Fantasy Booking: The Road to WrestleMania 31

The Road to WrestleMania typically begins with the Royal Rumble. This time, though, it began immediately after Survivor Series. That event in 2014 signaled a bit of direction change for the WWE. John Cena's team, with the help of wrestling icon Sting, overcame the team put together by Triple H and the Authority. Thanks to a stipulation instituted by Vince McMahon, the victory allowed John Cena to disband the Authority and gave him alone the power to bring them back.

The current WWE World Heavyweight Champion, Brock Lesnar, is about as part-timer as a part-timer can be. He rarely shows up on WWE programming, and in my opinion it is hurting the product. The current frontrunner for the title is the aforementioned John Cena, and that is hurting the product. The writers for the main roster have become so afraid of taking risks that they've simply counted on John Cena to go after the title. Their big plan for the future is Roman Reigns, who has yet to prove his place among the top tier of wrestlers. He has the look, but his mic skills are lacking.

The Tag Team Championships currently belong to The Miz and (the wildly more popular) Damien Mizdow. They're feuding with the Usos at the moment. The angle has been interesting, but mostly because Damien Mizdow is rising above anything the other three are offering at the moment. The United States Champion is Rusev, and his reign has been getting better. While he still needs a mouthpiece on the mic, and Lana has been fantastically heelish in the role, Rusev's actions in the ring are improving on a week to week basis. The Intercontinental Champion is Dolph Ziggler and, lately, Ziggler has been carrying the program. He, along with Money in the Bank Briefcase holder Seth Rollins, have upped the bar on wrestling skill and performance.

So, with the company firmly on the Road to WrestleMania, how would I book things going forward? Yes, this is pure speculation. It's basically guaranteed to be wrong. But it's fun to write.

The Tag Team Championships

 The Miz and Damien Mizdow (formerly Sandow) hold the copper belts. Mizdow was brought in as a "stunt double" for the Miz's ultra-heel Hollywood celebrity gimmick. Mizdow mimics every move The Miz does, and the fans love him for it. The current champs are going to break apart. That's a given. Mizdow is so over that he has to eventually break away and overcome The Miz. I actually look for that to happen before WrestleMania, so the two can have their big payoff match on the grandest stage.

The titles, meanwhile, will probably drop back to the Usos. The Usos are very talented, though their act is growing a bit stale. They may be turning heel by the summer, but ay WrestleMania 31, they'll probably face the Ascension, a team that is set to debut on Raw on December 29.

The United States Championship

Rusev beating up Big E Langston

Rusev should, by all rights, hold this title until WrestleMania 31. Who is opponent will be, though, remains to be seen. Rusev has yet to lose by pin fall. He's been disqualified and counted out, but never pinned cleanly. He's overcome Sheamus, Jack Swagger, Mark Henry, and the Big Show. The logical opponent for him is John Cena, though I have bigger plans for Cena.

Bo Dallas is due to return from injury soon, but I don't think he works here. I think the better way to go here would be fore Rusev to carry the belt into WrestleMania and face someone like Big E Langston or Kofi Kingston. Once Rusev wins and beats down his opponent afterwards, Kurt Angle comes out from backstage and hits an Angle Slam on the Bulgarian, leaving him laid out in the ring. Of course, this requires Kurt Angle to return.

The Intercontinental Championship


Dolph Ziggler is a midcard champion that should be in the main event at WrestleMania. But, thanks to Vince McMahon's love of muscle-bound brutes, Ziggler has likely hit his ceiling in the WWE with the IC Title. His recent battles with Luke Harper and Seth Rollins have stolen every show they've been a part of. Ziggler is, hands down, one of the best wrestlers in the industry.

He should still be champion at WrestleMania, and his opponent should be someone who melds well with his style. For Ziggler, because he has a ring chemistry with almost everyone, that leaves us a wide range of options. Knowing the current main roster writers, they'll probably stick him against someone like Kane. Nothing against Kane, but his better wrestling days are behind him, Ziggler needs to face someone like Rollins or Ambrose. But I would actually book him against Adrian Neville for the title. Those two would deliver such a good match.

The WWE World Heavyweight Championship

Absentee champion Brock Lesnar will likely carry the title into WrestleMania. I like Brock's character, and I love any moment in which Paul Heyman can be on TV. But I'm sick of Lesnar as champion. I actually want John Cena to defeat Lesnar at Royal Rumble just to get the WWE World Heavyweight Championship back on regular TV. But I have another motive...

Cena doesn't need the MITB briefcase, but he
could probably get it if he wanted it...

Roman Reigns is going to win the Royal Rumble. This fact might as well be chiseled in stone in the WWE corporate office. With Reigns set to win the title, WWE is probably bent on having Reigns face Lesnar, since the company seems to have given themselves over to catering to a five-year-old audience in which there can only be babyfaces and heels. Think I'm joking? Okay, name one 'tweener' on the main roster.

Couldn't do it, could you? Instead, I would have Cena beat Lesnar at the Rumble and have Reigns win the Rumble match itself. At WrestleMania, Reigns and Cena would square off in a babyface vs babyface contest. Reigns, of course, would win this contest, taking the title off Cena. The face of the company would congratulate the new champion by taking the title to present it Reigns. That's when it finally happens. Cena instead blasts Reigns with the title before hitting an AA on the belt.


As Reigns writhes in agony, Seth Rollins comes out with the Money in the Bank briefcase. As Reigns is coming back around, Rollins curb stomps him on the title belt, cashes in the briefcase, and becomes the new WWE World Heavyweight Champion. As Rollins is celebrating with the title, John Cena climbs back into the ring. He stares down Rollins before shaking his hand.

The next night on Raw, John Cena opens the show by introducing the new WWE World Heavyweight Champion, Seth Rollins. Cena and Rollins join forces and tear through the main roster. Rollins and Reigns battle through the summer for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. Cena targets Dolph Ziggler and the Intercontinental Championship. To show his heelishness, Cena even brings back the Authority, aligning himself with Triple H. We all want the Cena Heel Turn, so let's make it happen.

The Sad Dawning of a New Day

On the July 21 episode of Monday Night Raw, Kofi Kingston and Big E took on Ryback and Curtis Axel. RybAxel won the match fairly decisively. As Kingston and Big E stood in the ring talking to each other about the loss, Xavier Woods made his way to the ring. Woods grabbed a mic and delivered the following promo:

“Everybody listen! I need you to pay attention to what I’m about to say. This is exactly what I have been talking about. You cannot move ahead by shaking hands, kissing babies, singing and dancing, like a puppet. You cannot move ahead by always doing what you’re told. Now…this is our time. This is our place. It is time for us to find focus. It is up to us to find order. Together it is our time to find purpose. Because we do not ask any longer…now, we take.”

Kingston began nodding in approval almost immediately, and Big E got on board as Woods finished speaking. The trio began working together, and the next night on Main Event, Kingston and Big E crushed Heath Slater and Titus O’Neil. But, this being WWE, since the group didn’t have 100% fan support after one match, they were shoved to the back burner. They continued working together at house shows, but on Raw and Smackdown they were clearly not working on the same team, although their ring attire always seemed to match.

What the Woods Factions could have been...

Then, a few weeks ago, WWE began airing pre-taped vignettes featuring Xavier Woods dancing in front of a gospel choir. The tag line at the end said a “New Day was coming.” A week later Kofi Kingston got in on the act. Another week went by and Big E started appearing in these videos. A New Day, it appeared, was upon us. And good grief has it been a disappointment.

Xavier Woods promo about it being their time to focus and take, which bore all the hallmarks of a turn into heel or tweener territory, was basically scrubbed from history. Instead, WWE resorted to the worn out trope of casting three black men as southern African-American evangelists. There was a design, it seems, that was set to cast the Woods Faction as angry, almost militant, black men tired of being held back by their gimmicks. But after the continual uproar and fallout from Ferguson, Missouri, it appears WWE decided to scrap that plan for fear of offending anyone.

So a new gimmick was rapidly drawn up and thrown on them. They debuted on Smackdown, which WWE doesn’t even care about anymore. Their first match on Raw was ruined almost from the start. As the trio appeared on stage, Jerry “The King” Lawler was quick to announce “Hey look, they’re happy.” Right, God forbid an angry black man not named Mark Henry exist in the WWE. The faction was beaten fairly quickly in a tag team turmoil match, but their defeat paved the way for a feud with Goldust and Stardust.

What WWE Creative turned the Woods Faction into...

I had high hopes for the Woods Faction, but for now it appears as though WWE has set them up to fail.

And of course New Day is going to fail. WWE is so afraid of pushing the envelope by having legitimately angry black men in a group that they reverted to the tried and true, happy-go-lucky African-American southern evangelist trope for the entire group. How they went from Xavier Woods's "now we take" promo to this is sad, but not a mystery.

WWE could've easily capitalized on the group by turning them tweener/heel, but apparently the toddler fan base they are catering to would not accept a heelish Kofi Kingston, so Creative instead took Kofi's happy-in-the-face-of-all-injustice personality and slapped it on Woods and Big E as well. It wouldn’t have been a difficult booking effort, either.

At Survivor Series, a Fatal-4-Way tag team match was contested for the Tag Team Championships. Near the ending point of that match, having the Woods Faction interfere would’ve been the perfect introduction. They could beat down every team in the ring and then, as Woods said in his promo, “take” the Tag Team titles and leave. Over the following weeks they could defend the tag titles with both clean victories and dirty victories. Once their claim to the titles was legitimized, all kinds of feuds would be available. Feuding with the Dust Bros would be just as easy as feuding with the Usos.

You would have a true tweener group. An intense tweener group would've done wonders for the tag team scene and the midcard. Instead, true to the 4-year-old demographic they are targeting, WWE is casting all wrestlers in good or evil mode. There are no tweeners anymore. There are no anti-heroes. That would've been a great slot for the Woods Faction. Instead, we get super-babyface, so-happy-it's-sickening, Kofi, Big E, and Xavier Woods, doing exactly what Xavier Woods said had held them down in the past. So either Woods is far more stupid than his documented education would lead us to believe, or Creative is so afraid of offending someone that they reached into the bag of stereotypes instead of creating something new. It's disgusting how badly Creative has already screwed the pooch on this one.