It’s not often WWE fans boo General Manager Nick Aldis for making a match official, but that’s exactly what happened during the SmackDown before WrestleMania 41. The on-screen authority figure, after yet another tag team match descended into chaos, announced that the duos in the division would compete in a Tables, Ladders and Chairs match next week on SmackDown. As soon as he said it, fans started booing loudly and aggressively, as there was great hope a multi-team showdown would be added to the actual ‘Mania card.
For the past several months, The Street Profits, Motor City Machine Guns, DIY, Pretty Deadly, Los Garza and more recently, Melo Don’t Miz have really revitialized the SmackDown tag team division with fun weekly segments and banger matches. As ‘Mania often features some kind of tag team showcase or multi-team ladder match, fans assumed the entire division would be rewarded for its efforts with a spot on the card, but for whatever reason, that never happened.
Fans had been holding out hope it would be announced as a last minute addition; so, when Aldis announced it for next Friday, fans made their feelings known, both in person and on social media. X was filled with comments from fans questioning the thought process, and many of those tweets attracted thousands of likes. You can listen to the fans inside the arena below…
Such an insane fumble to not put the TLC match on WrestleMania when the SD tag division has been the only conistent bright spot on #SmackDown for the last year, they were robbed pic.twitter.com/GoPKscMzrdApril 19, 2025
I’m a firm believer in WrestleMania spots being earned, not given out. I don’t want to see giant battle royals added at the last second in order to get everyone who has been on television over the last year into a match. I also want the actual matches that made the card to be given enough time to cook. It’s better to have seven matches a night that get fifteen or twenty minutes each than ten matches that have to rush through as fast as possible.
But if people consistently do good work and are a prominent part of the show, it’s a little disconcerting to see them left off, especially when it’s an entire division. In this case, they’ve made us care about these tag team championships. They’ve gotten us invested in where the division is going, and it feels like all of them being left off is an unfortunate sign of how WWE itself values the tag team championships relative to everything else going on.
On the bright side, we all know this Tables, Ladders and Chairs match, even if it’s not on WrestleMania, is going to cook. Every team in this division can go, and given they’re no doubt going to feel like they have something to prove after this slight, I expect they’ll all go as hard as possible to prove why they should have been competing at The Showcase Of The Immortals. I can't wait.
As for the big show itself, you can check out those who did make the card this weekend, as well as my predictions for every WrestleMania 41 match. The event will be streaming live from Las Vegas. If you’re in The United States, you can check it out on Peacock. If you’re in the rest of the world, you can check it out on Netflix.
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