5 Biggest Missed Opportunities From WWE WrestleMania 36

Normally, this writer would open this monthly column with an introduction that reflects on how the superstars of WWE arrived at a specific arena and entertained the thousands in attendance with their most recent PPV, but that's not exactly what happened at WrestleMania.

Like the rest of WWE's programming at the moment, the Showcase of the Immortals emanated from the Performance Center (among other locations) as the superstars of both Raw and SmackDown went out of their way to give us the most unique WrestleMania of all time... and it was indeed just that.

Look, given the global situation right now, there are a lot of things that would've definitely gone down differently had things worked out the way WWE initially intended. And for some, the lack of those occurrences probably felt like missed opportunities, but this writer isn't going to sit here and criticise them for elements beyond their control when they bloody went and defied expectations so they could entertain us lot at such a trying time.

Thanks to some great wrestling and a ton of wonderfully hokey sh*t, the smallest WrestleMania of all time still managed to feel larger-than-life when it wanted to. That said, there were a number of things that could have been done a little differently...

It's a strange time for the world right now, so it's completely understandable that Roman Reigns and The Miz were absent from the first night of WrestleMania. The health and well-being of the WWE superstars is paramount, and anything that would put them at risk is a major no-go, so the decision to remove them from their matches was certainly the right call.

However, one thing that let the program itself down was the lack of explanation as to why neither of them were appearing. Oh sure, WWE explained Reigns' absence on SmackDown and made the Ladder Match announcement on The Bump, but it's a little naive on their part to expect every viewer of a phenomenon like WrestleMania to be familiar with these recent changes.

After all, WrestleMania is an annual extravaganza that tends to draw in non-regular viewers and old fans unfamiliar with how today's product progresses on a weekly basis. Throw in the fact that more people are understandably at home during this time and craving escapism like the Showcase of the Immortals, and you have to question their decision not to inform these casual viewers as to why the advertised challenger for the Universal Championship wasn't competing or why three men were vying for the Tag Team Championships.