The Orlando Magic WrestleMania

With WrestleMania set to take place at Camping World Stadium tonight, we decided to take a turn telling the story of the Orlando Magic through wrestling.

Wednesday at the Amway Center was a busy day.

The Orlando Magic and Oklahoma City Thunder took each other on in a historic overtime game that had the Amway Center crowd buzzing. They spent all day building up to that game with the Thunder shooting around in the morning.

Another group though was already hard at work. As the Thunder prepared for the game in the morning, technicians and scouts were already beginning to transform the Amway Center. There would be a new tenant for the weekend.

The truck bays had two extra television trucks — in addition to the Magic and Thunder’s broadcast trucks — causing a bit of a backlog for the back-of-house workers. The in-arena banners were getting tested with a new program for a weekend of event after event after event.

And soon after the game Wednesday ended, the arena’s facilities management team began the process of breaking down the basketball court, laying down protective cardboard and transforming the arena.

Like much of Orlando, the Amway Center has been taken over with WrestleMania fever, the WWE’s annual sports entertainment extravaganza this weekend. The company brings its marquee event to Camping World Stadium on Sunday. That is preceded by Friday’s WWE Hall of Fame ceremony and Saturday’s NXT Takeover card at the Amway Center. It is followed by WWE’s television show tapings of Raw on Monday and SmackDown Live on Tuesday.

The building is keeping very busy, to say the least, while the Magic are out of town. Do not worry, Orlando is scheduled to practice at the Amway Center on Monday before heading out to Cleveland for the team’s game Tuesday.

There is undeniable pull for the storylines the WWE creates. WWE wrestler John Cena probably described it best during his monologue when he hosted the ESPYs last summer.

Indeed, the WWE’s morality play does play itself out in the NBA all the time. LeBron James‘ heel turn and the face turn probably could not have been written better by the WWE’s legion of writers.

Not to mention everyone always seems to believe the NBA meddles with things with WWE-like acuity. Sometimes fiction is just as entertaining as reality.

Like all television stories, there is a bit of reality in them too. The characters have real personalities that connect with their audiences — through both the promos they shoot and the way they use their athleticism in the ring.

And like with any sport, we always see characteristics of ourselves in these characters. Both the good and the bad, they are a reflection of our personalities. These are stories that mean something and connect with the audience in a clear way.

These characters are pretty universal. And to prove that we will tell the story of the Orlando Magic through the prism of the WWE.

Happy WrestleMania, Orlando!