In spite of everything, we’re here. We made it. And WWE truly is going through with this. For better or worse, WrestleMania 36 is upon us. In a truly unprecedented circumstance, we will see WrestleMania play out over the span of two days in front of an empty arena. It’d be an understatement to say that everything is in disarray right now and WWE is no different, no matter how much they might want to pretend that the outside world can’t affect them. Perhaps the most cobbled together match-up on the show, pitting Aleister Black against Bobby Lashley out of nowhere, serves as evidence of this.
I certainly never thought that the first WrestleMania I covered as a columnist would be anything like this. But regardless. I’m Jordan Huie, you’re here at the Overtimer and you can assuredly expect the same coverage as always for this edition of WrestleMania which, if nothing else, I can safely say will be totally unlike any iteration that’s come before or any iteration that will come in the future. That all said… let’s get to the previews. I’ve got 16 matches to talk about here so I got my work cut out for me!
(Note: At the time of writing, WWE have not announced which matches will be airing on which day.)
Aleister Black vs. Bobby Lashley
I’ll give WWE atleast some benefit of the doubt on this one. I imagine Aleister Black was definitely going to be on WrestleMania in some significant form considering how consistently pushed he’s been since getting onto Raw. And I know for a fact that at one point Bobby Lashley was intended to be in a singles match at WrestleMania as well. There’s a lot of speculation but very little concrete on why Rusev disappeared from programming but he left, and the months long angle concerning his wife Lana leaving him for Lashley basically had no conclusion.
So they needed a new match for him and Black makes sense as a guy on a similar level. If circumstances were different, and they actually filled each Raw with three hours of original content each week like usual, I’m sure there’d be some angle here. But as it stands, they had to give that time to the big feuds and all this really got were a series of Aleister Black squash matches, an easy thing to make work in an empty arena.
Regardless, it feels very much like a filler match. They wanted sixteen matches to fill the seven total hours that WrestleMania is projected to be, and this was the sixteenth match. The two planned battle royals getting nixed likely has a part to play as well. But filler or not, it could be fun regardless. These two are physical, believable fighters, albeit in entirely different ways. If left to their own devices, they could have a good war. But I also wouldn’t be totally shocked if this was another instant Black Mass flash victory.
Something else to note is that I’m not sure if Lana was at this taping backing up Lashley or not. You can’t assume all-hands-on-deck for this show. A one-on-one bout would sure be ideal from my point of view. Either way, Aleister over.
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