The weirdest WrestleMania ever is staying weird when it comes to Roman Reigns.
Multiple outlets reported that Reigns had asked out of his Universal title match against Goldberg at WrestleMania 36, as he’s immunocompromised due to his currently in remission leukemia and there’s a pandemic going on. Next weekend’s shows were taped this past week, so news coming out is more “spoiler” than “rumor”. And the scoop itself came from Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet, who also works for WWE’s broadcast partner Fox Sports - making it highly unlikely he’d run with it if it wasn’t legit.
Yet the Mar. 27 SmackDown continued to promote Roman vs. Goldberg, in a variety of ways. And there’s this...
Also next week on #SmackDown, #TheBigDog @WWERomanReigns and @Goldberg meet face to face ahead of their #UniversalTitle showdown at @WrestleMania. https://t.co/U6Elyxsit9
— WWE (@WWE) March 28, 2020
If reports about The Big Dog’s replacement, and a segment shot setting up the match we’re getting in lieu of “Spear vs. Spear”, are correct... I guess we’ll see those next Friday on the April 3 go home show? You can read what we think are spoilers about Goldberg’s new opponent here.
Or will they let the change play out on the WrestleMania broadcast itself? Both last night and next week’s episodes of SmackDown were supposedly taped before the ‘Mania filming on Weds., Mar. 25 and Thurs., Mar. 26.
Not that they couldn’t edit in other material in post-production. But Reigns/Goldberg probably gets more WWE Network subscriptions and PPV buys than [redacted]/Goldberg, especially from fans who may only watch Big 4 shows, or who wouldn’t purchase this show if it weren’t for “the prevailing circumstances”.
Perhaps worth noting that the article the above tweet links to does not appear on WWE.com’s main or SmackDown page. The other segment promoted for next Friday - John Cena responding to Bray Wyatt’s proposal they have a “Firefly Fun House Match” - is in the stream of stories on both those.
That’s probably putting too much thought into it, and we know the folks putting together the company website aren’t always up on Vince McMahon’s latest plans.
But it’s kind of where we are trying to cover the first two-night, pre-taped, no-fans WrestleMania.