Credit: WWE.com

Final Picks for Reigns vs. Lesnar and WWE WrestleMania 38 Night 2 Match Card

Erik Beaston

On the heels of an explosive WrestleMania Saturday, WWE will look to replicate the excitement and energy of night one with a blockbuster Sunday card headlined by Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns in a Winner Takes All Match.

Celebrities, grudge matches and tag team championship clashes highlight the remainder of the card as the company looks to send fans home from Dallas happy and excited about its immediate future.

What can you expect from the lineup, who will emerge victoriously and why?

Find out now with these final predictions for night two of The Showcase of the Immortals.

Raw Tag Team Championship Match: RK-Bro vs. Street Profits vs. Alpha Academy

The Triple Threat for the Raw Tag Team Championship features three teams who have all held gold before and in some ways have come to define the red brand's tag division over the last year.

The Street Profits have been a predominant tag team for the last two years. RK-Bro, a seemingly makeshift tandem featuring two singles stars, exploded onto the scene and have dominated Monday nights since last year's WrestleMania. Alpha Academy's Chad Gable and Otis overcame subpar creative to become the top heel tandem and former champions themselves. 

Sunday's match will be an energetic contest with a real possibility to steal the show if it is given time. Orton is a cerebral performer and should help to direct traffic, while Gable, Otis, Riddle, Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins are all more than capable of holding their own with the future Hall of Famer.

Expect a hot crowd, three teams busting ass to create magic, and successful title retention from RK-Bro as they continue a reign that was never meant to last this long.

      

Prediction: RK-Bro

Pat McAfee vs. Austin Theory

Pat McAfee transcends WWE. He is a mainstream media star with an enormous following, and his huge personality has helped make him the color commentator he has developed into over the last two years. He has also demonstrated a penchant for showing up and showing out in NXT, where he had show-stealing performances.

It makes sense that WWE would want to use him to attract non-fans to WrestleMania, and pairing him with young star Austin Theory will gain the Atlanta native some exposure. Their match should be full of raw athleticism, strong storytelling and some crowd-pleasing spots from McAfee.

Theory got the last laugh Friday on SmackDown, taunting his rival and knowing damn well the former Indianapolis Colt could not do anything about it until Sunday. Given WWE's booking tendencies, expect McAfee to shut Theory up and score the biggest win of his wrestling career on the grandest stage the industry has to offer.

It will be a step back for Theory, who has been heated up of late and appears poised to challenge Finn Balor for the United States Championship, but given his pairing with Mr. McMahon, he should be able to recover fairly quickly and easily.

     

Prediction: McAfee

Anything Goes Match: Johnny Knoxville vs. Sami Zayn

One of the more intriguing matches on Sunday's card is the Anything Goes Match pitting Jackass' Johnny Knoxville against former intercontinental champion Sami Zayn.

The lack of rules or order essentially gives Knoxville the opportunity to throw caution to the wind, as usual, and do anything he can to defeat Zayn. Might we see some of his Jackass pals get involved in hopes of securing the win for Knoxville? Will there be some major stunt that fans and mainstream media are talking about the next day?

Of course, the lack of disqualifications allows Zayn to use any underhanded or nefarious means possible to make sure he is not embarrassed or humiliated by the Hollywood celebrity once again.

A chaotic match full of showmanship and creative booking to mask Knoxville's lack of in-ring experience should see the fan-favorite score a win, but not without an extraordinary performance from Zayn, who is one of WWE's MVPs over the last year.

     

Prediction: Knoxville

Fatal 4-Way for the Women's Tag Team Championship

To say WWE's treatment of its Women's Tag Team Championship has been underwhelming would be an understatement of epic proportions. They have too often been portrayed as an afterthought, titles given to two singles stars with nothing else better to do. 

Sunday night will see more of the same as Queen Zelina and Carmella defend their titles against the teams of Naomi and Sasha Banks, Natalya and Shayna Baszler, and Rhea Ripley and Liv Morgan.

Despite the negativity surrounding the creative of the championship, the talent in the match and the in-ring action we have seen out of them in the lead to WrestleMania 38 suggests we should be in for a damn good Fatal 4-Way as long as the match gets time and the competitors do not have to rush through the action. 

Banks and Naomi feel like the easy favorite to win the match, but their victory Friday night on SmackDown, coupled with WWE's booking methods, create a certain amount of hesitancy to make them the pick. The winner of the match is rarely left standing tall on the final show before the premium live event.

Ripley and Morgan represent the greatest opposition to that outcome, but Banks is a big enough star that one year after a historic main event loss to Bianca Belair, WWE will see to it that The Boss gets her first WrestleMania victory in seven tries.

      

Prediction: Banks and Naomi

Bobby Lashley vs. Omos

Bobby Lashley returned at the last possible moment, ensuring his place on the WrestleMania card. That is the good news.

The bad? His opponent Sunday is the dominant, destructive Omos, who has left a path of destruction in his wake since breaking up with tag team partner AJ Styles earlier this year.

There is not much of a backstory to speak of outside of The All-Mighty accepting the massive heel's challenge for a WrestleMania match. Nor does there have to be.

This will be all spectacle, this year's answer to the "unstoppable force vs. the immovable object" narrative. It would mean more for Omos to win, but if there is one guy who can believably put an end to his recent streak of one-sided demolitions, it is the former WWE champion.

      

Prediction: Lashley

AJ Styles vs. Edge

Edge vs. AJ Styles is one of the hardest matches to predict on the WrestleMania card.

In many ways, it feels like we are early on in the story. Edge turned heel, introduced a new persona, and Styles returned from the beating he suffered at the hands of the Rated R Superstar in such short order that there has been no time whatsoever for any of it to sink it.

WrestleMania feels very much like the conclusion of a first chapter in a feud still in its infancy.

Which begs the question: Does Styles win to avenge the beating, or does Edge pick up the victory to propel things forward?

It is entirely too early for Edge, fresh off said heel turn and still fleshing out what this new persona will look like, to lose. Styles will get his revenge eventually, but Edge needs this more than the perpetually over Phenomenal One.

     

Prediction: Edge

Winner Takes All for the WWE and Universal Championships

The biggest match of the year, on the grandest stage of them all, will see WWE champion Brock Lesnar square off with Universal champion Roman Reigns in a Winner Takes All match.

This is a match with the grandeur, stakes and expectations of the WrestleMania main event. Built since Lesnar returned to WWE last August, the feud has had twists and turns but Sunday in Dallas will write its finale in what most hope is a vast improvement over the last time these two took center stage at The Showcase of the Immortals. 

In that match, Lesnar dismantled Reigns in the most one-sided marquee bout in event history. Reigns has grown and evolved and arrives at the show as the biggest star in WWE. The Tribal Chief has reigned for well over 500 days and has shown no signs of slowing down.

Lesnar will get revenge for months of torment in a physical match that will probably see both him and his opponent take some big bumps. Whether it is interference from Paul Heyman or The Usos, or some other unforeseen surprise, Reigns will narrowly escape, exorcizing the biggest demon from his career by defeating The Beast on sports entertainment's most prestigious night.

     

Prediction: Reigns

   

Read 0 Comments

Download the app for comments Get the B/R app to join the conversation

Install the App
×
Bleacher Report
(120K+)