A wise man once said that, these days, WWE is built on fulfilling lowered expectations. And it's true, they're like a complacent significant other: once or twice a year they feel obliged to show us a good time, but the rest of the year it's sweat pants after work and TV dinners. WrestleMania is supposed to be one of those annual treats where WWE suck in their gut, get a decent haircut and take us to the movies: taxis both ways, nice shoes, no draught beer. Yet here we are, only three weeks and some change away from the biggest event of the worldwide professional wrestling calendar - one they touted would be the biggest of all time - and let's face it, we're being given gas station flowers and a gift certificate and expected to put out on the bus home. Plenty will place the blame on an extraordinarily bad run of serious injuries, a run that's plagued the WWE roster for months now. Randy Orton is out. Seth Rollins is out. Cesaro, Tyson Kidd, Paige - all on the shelf. Daniel Bryan has retired due to issues surrounding post-concussion syndrome. John freakin' Cena isn't wrestling at WrestleMania, an event he's loudly called spots at for the last dozen years. But there are clearly other issues at play: foremost amongst them WWE's inexplicable refusal to build stars in the way that they used to, and their remarkably short-sighted storytelling. With talent and characters as compelling as they have, there should be dozens of potential storylines heading into WrestleMania season. It's testament to the company's blinkered attitude towards that talent that so few of those possible angles are on the table, or anywhere near it. A couple of months ago, I wrote an article detailing some lateral thinking and a smidge of fantasy booking that might produce a card for WrestleMania 32 that could get people excited about the event again. This isn't a rehash or an update of that article, and the individual points made here aren't necessarily a cohesive plan to get the event back on track - some, in fact, may be mutually exclusive. Here are a dozen ways in which WWE could #FreeWrestlemania from sucking so very, very badly... and before you mention it, yes I know that's not what their hashtag actually means. I'm nicking it. It's mine now. #FreeWrestleMania, boys and girls. It's time to liberate the grandest stage of them all.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
