4. WrestleMania 31 (March 29): A Main-Event Cash-In
Main Event: Brock Lesnar (C) versus Roman Reigns What Happened: Lesnar and Reigns battled in a hard-hitting fight that saw the WrestleMania crowd vociferously supporting the heel champion and calling for the head of the Royal Rumble winner. After about 15 minutes of action, Seth Rollins's music hit the PA system and Mr. Money in the Bank ran down the aisle with his briefcase. Cashing it in, he joined the newly-established triple threat match, and after nearly falling prey to Lesnar, he managed to hit Reigns with a Curb Stomp and pin him, winning the title. Why It Was Meh: To give credit where it's due, the Rollins solution was a elegant way out of a situation where WWE wanted to take the title off of Lesnar, but couldn't risk putting it on Reigns. The problem was that the company had spent weeks promising an epic showdown with a winner who would carry the company into the future - either the unbeatable champion or the unstoppable challenger. Giving the victory to Rollins was a cop-out ending to the most important bout of the year, despite being a WrestleMania moment.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013
