THIS Is The Same Mistake WWE Makes Every WrestleMania Season

Becky Lynch Charlotte Flair Ronda Rousey
WWE.com

The Road has become literal by positioning its key players in very contrived vehicular angles, and in 2019, with Charlotte Flair interjected in the picture, the three women kicked the sh*t out of one another in a police car fisticuffs angle on the go-home show. Loosely-plotted but well-performed, the bombast of it all just about excused its contrived premise.

Kofi Kingston was afflicted by the same odds-stacking over on SmackDown in a series of diminished Gauntlet matches. All too often, WWE arrives at the perfect WrestleMania story, the thrust of which peaks in a fantastic, early segment, and scrambling, creative proceeds to go batsh*t crazy on tropes and visuals that only serve to dilute it.

In 2018, WWE warped reality to an extent that Vince Russo couldn't conceive by promoting Roman Reigns, stigmatised as the office favourite, as the office enemy. Mr. McMahon was compelled to suspend him after a heated confrontation, in which Reigns questioned the absence of Brock Lesnar. They had the temerity to script Reigns to say that Lesnar was McMahon's "boy". A simple story of redemption and ascension was ruined - they shouldn't have ran it, and they still ran it into the ground - with the least credible attempt to blur the lines in the history of professional wrestling. It was, again, a totally unnecessary story element that must have felt, to them, in some way lurid and compelling.

These people are selectively magnetised to vehicles between February and April. It's an epidemic.

CONT'D...(3 of 5)

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Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!