Gimmick Some (Wrestlemania) Lovin': Sting is Back

The Rules

The Future Endeavorer masquerades as The Terminator.

The contest in Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium was billed as a No Disqualification Match. As with previous contests throwing order and logic out the window, this had plenty of both storyline and real-world justification.

In kayfabe, the simmering hatred between The Game and The Icon, as well as their reliance on signature weapons, meant that the rules would be relaxed to give neither man an easy way out of the brutality his opponent wanted to inflict.

In reality, the combined age of the two performers drifted into the triple digits, and that fact, combined with Wrestlemania emanating from an outdoor stadium on the West Coast, gave WWE its fair share of factors for which it needed to overcompensate; taking away disqualifications gave WWE the opportunity to inject its own brand of chaotic nonsense ("gaga," as Bruce Prichard is fond of saying on his podcast) as a contingency plan for the fact that two middle-aged part-timers might not be able to put on a classic.