We are a few short days away from WrestleMania 42 in Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium, and Pat McAfee is the WWE champion.
No, seriously.
Cody Rhodes might be the official champion, but if you tune in to ESPN on Monday, it’s Pat McAfee with the WWE championship leading into the biggest event of the year for the company.
In the most recent “Friday Night SmackDown,” McAfee, along with Randy Orton, beat down Rhodes and took his WWE championship, which he’s defending against Orton on Saturday night.
But Orton isn’t the one with the title.
It’s McAfee who is now at the center of one of the biggest matches at WrestleMania, with Orton turned side character.
On “The Pat McAfee Show,” it’s McAfee who is the biggest selling point of the match. What was supposed to be a story between master and student, with nearly two decades of history behind it with Orton and Rhodes, has devolved into McAfee trying to “save wrestling” by having Rhodes lose the belt to Orton.
McAfee, to his credit, has done his best on the microphone to turn the fans against Orton and cheer Rhodes, but even for pro wrestling standards, the build to the title match has been nonsensical.
The inclusion feels like what it is: TKO, the ownership of WWE, wanting cross-brand synergy with ESPN before their huge event, with one of the linear television’s most prominent faces hyping up the show.
TKO and ESPN hope that McAfee, with the belt and week-long build-up, will get more eyes on the product come the weekend, and that those eyes will turn into downloads and purchases of the ESPN premium service to watch the shows.
Yet, by possibly adding more purchases, they’ve sacrificed the actual story. What was teased as a historic rivalry for the past two years has spiraled into a matchup between two gigantic stars overshadowed by a former NFL punter.
Regardless of whether Orton wins his 15th world championship on Sunday, he won’t be the actual champion.
It’ll be Pat McAfee.
And for ESPN and TKO, that might be a gigantic success.
For the longtime wrestling fan, though, it might be their last straw.