8 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 36 (Part 1)

7. A ‘Beautiful’ Montage

Ray Charles Wrestlemania
WWE.com

It’s nice to see some traditions continue with WrestleMania. One of the longest-standing ones has been the signing of “America the Beautiful” to kickoff the PPV. Several legendary singers have tackled the song throughout the years, but none were obviously available this year.

So WWE chose to meld together several of those singers, including Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, John Legend, Boyz II Men, Ray Charles and Gladys Knight, to deliver the performance for this year’s Mania. The result was a unique-sounding sound that just flat-out worked. It wasn’t great, but it was memorable and a warm moment.

Once again, WWE’s video production team came through when needed.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.