14 Times Really Weird Sh*t Went Down At WrestleMania 32
8. Is A Lack Of Swerves A Swerve In Itself?
The backstory of the Undertaker vs. Shane McMahon was an intricate narrative web, filled to bursting with character nuance, subtext and… nope, can’t even keep a straight face typing that.
The truth is that no one really knows what this match was about. Supposedly, Shane had something on his father that gave him leverage to demand the keys to Monday Night RAW (which, traditionally in the WWE narrative, means control of the entire billion-dollar company). However, that leverage didn’t seem to go very far, because he still had to agree to the impossible task of defeating the Undertaker at WrestleMania in Hell In A Cell in order to get what he wanted.
Equally, no one ever made entirely clear what the Phenom - long known as the conscience of the company and as close to an incorruptible free hand as WWE has on the roster - had to gain from agreeing to the match, or why this grand, mysterious wrestling legend felt that his WrestleMania legacy required him to defeat a middle-aged businessman on behalf of a horrible old man he (kayfabe) didn’t like, who called him his ‘bitch’.
Regardless of exposition or motivation, however, it was clear that Shane wasn’t remotely the Undertaker’s equal. What would the swerve be? A run-in? Would McMahon the Younger have brought in a squad of mercenaries to do his dirty work in this no disqualification match? The Balor Club? Kurt Angle? John Cena?
Nope. The swerve was that there was no swerve, no interference, no third parties, no tricks. Shane, a forty-six year old non-wrestler seven years absent from any kind of in-ring performance, was genuinely being booked as capable of beating the Dead Man at his signature event, in his signature match: on a par with Edge, CM Punk, even Triple H himself.
And he lost cleanly. The much-debated storyline didn’t go anywhere and didn’t mean anything.