WrestleMania Needs to Be a Two-Night Event Going Forward

Once upon a time, WrestleMania was four hours long. No pre-shows, no panels, no 13-match cards, just four hours of the best wrestling WWE had to offer that year.

But year by year WWE has been turning their biggest show of the year from a fun night of television into a marathon. First they introduced pre-show matches. Then those pre-shows jumped to an hour in length. Then it was two hours. Then the card’s number of matches started reaching double figures. And all the while WWE was making sure they didn’t have to answer to pay-per-view providers by replacing them with their own over-the-top network.

Now fans are staring down the barrel of a seven-hour, 13-match card (with one more still up in the air) at WrestleMania 34 at the Superdome on Sunday. And while it may be the best Mania card we’ve ever seen on paper, we can all agree on one thing — it is way too long.

Sporting events, even the most dragged-out triple overtime classics, don’t go that long. Movies are chopped up by studios long before they ever hit that length. Broadway shows don’t take that amount of time and they still give viewers an intermission. And yet WWE fans are expected to sit and cheer in one spot for about the length of a typical public school day.

So what can be done about it? As long as the company keeps making money and stadiums keep getting filled up, the company has no reason to stop expanding things out even if it hurts the overall show. But how far are we really from this thing hitting eight or nine hours? How long before sitting down to watch the show means dedicating an entire Sunday? Where does it end?

Well there is one solution. Others have proposed it, but the message needs to be stated once again — WrestleMania should be a two-night show.

It cuts the length of Sunday night’s show in half, it enables WWE to sell out an arena not once but twice (meaning more tickets sold, merchandise bought, more room for advertisers, etc.) and it bumps NXT TakeOver to Friday night to allow WWE to officially own WrestleMania weekend.

It also allows each night to give more time to the matches put in place without the crowd being worn out by main event time.

And to test things out, let’s take Sunday’s WrestleMania 34 card and see what WWE could do if it had two nights to work with instead of one.

Night 1

• AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
• Daniel Bryan & Shane McMahon vs. Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens
• The Miz vs. Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor
• Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka
• Braun Strowman & ??? vs. The Bar
• The Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal

Night 2

• Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns
• John Cena vs. The Undertaker
• Alexa Bliss vs. Nia Jax
• Ronda Rousey & Kurt Angle vs. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon
• Randy Orton vs. Bobby Roode vs. Jinder Mahal vs. Rusev
• The Usos vs. The New Day vs. The Bludgeon Bros.
• Women’s WrestleMania Battle Royal
• (Pre-show) Cedric Alexander vs. Mustafa Ali

The second night, given that it would go during the normal WrestleMania slot, gets the overall headliner match along with some of the roster’s biggest names (Cena, Undertertaker, Triple H). But, in order to keep fans hungry for both nights, we take one of the top matches from the card and give it the main event slot. And thanks to WWE having two world championships again, that decision-making process would be a no-brainer for future cards.

Night One would also get some of the matches guaranteed to have a better workrate (Miz/Rollins/Balor, Flair/Asuka) while Night Two gets the big sports entertainment spectacles (Rousey, Taker). And of course, you’d put the two battle royals on separate nights so they’re not back-to-back.

In the end, wrestling fans love watching wrestling. And WWE loves making money off wrestling fans watching their product. But nobody, especially their target demographic of children, wants to watch a seven-hour show.