THIS Is The Same Mistake WWE Makes Every WrestleMania Season

Dean Ambrose
WWE.com

In 2017, to build AJ Styles Vs. Shane McMahon, Styles smashed McMahon's head through a car window. This effectively built the grudge premise of their programme, but it was still cliched. What's telling is that The Miz and Maryse Vs. John Cena and Nikki Bella storyline was the most entertaining of 2017's lot, and the parody of intensity was absent altogether. Plotted with a pitch-perfect levity, Miz ethered Cena's robotic personal life in quality, genuinely funny parody segments. They served to entertain the crowd and strengthen Cena's resolve for physical retribution. WWE built anticipation for the physical meeting by not scripting Cena and Miz in extravagantly dumb and intensified scenarios that could only ever render a collar-and-elbow tie-up totally quaint and anticlimactic in comparison.

2016's theoretical blood feud was almost offensively bad and cartoonish. Terry Funk handed Chekhov's chainsaw to Dean Ambrose for use in his match with Brock Lesnar, only, he was never going to use it. WWE built a match - that people genuinely thought at the time could represent Ambrose's WrestleMania 13 moment - with a sight gag. Nobody thought Ambrose would ever use it, but the visual symbolised a sense of ghoulish excitement ahead of the match that WWE had no intention of satiating. These, ultimately, are professional wrestling matches, and WWE all too often complicate the crux of them with storytelling devices that are in no way germane to what any of this is.

Obviously, this hasn't happened during every WrestleMania season - it's f*cking WrestleMania, it didn't become a beloved, enduring institution by being sh*t - but this nonsensical, tacked-on bombast stretches back years further.

CONT'D...(4 of 5)

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Contributor
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!