what a show Did However, the good performance began to plant the seeds for next year’s WrestleMania season. Over the weekend, we had very little idea what could happen around Las Vegas. We now see a clear path to two big main events on the men’s side, including Cody Rhodes vs. Roman Reigns III.
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It’s true that Rhodes vs. Reigns is an obvious choice. In fact, that’s exactly what ChatGPT came up with when I asked him to craft a suitably exciting main event for next year’s WrestleMania, which can’t help but be fueled by persistent rumors about WWE using AI to book storylines.
Again, the AI is only working on information that is already on record, which is that Reigns and Rhodes have managed to blow off the stadium roof at WrestleMania twice before. What’s more, neither has lost their main-event star power since their last big match at WrestleMania 40.
WWE has been keeping this special card up its sleeve for some time now. They have also made the smart decision to let the pressure build gradually: avoiding the temptation of open war between the two rivals, and instead forcing them into an uneasy alliance against common enemies.
That alliance finally appeared to be ending on Saturday night. Following the Reigns-Rhodes-Usos-Punk team’s defeat at WarGames, “The American Nightmare” helped his former rival back to his feet, only to be told – in no uncertain terms – that this would be the last time the two of them would team together.
This follows a huge tease on this week’s “Raw” that Reigns will be looking to make a move on one of the world titles soon. That segment intentionally left things ambiguous as to which of his World Champion teammates (CM Punk or Cody Rhodes) Reigns was seeing. After WarGames, we can probably work on this.
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It is not that CM Punk has emerged completely unblemished. Against the odds, it turned out that the World Champion was the one to get the pin in the main event. And who was it that managed to bring the world champion’s shoulders to the mat? Not Brock Lesnar, but a certain Braun Breaker.
Hey, maybe Punk just drew the short straw backstage. Or, more excitingly, maybe WWE is actually moving towards Braun Breaker vs. CM Punk at next year’s WrestleMania – thus finally getting Steiner Jr. the world title we all know he deserves.
Paul Heyman hinted as much during the post-show, claiming it was “obvious” that The Vision would end up main eventing WrestleMania in some capacity – before making a specific reference to Braun Breaker pinning Punk. Sure, he was in character at the time, but it’s not hard to spot some truth beneath it.
If this happens I will not complain. Just last week, I was saying that Breaker was at risk of being completely overshadowed by WarGames, the very event that was intended to help advance The Vision. He now not only has a path toward a world title match at WrestleMania, but also a potential title defense against the returning Seth Rollins at next year’s SummerSlam. What a year that will be.
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If this looks like a good start to 2026, it’s worth noting that the picture still looks bleak on the women’s side, with WarGames giving no hints about what next year might look like. It probably didn’t help that neither of the two World Champions were in the match, with Jade Cargill skipping the event entirely for unexplained reasons.
If we’re assuming the two current champions will reach WrestleMania, the obvious fantasy picks would be Rhea Ripley vs. Stephanie Walker and Jade Cargill vs. Bianca Belair. Who knows, maybe this is what we’ll get in the end. However, right now, we have almost zero to go on, leaving us to guess.
Let’s hope WWE starts filling in the gaps on that front soon. We saw last year with the feud between Tiffany Stratton and Charlotte Flair that you can’t just rely on the Rumble to get a ‘Mania title match; Requires some real pitch-rolling beforehand. This is not the type of mistake you want to make two years in a row.
Still, it looks like at least half of next year’s WrestleMania season is starting to take shape. We know from Paul Heyman’s big interview on “The Ariel Helwani Show” this year that WWE puts a disproportionate amount of its creative focus on creating something special for these once-a-year events, sometimes thinking about it more than a year in advance.
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Based on what we saw last night, the prep process may be headed to the next step — and looking pretty juicy, too.
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