WWE WrestleMania 2014: Comparing This Year's Match Card to Other Shows

It’s rather interesting to compare the WrestleMania XXX card with the other lineups in the famous event history.

One cynical—but perfectly valid—reaction to this year’s card is to say it can’t even hold a candle to the greatness of other years.

There is undoubtedly a great deal of truth to this. The pay-per-view is appealing, sure, but it does seem to the lack the must-see factor that other WrestleManias have had.

Much of it feels thrown together at the last minute—mainly because it was.

Truthfully, the card has been besieged by problems from the start.

As PWI, via Wrestling Inc, mentions, Randy Orton vs. Batista for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship was originally scheduled for the main event.

Credit: WWE.com

Alas, Batista’s return was an enormous flop and the bout had to be drastically re-tooled. Per the stipulations, the winner of Triple H vs. Daniel Bryan earlier in the evening will now be placed in the match, making it a triple threat.

Additionally, CM Punk famously walked out on the company in January, scuppering the plans for him and Triple H to square off at WrestleMania.

There’s also been the WWE Network launch and the current ongoing television rights negotiations.

Credit: WWE.com

It’s been an extremely hectic and busy time for America’s No. 1 wrestling promotion. Vince McMahon has almost certainly had his mind on other things over the last two months, no wonder WrestleMania has taken a backseat. It was simply inevitable.

Honestly, this year, there is no grand Rock vs. John Cena or Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker-type bout that people are absolutely desperate to see. It’s hard for even the most devoted of WWE fans to look at WrestleMania XXX and not see it as somewhat of a disappointment.

However, that doesn’t mean the card won’t be great, from an in-ring perspective at least.

Triple H vs. Daniel Bryan will almost certainly deliver in the ring—both these guys are too good not to produce something special. Bryan’s (inevitable) world title win at the end of the show should also be a lovely, heart-warming moment for the star’s legion of fans.

Credit: WWE.com

The Undertaker vs. Brock Lesnar will likely churn out something spectacular, particularly considering Undertaker’s phenomenal work ethic. It should go some way to making up for the dismal build up for the bout.

The 30-man Andre the Giant Battle Royal—announced by Hulk Hogan on Raw three weeks ago—should be an interesting novelty bout too, if nothing else, especially if we get a few surprise entrants.

Even the Divas Championship match could be decent, as long as they let girls like Naomi and Natalya do most of the work and keep the woefully bad Aksana’s in-ring contributions to a bare minimum.

So is WrestleMania XXX a great card? No. It may not even be a good one, in all honesty. But it almost certainly won’t be a disaster of WrestleMania IX-levels either.