WrestleMania media day takeaways: Reigns challenges The Rock, Ronda to return?
Roman Reigns pitches his cousin The Rock on one last WrestleMania match next year at SoFi Stadium in L.A. (0:39)
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Reporters, clad in hard hats and yellow fluorescent vests, made their way to SoFi Stadium on Tuesday.
The mammoth, state-of-the-art facility is expected to be completed in July, and the NFL’s Rams and Chargers will begin playing there in the fall. In 2022, the Super Bowl will take place at SoFi, and the stadium will be one of the central venues for the 2024 Olympics.
Also on the bill? WrestleMania 37, which will be held March 28, 2021.
WWE will take over the Los Angeles area that week, with Raw, SmackDown and NXT Takeover at Staples Center and the Axxess fan expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
On Tuesday, WWE made the announcement official at a news conference at the still-being-constructed SoFi Stadium. WWE chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon, WWE Raw women’s champion Becky Lynch and former Universal champion Roman Reigns talked with media at length.
Here’s what we learned from the day at SoFi Stadium:
The Rock’s daughter Simone Johnson officially signed with WWE on Monday and will be training at the Performance Center in Orlando. How about her dad? Will Dwayne Johnson step into the ring again? One last match, perhaps?
Reigns, one of the biggest current WWE stars who just happens to be The Rock’s cousin, has an idea. How about WrestleMania 37 next year at SoFi Stadium? It is already being billed as WrestleMania: Hollywood. Why not have the return of Hollywood’s biggest moneymaker?
“Hey, DJ, check it out. Not bad, right?” Reigns said while looking out onto the construction. “I mean, the weather is good. Everyone is always talking about a dream match, me and him. First of all, we’re family, so it’s all love. If there was gonna be an event for him to compete in, to perform in, a venue to hold that mass scale of attention he’s gonna bring? It’s right here in your backyard. You ain’t gotta go far.”
The Big Dog vs. The People’s Champ in Tinseltown? Sounds like a movie script if there ever was one.
Ronda Rousey is coming back to WWE. It’s only a matter of time.
That is the interpretation from Stephanie McMahon. Rousey headlined WrestleMania 35 last year in a triple-threat match against Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair. It was a memorable yearlong run for Rousey that started at WrestleMania 34, when she teamed with Kurt Angle to face Triple H and McMahon. However, Rousey has not wrestled since Mania last April.
“In all seriousness, I hope so,” McMahon said of a Rousey return. “I know that she’s very excited about coming back. I think she has some things in her personal life that she wants to do. When the time is right, she’ll be back. I have no doubt about that.”
Rousey said last month on WWE color commentator Corey Graves’ “After the Bell” podcast that she might show up unannounced at a house show one day and ask to be booked. Rousey has said she’d like to return to WWE, if not so much in a full-time, every-week capacity.
Either way, the promotion would welcome her back with open arms, of course.
Could it be at WrestleMania 37 in Rousey’s hometown of Los Angeles?
“I sincerely hope we have Ronda Rousey back for WrestleMania here at SoFi, only I don’t want to be the one facing her in the ring,” McMahon said. “I don’t know. It didn’t work out so well for me last time. I think I’ll let her do her own thing.”
Becky Lynch talks MMA fighters coming into UFC, Conor McGregor and who has the best “billi strut”
UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones told Sports Illustrated that it was “inevitable” that he would be involved with WWE in some way in the future. On Tuesday, Lynch, one of the biggest stars in pro wrestling, issued a message to anyone thinking about getting into the art. It’s not as easy as some might assume, Lynch intimated in a fiery promo.
“I think people think this is a cakewalk,” Lynch said. “There’s nothing like what we do. It’s not as simple as just walking in here. You have to make a name for yourself. And you have to be obsessed with this. You have to love this. This isn’t a thing where you have one fight every six months. This is a thing where you are fighting three, four, sometimes seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. And for people to sometimes think it’s an easy thing they can just stroll into, it kind of irks me. It irks me — it does. Because I love this business. I love it more than anything.
“If [Jones] loves it like I do, well, then come along. I’ll show you the ropes. But if he doesn’t, if he just wants to make some easy money, this ain’t the way to do it.”
McMahon was asked about the death of NBA legend and Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant during a media scrum Tuesday. She said the news of his death hit her hard and made her think of her husband (Paul “Triple H” Levesque) and their oldest daughter, who is 13 years old, the same age as the late Gianna Bryant, who died in the helicopter crash.
McMahon said WWE will continue to honor Bryant in different ways moving forward. The promotion aired a tribute to the basketball great at the Royal Rumble last month.
“Certainly, we will do everything we can,” she said. “I think everyone should do whatever they can to honor not just Kobe’s memory but everyone’s memory who was on that flight. And the community. We all matter. I think that’s the most important thing to remember.”
Could Bryant be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame before WrestleMania 37 in Los Angeles? McMahon would not rule that out.
“That could be a potential consideration,” she said. “We’re gonna focus right now on WrestleMania 36 in terms of that Hall of Fame, but certainly anything is possible as we move forward to WrestleMania 37.”
Reigns has a chance at a Universal title match at WrestleMania, but he needs to win the Elimination Chamber match on March 8 for the opportunity. Meanwhile, current Universal champion “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt defends his title against Goldberg at Super Showdown on Feb. 27.
When asked whom he’d prefer to face for the belt at WrestleMania 36, it was pretty clear that Reigns was speaking from the heart and not in kayfabe.
“From a completely honest standpoint, I would much rather face ‘The Fiend,'” Reigns said. “He’s busted his ass all year long for it. No offense to Goldberg. I think he’s a great performer. He’s a great superstar. But I’m into the future right now and helping out the guys that are gonna be in the locker room with me. There’s no doubt ‘The Fiend’ has put a lot of work into what he’s done. We all have.”