WWE WrestleMania: Five key questions ahead of the biggest show of the year
Sunday 7 April 2019 22:10, UK
We analyse five of the biggest talking points heading into WWE’s biggest show of the year, WrestleMania 35.
The action gets underway at midnight on Sky Sports Box Office - so what are the main questions which will have to be answered tonight?
Will the main event deliver?
As the late, great Gorilla Monsoon once said about WrestleMania: "The world is watching."
And that will be the case more emphatically than ever this year, as a women's match headlines the 'grandest stage of them all' for the first time in 35 years.
Expect loud Becky Lynch chants, boos for Ronda Rousey and an extravagant entrance for Charlotte Flair. Expect, too, a great match. All three competitors can deliver in the ring, and with the fans' investment well known, this should be good.
Anyone in any doubt need only look back at the stand-out match from last year's Mania: the mixed tag between Rousey and Kurt Angle, and Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. Flair's battle with Asuka also regularly features in honourable mentions.
The world will be watching. But the women can definitely deliver.
Is it time for Rollins' coronation?
Seth Rollins attempts to go from Kingslayer to Beastslayer as he becomes the latest man to pit his WrestleMania wits against Brock Lesnar for the Universal title.
Roman Reigns came up short last year when all of the armchair bookies believed otherwise in a main event which did not go down well with the New Orleans crowd.
Rollins will have the type of arena support that Reigns did not have that evening, but is the company ready to move away from their absent champion - and thus special attraction - Lesnar?
With UFC president Dana White making no secret of his own plans to again work with Brock, it may be that Rollins has to wait a little while longer to take the top title.
How many feelgood moments will there be?
Rollins, Lynch and Kofi Kingston all find themselves in positions where the crowd will be completely in their favour - something which is quite rare in these days of babyfaces often being seen as less than cool.
But they can't have all three of them win at WrestleMania, and so somebody will surely have to miss out.
It seems unlikely such a fate will befall Lynch, whose show-closing pose with both belts as the MetLife Stadium fireworks explode into action seems to be locked in.
Kofimania, meanwhile, has been running wild on SmackDown for the past few weeks. His popularity with the fans means he may even get louder chants than Becky on the night.
Add an emotional Kurt Angle retirement into the mix and the chances of fans of all three babyfaces leaving New Jersey happy drastically go down.
Will this be the longest WrestleMania in history?
Including the pre-show matches - which are yet to be confirmed - there are 15 bouts slated for WrestleMania, more than any at the event since 1990.
Conservative estimates are putting the run time at around six hours, which would see fans in the United Kingdom staying up until around 5am.
Burn-out is a potential issue, both for those watching back home on the sofa, and for the arena crowd, whose attention will need to be captured for the longest time in Mania history.
Is it overkill, creating an unnecessarily large card to ensure the vast majority of what is already a huge roster gets a match? Or is it the best way to celebrate WWE in their biggest event of the year, and incredible value for money for the paying fans?
Is this the end of the old guard?
It is quite probable that this could be the final WrestleMania appearance for several huge names from WWE's rich history.
There is no place on the card for The Undertaker or John Cena, while Kurt Angle will certainly bow out and Triple H and Batista could both exit stage left. The latter pair fight each other, while Angle is - perhaps somewhat controversially - up against Baron Corbin.
That match is one that has upset some fans but is an indicator of a willingness on the company's part to promote new, younger stars.
It could be the start of a new wave of talent breaking into the top end of the card, as several of the more established names drift over the horizon.
