Making sense of the Wrestlemania 32 card Heels & Faces

Wrestlemania this year is speculated to be the biggest in history, on par to break the long-standing attendance record of over 93,000 people set at the event back in 1987. Set to be held at the AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas with a seating capacity of over 100,000 WWE has the opportunity to set the stage for the grandest event of them all!

However, the roadblocks on the way to creating history have been popping up quite late in the day, in the form of injuries and other things. With just a month left to the biggest show of the year, WWE was in a dire position with regards to storylines, star matches and special attractions. To draw a crowd that size, WWE has to pull out all the stops and put on a stellar card, which will be remembered for a long time to come.

Not known to throw in the towel with anything, WWE chairman Vince McMahon and the creative staff figured out a solution. In the RAW following Fastlane, Shane McMahon made his shocking return and was put in a match against The Undertaker for Wrestlemania 32. Rounding off the top half of the card is a WWE World title match between Roman Reigns and Triple H and a no-holds-barred grudge match between Brock Lesnar and Dean Ambrose.

While both matches have the potential to be great and sound exciting in the first glance, a closer look tells us that panic booking may be at work by the WWE, owing to the pressures of creating fresh match-ups that draw fresh crowds, outside of the regular Monday Night RAW audiences. 

For starters, both announced matches have popular babyfaces going against each other, with very little history of dislike between them. Secondly, from a believability standpoint, the matches have very little credibility to bank on. Ambrose, while a good wrestler, has had no momentum whatsoever with a less-than-impressive win-loss record in the past year and more. To expect him to do anything, but take a beating at the hands of Brock Lesnar, who is the most dominant performer on the roster, is a hard-sell at this point. To make matters worse, Lesnar has rag dolled him in every interaction they have had in the past month.
In the second match announced, you have a non-wrestler Shane McMahon taking on the most durable legend in the wrestling business, in a battle inside the ‘most insidious structure in WWE history’. To make matters worse, Shane hasn’t even been on TV, forget wrestling, for over half a decade.

One has to assume that the depleted roster and lack of star-power, along with the inability to call on former big names (Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, The Rock) to save the day may have forced Vince McMahon and the creative to pull in a last minute trick fest to grab maximum attention or divert attention from the real issues at hand.
While the industry is way more exposed than it needs to be, thanks to the need for breaking the 4th wall for WWE Network, creating stars and getting audiences invested in ongoing storylines has become incredibly difficult.
However, as fans, let’s hope that like WM 31, WWE pulls off a bag of tricks that will send us home satisfied, even if we may enter the event with several questions ringing in our heads.