At some point, Cena will tie Flair's record of 16 titles.

If he hasn't done this by the Rumble, I'd have to think he'll be the favorite to win it in order to make Cena's chase to tie Flair as the main story.

If Lesnar isn't in the rumble match itself, who does he wrestle at the royal rumble ppv? With limited dates I don't see them building a new credible storyline for him between now and then. So, it makes me think he is in the rumble.

If Lesnar IS in the rumble match (and DOESNT win), the person who eliminates him is almost a lock to be his WM opponent. The list of credible opponents to Lesnar is small, the list of those who would eliminate him and set up a mania match is smaller. So who eliminates Lesnar? Rock? HHH? Daniel Bryan? BatistaAirport.jpg? I don't think they will do a Cena-Lesnar rematch.

I would like to see them do a shield triple threat match at Mania for the title. It's too bad they didn't give Reigns the briefcase or it would be super simple, have Ambrose win the Rumble and let Reigns cash in at the beginning of the Ambrose-Rollins mania match to make it a triple threat. Or, just announce he is cashing in that night in advance so they could bill it as a triple threat.

Thinking about it some more, I suppose it could be as simple as Reigns beating Rollins for the title at the Royal Rumble (that way you avoid the fans booing the **** out of him winning the Rumble), and Ambrose winning the rumble match. Rollins invokes his rematch clause at WM making it a triple threat.

If Shield does a 3-way for the WWE Title, no chance it's the main event. Other than the IWC, that main event will not draw a lick.

Awesome

If we look at it from the perspective of the goal being to get Roman Reigns over with the Wrestlemania crowd, I think the best scenario is to have him beat John Cena. 1) The crowd will be willing to boo Cena. 2) Cena comes through in big matches.

If we work backwards from there, we decide if Reigns goes into Wrestlemania as champion or challenger. For him to go in as the challenger, that means he has to win back-to-back Rumbles, which feels like a bit too much and likely to get fans upset because they feel he is being pushed down their throats. So, it feels like he probably has to go in as the champ.

So, how do you transition the belt to Reigns? I'd lean towards having Reigns beat Rollins at the Royal Rumble, then have him win a rematch at Fastlane in a Shield three-way in which he pins Rollins but makes Ambrose look like a guy in line for a future title shot.

The fan reaction to Reigns winning is key. If WWE does it right and Reigns cements his position as a true main eventer who can be more than just the Samoan Diesel, that may clear the space for the angle people have been waiting for, the John Cena heel turn, as he is so desperate to get the title back that he is willing to resort to tactics he was unwilling to use before.

A scenario to have Reigns go into Wrestlemania as the challenger would be to have Cena beat Rollins at the Rumble and Rollins finding a way to enter the Rumble match and win it. He then gets goaded into putting up his spot at Wrestlemania and loses it to Reigns at Fastlane.

Kayfabe wise, why would Rollins want to invoke his rematch in a three way dance scenario there by reducing his chances of winning. There is only two ways a Shield three way at WM would happen. Either Reigns and Ambrose would have to be the last two in the Rumble and hit the floor simultaneously. Or they do away with the clause that the winner of the Rumble gets the title shot at WM, and then the Authority books that match. I highly doubt they will go the dual winner route again, and while I like the idea of doing away with the WM main event clause, I don't see that going anywhere anytime soon

It's hard to say since I read so much IWC stuff that I'm not sure what "typical" fans would like. The IWC would love it. But wasn't the Shield pretty over at it's peak? And Ambrose got a huge pop when he "won the title" before the Dusty finish last year.

Well, the authority could force Rollins to invoke his rematch clause at WM since it would be best for business, obv.

I think its obvious we're heading towards Bray vs Kane for the main event of WM32. Winner keeps the Undertaker.

Why would the IWC love a Shield 3 way? Only one of them is actually good at wrestling.

Yeah, I don't understand it either. For me the only reason to have it at Mania is to get Reigns and Ambrose out of the way in one match.

Rumor going around that Young Bucks have signed with LU and then they posted this.

At least we can rule out AJPW and NOAH! Seems like LU as that's the only capitalized one. But whatever, their tag team work has really gone down from 2011-2013. They still have flashes of greatness but it seems like they run through the motions too much now.

Yeah totally agree that their recent matches have been a little routine and that's why I'm hoping they signed with LU because that might make them change it up a little. NXT would be cool for about a week. Does a LU contract keep them out of NJPW?

Also read that ADR is still the AAA champion, I wonder how that will play out. I tried watching that recent Triplemania and it was an absolute mess. Was funny seeing Sin Cara almost knock himself out during the end spot though.

I would assume it keeps them out of NJPW. That's really a shame as well as the tag division there is already ****.

In more Lucha news:
Found the bolded pretty interesting.

edit: Did you see Mistico got fired from AAA for having beef with ADR only for ADR to leave like 2 weeks later. Funny stuff.

I kinda remember ADR being pretty "meh" and even boring through his first run. Why would the company feel like they absolutely needed him back so much? Actually I never really understood why he was pushed so hard the first time around.

I read that about ADR. Pretty sure he could have made big money in Japan considering those fans knew about him before the American ones did.

Mistico's whole career is just one big botch.

Maffew posted this on twitter. Pretty crazy.

I missed ADR's earlier run. But he seems to be the kind of guy Vince would like. Tall, looks like a wrestler, can appeal to a growing demographic. Plus, signing him affects WWE's competition.

He was pushed like Reigns except nobody outside of people who watched Mexican wrestling knew him and wasn't in a tag team first. Much like Reigns, he has no charisma. They put him to the top of the card and despite getting no reaction during a Big Gold belt run, they gave him the main belt a few months later. He was terrible.

He is a lot better than Reigns. I think he is fairly ok playing the annoying heel. He is never going to be excellent, but in terms of comparing him to other people on the roster he is better than a good amount.

Made the comparison during his last run with the company, but he really seems like this generation's Jeff Jarrett. Objectively he's able to do some things well and isn't really terrible at anything, but he's totally uninteresting and almost never gets more than a tepid crowd reaction. His ratio of push to crowd reaction is probably among the worst I've ever seen.

After ADR left WWE he came out and did a promo in ROH and showed so much more charisma than he ever did in WWE.

Meltzer is making it sound like WWE really broke the bank to get Del Rio to come back; he even said he doesn't think they will keep him heel long term because he is being paid so much. So I can't really blame ADR for going back even though they probably will misuse him again.

He did send a tweet after Ultima Lucha that he wasn't happy with his spot on the card (first match of Pt 2, 5th from the top)

This is a really good comparison.

If true, I really don't get this at all. Does he increase their value with the Mexican population that much?