10 Problems WWE Has With Modern WrestleManias

Although Vince McMahon might have gone cold on the nickname ‘The Granddaddy of them All’, it’s starting to seem more apropos as each WrestleMania rolls around.

Each year’s flagship event promises to be bigger than the last, and while WrestleMania 32 did break WWE’s attendance records, it was also widely derided as an overly long, out of touch mess of a show - one of the worst PPVs of the year.

So why is it that WWE seems to struggle to pull off a half-decent Mania in the 2010s? This is the very same event that birthed classics like Steamboat vs Savage, HBK vs The Undertaker, The Rock vs Stone Cold Steve Austin, and a plethora of other matches that epitomise exactly what great wrestling can and should be. The name alone lends the kind of star power a Payback or a Fastlane could only ever dream of, but even with all the pomp, circumstance and guest appearances, it usually winds up being a colossal disappointment, sprinkled with some vaguely memorable moments.

Some of the reasons behind the failings of modern WrestleManias are symptomatic of WWE’s culture – and the wider wrestling culture – as a whole, but others are specific to the event itself.

Perhaps WWE should heed one of their most commonly uttered in-match phrases: the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

One of the most simultaneously interesting and frustrating aspects of modern WWE is how impossible it seems to be for fans to get on the same page.

While it’s always great to see two sides of a crowd going insane over their chosen combatant (AJ Styles vs John Cena being the prime example), there’s still nothing quite like 100,000 voices screaming in support of the ‘good guy’, or levelling deafening boos at the ‘bad guy’. But not since Daniel Bryan has WWE had a clear cut babyface with enough star power to headline WrestleMania.

As soon as an audience splits more than 50/50, it can have a negative impact on both the performers in the ring, and the minority side of the crowd. If somebody is booing you when you’re supposed to be cheered, it may well have an effect on your ability to perform, and if someone is ragging on the person you came to root for, it might be detrimental to your enjoyment of the match.

This is not to point blame on any one wrestler, booker or fan - but rather to point out that a major flaw in recent WrestleManias has been that they incite division and/or apathy.

A lot of people are excited about the prospect of Goldberg vs Lesnar, and aren’t the least bit interested in seeing what Samoa Joe and Sami Zayn are doing at WrestleMania. Conversely, a lot of people couldn’t care less about Goldberg vs Brock Lesnar, and would prefer to see two younger stars vying for the Universal Title.

In that situation, nobody really goes home happy. Everyone is going to be bored at some point during the evening.