be a part-time champion. That's good - the belt was quite literally created because he was a part-time champion - but Raw isn't exactly brimming with available star players ready to be fed to Reigns. Seth Rollins has a Bron Breakker-sized problem to contend with, CM Punk has moved on to Cody Rhodes, Jacob Fatu (Roman's apparent first challenger), will be a non-problem once Backlash is done. Also, Gunther is rumoured, but he may be too busy goading Brock out of retirement to care.
That leaves Oba Femi as the sole viable threat to Roman's latest dictatorship, the process of which has already begun, but this is a match that WWE shouldn't rush into. Pencil it in for SummerSlam at the earliest.