The Disturbing Truth Behind The WWE WrestleMania Main Event
Out of the 45 matches WWE has promoted as the WrestleMania main event - including the additional nights at II and from 36 onwards, and excluding XX - 22 were good to great or worthy and 23 were poor/disappointing or undermined by a defining botch or relative box office failures (or a combination of the three). Fan consensus was attempted, too; subjectively, the Boneyard match was rubbish, but loads of people raved about it, so it's classified as the former.
The WrestleMania main event was not great, at least, 51.1% of the time. If you personally can't stand the idea of XII - colossal box office dud - being bad, then that 51.1% becomes 49.9%. Splitting hairs. You might disagree with the qualitative assessment to a bigger extent, but come on. Piper Vs. Mr. T? 'Taker Vs. Sid? Triple H Vs. Orton? The history of WrestleMania is littered with sh*te.
The conclusion to be drawn is that, despite a definitionally uneven track record, every single year, people go apesh*t at the prospect of WrestleMania. You weren't allowed to say this at the time, but that stretch between WrestleMania 32 and 35 was brutal. The super-serve era was horrendous.
WrestleMania - the one night per year that the casual fan becomes a real thing - became something even the hardcores resented halfway through the experience.
And still, people who endured 34 got hyped about 35. WrestleMania is an exercise in effective pro wrestling promotion more than it is some highlight reel generator of 'Moments'.
And, while many of those shows were elevated by a far superior match on the undercard - 13, X8, and 25, most notably - the main event was still considered the be-all and end-all every January through WWE's expert promotion of the Royal Rumble - and its premise, that the winner headlines WrestleMania, is bullsh*t almost as foul as the Hogan/Andre spin.
The lesson to be learned from the outrageous razzmatazz of WrestleMania is that promotion is often more effective than booking, and that production values matter to a degree that some haven't reckoned with. WWE turned awful business around, in 2020, by relocating its horrific pandemic era slop from an empty gym and into the ThunderDome.
If AEW wants to make 2024 the new 2021, it might just need to up its pyro budget.