So one thing always intriques me each year, is the "Road to Wrestlemania", which usually begins after the Rumble, but to me...it begins the month before where they plant the seeds as to who will win the Rumble and who will be set up at the Rumble. Back in the day, most people who walked out of the Royal Rumble as champion, were likely to headline Mania, but nowadays, title changes happen so often, that it's very easy to oversee that happening.

As things are concerned so far, they've done is plant the seeds for the upcoming Mania. It could be all false, but from what I've seen and read, I hope to God that it is. The following is pure speculation on what I see happening from this point:

1. Money in the Bank ladder match! While the first 2 MitB matches were absolutely awesome, the last several have been a waste. One reason for this is clear to me: 6 > 8. When you have 6 guys in the ring, the potential for clusterfuck is present, but having 8 guys involved...it's almost bound to happen. Keep in mind, after about 4 minutes in...most of these guys are going to spend the match laying on their side outside the ring. Another thing to note is that they're using less and less people who can give you a good ladder match, at least to the extent that they were able to before. Expect to see Kane, MVP, the ECW champion and just about every other guy who would otherwise not be on the card in this match. Expect nothing you haven't seen before...this only serves to hype the crowd up for later on.

2. Edge returns! The idea floating around is the idea of Edge returning and feuding with his former tag team partner Chris Jericho. Probably the only match I might remotely be interested in seeing. The worry on my part is that Edge is going to botch his face turn like he did in 2004, which really sucked. Also with a high profile return like this, I would hope that it could be a title match, but I honestly see this getting lost in the shuffle...maybe being the 3rd match on the card.

3. Another leaked rumor was CM Punk vs. Rey Mysterio. This match would be a hair vs. mask match. Let me ask you, what the fuck is with hair matches at WM? Who fucking cares? This is like the 4th hair match at WM, and it adds nothing to the match. Rey isn't losing his mask until he's ready to retire, and I don't see him stepping down for a couple of years. Seriously though, the time and energy they always waste with the "hilarious" head shaving eats up time that could be used for a good squash match or something, but we have to watch someone lose their hair. Pass.

4. The Playboy Bunny match or whatever has been the unfortunate reoccuring women's gimmick match that seems to happen every fucking year now. No one in their goddamn mind even cares to pay money to watch this. Also keep in mind that WWE Women's wrestling is worse than ever...almost every diva wrestles like Torrie fuckin' Wilson. Plenty of blown spots and 4 minutes later...we have our champion...yeah...who gives a fuck? The word right now is that they're going to continue the trend of this crap...most likely an inter-brand match.

5. Midcard title match that has no build. This is speculation on my part...but there always seems to be at least one match every year that has no build to it at all and is usually not worth mentioning. I think it'll be Drew Mcintyre vs....I don't know...Christian! That makes a lot of sense!!!

6.Next up we have the return of Bret Hart. Now one thing that could be cool is him having one last match. Unfortunately, it's going to be a "match" with McMahon. The one thing that bothers me most, is that while Bret Hart is in no condition to be wrestling, Vince McMahon isn't in the best condition to wrestle either. This isn't 1998, where you could get a fairly decent match out of eachother, this is going to be at most an 8 minute beatdown of a 60 year old man. There's absolutely no way that Vince goes over here. And even with the predictable finish, who honestly believes that this would outdo anything else that's going on? I still think that Shawn Michaels would've been a better choice, but they already blew the animosity moment there last week. "Smarks" already know that Bret made up with Vince, so giving them Shawn vs. Bret would've been the smart move since there was more bad blood there than anything else.

7. Speaking of Shawn Michaels, as it stands right now, Shawn is going to wrestle Undertaker...again. Taker's whole storyline at WM for the last 8 years or so has been his "streak". And while Shawn and Taker had a pretty good match last year, how the hell are they going to even come close to topping that? Or better yet, why would they try? Taker has already proven he can beat Shawn, and facing off again is going to just show how good their match last year was compared to now. They pulled out all the stops and put on a clinic. Not only would it be hard to do again, but impossible anyways. Taker is absolutely terrible in the ring right now, which is part of the reason why they decided on this, since Shawn could work him to a decent match. Keep in mind, Taker is champion right now, is it going to be a title match? Is he going to drop the title to Rey? One thing that has intrigued me before about Taker is that he has a different person every year trying to end the streak, and I know he faced Kane twice...but it seemed like 2 different characters, so there's a lot of people I would rather see against Taker. I'd prefer Cena honestly, I mean there's the only plausible guy I can see ending the streak. Sure it won't be the match that last year had, but at least it'll keep you on the edge of your seat since Cena very well could be the guy to beat Taker at Mania.

8. Also speaking of our friend John Cena, he cut a promo a month back about how he wouldn't lose any matches until he gained the WWE title back. Well, on Monday he lost. But that doesn't matter, because he wasn't pinned...yay wrestling logic! So anyways, that promo pretty much told me that he's the most likely person to win the Rumble this year, and most likely facing Sheamus at WM. I hope to God that isn't the case, because we once again know who's walking out as champion there. Rumors also say that Batista might be penciled in against Cena, which was supposed to happen last year. That could be interesting, but Batista just seemed so lost in the shuffle right now, I can't see him in a high profile match, he'll most likely face off against someone like Mark Henry at this point. Also I know I left off Triple H, but he's most guarenteed to be in a title match anyways, so they could very well just tack him onto this one and make it a Triple Threat, since they seem to do Triple Threat title matches every year anymore.

Feel free to add your own thoughts or ideas they might pull at Mania.

Knyte wrote:

I don't think there is any way that Shemus is walking into WM as champion. He's too young, and too unknown. He will not sell PPV buys, and I hope to god, WWE knows this. I think that's why they setup the Heel vs Heel match at RR. I think if they are taking away the ECW title, then they should give Christian a MITB-like contract. Basically, he is the 3rd tier World Champion, and if the belt is going away, then he should be able to cash it in for any title he wants... Now, Christian vs Orton at WM... will never happen. Vince does get Christian and doesn't like him. He will never be a WM main eventer. But, you know they would put on a killer match.

I still hope that somehow either Kofi or Cena get into the match and win. Even though the title might be going back to Cena, I'd rather it happen now rather than WM, I mean why give him yet ANOTHER WM moment...he isn't fuckin Hogan...he's had 5 moments already. Kofi has already been pushed down the card and even the crowd knows it! The white hot pops he was getting before have already been dying down, so it's too little too late.

I like that idea. ECW champion and MitB holder. Have him merge the belts with the World title. I would say maybe merge it with the WWE belt, but there's absolutely no way that Christian would survive there. Despite being a credible champion and making it very easy to have him turn heel and beat Cena legit (now), it would never happen. At least Christian has a decent shot on SD, if Taker ever decided to stop fucking around and drop the belt...what a fucking joke Mark Calloway has become.

Syd Lexia wrote:

I never understood why Christian went back to WWE.

Because Angle went to TNA and royally fucked up what was once a pretty decent TNA. I like Angle and all, but he has always felt out of place in TNA, while Christian had a kickass time until Angle showed up and Christian floundered around like what Rhino has been doing for years.

Ba'al wrote:

You're saying pass to a potentially great Mysterio/Punk match?

If it's a frickin' hair/mask match, then yes. These gimmicks almost always spend more post-match with the head shaving and such. Also I hate how they always play up how "crazy" having your head shaven is...it's a 70 year old fuckin' gimmick...and it only works with certain personas. Yes, I'll admit the match could be good...but it's so fucking predictable that it's not even woth taking into consideration unless Mysterio would lose.

For once, I would love for a wrestler to trump his opponent by coming out to the match bald already.

I want this back:



You know...the belt that Hogan, Warrior, Savage, Flair, Hart, Austin, Yokozuna, Michaels, Undertaker, Sycho Sid, Mankind, and various others held. Wearing the belt that all those legends wore is better than "just the moniker of WWE champion".

And while I'm all about an undisputed champion, I know it's not going to benefit very many people, at least not until guys like Undertaker, Triple H, Orton and Cena are gone.

Personally...I think Taker's gimmick matches at Mania have sucked.

He had that casket match with Mark Henry which was decent I guess, but it could've been much better.

And the HIAC match where he kills Bossman...yeah...ummm...no thanks.

Considering how he uses that stupid Hell's Gate, I'm surprised they don't book a submission match.

It was actually WM21...but they had an even better match at Vengeance, where Michaels won.

And I wouldn't mind a Rockers match actually, at least Jannetty can go better in the ring than Triple H can. And since Trips seems content with being in a title match EVERY year, might as well let him.

I think Jericho or even Vince would be better storyline opponents for Undertaker than Michaels. Hell, I thought they were going the route with Vince with all the screwjob finishes a while back.

No worries...it's easy to mix up XX and 21...WM isn't the most memorable event it used to be. And while I remember the entire card from WM1-17...I can't even precisely remember 10 matches from the last 3 years.

You and me both Hawk...I remember a time when I would automatically be stoked several days in advance for Raw, that seemingly died around 2002 but they kept putting on decent shows. But for the last few years, I would trick myself into watching HOPING that I could get something out of it. It's almost like the woman from "Dogma" who would go to Mass every Sunday, despite already not having any faith left, it's more or less just part of an already existing routine that's hard to break.

They'd have to work pretty hard to top last year's WM as far as boring goes. WM25 was easily the third worst WM behind WM1 and WMXI.

To me, shit went downhill as soon as Bischoff was onscreen fired. He was quite possibly the glue that held Raw in place. And who replaced him? Just about every single character that couldn't even hold a candle to his character; Coach, Adamle, Regal, Vickie, hell even McMahon. It had been spiraling out of control as soon as Cena joined Raw and beat every single credible wrestler within the first year he had the title. Raw has just been a stalemate of that shit since then with absolutely no progression or build up of characters since then, with the (poor) exception of Sheamus, I can't think of a single wrestler who has really been built on Raw...unless you count RVD, but it took almost every power in the world to keep Cena down for the count of 3. And while I have gotten back into the loop of watching Raw, I'm still not even close to being where I was even 2 years ago as far as excitement, and really the only thing holding my attention is the Road to Wrestlemania coming up. I heard rumors that Cena is already having back problems and as dickish as it may seem, that's actually a bit of good news since it'll mean he'll need to lighten the load, and don't get me wrong, I don't wish injury upon anyone. But I hope to Holy God that means they'll not book him into the same fucking scenario again.

And yes, it was cool to see Shawn win the World Heavyweight title. The only problem with that moment was the awful hair he had at the time, which was only topped by the absolute god-awful, ugly ass, un-finished, shit colored tights in the history of professional wrestling.