You know, when you think about the “Showcase of the Immortals” or the “Grand Daddy of Them All” or the “Super Bowl of Sports Entertainment” or [fill in marketing cliché here], you think of a great many moments of greatness and infamy. At the first Wrestlemania, we got to see Liberace dance the can-can with the Rockettes. At WM III, Hogan slammed Andre. At WM V, Roddy Piper sprayed Morton Downey Jr. with a fire extinguisher. At WM XI, Lawrence Taylor “wrestled” (today, he would have failed the Wellness Policy). At WM XIII, Bret made Steve Austin a star by bleeding him like a pig. At WM X8, Hulk Hogan turned babyface against The Rock in a way no one thought would happen. Last year’s Wrestlemania featured a dress-up contest between Triple H and John Cena.

You get the idea… there have been a great many moments over the years that have made us all either collectively roll our eyes or jump off the couch in amazement. Looking at this year’s card, there doesn’t seem to be much at the moment that is going to make this show very memorable. Now, you can’t judge the book by its cover, nor second-guess what the show is going to be like a month out, but they’re not really marketing this thing very well. Look at the card so far:

WWE Champion John Cena defends against Shawn Michaels. Michaels is quite obviously being fed to Cena to keep him over, give him a credible challenger that will draw money, and give Shawn something to do while Triple H recovers from injury. Then again, if not Shawn, who else would you put in the slot on the Raw side? Edge, who feuded with Cena for most of 2006? Randy Orton, the man of a thousand chinlocks?

I know that Undertaker put over Cena before he was drafted to Raw a couple of years ago, but I would rather have seen Cena against a heel Undertaker to break his streak of Wrestlemania undefeatedness instead of the match we’re going to get. Michaels will probably make the match more watchable than others, but there are better “spectacle” matches that they could have picked. I also have never liked the “enemies as tag champions” thing that they’re doing right now on Raw.

World Champion Batista defends against The Undertaker. I would seriously rather watch paint dry than watch Batista “wrestle”. He’s Brock Lesnar with a tan. His range of dramatic ability to sell a storyline ranges from yelling to yelling louder. They might have tried to give this feud with the Undertaker some life by turning DAVE heel at No Way Out, but that lasted all of about 10 seconds when he showed up on Smackdown that week saying, “Hey, I’m just here to compete, man.” Unless it’s a “Who’s got more ink?” contest, this is no contest. Smackdown will strike out this year with a lousy WM main event.

The Battle of the Billionaires: McMahon vs. Trump. Okay, you’re Donald Trump. Your TV show’s ratings have been steadily declining. You get in a media fight with Rosie O’Donnell over your drunk beauty pageant winner. So, how do you repair your image? Of course, you call your old buddy Vince McMahon and tell him that you want to face off with him at Wrestlemania. Let’s go one better, and say that the loser has to shave his head. Oh, wait… that’s not enough? Let’s throw UMAGA and LASHLEY into the match. THAT will pop the buy rate!

I understand that the premise of the match is around the three big personalities involved (Trump, McMahon, and now Stone Cold Steve Austin), but couldn’t they have done better than throwing in a couple of scrubs like Umaga and Bobby Lashley? Just because they have belts doesn’t mean anybody thinks they’re stars, and just because they’ll be in the same ring with the three people that everyone’s paying to see will mean that they’ll get a rub off it, because it will turn into the “Stone Cold love-in turn the clock back to ‘99″ festival. Samoa No had a decent run with Cena, but he will be booked to look weak against Austin. If Lashley has to put over Austin, it will make ECW look like even more of a joke than it is now.

Unless Austin will suddenly decide to start working full-time again, it is not worth it to put him over two young full-timers that could use the rub for being a referee. If Vince had such a mad-on to be in Wrestlemania again this year, I don’t know why they didn’t put him against Mick Foley like they looked like they were going to do.

Money in the Bank. Right now, this is the only match I would pay to see, but it sure ain’t worth $50 by itself. It’s the car wreck match to replace all those TLC matches, but to finally give it some sort of importance.

WWE Women’s Champion Melina vs. Ashley. This is obviously a Playboy publicity grab, and I doubt there will be any accidental nudity for all you 12-year-olds at home to Tivo. Those days are over, even the days of Mae Young dropping her top (thankfully).

It looks like they will also possibly have Khali vs. Kane, which will basically be the same as Khali vs. Taker from last year. It also looks like Chris Benoit may defend the U.S. Championship against MVP, which would probably equally un-thrilling. Benoit could carry a broomstick to a good match, but I’m sure that somebody will want to book the Power Ranger to take the belt to the disgust of everyone else in the free world. The undercard rarely sells this show, even when it’s a good match (remember when Edge and Booker feuded over a shampoo commercial?), so when you look at the top of the card and the reasons that WWE is giving us to give them $50, just because it has the name “Wrestlemania” on it isn’t going to cut it this year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 8:49 am and is filed under Russ Ray's Rasslin' Ring, The Russ, Wrestling. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.