WrestleMania - Kurt Angle & Ronda Rousey VS Triple H & Stephanie McMahon

[Jack-Hammer]

Welp, this match is official. We've known it was coming for a while, it was all but signed and sealed last week but it's official now.

The purpose of this match is pure spectacle. Ronda Rousey will get to beat up Stephanie McMahon and the live crowd in New Orleans will eat it up. While I can't say that I'm overly excited about this, it may well be the best thing to do with Rousey for her very first match. She's not ready to be a champion, hence the right call was made not to put her in a title match, which automatically puts Charlotte and Alexa out of contention, and there aren't many female stars on the roster who have the sort of star power and/or credibility to be a "believable" challenger for Rousey at this point. Paige will never wrestle in a WWE ring again, Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville are both quite green and lack credibility, Alicia Fox is out injured and lacks credibility, Asuka has a title match lined up so that really only leaves Mickie James and Nia Jax when you get right down to it. Mickie has the credibility and ability to give Rousey a good match, but nobody would remotely believe she'd have a chance to win. Nia has the whole powerhouse, dominant thing going on but feeding her to Rousey is a waste of a top contender for the Women's Division and almost certainly Alexa Bliss' opponent. So instead of a competitive match, they're just going for a sports entertainment spectacle and, as I said, it's probably the best thing to do at this point.

Triple H and Kurt Angle are ultimately background players in this as the fans are going to be focused on Ronda and Stephanie. I suspect Trips and Angle will carry much of the match as both Ronda and Steph are so green. However, if they turned around and decided to give this match some sort of no DQ stipulation, it'd give Stephanie more of a chance as she could use weapons like chairs or kendo sticks. Fans aren't going to suspend disbelief enough that Ronda Rousey, the woman who put women's mixed martial arts on the map and one of the biggest sports stars of the decade, could be "beaten" in a "fight" by Billon Dollar Soccer Mom.

[Uncle Sam]

This is a tag match because Ronda's still early on in her wrestling career and needs the cover - that's a given: Wrestling Booking 101. My problem with that is, her cover is Kurt Angle, a man who wrestles as if he's apt to snap in half at any moment.

[Slyfox696]

I agree with Sam...no problem at all with putting Rousey in a tag match they can use to capitalize on her drawing power while hiding her flaws, but putting her with Angle? Angle simply cannot go any more and the last time I remember watching him (with the Shield), he was an embarrassment to himself and what he used to be. Hell, I'd rather have seen Cena in this match than Angle, despite the fact there's very little relationship between him and the other three.

[Dave]

I suppose this is a case of suck and see.

I must admit, I was a little worried about the shape of Kurt Angle heading into this match. I watched him in the match with The SHIELD and he looked rotten. Then again, it was his first match with the WWE in some time and gets some slack from me. A similar amount of time will have passed by the time Mania comes around, so I'm hoping that he's improved some in that time. Christ knows if he's really able to go the way he did but I don't think it'll matter too much.

I fully expect Triple H to beat the shit out of Kurt Angle for most of the match. The hot tag will come to Rousey at some point and she'll wipe Stephanie out for the win. I'd be very surprised if this match goes any longer than 10 minutes with all things considered. Still, I'm buying the spectacle of the match and I'm looking forward to seeing, mostly, what Ronda can do in a ring.

[Slyfox696]

I suppose this is a case of suck and see.

I must admit, I was a little worried about the shape of Kurt Angle heading into this match. I watched him in the match with The SHIELD and he looked rotten. Then again, it was his first match with the WWE in some time and gets some slack from me. A similar amount of time will have passed by the time Mania comes around, so I'm hoping that he's improved some in that time. Christ knows if he's really able to go the way he did but I don't think it'll matter too much.

I fully expect Triple H to beat the shit out of Kurt Angle for most of the match. The hot tag will come to Rousey at some point and she'll wipe Stephanie out for the win. I'd be very surprised if this match goes any longer than 10 minutes with all things considered. Still, I'm buying the spectacle of the match and I'm looking forward to seeing, mostly, what Ronda can do in a ring.

I fully expect Rousey to beat up on Trips for a while too.

[DNA 2.0]

Everybody thinks that Angle is in there to cover Rousey. Lol. Don't be shocked when Rousey ends up being the one covering Angle, who could barely walk back at TLC.
This whole thing will fall on HHH's shoulders which means a very slooooooow match. So I hope they get this over with in 10 minutes. But since this is a blockbuster, they are going to give it 20.

The story will probably be, don't let Kurt tag Ronda.

Seriously, they should have booked just Ronda Rousey vs Triple H in a Street Fight and have Angle be the ref.

[CyberPunk]

Looking at WWE's track record, I'm fully expecting this match to go close to or even over 20 minutes. The wrestling is not the point here though. I see the match being initially Triple H vs Kurt Angle with Triple H trying to prevent Stephanie from entering the match at any cost. The spectacle would be the eventual beatdown Rousey hands to both Triple H and Stephanie. Angle is there to take some punishment and to provide the hot tag to Rousey. If she pulls off even half of her moves properly, the crowd will eat it up.

My gut feeling is someone will end up replacing Angle, possibly the Rock.

[FunKay]

This is fine for me; it ties up some loose ends from Survivor Series last year (and Mania 31 of course) and in lieu of Rock, Angle works as the part time partner who won't take the gloss off of Rousey like Strowman could have. I'd also say that Trips is probably the safest guy for Angle to be in there with and if nothing else, this should clear a fair bit of room for others at Mania, because Hunter's not going to drag a mixed tag designed to showcase Rousey out for 30 minutes in a war of attrition (he said with baited breath).

I'm fine with it, it protects Angle and Rousey and should be an excellent way to get Rousey over with the crowd (killing Stephanie McMahon and banishing her from my screen for a significant period of time is an instant win for me).

[Undying]

This match will draw in a lot of people i'm sure but it doesn't mean it will be anything special. I can see it going 20 minutes or so with 90 percent of that being Triple H beating the shit out of Angle with eventually a hot tag to Ronda where she can make Stephanie tap. But is it completely out of the realm of possibility that Stephanie scores the pinfall on Ronda? Most likely, but doesn't mean I wouldn't laugh my ass off if it did happen.