According to reports from Fightful Select, WrestleMania 38 is going to be another two-night affair, set for April 2nd and April 3rd of 2022.
Last year, the “Too Big for One Night” slogan felt like a gimmick to distract from the show taking place at the WWE Performance Center. It also made up for the lack of NXT TakeOver: Tampa Bay no longer that Saturday night.
Some people, such as yours truly, instantly liked this new format. I was happy to see it return for WrestleMania 37 and curious why WWE didn’t outright announce it for 38 and 39.
Now, we know that this appears to be in the works and WWE likely came around to the idea after crunching numbers from this year’s show.
Of course, like with everything, it’s not perfect. There are some flaws to this idea. However, I think the good outweighs the bad. So for anyone on the fence one way or another, let’s look at the pros and cons of splitting WrestleMania 38 into a two-night affair.
Pro: Avoiding the Burnout
I’m the type of person who, if I love something, I can’t get enough of it. I always watch the full extended edition of Terminator 2: Judgment Day because it has even more extra scenes than the original bonus cut does, for instance. I went to the first Marvel Cinematic Universe marathon to watch Iron Man through The Avengers and loved it.
But not everyone is like that. I know plenty people who get upset at a movie being 2 and a half hours, even if they’re loving every minute of it. They just get antsy, they need to do something else, they hate sitting down in one spot for too long, etc.
WrestleMania 35 had 16 matches on the show. Some of them were cut down to 0:58 and 2:30 just to speed things along and the main event still didn’t end until past midnight.
It’s a lot to ask people to sit through one professional wrestling program for 6 or 7 hours in one shot. The 2-hour kickoff is too much for some, let alone to have that just be “the matches nobody cares about and a bunch of recaps and video packages.” But if you split things in half, you can do an hour pre-show, a 3-hour regular show and suddenly, 8 hours over a weekend doesn’t seem so bad.
This avoids fatigue. People aren’t as in need of a buffer segment just to avoid being too tired to react to one of the matches.
Con: It Loses Prestige
That marathon for The Avengers felt special because it started at 11am and ended at 2-3am. If I had just rewatched all the previous films over the course of a week, one per day, leading up to The Avengers, it wouldn’t have been memorable.
WrestleMania as a one-night show feels more special. It’s a juggernaut of a program and a gauntlet. The Super Bowl is one day and WWE treats WrestleMania akin to that show, rather than the Olympics, spanning a much longer stretch of time.
It can be argued that splitting the difference weakens the appeal of WrestleMania by watering it down.
Pro: More Room on the Card for Variety
A major positive with the extra time is that more Superstars can get on the card, since there’s about an hour’s worth more room. On top of that, WWE can properly split the difference between similar matches to avoid running into any repetition.
For example, having the men’s Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal and the women’s battle royal (which I still think should be reclassified the Chyna Memorial Battle Royal) on the same card makes both look lesser. People instantly compare them and whichever goes second feels like you just watched the same thing. Putting one of them on the opposite night, though, helps spread the wealth.
There’s more of a chance all the championships get defended, rather than any lost in the shuffle. Hell, this year, WWE managed to do a No. 1 contender’s match on the first night to set up the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship match on Night 2. Only the SmackDown Tag Team Championship belt was ignored (rather, put on the SmackDown episode prior to WrestleMania as a marketing hook) and no match lasted less than 5:50.
Being able to incorporate more of the roster is a good thing. That way, more people get their big paychecks.
Con: More Filler Matches
If not done correctly, WWE could mistake more room for needing more worthless filler, though.
It should be about the quality of the matches, rather than the quantity. While WWE did manage to get two of the women’s tag team matches on the show, as mentioned above, they could have just thrown Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler in the Tag Team Turmoil match and had it for the title instead of setting up the title shot.
If you polled the audience for most shows, few people are ever interested in the full card. Normally, they’re watching for the general idea of WWE (as in, “I always at least watch WrestleMania every year”) or they’re interested in a handful of marquee bouts. They probably wouldn’t care about half the matches.
That is especially true if WWE doesn’t care, either. Liv Morgan vs. Natalya at WrestleMania 36 is a prime example of WWE basically saying “Whatever. It’s a pandemic. We’re doing random stuff to fill time and nobody should be upset with us, cause at least they’re still getting a WrestleMania.” But if that wasn’t on the card, would anyone have thrown a fit and refused to watch? Doubtful.
The key is making sure each match feels justified. WWE has to look at the lineup and think “Is this worthy of WrestleMania?” rather than “We can probably shove that in there, too. That’ll kill 10 minutes.”
Pro: The “Main Event” Philosophy
WWE loves to toss out superfluous praise. Any opportunity they get, the commentators are told to promote something as a “first time ever”, even if it’s stretching. For the first time ever, this match you’ve seen 6 times this year will happen on the opposite brand. Oooooh!
This goes for the phrase “main event” as in WWE, that’s tossed around to mean more than just the final match of the show.
For example, Royal Rumble winners aren’t spoken of as just being able to challenge for the championship of their choosing. WWE makes sure to say they’ll compete in “the main event of WrestleMania” every year. Without fail, every year that isn’t the final match, fans complain that it isn’t the real main event.
With a two-night setup, though, there are two legitimate main events. Sasha Banks vs. Bianca Belair and Roman Reigns vs. Edge vs. Daniel Bryan were the two main events from this year, definitively. The latter might hold more significance to some because it was Night 2, but that doesn’t take away Belair and Banks being able to say they were in the main event of WrestleMania 37, Night 1.
Con: Competitive Comparisons
If you’re Banks and Belair and you are told you might get the main event, only for Reigns/Edge/Bryan to go on last, you might think “Well, that sucks, but at least that’s the Universal Championship and all. It’s hard to outrank The Tribal Chief.” However, if you’re dealing with a split WrestleMania setup and you don’t make one of those two main events, suddenly, you don’t matter as much.
Bobby Lashley vs. Drew McIntyre for the WWE Championship had the opening match this year, which felt like a special placement on the card. It’s not as good as the true main event, but it’s at least on par. Asuka vs. Rhea Ripley for the Raw Women’s Championship, though, didn’t get quite the hot spot as it went on right before the Triple Threat for the Universal Championship.
In a way, that makes it look worse, if you think about it. Just as having the brand split has made it so if you can’t win a world title with double the opportunities, you must really not be top guy material, if you aren’t in one of the two true main events of WrestleMania, then you’re basically the third place at best.
That can convince fans that something isn’t as important because they have more of a reason to judge it, compared to when it’s “everything but the one match” in the same boat.
Pro: Here Comes the Money
Two nights means double the buy rate for people who purchase pay-per-views outright (but who does that anymore?) and double the ticket sales for those in attendance. So long as that offsets the price of setting up shop in the stadium for another night, WWE makes out great with a second show.
That extra night gives them more time to run commercials and do product placement that can be extremely beneficial for the monetary side of things. Hell, they’ll even end up with more merchandise sales by proxy of a second day’s worth of having those products available.
Any time WWE can get more money, it’s a benefit. The more they have to go around, the more they can spend on acquiring new talent, improving assets and maybe not worrying so much about budget cuts. That one extra night of WrestleMania could be the difference of someone’s job.
Con: Everybody Has a Price
Of course, the downside to that is that the fans would have to be paying that price. If someone wants to go to WrestleMania 38 to see The Rock in action (assuming he wrestles) and they buy a ticket to Night 1, but it turns out he’s on Night 2, they’re going to be super upset, so they will have to find a way to buy tickets for both nights to make sure.
That’s a TON of money to dish out. When I went to WrestleMania 29, it was breaking the bank just to go to that show, stay overnight one night at a hotel in a room I split with multiple other people, and to go to one session of Axxess, without spending a dime on merch—just some shitty hot dog and disappointing cheese fries (c’mon MetLife). There’s no way I would have been able to double that.
Of course, this isn’t a problem for WWE—it’s a problem for the fans’ wallets. WWE couldn’t care less if you can afford that second ticket because someone else will just buy it if you can’t.
Then again, some people might look at WrestleMania being split in half as not being worth either night, then. “Why would I pay that much money if I’m only getting half the show? That’s a ripoff. If this was one night, I’d get all the matches for the same price!”
It’s a hard argument to fight against. Those people are right. But if you’re sitting at home, you’ve already subscribed to the network, and you’ve got the time aside to watch the show on both nights, I do think it’s ultimately the better decision all around.
Do you like the idea of WrestleMania continuing as a two-night show? Would you rather prefer WWE go back to the single-night extravaganza? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!
