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What's the story?
WrestleMania 34 is now just 12 days away and it seems that The Undertaker's match against John Cena hasn't yet been officially announced. Cena faced Kane last night on Raw and WWE once again missed the opportunity to reveal The Deadman's answer to the challenge, but it seems that there is a reason why.
In case you didn't know...
WWE has wanted John Cena to face The Undertaker for a few years now, with it being rumored that it was supposed to be Cena in Shane McMahon's place back at WrestleMania 32 but he wasn't cleared in time to compete.
The Undertaker and Cena have never had a showdown at WrestleMania and it seems that after he was able to team with his, fiancée, Nikki Bella last year, this year was the perfect time for him and The Deadman to finally collide.
Cena has become a part-time star in recent months and it seems that this could be one of his final WrestleMania matches as well as it being Undertaker's last on the Grandest Stage Of Them All.
The heart of the matter
Even though it's been made obvious that Cena will be facing Undertaker for the past few months and fans expected the build-up to begin when both stars were part of Raw's 25th Anniversary, the company has left it down to the last minute which is why there is now just over a week to go and the match is still yet to be announced.
Dave Meltzer discussed the reasons for this on The Wrestling Observer today where he revealed that it could be because Vince McMahon already feels that this year's card is pretty loaded without Undertaker's match as part of it so he's allowed the build to go down to the wire. (Transcript via Ringsidenews)
“They had Danielson have his checkup by Dr. Maroon eight days earlier because Vince was so adamant that he didn’t want to wait until what would have been this week to shoot the angle and then next week have the match which I can get. But with Undertaker and Cena is actually doing the exact same thing. The idea is with Daniel Bryan’s return and Ronda Rousey’s match you know Nakamura and AJ and Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns I think maybe he [Vince] figures, ‘hey it’s a loaded up card we can wait until the last week to push the Cena and Undertaker thing.’ I don’t know, I’d want to do a couple weeks build for that one.”
It seems that the ticket sales could have a huge impact on the way the storylines are playing out since it seems that none of the shows for WrestleMania week have sold out yet, which is worrying since it's just days away. Perhaps McMahon hopes that the announcement will give the sales a last minute boost.
"The last I’ve checked and I haven’t checked in several days, there were seats available. I don’t think any of the WWE shows were sold out but I think RAW was close and they were pushing tickets for the Hall of Fame. They were pushing hard tickets for SmackDown for New Orleans and Mania’ has a lot of tickets left as well. This isn’t the best year at all for those tickets.”
What's next?
It is thought that the match will finally be confirmed on the go-home episode of Raw before WrestleMania since it has been building for a number of weeks and this is the last chance the company has to announce the match for WrestleMania before the event.
Author's take
The WWE Universe has been waiting for this match to happen since before Cena officially called out The Undertaker a few weeks ago.
Whilst it will be a fantastic match between Undertaker and Cena, many fans were worried that The Deadman wouldn't be able to return after his surgery last year. Leaving it down to the last minute adds more excitement to WrestleMania, and since this year's show is already huge, maybe it was a great idea from McMahon?
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