Wrestlemania 42 opens this weekend at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas for a second straight year, a two-night show with 13 confirmed matches and more than three dozen WWE stars trying to make the card feel bigger than the doubts around it. The problem is not scale. It is belief.
Drake Riggs put that bluntly, saying expectations for this year's WrestleMania are catastrophically low and calling the quality drop staggering. He pointed to Saturday’s Night 1 as starting with a needlessly celebrity-infused trios match and ending with the Rhodes vs. Randy Orton and Pat McAfee feud, while saying Rollins vs. Gunther is the likeliest night-stealer. That is a sharp contrast to the confidence WWE usually builds around what Paul “Triple H” Levesque calls the Show of the Immortals.
The comparison to WrestleMania 41 hangs over everything. Last year’s two-night event in Las Vegas produced a Night 2 opener between Iyo Sky, Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair that drew strong marks, while Cody Rhodes vs. John Cena is remembered mostly for the outcome after, as Riggs put it, it otherwise completely missed the mark. WrestleMania 42 is being measured against that uneven standard before the first bell even rings, which is why the preview conversation has turned less to spectacle and more to whether the structure of the weekend can deliver a cleaner finish.
Kel Dansby said he went back and rewatched last year’s WrestleMania and enjoyed it more than he expected, but he also said the real deciding factor this year will be how CM Punk vs. Roman Reigns sticks the landing. Dansby added that last year’s Travis Scott involvement felt clunky and left a bad taste with fans, a reminder that the biggest stages can be undone by a single bad turn or a finish that never fully lands.
Anthony Sulla-Heffinger chose the simplest forecast, saying he is going to take the easy way out and call WrestleMania 42 about the same. That may be the safest read on a card built around several high-profile matches and a familiar setting, but it also leaves the show with a clear challenge: after a year that mixed standout wrestling with some awkward edges, this weekend has to prove it can do more than match expectations. It has to beat them.