WWE WrestleMania 37 is scheduled for April 10 and April 11, 2021 from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida. Follow along here for spoilers and information on the event's card, lineup of matches and news regarding the pay-per-view.
The following are my predictions for the WWE WrestleMania 2021 PPV. Check back for WrestleMania XXXVII results and review coverage here when the time comes.
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| WWE WrestleMania 2021 Spoilers |
Universal Championship Match: Roman Reigns (c) vs. Edge vs. Daniel Bryan
If Edge wins, it's because they want to pop the crowd and he'll drop it soon after back to Roman Reigns. There's a very good chance Reigns retains the title, though. In both scenarios, I think Daniel Bryan takes the pin. By no means can I imagine Bryan wins the title. I think he's there to help the quality of the match and to make sure he isn't forgotten about for the card, rather than to be the one walking out with the belt. Right now, I'm 51% for Edge winning and 49% for Reigns retaining, but I could be swayed either way.
PREDICTION: Edge wins the title.
WWE Championship Match: Bobby Lashley (c) vs. Drew McIntyre
I'm going to level with you here. This is not the WrestleMania match I think anyone was hoping for a few months ago. There's no way this was something WWE was working toward over the past year, and that bugs me.
That's not a slight toward Lashley or McIntyre. No. I'm a fan of both of them. The problem isn't what they bring to the table, but how they've been set up for this match, which has been rushed and done all wrong.
It's going to backfire, too.
The idea in mind is clearly that WWE wants McIntyre to win the title from a dominant heel so he can get his pop that he didn't get from a lack of a crowd last year. However, what isn't being factored in enough from what I can see, and certainly hasn't been sorted out to prevent a problem, is that people are glad Lashley won the title. They see it as a triumphant moment, rather than something to boo. It took him 17 years to become champion and people are happy about that.
The Miz was where all the heat went with taking the title from McIntyre, not Lashley. So when push comes to shove, either McIntyre wins this and people boo that Lashley dropped the title so fast, or McIntyre loses and that defeats the entire purpose.
I'm still nitpicking this for being a rematch from last year, too, instead of something different. I'd still give a thumbs down to how a lot of this was rushed, with no No. 1 contender's match at Fastlane, the hot potato situation at Elimination Chamber and so on.
This is not a success just because it has two successful people in it. If that were the case, Undertaker and Kane against D-Generation X at Crown Jewel would have been the best match ever, right?
I'm also convinced WWE would have gone with Brock Lesnar in Lashley's role if they could have gotten him back and just did a full rerun, but couldn't, so Lashley was the backup plan. I have zero faith this was planned anywhere earlier than the start of February.
PREDICTION: Drew McIntyre wins.
SmackDown Women's Championship Match: Sasha Banks (c) vs. Bianca Belair
WWE sure took a long enough time to announce the clear and obvious choice, given how Belair didn't give any indication whatsoever that she would challenge anyone other than Sasha Banks, right? Every week, I continue to think that this feud is being wasted. It's been awful and it continually doesn't get any better. The fact that it's revolved around Carmella's sommelier Reginald more than anything else is astonishing and there was no need to have these two fight for the tag titles at both Elimination Chamber and Fastlane.
Both Banks and Belair are far, far better than what this "storyline" (if you can call it that) have presented them. When the bell rings, they should do a great job. However, just because they have a great match (hopefully) doesn't mean they had a great feud, as getting to that point has been a chore to say the least. Keep that in mind.
PREDICTION: It seems like Bianca Belair should win, right? So WWE will probably have Sasha Banks retain, just to throw people off. However, I have to still officially predict Belair will win the title.
Raw Tag Team Championship Match: The New Day (c) vs. AJ Styles and Omos
The New Day and AJ Styles are fantastic, it will be interesting seeing Omos in the ring for the first time, and you can't argue that this isn't a fresh match. It's significantly better than if this were just The Hurt Business against Lucha House Party or something along those lines. Also, putting someone as high up on the totem pole as AJ Styles means more attention is brought to the tag titles, which is rare for WrestleMania.
I'm not 100% in love with this, but I like it and it gets a thumbs up from me.
PREDICTION: AJ Styles and Omos win the titles.
Raw Women's Championship Match: Asuka (c) vs. Rhea Ripley
I have some pros and cons about this:
- I fully expect Charlotte Flair to be added to this match.
- If this stays just Ripley against Asuka, then Ripley wins the title.
- If Flair gets added, there's a good chance Flair wins the title, but an even better chance Ripley pins Asuka, and CERTAINLY not Flair.
- Both Asuka and Rhea deserve better than the way this has been approached. An entire year went by with WWE pushing Asuka to the sidelines. She should have had a better run and a more serious feud for WrestleMania. Likewise, Ripley never should have dropped the NXT Women's Championship to Flair last year at WrestleMania, nor should she have just came out and challenged Asuka 3 weeks before WrestleMania. With the way Bianca Belair against Sasha Banks has shaped out to be a terrible build, Ripley probably should have just won the Royal Rumble.
- I don't want to see Ripley lose anymore to Flair. I want Ripley to win this title and also beat Flair. She needs to win against everyone to be cemented as a top star. She can't just be the second-best that Flair stands above.
Here's hoping WWE stumbles into success with this and both Asuka and Ripley aren't in a bad spot any time soon, and Flair is used to the best of her talents (which are immense) in a way that doesn't degrade either of those two. I don't think any of this was planned or executed well, despite how talented all three women are.
Bad Bunny and Damian Priest vs. The Miz and John Morrison
WWE went ahead and basically did this, then took a detour, then came back around to the feud on March 15th. I had thought there was a chance Awesome Truth would reform since John Morrison suffered an injury and R-Truth was still going after the 24/7 Championship. Then, Bad Bunny just flat out gave R-Truth the title, so there goes that.
Thankfully, this has come back around to being a tag team match. That means Damian Priest can stay in most of the match and anchor it, while Bad Bunny can do a spot or two that he's hopefully practiced considerably.
Celebrities in general mean nothing to me. I've never worshiped any of them and I don't get why famous people get such immense glorification. But I understand WWE trying to capitalize on the media coverage they'll get with Bad Bunny's appearance here, so I don't condemn them for this, even if I couldn't care less about Bad Bunny in general.
PREDICTION: Bad Bunny and Damian Priest win.
Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt
I couldn't care less. I've seen them fight at WrestleMania. I've seen
them fight in the past few months. I do not care and slapping "Firefly
Fun House Match" in front of it doesn't change my mind, if they decide to do that. Nor can I even say I'm excited about a cinematic match, as I've disliked nearly every single one of those.
The Fiend is just Bray Wyatt with different ring gear. He doesn't wrestle different enough to wow me. Both are heels, so that's not even a good dynamic. I can't think of anything that would incorporate Alexa Bliss here that would be awe-inspiring, as they've more than exhausted their creative pool with that, since all she does is giggle and skip, lately, instead of continually building on the character with new elements.
Lame. And they'll think it's the equivalent of a true Undertaker vs Kane type scenario, which is isn't.
PREDICTION: Bray Wyatt wins.
Steel Cage Match: Braun Strowman vs. Shane McMahon
This feud has been terrible. It's literally revolved around Shane McMahon randomly deciding to bully Braun Strowman by perpetually calling him stupid and nothing else. Awful.
I'm disappointed they decided to go with a steel cage match for this. I don't think that suits their styles, as both are better brawlers being able to go out of the ring and use weapons. In fact, this is kind of the complete opposite of what they should have done, because now, you can't even have Strowman run around the ring and do the whole train thing. Baffling decision that I think will backfire.
PREDICTION: Braun Strowman wins, unless the game plan is to have him toss Shane McMahon off the cage and lose on a technicality.
Cesaro vs. Seth Rollins
In theory, if these two just go out there
and have the best match they can have, it should be great. They're not
only talented wrestlers, but great friends, so passion and skill
shouldn't be any problems at all. I'm looking forward to it!
PREDICTION: Cesaro wins.
Intercontinental Championship Nigerian Drum Fight: Big E (c) vs. Apollo Crews
I'm a fan of both, but here's my problem: They've done this match SIX TIMES already since January. How am I supposed to be excited to see it again, especially when there isn't even a gimmick to spice things up? If they weren't going to build something better in the meantime or pivot to something new, and just wanted to take the easy route, then, I'd have rather seen a "toss everyone together in a ladder match" scenario, as uninspired as that is. And if they knew they wanted to do this at WrestleMania, they never should have had so many matches ahead of this.
Update from April 2: Thankfully, WWE went ahead and added a stipulation to this. Unfortunately, it sounds like it's just a No DQ match with a different name to it. But hey, that's still better than nothing. That makes this go from something I had practically zero interest in to something that I have a least a tiny bit of interest in. It's still overkill and it should have been done months ago and not taken seven matches to get to this point.
PREDICTION: Apollo Crews has lost every single time, so either he finally wins it, or this is just the nth rinse and repeat with Big E retaining and it was completely pointless to do so many times in a row.
Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn
I can't imagine this was the plan until mid-February. But hey, these two work great together. We've seen it a million times, but it's an undercard match and maybe they have some tricks up their sleeves.
United States Championship Match: Matt Riddle (c) vs. Sheamus
I was hoping Keith Lee could be involved in this as a Triple Threat, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Instead, this is just a throwaway "whatever, good enough, they're names and it's for a title and it's on the undercard so shut up and watch them wrestle" type of deal.
Again, I absolutely hate WWE's booking philosophy of doing the match already before the pay-per-view. They couldn't figure out any better way to set this up than to have Sheamus pin Riddle in a non-title match? Now, I'm less interested in seeing it, because they JUST wrestled. I would have done a No. 1 contender's match.
I would have assumed this was an easy victory (relatively) for Riddle to retain, but then, he screwed up his lines in that backstage segment with Asuka on the March 29th edition of Raw. Maybe Vince just punishes him because of that and takes the title from him so Sheamus can drop it to Keith Lee down the road.
PREDICTION: Riddle retains
Tag Team Turmoil Match: Billie Kay and Carmella vs. Natalya and Tamina vs. Ravishing Glow
(Lana and Naomi) vs. The Riott Squad (Liv Morgan and Ruby Riott) vs.
Sexy Muscle Friends (Dana Brooke and Mandy Rose)
The winning team will get a Women's Tag Team Championship title shot on Night 2.
This may or may not also include Billie Kay and Carmella. I say "may or may not" because WWE put out a graphic and an announcement that it's just the 4 other teams, yet at the exact same time, put out a graphic with Billie Kay and Carmella on it, then teased they might be added.
That may factor into the possible winning team. Carmella makes more sense to be involved if they want to play into the Reginald thing, as they've been obsessed with that for months. Otherwise, I'd assume The Riott Squad wins.
All in all, though, I have the same opinion about this either way: WWE should have made this a battle royal for the tag titles, included all the other missing stars (Bayley, Nikki Cross, Reckoning, etc) and cut down on the time.
These tag team titles have been terrible for the past year. For all the effort they put into making it eclipse the Raw Women's Championship, because they considered these storylines (like Charlotte Flair's return and temporary reign, the Lana/tables stuff, the Golden Role Models, etc) more important, you'd think the tag titles would be in a better position. Yet, they aren't.
This match isn't going to be good. The tag title match itself isn't going to be good. So WWE split the difference, and instead of having one bad match nobody ultimately will care about, it'll be two even worse matches that nobody will care about.
And you mean to tell me that's a better option than having the SmackDown Tag Team Championship on one of those nights, instead? Give me a break.
PREDICTION: The Riott Squad wins.
Women's Tag Team Championship Match: Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler (c) vs. TBD
Either they give the belts to new champions for the sake of popping a crowd, or this is just an even bigger waste of time, overall.
This page will be altered to reflect newer opinions and other adjustments whenever new information about this and surrounding events takes place, so stay tuned for more updates!
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