WWE Stock Report: Goldberg vs. Roman Reigns should be postponed

Some places do power rankings. Here at Cageside, we do a stock report.

In this weekly series, we identify three Superstars (or groups of Superstars) who are on their way up, and three that are moving in the opposite direction. After a busy week that included WrestleMania 36 becoming a two night event in multiple locations, a contract signing between Undertaker and AJ Styles, and Becky Lynch already performing her WrestleMania entrance in a custom semi-truck, a lot of fortunes were changed.

With that in mind, let’s see whose stock has increased the most this week:

Stock Up #3: Tamina

Like Bayley, I wasn’t even sure if Tamina was still on the WWE roster, and I certainly didn’t know which brand she was on. So the fact that Tamina now has a match at WrestleMania 36 sounds like a pretty big step up for her, even if her probability of winning approaches zero.

Stock Up #2: Mojo Rawley

Raw superstar Mojo Rawley is getting his 15 minutes of fame on SmackDown now that Rob Gronkowski is in WWE and hosting WrestleMania 36. The segment this week (Mar. 20) between Rawley, Gronkowski, and King Corbin made clear that WWE is tying Rawley and Gronkowski together for now, and that’s good news for Mojo.

Stock Up #1: Daniel Bryan, Drew Gulak, Sami Zayn

Daniel Bryan has somehow turned both Drew Gulak and Sami Zayn into relevant players in a WrestleMania championship storyline, and it’s resulting in good matches, entertaining mic work, and plenty of ball jokes.

Now let’s see whose stock has decreased the most this week:

Stock Down #3: Andrade

Andrade has wrestled in four televised matches since returning from his suspension, and he has been pinned in three of those matches. His latest loss occurred on this week’s (Mar. 16) Raw against Rey Mysterio. I suppose a mid-card champion losing lots of matches is nothing new in WWE, but it doesn’t do him any favors.

Stock Down #2: Goldberg & Roman Reigns

Goldberg vs. Reigns is a potentially huge match that deserves a better story than this. What we’ve gotten here just doesn’t have any depth to it.

Reigns simply declared himself the top contender for the Universal championship, and then they tried to have a super intense contract signing where the tension revolved around a tweet from two months ago. I think they are angry at each other because of college football and Goldberg headbutting things? It’s just not working, at least not for a match that is scheduled to take place in two weeks.

This is one WrestleMania match that should be postponed. The storyline just hasn’t been developed enough, and “Spear vs. Spear” isn’t a good enough hook to make up for that deficiency. Looking beyond just the wrestling, there’s also the fact that Roman Reigns is immunocompromised, and he should be staying home right now due to the coronavirus pandemic. The risk just isn’t worth it. But that’s true about all of these shows that AEW and WWE are putting on right now.

Stock Down #1: Steve Austin

Steve Austin is one of at least two superstars who WWE considers to be the greatest of all-time. So how does a GOAT get used in his big return on Raw? In a very bad stand-up comedy bit that would have bombed even in front of a live audience? What?

Stone Cold’s appearance on Raw was not entertaining, had no relevance to WrestleMania, and was an uninspired waste of time. Even worse, Austin may have damaged his own foot when he accidentally kicked Bryon Saxton in the junk, leading to some bad-looking Stunners. This whole thing was a massive letdown, and not worthy of all the return hype that Austin received over the last couple weeks.

There you have it, Cagesiders. Whose stock do you think has changed the most this week?