For as great as the Bloodline saga has been at adapting plans on the fly to align with fan response and desires, the Roman Reigns and Rock tag team match at WrestleMania might be a flop of a conclusion.

A tag match just screams overbooked silliness more fitting of a recent WWE era fans don’t want to experience anymore.

The tag match where Rock and Reigns team up against Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins with the end result deciding stipulations for the Night 2 main event between Rhodes and Reigns is, in a word, a mess.

Just saying it out loud speaks to that well enough: If Rhodes and Rollins win, the Bloodline is barred from ringside during the Night 2 main event. If they lose, it’s a free-for-all of interferences.

Except, for one, fans know better than to trust that the Bloodline being barred from ringside would actually work.

And that’s the bigger problem—the fans know.

Twenty years ago, the tag match would be a pretty fun showdown. But now? Fans know it’s probably taking the main event slot of Night 1 at the expense of other Superstars who deserve a realistic chance at it.

Think, Rhea Ripley and Becky Lynch. Bayley finally getting her ‘Mania moment against Iyo Sky. Gunther defending his historic Intercontinental reign. It goes on and on.

And it hardly stops there. Fans know that the match might be a clunker. They know that Rock will film a movie soon after, so he has to play it safe. They know that Rollins has been injured lately and needs to wrestle the very next night, too. They know that Rhodes needs to wrestle the very next night in the “real” main event, too. They know that Reigns does, too. They even know of the speculation that says Rock, contractually, must wrestle at this ‘Mania.

Perhaps most of all, they know that this is a way to handwave the hardcore fans and appease to as many casual and lapsed fans as possible. Rock is wrestling, just deal with it, OK?

Granted, WWE could say that this tag match only exists because fans so dramatically fought back against the company’s initial idea of Rock vs. Reigns.

And fans would be justifed in saying WWE shouldn’t have shoved Rock down their collective throats while making Rhodes look like a dork who gave away his multi-year storyline and Royal Rumble win to a part-timer.

And so it would go, because so it goes in this blurred-lines era where fans are tuned in to the business better than they ever have been in the past.

But it doesn’t help that the tag team division as a whole has been largely an afterthought in WWE for a decade or more. And that modern history says 90 percent of tag teams actually competing in WWE are cobbled together groups of guys that creative didn’t have anything for in the singles area. By extension, tag matches have often felt like a card-stuffing last resort, or a way to hide one of the competitors. Adding the above only compounds the issue here.

One has to think that, instead of opting for a strange Vince McMahon-led creative era decision, WWE could have come up with something a little smoother.

One easy example is tossing Rock in and making it a triple threat on Night 2, while Jimmy and Jey Uso loop all the way back into the Bloodline story and main event Night 1 with the same stipulations. There’s plenty of time between now and ‘Mania. In fact, too much time, really. The already-boring annual stretch before the big event could’ve leaned into telling the story of how the Usos work their way toward that match—instead, fans know the match and rules already and there’s only so much all involved can say until the bell rings.

It doesn’t help, either, that fans probably already know the end result of the tag match. It just feels like the good guys will triumph, preventing the bad guys from interfering with Rhodes’ story on Night 2. There’s wiggle room for a surprise and even betrayals in the tag match, sure, but given the boring buildup to the tag match, it’s ill-advised to hold one’s breath.

WWE should take this sort of criticism well enough, too—it just means this new era of creative has (mostly) been so solid that fans have come to expect more.

It’s hard to imagine WWE reversing course again with the involved Superstars to steer away from the tag match. But it’s hard to ignore the company’s improved storytelling, the compelling characters that were the backbone of the Bloodline and Jimmy and Jey right there and more than capable of playing a role.

Barring something dramatic, the nuclear reactions to the altered ‘Mania course leading to a lukewarm tag match is a low-key disappointment, given the names involved on what looks like an otherwise amazing card.