How WrestleMania Almost Killed WWE
As the world locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vince McMahon stubbornly insisted on running the event in Raymond James Stadium in Tampa until he legally couldn't. It eventually went down in an empty Performance Center, spread over two nights, and while it was initially WWE made the best of a bad situation, the universal response to the move was to keep it that way when crowds eventually came back. The decision exponentially improved the pacing of the shows, and made it easier to showcase more talent without exhausting the audience.
Two-nighters meant two main events, freeing up - for example - Stone Cold Steve Austin to headline a WrestleMania on the same weekend as Roman Reigns despite the two having nothing canonically to do with one another. However, the core issue of WWE’s creative struggles remained until the summer after that specific event - Vince McMahon resigning in disgrace in July 2022 made 2023's card look like the first without his fingerprints, until it was revealed that he was at the heart of a coup back in to the fold in order to drive forward a merger with UFC under the TKO umbrella the day after WrestleMania 39. His second disgraced resignation in 2024 was the true tipping point, and WrestleMania 40 - with its constant references to new eras and bold and decisive crowning of Cody Rhodes as the company's undisputed top star - allowed Paul Levesque to claim the creative throne from his Father-In-Law while more power players in power suits did the rest.
The rest, as of right now, is unknown. WrestleMania 41 from Las Vegas, Nevada will draw the company's two biggest gates in history, but that's as much down to aggressive price hikes as how hot the product is. The product is "on fire", as Triple H has enjoyed parroting on the road to the latest 'Show Of Shows'. But once again as it was in 1985, WrestleMania remains the constant acid test. A card seemingly made up of compromises in order to accommodate the massive slate of stars is not going to determine the financial future of WWE in the way it might have done once before. WrestleMania cannot kill WWE now because just about nothing can or ever will. But the worst thing to do with a hot hand is crash and burn, and as with WrestleMania IV, WrestleMania VIII, WrestleMania X-Seven and half of the events in the 2010, sometimes even the biggest stage only does so good a job of obscuring lots of tiny problems.
The gambles have ostensibly never been smaller, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. With WrestleMania, the stakes will always be sky high.