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WWE News: Seven Superstars Removed From ‘WrestleMania 33’ Without Explanation

By Danny Cox
Published on: 02:35 PST, Apr 2, 2017

With less than 24 hours to go before WrestleMania 33 is set to begin, seven WWE superstars found themselves taken off of the card and without so much as an explanation. Everyone thought the card for the pay-per-view (PPV) was complete and finalized, but it appears as if the company needed to make a few changes. It will be interesting to see what reasoning is given for the seven stars being taken off the card, but that is if any reason is given at all.

Throughout the day on Saturday, the line-up for the fourth annual Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal ended up changing quite a bit. Earlier this week, the full list of 30 participating superstars had been revealed, but now, the number has gone down a few, and seven guys were simply removed.

Earlier this week, as reported by Sports Keeda, a name from NXT was added to the battle royal, and it is a big one. Tian Bing, the first Chinese superstar in WWE history, was added to the match and it will obviously be his first WrestleMania appearance.

With his addition, that made 31 superstars in the match, but that is no longer the case. As previewed by the official website of WWE, the updated number of superstars appearing in the WrestleMania 33 match now stands at 25.

[Image by WWE]

For some unexplained reason, these seven superstars were removed from the Kickoff Show bout.

  • Sin Cara
  • Kalisto
  • Konnor
  • Viktor
  • Simon Gotch
  • Aiden English
  • Titus O’Neil

That makes two members of Monday Night Raw being taken out of the match in Titus O’Neil and Sin Cara. On the SmackDown Live side of things, The Vaudevillains, The Ascension, and Kalisto were all removed as well. With their removal from the battle royal, it takes the number of superstars down to 24, but one more has since been added.

Wrestling Inc. is reporting that another NXT superstar was added in and that would be Killian Dain who is a member of the stable SAnitY. That addition is official as shown by WWE on the preview page for the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal too.

At NXT Takeover: Orlando on Saturday night, Dain was a member of the winning SAnitY team in a huge eight-person tag match. The dangerous stable picked up a victory over the team of Tye Dillinger, Kassius Ohno, Roderick Strong, and Ruby Riot in a really great tag match.

[Image by WWE]

Each year at WrestleMania, WWE has been giving a number of NXT superstars or other names a shot in the match, and it does help elevate them in many ways. Killian Dain is a beast of a man, and it won’t be easy for anyone to get him up and over the top rope, but other giants such as Mark Henry, Big Show, and Braun Strowman will surely try.

For Tian Bing, this is a huge opportunity for him in WWE, and it is really going to start opening the Chinese market for the promotion. Seeing him on the WrestleMania 33 card will be huge for his career and jump-start him into other avenues.

As for the seven WWE main roster superstars removed from the match? It really does hurt them as they were going to be featured on the biggest PPV of the year and get that paycheck, but not anymore.

Almost every single superstar on the WWE main roster had some kind of match to be in for WrestleMania 33, but not anymore. In an odd twist, seven names were removed from the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal without explanation, and two stars from NXT were put into the match. Now, there are only 25 men in the match instead of 30 which means The Vaudevillains, The Ascension, the Lucha Dragons, and Titus O’Neil are all left out.

[Featured Image by WWE]

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