WrestleMania 28: Pushes Coming for Young Stars on Road to WrestleMania 29?

The WWE was a target of a lot of criticism on the road to WrestleMania 28—not because the pay-per-view’s card was bad (we all know that wasn’t the case), but because it “relied too much” on older superstars from the past. 

If you think about it, that argument kind of has some merit. Out of the top three matches on the show, we had The Rock (39), Chris Jericho (41) Triple H (42), and Undertaker (47), as well as CM Punk (33, the baby of the bunch) and Cena (34), who’s been main-eventing for so long that it feels like he’s in his 40s already. Not to mention, you had Kane (44) and Big Show (40) in other high-profile matches, too. 

As you can see, the WWE, outside of Punk, didn’t exactly use WrestleMania to highlight its rising superstars, and apparently, we fans weren’t the only people who noticed that. 

From F4Wonline.com (via WrestleNewz.com): 

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There was a push in Miami this weekend for WWE to begin pushing some of the younger talents on the Road to WrestleMania 29 in 2013.

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Look, don’t get me wrong: The WWE needs to have guys like The Rock, Jericho and Undertaker around, especially at WrestleMania time, to draw in more fans and make more money. 

But their involvement in the WWE’s biggest pay-per-view of the year is going to become a big problem if it consistently overshadows the company’s younger superstars and, in many cases, prevents them from getting the push that they deserve. 

I’m completely fine with having The Undertaker’s Streak match and another match involving a WWE legend, but I think it’s imperative that we see the younger stars mixing it up with the veterans and that we see the younger stars getting a chance to headline the show as well. 

There were some very talented superstars—such as Dolph Ziggler—who were randomly thrown into some 12-man tag team match at WrestleMania 28 when they could have (and perhaps should have) been involved in some major singles matches or even competing for World titles instead. 

I hope we indeed see that happen on the road to WrestleMania 29. 

You wanna bring in Brock Lesnar, Batista or “Stone Cold” Steve Austin? That’s fine. 

Just don’t forget that the full-time, younger superstars deserve to have their WrestleMania moments, too.

Note: As part of the new WWE blog, I'll be asking all of the B/R wrestling readers for questions for a new mailbag that I will post on Fridays. It will be a slideshow featuring 10-20 questions and answers on a wide range of topics. You can submit questions either through Formspring or Twitter, and the best ones will be answered in the B/R mailbag.