WrestleMania 34: 7 reasons to watch WWE’s April’s PPV

We’ve finally reached the end of the road to WrestleMania, and can you guess what’s there waiting for us? Use the context clues provided. That’s right, it’s WrestleMania, and it’s the 34th edition of the annual super-event. Normally in this previewing space we give you five reasons to watch whatever WWE pay-per-view we’re talking about, but this is Mania, bay-bay. Let’s bump that to seven reasons — one for each hour long the show is!

Oh, yeah, WrestleMania is super long, just an fyi. If you don’t want to watch seven hours of the show, tune in at 7 p.m. ET for the official start time: the pre-show will have matches on it, and that will kick off at 5 p.m. ET on the WWE Network.

Charlotte Flair is the most dominant women’s champion WWE has going. Between the WWE Women’s Championship, RAW Women’s title, and SmackDown Women’s belt — the one she currently holds — she’s a six-time Women’s Champ. Charlotte isn’t just where she is because she’s the daughter of Ric Flair — she’s incredible in the ring, knows how to tell a story, and while she’s currently playing a face, is one hell of a heel.

Asuka, on the other hand, is 256-0 in her WWE career. That includes NXT, WWE, house shows, everything. WWE made a big deal of her being the longest reigning champion of any kind of NXT, as well as for breaking Goldberg’s record undefeated streak — something even Goldberg himself complimented the Empress of Tomorrow on. Now she’s the first-ever winner of the Women’s Royal Rumble, and she chose to challenge Charlotte, the only other performer out there who can challenge Asuka’s claim to the throne for the women’s division.

Both performers are the face right now, but they’re also both capable of thriving as a heel — it will not only be fascinating to watch the match in general, but to see what directions and further storylines come out of this matchup. If Charlotte can’t beat Asuka, then who can?

Carmella still has the Money in the Bank briefcase with a guaranteed contract for a title shot. I’m just going to leave this here in case it turns out I called her shot a month ago, yeah?

Carmella taking advantage of an exhausted Asuka, who just fought Charlotte as hard as she could until she barely has anything left? People would be furious at Carmella, and that’s why it would work! Imagine how much hate self-important Carmella would get with the constant and obnoxious reminders that she did what no one else in WWE has been able to do, even as she took the most cowardly, path-of-least-resistance way possible to get there? Inaugural Money in the Bank match winner Edge would be so proud of the opportunism.

Plus, then the temptation to have Ronda Rousey break Asuka’s streak at next year’s WrestleMania will have been removed. I’m just looking out for y’all.

Daniel Bryan is going to wrestle! At WrestleMania! He’s been gone for over two years as an in-ring performer, and it was assumed he’d never be back once he announced his retirement. Or, at least, not back in a WWE ring — they can’t keep him retired once his contract is up, no matter how many concussions or neck injuries he’s suffered.

Bryan is cleared, though, and WWE is going to be keeping a close on his medicals after matches going forward to make sure he stays healthy enough to perform. He’ll be taking on Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens alongside tag-team partner Shane McMahon, in a story that makes almost no sense at all!

The sheer joy generated from Bryan’s return will power us all through that, however. It’s just a shame that WWE keeps treating Shane McMahon as if he’s the good guy in this, because his character has been a complete power-mad dipshit, while Owens and Zayn have been in the right even as they’ve been bad guys, and Bryan was in their corner throughout. Until he wasn’t, which led to the duo beating him down once he was medically cleared, giving us this match.

True justice would be Bryan accepting this beatdown from Owens and Zayn as part of a long-con to get Shane into the ring so that Bryan could lay hands on the guy who has made his job significantly harder for months and months, and the crowd realizing through Bryan’s actions that yes, it is Shane O’Mac who is in the wrong and is the bad guy, and Bryan, Owens, and Zayn deserve to be cheered for standing up against the injustices of their patronizingly paternal corporate overlord, but I’m also not going to hold my breath on the Right Story being told here. I will, however, settle for Daniel Bryan being back on my television as a wrestler. Even if I do still have some emotions to work through on that note.

We know this isn’t the first women’s Battle Royal at WrestleMania, WWE. We also understand you want everyone to forget about the first one, in which you had Santino Marella dress up as a woman and win to become Miss WrestleMania. Huh, I wonder why fans were so furious at WWE’s creative team when James Ellsworth won the first women’s Money in the Bank ladder match for Carmella last summer?

But enough about reminding you that wrestling companies can and will change their history at will to suit their story: what matters right now is that WWE is going to have a women’s battle royal, and it sure sounds like the kind of thing we should get used to seeing. Considering WWE has the two women’s titles on the main roster and no secondary or tag titles to speak of, maybe the winner of this will become a bigger deal than the winner of the men’s version of this match. Or maybe they’ll just drift through life aimlessly for a year, just like the men! Now that’s real equality.

Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m actually super looking forward to this match — battle royals, in general, rule, and it’ll be exciting to see WWE put one on for the women that isn’t just about eating up five minutes of time — and I swear if they don’t let Becky Lynch win a match at a goddamn pay-per-view yet again I am going to be mad on and offline about it.

Honestly the only real active downside to the Women’s Battle Royal — other than I don’t get to call it something shortened like I do for the men, where I refer to the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal as “The ‘Dre,” is that Sasha Banks and Bayley are here instead of in a solo match against each other. This beats shoving them on the pre-show, though: maybe we’ll get our one-on-one in a major space down the road.

Undertaker still hasn’t answered John Cena’s challenge, and I love that they’re leaving this as a mystery because there is so much more going on at Mania 34 that they don’t exactly need to openly sell Taker vs. Cena, one of the most anticipated possible matches at Mania for either in their careers, in order to succeed.

I will not love it if the result is Undertaker showing up to answer the challenge by attacking Cena, setting a match for a later date. WrestleMania is for bringing feuds to a close, y’all, and I demand closure on Taker/Cena. Taker beating Cena in a match and sending Cena down a road of self-doubt that inevitably leads to a record-breaking world title? Cool. Undertaker pantsing Cena at WrestleMania and growling “Rest in peace” over him like it was a segment on RAW? That will not stand.

If we get the match, though, man. It’ll be good for Taker to be able to wrestle with both of his hips intact so we can avoid last year’s disaster — one no one could really do anything about it by the time it was happening, Taker just hadn’t healed up. And it’ll be good that it’s Cena in there with him, both for historical purposes and the continuation of their feud that’s been on ice for years, and the fact we can all trust John to be gentle with a guy who got his start in wrestling two years before I was born.

A.J. Styles rules, Shinsuke Nakamura has the capacity to rule when he isn’t wrestling Dolph Ziggler, and these two already had a match in New Japan that ruled. The build to this has been great, which you can not say about a lot of what Styles has done during his title reign nor about any of Nakamura’s previous SmackDown feuds. I’m going to keep it short here, because there’s not much else to say other than two dudes with intense in-ring and out-of-ring chemistry are going to try to destroy the other in order to win the WWE Championship.

Sometimes, that’s all you need.

It’s WrestleMania, so there are plenty of options for this last spot. So, I’m just going to name them all!

This... worked out better than I thought it would. Jinder Mahal has some good ideas, but society doesn’t understand him and he has maybe gone a little overboard trying to force them to understand. Rusev has grown to love the people as they have grown to love him, and wants to take care of them. Bobby Roode mostly cares about Bobby Roode, but he’s also aware that if everyone is dead there isn’t anyone left to worship him. And Randy Orton cares mostly about Randy Orton, but also does not care if everyone is dead or if he is the one who killed them.

Viva la Rusev, is what I’m saying here. If he wins, April 9 will forever be known as Rusev Day. April 10, too. And so on.