If WWE Was Being Honest About WrestleMania 35

The show bludgeoned us with both organic moments and manufactured Moments (TM). WrestleMania 34 numbed us with shocks; nothing in itself registered as singular history on its own merits, resulting in an insane blur of sh*t that just happened and could not stand alone. Processing everything that happened was as difficult as enduring it, by the shattering six-hour mark, at which point an entire stadium threw a beach ball around.

WrestleMania moments shape character arcs, even entire careers. If we’re too physically exhausted to react to them, what then happens to those arcs, those careers? Daniel Bryan turned heel later that year, remember. WrestleMania used to pay off the events of WWE’s televised offerings; now it mirrors the sheer, blurring excess of the schedule. The remaining matches didn’t approach the rabid atmosphere that met Ronda’s debut, because WWE had passed the magic four-hour mark.

But what match follows that mark on Sunday, April 7?

What if Kofi Kingston’s WWE Title challenge arrives after Triple H destroys every last bit of furniture as part of his sapping, traditional epic? If we don’t have the spirit to get behind his 11 year culmination, what was it worth?

The spectre of Triple H, as ever, looms over everything. He has previous in the MetLife stadium; punishingly dull and overlong previous. He made every second count in 2018. April 2018; in October 2018, at Super Show-Down, he danced with the decrepit Undertaker for 27 near-tragic minutes. To answer the question why, one must take the cynical route: his ego is as ageless as it is boundless. His ego has always told him he can go that long—in such defiance of the silence that it must border on the medically narcissistic—and now his age isn’t telling him otherwise. There is, it is safe to write, more chance of HHH Vs. Batista going 25 minutes than 10.

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