WrestleMania is the biggest show of the year for WWE, which means that they’ll be saving their biggest matches for that event. Their strategy to ensure that the Show of Shows lives up to its name usually encompasses a few obvious things.
You’ll see the Hall of Famers make a brief cameo at ‘Mania itself. There will be several ‘dream matches’ that can only happen once, to sell as many tickets and buys for the show as possible. Lastly, and most importantly, there will be several title matches.
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The championship belt is supposed to be the most important thing in a pro wrestling promotion. Whoever wears a division’s belt is to be perceived as the biggest star and the most important person in that class. Sadly, this simple and traditional philosophy has been largely ignored by WWE.
Their philosophy has shifted more towards ageing part-timers that were bigger stars years or even decades ago as the top cash-cows.
When someone like Goldberg, who, prior to Survivor Series, hadn’t wrestled in a major match in 12 years, is closing not only your weekly TV shows, but one of your biggest PPVs of the year, you know that there are major problems with how the current roster is perceived by the power-brokers in the promotion.
The other problem plaguing today’s WWE is that there are a whopping nine championships on the roster. And these are just the actual championship belts.
It doesn’t take into consideration other awards and distinctions, like the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal (whose winner gets a humongous trophy); the Money in the Bank Briefcase winner, and the winners of other various NXT and WWE Network tournaments.
The point here is that WWE has saturated its own product to a point of severe overexposure. There are too many wrestlers, too many shows, and too many belts. Because of this ‘quantity over quality’ approach, we’re likely to see no more than half of WWE’s existing championships appear at WrestleMania 33.
Some will be defended at the event or on the ‘Mania pre-show, while the others, unfortunately, will be left off the card.
With the RAW after WrestleMania acting as the start of the new year for WWE’s storylines, it’ll be important to see who will be champion on that show. This article will figure that out.
WWE Cruiserweight Champion: Neville
The Cruiserweight division has failed to take off like it was meant to. What was pegged initially as a replica of WCW and NJPW’s junior heavyweight divisions of the 1990s has become another Vince McMahon-controlled WWE program where the wrestlers have their abilities toned down significantly.
It’s a terrible shame. Instead of letting these wrestlers perform in the style they’re most comfortable with (or, at least, saving their biggest and most daring moves for the biggest and most important matches), the Cruiserweights are booked in the same way as the Divas were two years ago: thrust into 5-minute nothing matches with little-to-no character development.
It’s almost as if Vince’s touch is corrosive to something that, under Triple H’s booking, was much more enjoyable.
As a result of this disappointing booking, the holder of the Cruiserweight championship doesn’t matter as much as it should. Fans don’t care about the Cruiserweights, and rarely give them any big reactions. This was most obvious during the Rich Swann vs. Neville match at the 2017 Royal Rumble.
Also read: WWE Rumors: Possible WrestleMania 33 lineup
The action was good, the moves interesting, the psychology logical. But the fans did not care about this match one bit; it was the designated bathroom break because the bookers failed in treating the Cruiserweights as something different from everything else on the roster.
Neville as champion is a good thing, but the division around him has been mired in poor feedback from the fans and has generated a negative perception from WWE’s own top brass. They thought that putting the belt on Neville would be a good idea, which it is.
The problem, however, is that not enough time is given to giving the fans a reason to care about the other Cruiserweights (though maybe if they stopped spending ten minutes putting on those awful purple ropes, maybe the Cruiserweights would have more time to connect with the audience).
You can expect Neville to hold onto the belt for the time being. He was brought in for the specific purpose of increasing fan interest in the Cruiserweight division, so for them to put it on someone else wouldn’t make any sense at this time.
WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion: Alexa Bliss
If there’s one performer that has really improved a lot on SmackDown, it’s Alexa Bliss.
Her promos have gotten much better, she’s great at playing a detestable heel, and while her in-ring work isn’t on the same level as that of the Four Horsewomen, she’s improving day-by-day. To that end, Bliss should not lose the championship anytime soon.
The main reason for this is that the SmackDown women’s roster is cripplingly thin, with only eight listed full-time competitors. This list gets even smaller when you consider that Eva Marie is filming a movie and Nikki Bella’s in-ring career might be over soon.
That leaves Bliss with five potential opponents: Becky Lynch, Carmella, Mickie James, Naomi and Natalya. Of these women, only Lynch is a pure babyface, and we’ve already seen Lynch vs. Bliss several times.
Furthermore, Natalya is an established heel whose still feuding with Nikki Bella for the time being, and James just returned as a heel ally of Bliss’s. So that leaves us with Carmella and Naomi as potential opponents for Bliss.
Neither of them have been built up properly as contenders for the championship, so it doesn’t make sense for Bliss to lose the belt in the foreseeable future. Maybe if Sasha Banks jumps over to SmackDown, then it’s possible that we’d have more excitement in this division.
WWE RAW Women’s Champion: Charlotte Flair
Charlotte is arguably the most dominant champion on RAW right now. She’s the only one that wins matches with minimal interference, and her heel psychology is geared more towards viciousness and in-ring underhanded tactics than relying on outside help.
She’s also the only wrestler with a legitimate streak going on, having won 17 consecutive PPV matches.
With this particular statistic being promoted almost every week, it would be incredibly foolish for WWE to break it at WrestleMania. Yes, Charlotte did win the championship at WrestleMania 32, but her PPV win streak is more important than seeing a repeat match result from last year.
Charlotte needs to continue winning as much as possible so that her first PPV loss actually means something.
Furthermore, WWE has done a poor job of building up credible opponents for Charlotte. This isn’t NXT where Charlotte and her fellow Four Horsewomen stole the show and set the wrestling world on fire with excellent women’s wrestling matches that were built up over a long time.
This is WWE RAW, where long-winded promos, cheap finishes, and nearly-nonexistent ring psychology are the norm.
As a result, Sasha Banks hasn’t succeeded much as a challenger to Charlotte, and Bayley has lost some of the charm that made her enjoyable in NXT (especially since she has become a glorified shill for WWE merchandise).
So unless Asuka makes a surprise appearance on RAW to challenge Charlotte, it doesn’t make sense for anyone else to defeat her.
WWE United States Champion: Kevin Owens
I feel sorry for the United States Championship. In the span of less than two full years, it went from an obscure title few people cared about, to one of the best belts to fight for (thanks to John Cena’s open challenges – seriously, why can’t more wrestlers do that?) to falling back into obscurity following Cena losing the belt.
Sadly, the belt that once acted as another stepping stone for wrestlers to reach higher levels in WWE has become a forgettable prop that few wrestlers (and even fewer fans) care about.
When Roman Reigns defeated Rusev to win the belt, there was a small glimmer of hope that another of Vince’s top guys would carry the belt with pride.
Instead, there were occasions when Reigns didn’t even carry the belt at all, and his focus on the Universal Championship sent a clear message: “I may be the U.S. Champion, but I want that championship instead”.
As a result, the U.S. Championship suffered further, until it was won by Chris Jericho. From here, it’s likely that Chris Jericho will hold onto the belt until WrestleMania, at which point he’ll likely lose it to Kevin Owens.
WWE’s likely to book the following chain of events: Owens will defend the Universal title against Goldberg, and will lose, despite interference from Jericho. Owens will finally turn on Jericho, ending their friendship once and for all.
This’ll lead to Owens vs. Jericho at WrestleMania, with the likely stipulation of having Jericho’s U.S. Championship on the line.
Owens will win, part ways with Jericho, and from there, hopefully, he’ll stop acting like a coward in big matches and become an actual vicious prizefighter like he was in 2015.
WWE Intercontinental Champion: Baron Corbin
Dean Ambrose’s ‘Lunatic’ gimmick has become stale. He’s basically a super-PG version of Steve Austin, only with a fraction of the crowd reaction. Ambrose is ‘wacky’ in a sense that you don’t know what he’s going to do, but the random things he does are more comedic than they are badass.
But Ambrose is still a strong competitor with a title belt around his waist. The only question now is, whom will he feud with? Miz looks like he’s going to be facing Cena going forward, Ziggler has just turned heel, and AJ Styles will be wrestling Shane McMahon at WrestleMania (because, WWE logic).
That leaves Ambrose with one opponent to face: Baron Corbin.
While he hasn’t been given the super monster push (that was given to Braun Strowman), Corbin has improved considerably over the past few months. His promos are getting better, his matches are more exciting than they were a year ago, and he does a great job of portraying the ‘I don’t care about anything or anyone’ jerk.
He’s a perfect heel that needs another critical milestone to achieve, and that milestone should be an Intercontinental Championship victory at WrestleMania 33.
With SmackDown in dire need of new stars, they should take advantage of Corbin’s improvements to give him a chance to see how he can do as a champion. Who knows, he might actually do well in that role, as long as WWE doesn’t cut his legs out from underneath him like they did with The Miz at No Mercy 2016.
WWE RAW Tag Team Champions: Gallows & Anderson
Ever since the New Day lost the belts, attention towards RAW’s tag team division has dwindled.
Of course, the fault for that rests entirely on the shoulders of WWE’s creative department, who have failed to book any of the regular RAW tag teams outside of the New Day in a way that makes them entertaining and worth watching.
Take the current champions (and most likely champions after WrestleMania), Gallows & Anderson. They debuted on the night after WrestleMania 32 and were white hot at the time. They were one of the most talked-about tag teams in the business, fresh off a successful run in NJPW.
But this is WWE we’re talking about, where having any success outside of the company is taboo because that success didn’t have Vince McMahon’s personal stamp of approval on it.
So Gallows & Anderson ended up losing several high-profile matches and were forced to take part in many abysmal comedy segments (I would like to apologise to anyone reading this for having to remind you of that God-forsaken ‘Old Day’ segment, but it was necessary for argument’s sake here).
By the time Gallows & Anderson won the championships on the Royal Rumble pre-show, the interest in them had dropped significantly. People cared more about the oddball pairing of Sheamus and Cesaro than they did for Gallows & Anderson.
So now that G&A are the tag champions, the only question to ponder is how will WWE treat them? Will WWE give them a monster push that will lead to them dominating the tag team division? Or will Karl Anderson spend the next ten weeks losing via Roll-up to the Shining Stars?
As much as I wish it wasn’t, my money’s on the latter.
WWE SmackDown Tag Team Champions: American Alpha
If you thought RAW’s tag team division was uninspiring, I’ve got some bad news for fans of the blue brand.
SmackDown’s tag team division has been crippled by a lack of genuine teams. Sure, the tournament to crown the inaugural champions went well, but ever since then, the division has fallen off a cliff. There are no new or exciting teams for fans to care about.
Rhyno & Heath Slater’s awkward pairing gimmick lost relevance months ago. The Wyatt Family is about to implode again, especially since Randy & Bray look to be heading towards a WrestleMania feud.
As for the current champions American Alpha, they’re a great team of two highly talented wrestlers, but their appeal comes from their great matches, which they cannot have without properly-built-up opponents.
On the most recent episode of SmackDown, American Alpha’s open challenge ended up in a nonsensical 5-team brawl that no one in the audience cared about. A few weeks prior to that, American Alpha had defeated one of these jobber teams in less than a minute with three moves.
How does this sort of booking lead to any interest in the division whatsoever?
Given this lack of depth in the division, it doesn’t make sense for anyone other than American Alpha to hold the belts for the time being.
The only other team worthy of even challenging for those belts now is the Revival, and I doubt Triple H wants to send one of his best NXT teams to the main-event roster right now, especially after what has happened to Tyler Breeze, who was once pegged to be a solid hand on the main roster.
WWE Champion: Randy Orton
Randy Orton won the 2017 Royal Rumble match, eliminating the surprise #30 entrant Roman Reigns. His victory was met with a mixed reaction.
Most people cheered solely because Orton was an infinitely better choice than Roman Reigns, whose juggernaut-like main event push appears to be continuing no matter how vociferous the reaction towards him is.
Though Orton isn’t a bad choice in himself, his victory does ruin the opportunity for WWE to have used the Royal Rumble to elevate a new star.
With this victory, Randy announced that he’d be challenging for SmackDown’s WWE Championship, which John Cena won for the 16th time at the same Rumble PPV. This is where possibilities begin to change.
Some people believe that WrestleMania 33’s main event will be Randy Orton vs. John Cena for the 4,346,265th time, which would make sense given that these men are two of Vince McMahon’s favourites.
The other possibility circulating right now is for Bray Wyatt to win the championship at the Elimination Chamber PPV, only for Randy to capture the belt from Bray at ‘Mania.
Either way, it looks like SmackDown will be carried by Randy Orton for the coming months. Vince has been happy with Randy’s work since returning and was especially happy after Randy didn’t complain upon getting his head smashed in by Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam 2016.
And speaking of Brock…
WWE Universal Champion: Brock Lesnar
RAW’s main event scene is an overcrowded mess at this point. There are so many people vying for that elusive top spot on the program that you can’t really tell whose supposed to be the show’s biggest star.
Is it WWE Universal Champion Kevin Owens and his best friend Chris Jericho, who’ve interfered in each other’s matches so much that neither one can be expected to win cleanly ever?
Is it the Undertaker, whose loyalty to SmackDown appears to have only been for one show?
Is it Roman Reigns, who keeps getting opportunity after opportunity no matter how much people hate him?
Or is it the part-time duo of Goldberg and Brock Lesnar? Well, if you believe more rumours circulating about, it’s likely the latter duo.
It's believed that Vince is planning for Goldberg and Brock Lesnar’s WrestleMania confrontation to be for the WWE Championship. That means that somewhere down the line (most likely at WWE Fastlane 2017), Goldberg will defeat Kevin Owens for the Universal Championship and then defend it at ‘Mania against Lesnar.
It’s further believed that, after defeating Goldberg for the title, Lesnar will hold the Universal Championship until SummerSlam, at which point he’ll drop the belt to someone else, with the top two likely winners being either Braun Strowman or Roman Reigns.
If WWE does go down this path, it might not actually be a good decision. Lesnar will likely do what he did when he was the champion in 2014-2015: act as a part-time champion that only appeared when he wanted to, or on a limited schedule.
Unless something in Lesnar’s contract has changed, he wouldn’t be making many appearances as champion. Worse, Lesnar will always be cheered over someone like Roman Reigns, so their plan to re-crown Reigns at SummerSlam 2017 could be just another repetition of the main event of WrestleMania 32.
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