But 2014 was something of a lost year for World Wrestling Entertainment, and the Road to WrestleMania has been a hard one thus far. Daniel Bryan’s emotional return to Raw and his declaration that he would not have to retire. Brock Lesnar destroying John Cena at SummerSlam. There were glimmers of hope, here and there. Really, they’ve been treading water since Daniel Bryan, fresh off his triumphant double header at WrestleMania XXX, suffered an injury that took him out of the picture for nearly a year. One problem ( the problem) is that the WWE hasn’t had much in the way of success with many of its storylines of late. This year, unable to promote an Elimination Chamber event because the titular construction is expensive to set up in arenas that can’t easily accommodate it, Fastlane held the promise, due to its punning title, of accelerating the company’s storylines heading into WrestleMania. The fallout from the big show may string things along until SummerSlam, but everything from that August show until about the Royal Rumble is about the promise that WrestleMania will be worthwhile. If anything, it’s called The Road to WrestleMania because that’s when the pieces for the show really start to fall into place. This was true once, perhaps, before World Wrestling Entertainment was the only game in town, before it had to fill five hours of broadcast television and yet more for their online outlet, but the days of WrestleMania being plotted out a year in advance have been over for some time. In every documentary I’ve seen about the event, the 31st edition of which takes place on March 29, a member of creative or a wrestler, perhaps Triple H or Vince McMahon, even, will claim that the Road to WrestleMania starts the day after the show, when the exhausted crew gathers in the basketball arena adjacent to the stadium they’d just occupied and begins plotting out the next episode of Raw. World Wrestling Entertainment decided to re-brand their February pay-per-view event Fastlane to play off the fact that they call the long stretch between Royal Rumble and WrestleMania the Road to WrestleMania.
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