What If WWE WrestleMania Was Always 2 Nights?
Which matches would have main-evented Saturday if all previous WrestleMania shows were two nights?
Since WrestleMania 36, WWE has split the biggest event of the year into two nights. This has allowed twice as many people to have their "WrestleMania moment" by officially being in the "main event" of The Showcase of the Immortals, even if we all know the true main event of the weekend is whatever goes on last Sunday night.
Still, it is an honor that is reserved for just one more match, and it needs to be an important one for the card to draw in audiences Saturday night and make them feel like this is just as big (or as close to it as possible) to balance the scales.
But what if that was always the case?
Similar to how it's interesting to ponder who might have become a World champion if there were always two titles to go around, which matches from previous WrestleManias would have been in contention for the Saturday night main event?
Let's look back on every single card from the first WrestleMania up to the final one-night extravaganza at WrestleMania 35 and determine the runner-up that would have been the other main event on The Grandest Stage of Them All!
35. WrestleMania 1
An important note to set is that it isn't fair to fantasy book matches that aren't on the cards with the assumption WWE would have made a better lineup if they were scheduling things out for two nights. Going down that rabbit hole just creates problems of what these new matches conjured up out of thin air would have been, and anyone's thoughts could be different.
With that in mind, the first WrestleMania doesn't have a strong card worth of options to pick from by modern standards.
For example, the Intercontinental Championship match is just Junkyard Dog beating Greg Valentine by count-out. Andre the Giant puts his career on the line against Big John Studd in a $15,000 Body Slam Challenge, but that would be functionally odd for a main event.
Thankfully, Wendi Richter beating Leilani Kai for the WWF Women's Championship checks off a lot of boxes for the WrestleMania I pick.
While it's hard to imagine WWE would have been so kind to the women's division back then as to give it the first night's main event, it is still the match that went second-to-last, a big title change for the women's top title, and it featured Cyndi Lauper, whose celebrity involvement helped create this event in the first place.