This morning a WrestleMania 36 speculative card made its round on social media. The result wasn’t necessarily a feeding frenzy as many would expect, but a “Have they (WWE) lost their d— minds?” type of reaction.
It sounds strange, but that type of reaction has been what the WWE has gotten from fans on a regular basis lately. Their recent claims to have “dominated ratings” in 2019 while having their lowest scored year in a long time if not ever has only added more fuel to the fire.
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Typical leak
The leak itself is no surprise as the WWE has allowed the Granddaddy of Them All events to be leaked by now. It was always a way to build hype for WrestleMania and the road leading to it that begins with the Royal Rumble.
The WWE has been unusually secretive about their WrestleMania plans this year. The most likely reason is AEW’s existence, and it’d give them a chance to come up with their own card to hold opposite WrestleMania. AEW has said they don’t intend to compete head to head like that, but there’s little chance Vince McMahon believes that. It’s better safe than sorry.
The other reason is they probably don’t know what they’re doing yet. At least, nothing’s written in stone. Things can change too fast, and it’s likely the WWE also wants to further gauge fans reaction to superstars like Roman Reigns (he’s finally losing some of the negativity from his pre-leukemia diagnosis) and possible angles. It basically gives them time to work things out.
And work things out is needed if this is real.
The Card
As many of us have feared, the WrestleMania 36 speculative card is better suited to another pay-per-view, so there’s definitely room and time to change things.
And here we are:
Brock Lesnar vs. Tyson Fury for the WWE Championship
Bray Wyatt vs. Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan for the Universal Championship
Becky Lynch vs. Shayna Baszler for the WWE Raw Women’s Championship
Samoa Joe, Kevin Owens and Big Show vs. Seth Rollins and AOP in a Hardcore Tag Team Match
Bobby Lashley and Lana vs. Rusev and Liv Morgan in a Mixed Tag Team Match
Okay, the Universal Championship, Hardcore Tag Team, and Raw Women’s Championship matches are definitely good ones, but the others feel like they’d draw out the storylines too long for. The Tyson Fury and Brock Lesnar has the potential to be awful, so it may be better to pretend it was never mentioned. Fury’s lack of in ring skills would do far more damage than not, and it’s hard to imagine him doing better than against Braun Strowman at Crown Jewel at the moment. In another six months to a year, anything’s possible.
This does beg the question if those are slated as top matches, how bad will the rest be?
Is it fake?
This is the closet hope for many fans that saw this, I think, and websites took the time to point out it is fake and why.
According to wrestlingnews.co, the leaked card is fake because Tyson Fury is not currently under a deal to appear, and Daniel Bryan is not listed anywhere as part of the main event. Also, the fact the WWE is remaining tight-lipped about their plans instead of already releasing the news is another reason.
These are all viable reasons that make it hard to argue against the logic. With today’s technology, it’d be easy for a fan to recreate a card similar to CM Punk’s recently leaked WrestleMania 30 card.
Still, they miss the idea that this could be a test run, a first draft of the top five matches to gauge fans’ reactions. It’s no different than the typical survey testing done with audiences of other shows and movies. The thing is, is there any way to really know?
