Kane seems to be available.

Kevin Owens vs Kane vs Big Show vs Ryback.

Throw Stardust in there and make it a ladder match and it'll be the best ladder match ever witnessed!

edit: R-Truth should definitely be in as well.

Ryback goes over because they're gonna need a strong heel challenger for Reigns after WM.

For ppl who watched 10 yrs ago

Did fans push back on cena the same way they are with roman ? Any differences in how they were pushed?

Cena was already an established main eventer when he started getting noticeable backlash from crowds. He was massively over when he was pushed to the top. He initially got over as a edgy heel, just like Rock and Austin. No idea why they wouldn't try it with Reigns.

Yeah, Cena was actually turned by the fans when his rapping gimmick got over. Then of course, they abandoned it and he became what the fans hated.

That rapping gimmick definitely had an upper midcard ceiling IMO.

Yeah the rapping gimmick peaked and it was definitely time turn him, little did we know we were getting 10 years of Cena > anything else.

My impression was that in culture in general people who more or less lived Cena's rapper gimmick were perceived as being less cool every year around that time, so Cena's character was likely to be less and less cool every year if they stayed with it.

Between Reigns, Cena's US title open challenge, and other factors, it is clear now that the problem all those years with post-rapper Cena on top was not John Cena the performer, but John Cena the role. The company just has a vision of a fart and ball joke making, inconsistent selling, five moves of doom executing, odds overcoming superhero at the top.

Both very good points. Cena's rapping gimmick got over as being cool because he could basically say whatever he wanted without swearing and was actually a decent rapper. He was also doing tracks with respected MCs like Freddie Foxx and MURS so it gave him some credibility. Some of those early heel freestyles were brutal. It eventually wore thin though and we ended up with stuff like this -




Yeah this is where my frustration comes from. It felt like we were finally getting new faces/something new and then Reigns just took the Cena role and everyone else takes a backseat.

I like it how everyone is so outraged about Roman Reigns that HHH has managed to book himself to win the rumble and hold the world title through to mania without wrestling a single match in between and nobody has batted an eyelid.

That's part of the outrage though. The HHH stuff is done to try and get Reigns over.

But it's Triple H GETTING HIMSELF OVER AGAIN! 18 years of this crap... I'd rather Reigns have kept the title at the Rumble than this!

He's fooled ALL of you with this NXT crap btw... it's just a way to keep talent from places that will make money with it.

All of this.

I was specifically thinking of the second part last night. I wonder if the signing of those four NJPW guys is in good faith or done in spite because last year Kidani (NJPW's then president) had some big blow up with Vince and/or HHH about putting some NJPW on the Network. Kidani eventually came out with a public statement saying how he thought it was disingenuous and mentioned that they'd get little out of doing that because they have their own streaming service.

The main issue imo is they have booked things in a way where the only things that made sense at the Rumble were Reigns win, HHH win or something like DBry returns and wins.

I get how it can be viewed as HHH's ego wanting 1 more title reign, but as high the opinion that HHH has of himself, the plan still seems to be to just feed him to Reigns at the Mania Main Event.

I think some people also realize that Vince is the boss and he's the guy pushing Roman so hard. HHH doesn't have a damn choice this time.

HHH put over DB clean for a huge WM moment, hes bought himself some burying/self inflation credits

Let Bryan kick out of the Pedigree and then jobbed clean to just the one finisher too. He does get credit for not doing anything to save face at all in that match.

HHH last matches:

- Won RR
- Beat Sting in an overbooked mess comedy match
- Lost with evolution to the shield
- Lost with evolution to the shield
- Lost to Bryan
- Lost to Curtis Axel
- Lost to Lesnar
- Beat Lesnar
- Lost to Lesnar
- Lost to Taker
- Beat Kevin Nash
- Lost to RTruth and The Mix as partners with Punk
- Beat Punk
- Lost to Taker
- Lost to Sheamus


The only HHHshovelgif is the win vs punk, and that was bad. Fact is the dude has been properly doing his job as an old timer that still has a name: either putting over new talent (sheamus at the time/shield/shield/axel/bryan) or fighting other old timers (taker/lesnar/sting).

Guy was the worst during the reign of terror and not much better on the bookends of it, but he's not been a burial machine for actual years. That list goes back to 2010.

Beating Sting was bad and not best for business. Remember, Sting was signed for four matches. I'm far from a Sting fan but this was bad.
Beating Brock was terrible but not on the same level as Punk. There was no need for a match between the two to even happen at WM, let alone having HHH win. "Gotta get my heat back, brotha!"
The second Taker match is another match that nobody wanted that had a hilariously bad story line just to get HHH to do something epic.

I'm sure a lot of people just want him to go away. He may have an exaggerated shovel at this time but he's constantly in the top story line just to feed his ego and so others don't catapult too far ahead of him.

I don't know that there's a lot to support the notion that it's just his ego causing him to appear in big-time spots. Vince, being obsessed with using part-timers on big shows instead of actually building a whole tier of top stars, is of course going to want to use HHH the same way that he wants to be able to call on Undertaker to come back and occasionally work big shows for him.

After the ridiculous number of injuries happened, there weren't a lot of options to call on to fill the top matches at Mania. I certainly can't find much problem with his involvement this year under the circumstances.

Given the circumstances, it makes sense that HHH is in a key position at Wrestlemania. However, if the point was to make fans want to see Reigns win, or for the crowd to cheer Reigns and boo HHH, they have done even worse than usual. First Reigns beats up HHH in a relatively unprovoked attack. After that, HHH wins the Rumble in a rather strong fashion without being too flagrantly cowardly and dastardly. Then HHH comes out and again looks strong relative to Reigns, beating him up in a somewhat even fight. All the while HHH has been pandering to the crowd, and being the good guy on social media and on NXT by showing himself with the new presents he is bringing in for the audience like Nakamura. Is anyone who wasn't already in favor of Reigns going to be won over to his side by all this? WWE likes to talk about how TV ratings aren't everything and all streams of information matter. Well, counting all channels of information, HHH is portrayed as being better than Reigns.

So you're saying

Perhaps Vince got bored with just seeing his chosen ones overcome the kayfabe odds, and decided he would stack the deck against them in terms of crowd reaction as well. "Wrestlemania, can Reigns overcome the odds and be cheered??!!"

HAHAHAHAHHAHA hahahahah

ahhaha

ha

wait did that actually happen?


Also I'm fine with HHH winning the rumble given the circumstances, and was fine with him beating Sting. I've never understood why people think he should have put over an old guy with no future who was only signing on for a few show matches? It's not like he went over AJ Styles.

The only ones I have issue with on the list are him going over Bork, because it was at Mania. I don't have an issue with game taking a win there, but it should have been at a lesser PPV, and Punk, which obviously everyone feels similarly on.

There are obviously things that don't show up on the list which have been more recent though, such as his Sheamus beat down which wasn't an actual match.