By Shawn Valentino, PWTorch Specialist

Greetings from Houston, everyone. I am writing this article as I am surrounded by wrestlers in my hotel. It is truly a surreal setting. I was just speaking to Debra, whose ex-husband will be inducted into the Hall of Fame tonight. Seeing Steve Austin enter the halls of immortality with such luminaries as Koko B Ware should be a sensational experience tonight, but the real highlight of a wrestling fan's year arrives tomorrow. WrestleMania is here and I for one am excited, despite the fact that the build has been less than stellar.

I have been watching wrestling for over twenty years and I do not think I have ever seen such a messy road to Mania. The world championship matches have obviously been thrown together at the last minute and the storylines leading up to them make us wonder if the writers should be tested by the "Wellness Policy." There has never been a WrestleMania where we have seen variations of the participants fighting so much in the weeks leading up to the show. The WWE just has not gotten the idea that less is more. If the buyrate is low on this event, they have themselves to blame. Nonetheless, the actual matches should be solid and the atmosphere and the production should be first-rate. Today I will share some thoughts about WrestleMania 25, and I truly hope that you all enjoy the show!

Finlay vs. Kane vs. Mark Henry vs. Christian vs. MVP vs. Shelton Benjamin, vs. Kofi Kingston vs. C.M. Punk: Money in the Bank

Could WWE have possibly done a worse job in building up to this? First of all, you have three people that are basically wasting space in the ring in Finlay, Kane and Henry. Then you have a person who already not only won the match but took the title and it led nowhere in Punk. You have a goofy character we know nothing about in Kingston. We have a goofy character we care nothing about in Benjamin. Then you have a returning superstar that has been treated like a jobber in Christian. Finally, you have a natural heel who switched to being a face for absolutely no reason in MVP. Not only that, the WWE has given us nothing that makes us want to get behind any of these wrestlers, nor have they shown us why any of them care about winning the briefcase.

On top of that, we have seen variations of this match for weeks, and each successive week it has become less interesting. There is no chemistry or intensity between the participants, and nobody that anybody is particularly excited about rising up the ladder, so to speak. The match should still be tremendously entertaining, but this year it feels like it was thrust together with no thought behind it.

25 Diva Battle Royal

Two words. Bathroom break.

Jeff Hardy versus Matt Hardy: Extreme Rules

This is a match that should not be taking place, but will be an exciting display all the same. The fact that WWE chose to go in this direction is a perfect illustration of their paranoia of internet leaks, and how they will even denigrate their own product just to be unpredictable. The buildup has been mediocre at best and distasteful at worst. There have been more holes in this storyline than in a Swiss cheese factory. It has also exemplified the weaknesses of each performer as being awful on the microphone and unable to express genuine emotions in an intense, convincing fashion.

I still do not know if Matt was the one that performed all of those dastardly acts to his brother. Even worse, I do not care, nor do I care who wins. This is one of many examples on this show of WWE needlessly fluffing the product with over-the-top angles. If one of the wrestlers is attempting to kill the other, what is their motivation of having a match? Once you take things to that level, it is hard to get interested in two wrestlers settling their differences in a ring.

Just think about how much better this storyline would have been if Christian was involved. He would have fit perfectly as the creepy outsider coming back to the company trying to take out one of his old rivals, and he could have carried the promos leading up to Mania. Despite the awful build, this actual match should be an entertaining undercard showdown.

Miz & Morrison vs. Carlito & Primo: Tag Team Title Unification Match

The best thing I can say about this match is that at least two meaningless championships will be reduced to one worthless title. The WWE is not going to put any effort to strengthen their tag team division so there is no real purpose to this match other than to get these guys on the card. That being said, if given the proper amount of time, this could be a very entertaining match.

This should be used to further elevate Miz and Morrison, as they have been a very good act for the past year. I personally felt that this should have been Morrison's year to win Money In the Bank. Since they are not going in that direction, let us just hope that WWE sees the value of a strong tag team division. I would not hold my breath.

JBL vs. Rey Mysterio Jr: Intercontinental Championship Match

A few months ago I wrote an article about how the wrestling companies could make their championships more meaningful. One of the suggestions I made was for them to not have wrestler's who have held the main titles go back down to fight for a lower belt unless there was a strong storyline of how they want to work their way back up the card. I also stated that there should not be non-title matches where the challenger wins, because it cheapens the value of the belt.

So what do we have here at WrestleMania? We have two former world champions fighting for a lesser title in a match with no build-up or context. It was not only thrust together at the last minute, but they already showed us a match between the two the week before the show where the challenger already proved he could win clean. JBL's short reign already means nothing. If Mysterio beats him in Mania, nobody cares because we have already seen it happen a few days earlier. If JBL wins, he is merely defending a lame-duck title. On top of that, we already were shown that the match would be average at best. If WWE wants to treat their mid-card titles with such disrespect, they should not even bother having them.

Chris Jericho vs. Roddy Piper & Jimmy Snuka & Ricky Steamboat

This match appears to be the biggest disappointment in the eyes of most wrestling fans. To those who are unhappy with this matchup, I simply wanted to ask you a simple question. What did you expect? There was absolutely no way that this was going to live up to the hype it received. We should just be happy that we were treated to a series of sensational segments between Jericho and the legends that showcased his status as possibly the top performer in the company. The actual match should be an entertaining spectacle for what it is because everybody involved is a veteran that knows how to please the crowd, and you have the added unknown of what role the volatile Mickey Rourke will play.

For those that are underwhelmed by this contest, just think briefly about the other options. It could have been a "contest" against a flaky, unreliable actor that likely would have been an utter disaster. Jericho could have faced off against a broken down wrestler coming off surgery who was a terrible worker even in his prime in Hogan. He could have fought a broken down legend in Austin, who is likely incapable of a decent match again, needlessly putting himself in danger of paralysis for a storyline he does not even fit in. Then there was the tease of the return of Flair which is something nobody wants to see after the beautiful sendoff he received last year. The real surprise to me is that anybody in their right mind would feel that Lawler would be a good opponent in this mix. Ten years of sleepwalking through commentary does not deserve to be rewarded. Hopefully those of you who wanted to see that were satisfied on Raw with seeing the fat slob going through the motions in the ring just like he does on color.

I think this match will defy the odds to be a fun overbooked battle that will provide some of the best feel-good moments of this show. I see it finishing with Snuka doing the Superfly Splash and Rourke doing the Ram Jam.

"The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels vs. The Undertaker

Let us look back a couple months when many people thought that it would be HBK facing JBL to regain his freedom and blow off their feud at WrestleMania. Now I never had any doubt that the WWE was leading up to the dream match between Michaels and Taker, but can you imagine how bad this card would look without this? The two longest tenured icons in the history of the company facing off for the first time in over a decade should provide us with a WrestleMania moment to remember.

The build to this epic battle has been very well done. Unlike the other big matches, it has not been watered down with needless physical contact between the competitors. Instead, we have had a series of tremendous promos and video packages that have built it up to be the historically significant confrontation that it is. Some of the visuals we have witnessed are amongst the greatest we have seen on WWE television, especially Michaels coming into the ring in the symbolic Angel of Light outfit. It has played off the history of the two characters to make us feel that the ramifications of winning or losing this match will be enormous.

Of course, the one negative is the winner here is a foregone conclusion, especially with Michaels repeatedly getting the upper hand in the mind games. It does not matter. The very sight of these legends facing off on the grand stage will be the awe-inspiring spectacle that the rest of the show is sorely missing.

Randy Orton vs. Triple H

Let me do a little recap of this feud. The heel beats down the father-in-law and brother-in-law of the face and the face does not react. Then the heel beats up the face's wife causing the face to "reveal" his status as her husband. Then in the ensuing weeks, the face chases down the heel with a sledgehammer. Then the heel and the face make a stipulation not to touch until WrestleMania. That stipulation is broken within days and the heels beat down the face. Then the face gets his revenge by breaking into the heel's house and beating him up. The face gets arrested, but the heel shows his courage by wanting to fight the face and take care of his own business. Then the face is released and exacts some more revenge by beating down the heel's cronies before riding off into the sunset with his smiling wife. Let us not forget that the very premise of the feud was the heel beating up the face's wife. Then the heel does another dastardly act to the face's wife. The following week the face comes back and gets the upper hand in a brawl on the heel again.

Does that all sound about right? Can anybody explain what we are actually paying to see when we have already gone through about every stage of a feud before the match? We have already had home invasion, weapons, savage beatdowns and the like, but now we are expected to be looking forward to two men having a regular match in a wrestling ring. Lost in this midst is the fact that a world title is on the line that nobody seems to care about too much. I cannot fathom what WWE is thinking in building this match, but it has obviously been thrown together at the last minute. It is the classic case of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.

I am not a big fan of fantasy booking, but if I were to redo this feud, I would have gotten rid of all of stuff with Vince and Shane as well as the home invasion, etc. Instead, the whole feud would be build around that fantastic segment where Orton did the DDT on Stephanie as Hunter watched helplessly. I would have other wrestlers talking about it for weeks and we would have updates on her condition. It would soon be followed up with the stipulation that Orton and Triple H would not touch until Mania so fans would be thirsting for The Game's revenge. The premise would be that Orton already took down Triple H's wife, but now he wanted the title. I still believe that we will get a very good match between these two, but I wish that the WWE gave us a story worthy of WrestleMania.

John Cena vs. Big Show vs. Edge: Who knows what is on the line?!

As ridiculously plotted out as the other world title match is, it is a Shakespearean drama compared to this jumbled mess. You know things are bad when even John Cena is basically saying that it is a bunch of nonsense. First of all, there was no chemistry or heat between Vicki and Big Show that made us wonder or care if there was anything going on between them. Edge is supposedly using Guerrero anyway so he should not really care if she is having an affair. I feel that WWE has done an awful job in establishing the relationship between Edge and Vicki and pointing out Edge's true intentions, whatever they are. Then they add another element to the mix and it has lead to this disaster of a build.

I do not know anybody that is looking forward to this match and the D-grade junior high school soap opera drama has all the resonance of watching Showgirls on repeat on your DVD player. They should have stuck to a one-on-one match between Edge and Cena playing up their storied history and building it up to Cena's quest to regain the gold from The Rated R Superstar. The championships have been shifted around so much in the last six months that we barely know who has it anyway. An intense feud between two top young superstars may have been a good way to reestablish the value of the gold.

Please seed questions, comments and feedback to valentino.torch@gmail.com.

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