You can bet your sell merchant account that following Stone Cold’s appearance, the final pre-WrestleMania guest host will be Pete Rose; and the first post-WrestleMania guest host will be two of the stars of the movie Hot Tub Time Machine.

So while changes to Raw may be forthcoming, the guest host concept will live at least one episode past WrestleMania, at any rate…

The Rock, now a big-time movie star, owes his current fame and success largely to the exposure of his early WWE career. However, at the event intended to honor his father and grandfather for the time they spent in WWE, The Rock apparently presented himself, both on-stage and backstage, as above everyone else he used to work with.

His Hall of Fame induction speech ran exceptionally long, and was primarily a comedy routine making fun of and belittling current WWE stars, none of whom he warned ahead of time about the jokes he had planned. His comments on his father and grandfather were, by comparison, brief and lacking in much detail or heart.

The Rock did not attend WrestleMania, showed up just in time for his speech, and left immediately after it was over, blowing off nearly all the WWE personalities with whom he used to be close, including pal Stone Cold Steve Austin.

The Rock’s bad behavior drew much ire from the current roster of WWE personalities, and is a good indicator that the next time the WWE and The Rock cross paths, it may be a couple decades down the line, when it is The Rock himself who is being inducted. Fans offering up everything from their life’s savings to their bathroom faucets in trade for Dwayne Johnson to make a return to the WWE ring may be placing their hopes in an extreme unlikelihood.

Still, the concept, delivered by Triple H as the third part of the “triple threat takeover” of Raw, part of promoting the triple-threat main event title match at WrestleMania between Orton, Cena and Triple H, is a fascinating one, and ought to be tried again sometime with more airtime given to the match. It played out like a fine bottle of Riedel, but was all-too brief.

About the only way to improve on it, in fact, would be to somehow have Jeff Hardy be one of the principals involved in facing the entire Raw roster; few people deliver better in-ring psychology in their matches than Jeff Hardy.

Although popular thought has Flair losing to Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania to put the final swan song on his career, it would be fun to push the storyline past WrestleMania, I think. It’s not like Flair is a man just out of drug rehab; he’s in top form for a many of his age, and could probably ride this storyline until SummerSlam next August.

See, thing is, Flair has now won enough that he ought really to be considered a number one contender for the WWE title, if he wins his match at WrestleMania; what better way to send Flair off into his final sunset than to have him fact whoever is champ after WrestleMania, win the title, and carry it for a few PPVs before finally losing the title and retiring at SummerSlam? The 17-time world champ deserves one final, career-capping title run, if you ask me.

Truth is, though, the match simply won’t be credible if it’s not a crush of Mayweather. With Big Show tipping the scales at 440 pounds, he’s almost three times as big as Mayweather at 156. I expect Mayweather will get his WrestleMania moment of getting in a good jaw shot on Big Show, but I think expect Show slam and sit on Mayweather for the quick win. Anything longer would be too much of a stretch.

Many boxer-vs.-wrestler matches end up being pretty embarrassing for the wrestler in question. Andre vs. Wepner involved Wepner being tossed from the ring and left in such condition that he had to use shower chairs after the match. Ali vs. Inoki ended in a draw, a finish that satisfied fans from both sides somewhat at least. But Gunn vs. Butterbean ended in less than a minute and left Gunn with no respect and, ultimately, no career after that. Gunn was about half the size of Butterbean.

The Mayweather vs. Big Show tilt looks to be an Andre/Wepner style mismatch, only worse… this time for the boxer. Mayweather stands 5’8″ and weighs around 155. Big Show is right around 7 feet tall and still weighs around 420. So Big Show has well over a foot and nearly three times the weight as Mayweather; Big Show’s open hand is nearly as big as Mayweather’s head.

What this likely means, in addition to a $20 million payday for Mayweather, is another embarrassing episode in boxer-wrestler history, rather than anything approaching a legit mixed martial arts contest. There are only a couple ways I see this going down.

First, it could be a crush by the Big Show, with him completely dominating and quickly defeating Mayweather. Give the size differential, this would be believable as a finish, but would do nothing to help Mayweather’s career as a boxer.

Second is even more embarrassing for sports entertainment in general and the Big Show personally; and that would be for a man of Mayweather’s size to take Big Show down in flukey but similarly swift fashion.

What I don’t see happening is a longer, more legit match; the injury risk to Mayweather is too great, and given his upcoming boxing title defense in August, it’s unlikely Mayweather would agree to anything like that. So no matter who gets squashed here, I expect it to be a blink-and-miss-it event that will disappoint and annoy fans of both wrestling and boxing.

Still, Vince McMahon always knows how to get the non-wrestling sports press talking right around WrestleMania time every year; last year, it was McMahon vs. Trump in a hair match; this year, it’s Mayweather vs. Big Show.

Now, it is ProWrestlingViews.com’s position that, far from being the 2007 wrestler of the year that WWE claims him to be, Batista is the most overexposed and overhyped performer of 2007. However, it’s also clear that main event status runs through Batista over on SmackDown, so even though he doesn’t hold the belt, clashing with Batista can only help MVP in his rise to main event status.

Clad in tights and sheepskin boots, MVP and Batista had a great TV match that showed the potential of the feud without giving away so much that it would diminish PPV buy rates. Batista does the “unstoppable force” thing well, and MVP is a versatile enough performer to pull a watchable match out of him.

Most think Batista is headed for a title match against Edge at WrestleMania, but if the company (hopefully) changes course from overexposing the Beast in the WWE title picture, a feud with MVP that reaches its zenith at WrestleMania might be a good use of Batista outside the title picture, and help push MVP into main event status. That could be good for both mens’ careers.

However, while it’s a huge move to use a feud with Jericho to bring JBL back as an active wrestler and onto the Raw roster, it’s definitely a step way down for Jericho, whose mission was supposed to be as the Raw savior, delivering us from the Randy Orton era. While the move is a necessary sidestep, perhaps, to avoid overplaying the Jericho-Orton feud too soon, what may be brewing here is the unexpected, and that’s the dramatic popularity of the Jeff Hardy-Randy Orton feud. Hardy, a former TNA champ as well as a multiple-time tag champ in WWE, had been a terrific performer in his feud with Orton and is earning a lot of respect and momentum in his drive toward his Royal Rumble title match.

Whether it’s in the ring or doing charitable work for victims of cerebral palsy, Hardy’s a sentimental favorite to get a surprise win and ride that wave into the WrestleMania main event for a rematch against Orton. That could leave Jericho hanging in mid-card limbo again, as has often been the case in his pro wrestling career.

In ECW, the push seems to be putting off too many clashes between John Morrison and CM Punk, so that they can have their biggest clash at WrestleMania. Here’s hoping it will be an ECW Rules match.

Over on Raw, it’s a bit tough to guess where the Fed is going with Randy Orton. Would they risk switching champs at this late date, putting the strap on Jeff Hardy at the Royal Rumble? Could the Rumble winner become the presumptive challenger for the WWE title on Raw, or the World Championship title on SmackDown? There are more players and uncertainty here, considering John Cena’s out of the picture until after WrestleMania, perhaps returning in time for SummerSlam if things go well.

On SmackDown, as usually, things are grim. Batista is the most overpushed superstar on their roster and yet another Undertaker showdown seems inevitable. While Edge is providing some freshness, Finlay is both annoying and boring. The Great Khali might figure into the picture, but the best all-around personality would be the under-utilized MVP.

The next few weeks could determine a lot.

For the past three or four years now, it’s been obvious that two of the young stars WWE has wanted to build around are Randy Orton and John Cena. Considering Cena’s the champ and has been for the better part of a couple years now, they’ve handled his rise to the top well.

Now, just as they did with Steve Austin and The Rock, it’s time for the always-planned feud to come to fruition. It’s time for Randy Orton and John Cena to start butting heads … and, probably, trading title reigns a bit.

Cena has loads of personal magnetism and is the electrifying personality that gets people tuning in, much like Steve Austin at the height of the “Stone Cold” era.

Like The Rock, Randy Orton is a third-generation superstar who makes the perfect foil with the right set of skills to be a great feuding partner with Cena for years to come.

In the early days of the Austin-Rock feud, they only clashed seldom and usually at PPVs. That was before the era of five hours of weekly programs of WWE TV to fill. Cena-Orton could be the feud that defines the careers of both men.

But, just as it marked the end of the appeal of seeing Austin and The Rock go head-to-head, overexposure is the greatest risk the Cena-Orton feud has. If they overplay the feud and don’t mix in enough other rivals in the title picture, it could get boring pretty quickly.

Don’t believe me?

Hogan-Andre headed two WrestleMania events. Cena-Khali lasted, what, maybe two months before the mismatch was overexposed?

Cena-Orton could be a great feud. Or, if overexposed, it could become as welcome as an outdoor fireplace at the height of an Arizona heatwave.