7 baffling booking decisions from WrestleMania 34

Last night's WWE WrestleMania was a bit of a mixed bag. It really shouldn't have been, either. This was one of, if not the most stacked WrestleMania cards we've seen in a long time. There was no reason for them to have made so many outlandish choices.

Granted, there were a few genuinely satisfying moments, such as Nia Jax's and Seth Rollins' respective title victories, but there were several moments that left the fans scratching their heads.

So in order of appearance, here are seven booking decisions in WrestleMania 34 that made little to no sense, or were just flat-out dumb. Feel free to offer your thoughts in the comments.

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#7 Why did Naomi win the Women's Battle Royal?

Naomi won the first-ever WrestleMania Women's Battle Royal...but was she really the best choice?

Look, Naomi is a fine talent. She's one of the most athletic women on the roster and, when she's on, she's one of the best they've got...but was this really the best option?

Naomi has very little interesting about her right now. Ever since she lost her Women's Championship to Natalya at last year's SummerSlam, she has lost a great deal of relevance in the eyes of the fans.

It's kind of difficult for people to be satisfied with this decision when they've been given no reason to care about Naomi for the past eight months or so.

While these WrestleMania Battle Royals have been known to do nothing to elevate the winners' stock (see Cesaro, Baron Corbin, and Mojo Rawley), they could have done something different with the Women's Battle Royal.

They could have used this match to spearhead someone's ascent to the main roster, like Peyton Royce or Ember Moon (who wasn't even in the match, likely to sell injuries from her match with Shayna Baszler the night before), to re-establish a crestfallen hero like Bayley, or to solidify Sasha Banks as a heel.

But instead, they gave the trophy to Naomi. And they will likely do absolutely nothing with her victory, just as they've done with all the other WrestleMania Battle Royal winners...except hopefully not "Woken" Matt Hardy. Please give him something interesting to do.

#6 Why did Asuka tap out?

Asuka's winning streak had to end someday...but was this really the best way to do it?

This match was fantastic. It may have been the greatest women's wrestling match of all time. That said, the match's ending was hard to grasp.

For over two years, Asuka has been trucking her way through the entire women's roster, both in NXT and in WWE. She had never been pinned, never tapped out, never lost her NXT Women's Championship, and she seemed unbeatable....seemed.

Last night, Charlotte made Asuka tap out via the Figure-8 Leglock, thus ending the longest winning streak in WWE history. Now, the fact that Asuka's streak ended is not the problem - it's how it ended that's the problem.

Firstly, tapping out inherently makes an opponent appear weak, which damages a lot of Asuka's mystique. Secondly, Charlotte technically didn't lock the submission in entirely. While this was a masterful bit of selling, she was bridging with only one arm.

One would think that a missing arm would take some of the pressure off of the hold, or at least make it easier to reverse. Third, is anyone else bothered by the fact that Asuka lost in her first championship opportunity on the main roster?

She's been built as this "unstoppable force" for so long now, and now suddenly she can't win the big one? Fourth, the promo they had Asuka cut after she lost was emasculating; perhaps even worse for her image than the loss itself.

Fifth, if Charlotte is supposed to be a face, this isn't exactly a way to get people to continue cheering for her. Sixth, this would have been a perfect opportunity to have Carmella cash in, and it's a shame WWE didn't realize that.

To be fair, this was something that had to happen some time, and it definitely had to happen at the "Big Four" pay-per-view. But not this way, not by submission.

#5 Why did Jinder Mahal win another championship?

How have they not yet realized that the Jinder Mahal experiment is not working?

WWE hasn't done much to make the United States Championship interesting over the past few months. As such, this match was doomed to be this year's "bathroom break match"; a wholly forgettable affair that fails to excite anyone, from the live crowd to the millions watching at home.

So naturally, WWE gave the victory to the least-interesting, least-talented guy in the match. How have they not realized how much of a failure Jinder Mahal was as a title holder? When he was WWE Champion, audiences for SmackDown deteriorated as his in-ring and promo work never improved.

Yes, he gets heat, but it's not heel heat - it's "get off my television" heat, a la X-Pac in the early 2000's or the Bella twins during their rivalry. So why would they let him devalue yet another championship?

Furthermore, why would they not give the fans what they want and let Rusev win it? He earned his way into the match after it had already been made, so it would have been an easy narrative for them to build. But they didn't, Jinder won. Even worse, he pinned Rusev to win.

If the rumors are true, I definitely understand why Rusev asked to be released.

#4 Why did John Cena get squashed?

To be fair, The Undertaker looked great in his return.

WWE had a chance to make this lackluster "feud" into something magical. They had an opportunity to have two of the greatest of all time put on a world-class barn-burner.

Afterall, these are the two guys with the best WrestleMania records in history; the only two people with a double-digit number of wins at WrestleMania. Surely, they would have a competitive contest, right?

Nope. Undertaker beat John Cena in less than three minutes.

Why? Why couldn't these two have had a more back-and-forth contest? Undertaker's matches have been among the most thrilling on all WrestleMania cards for several years now, but this match almost halved the length of his previously-shortest WrestleMania match (which, coincidentally, was his first one).

The Undertaker was able to push out a 23 minute match last year...has his health deteriorated tenfold since then? This seems highly unlikely, as he appeared to be more mobile than he was last year.

For that matter, why would WWE want "Big Match John" to look so weak in a big match? Why were the commentators still putting him over as a "surefire Hall-of-Famer" after he'd been humiliated in such grand fashion?

This match never should've happened; Undertaker should've stayed in retirement, and it's not even satisfying to see John Cena lose anymore. At this point, it's just getting sad.

Oh, and John Cena's Big Boot sell was horrendous. It had to be said.

#3 Why did they book Daniel Bryan so poorly?

Daniel Bryan's two years on the shelf felt like ninety.

Seeing Daniel Bryan's name on the card for a match at WrestleMania 34 was something of a dream. Seeing his name opposite two top-notch talents in Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn made it even better.

The roar of the crowd as Daniel Bryan "YES'd" his way down the entrance ramp once again was electrifying, and the NOLA crowd was rightfully pumped to see him light up the same arena where he finally won WWE's top prize in 2014. And then they had him sell injuries for 10 minutes.

Sure, it makes sense from a storytelling perspective to get fans to worry about a potentially-injured babyface, but this is Daniel Bryan, a guy that the WWE Universe has been wanting to see back in the ring for years.

Why have one of the world's best/likable pro-wrestlers' return, only to have him selling at ringside for most of the match? Not only that, but a lot of fans still have legitimate concerns about the state of Bryan's brain and whether or not he's fully capable of returning full-time to in-ring competition (that head sell after the top-rope dropkick was actually terrifying).

I get why WWE uses the trope, but when they start toying with actual health concerns, that's when things go a bit too far. And this last point may sound cold, but the fans care a lot more about Daniel Bryan than they do about Shane McMahon's diverticulitis. Sorry, but it's true.

To his credit, when Bryan finally came to, he seemed as if he'd never been gone. All of his stellar in-ring acumen was still in tact, and his contagious energy was there in spades. But having him lie motionless at ringside for so long deflated the crowd to an irreparable degree.

So WWE, if you're reading this - please let Daniel Bryan really be Daniel Bryan again, like he was for the last few moments of the contest.

#2 Why did they turn Shinsuke Nakamura heel?

Why, Shinsuke? Why?

Of course, this is just another "let's see how this one plays out" storyline, a la Sami Zayn's initially-questionable heel turn at last year's Hell in a Cell, but why of all people turn Shinsuke Nakamura?

He was one of WWE's most organic, likable babyfaces prior to last night. He couldn't enter an arena without the whole place singing his entrance music, his matches would be flooded with chants of "NAKAMURA!" throughout, and his incredible charisma has helped him to stay over despite his difficulties with promos.

Sure, Nakamura worked wonderfully as a heel in Japan, but that was where he could speak his native language. In the storybook land of the WWE, heels spend a lot of time on the microphone, and Shinsuke's English-speaking skills are quite limited.

Of course, this is no fault of his own - English is a complex language that is markedly difficult to learn. But how would a heel Nakamura work in WWE?

Is he going to walk out to the ring stone-faced? Is his already-iconic entrance music going to change? Is he going to eliminate all of his signature poses? Will he be cutting his own promos, or will someone speak on his behalf (if it's the latter, please let it be Paul Heyman)?

The only way that they could feasibly approach this is to have him implement a stronger "Strong Style," which honestly would be awesome. However, it would not yield the reactions that WWE wants, as the more-mature audience would most certainly cheer for that.

This is not to say that a heel Shinsuke Nakamura can't work, because it definitely has worked in the past. It's just hard to see how it can work in the more cartooned, buzzword-laden world of WWE.

#1 Why did a child win a championship?

This is worse than David Arquette. And yes - I'm serious.

I have never been so frustrated, so dumbfounded by the foolishness of a booking decision, that I turned off a pay-per-view,until last night. A 10-year-old child is a champion in WWE. Read that again and try to justify it.

First of all, this is a sinful misuse of Braun Strowman, who is easily RAW's hottest commodity right now. Second, it's a burial of the entire tag team division.

It was bad enough that Strowman demolished the entire division on his own, but even worse that he beat the Tag team champions in four minutes with a literal child as his partner.

Putting this into perspective - WWE decided that a child was a more suitable Tag Team Champion than, say, The Revival, or the "Woken" Hardys, or even Titus-freaking-Worldwide.

Any justification of this decision is null. Sure, WWE "does a lot for the kids, but that doesn't mean they should give them one of their ACTUAL CHAMPIONSHIPS. Sure, maybe they're doing this to build Braun Strowman up as the new hero, but why do so at the expense of so many talents who work so hard week after week?

This is no better than having a part-time, 50-year-old Goldberg win RAW's top championship from Kevin Owens in 22 seconds.

This is no better than WWE's relentless push of Roman Reigns over fan favorites like Daniel Bryan, The Undertaker, and even Braun Strowman himself. This is no better than David-sodding-Arquette winning the WCW Championship.

This blows. This flat-out, full-stop, inexcusably blows.