When they put the card together, it probably passed their smell test. There's good stories, good matches, spectacle matches, more than one 'steal the show' candidate, and some opportunities to do 'gotcha, bitches' finishes and even a turn or two (*looks at Sasha*).

Their most glaring failure is not having something better for AJ than sticking him with Shane. Shane should've been with Harper, Corbin, Ziggla or some other dude who isn't the best wrestler in the world right now. Too bad about Finn being hurt..maybe that was the AJ match? Certainly they didn't really have him vs HBK as THE plan, right?

Besides that, I'm slightly salty about Sami Zayn being so stuck in a 'mechanic' role to the degree that he has nothing to do at Mania. Last year, he wrecked Mania weekend with Nak and then in the ladder match. So they pretty much have to like him overall but dang. Him and Ziggla need to do something together to see if either can get to a better place by stealing some shows together. Even a Zayn/Harper program could be fun.

Okay..one more: My most 'booking the territory' thought is that Samoa Joe should be wrestling Strowman on this show. Joe cheating a little and beating Strowman would've been a solid look for both guys.

I'm NOT expecting a lot of surprises on this show. Maybe Dwayne shows up and eats clock even though it isn't necessary at all (IE: it wasn't last year either). Maybe the Broken Bros show up if the logistics work out (I doubt it). But I'm not waiting for anything like that.

Side: I still can't believe HHH/Reigns lasted as long as it did after that long ass show. last year Horrible decision. They overestimated the crowd's stamina big-time on that one. Or maybe they wanted us tired cuz they thought that would save the audio when Reigns was holding up the belt at the end. It didn't. Cats booed like crazy. Me and my friends were laughing about how heavy the boos were. I remember damn near wanting to leave in the middle of that match tho. I stayed to see Steph get SM punched/speared since that was a lock to happen.

I have a curse: I've been to Mania 25 and 32. Both of those had HHH at the end having a match way longer than it should've been.

I'm thinking about going to next year's Mania since I feel weird about not being in Orlando right now. I clearly like rasslin enough that I should go to the big shows.