Real Reason WWE Dropped Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal From WrestleMania Revealed

The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal had been one of the attractions at every WWE WrestleMania show.

The multi-wrestler match was conceived to honor Andre the Giant, who was the company’s first Hall of Fame inductee. The 7+ feet tall superstar won several battle royal matches in his career, earning himself the moniker of “The King of the Battle Royal.”

The first edition of the bout took place at WrestleMania XXX in 2014, which was won by Cesaro. All the subsequent editions either took place on the main card of WrestleMania or as part of the pre-show until 2019.

Due to concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic, WWE decided not to host the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal match in 2020.

While the format returned on the card for the WrestleMania Weekend in 2021, it did not take place at the show itself but rather was aired on the April 9 edition of SmackDown.

Ever since, the Battle Royal has been repackaged as a special on WrestleMania SmackDown, taking place the night before the actual WrestleMania show. The current United States Champion, Carmelo Hayes, won the 2025 edition.

Why WWE Dropped The Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal From WrestleMania

The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal was a great way for several wrestlers to be featured on WrestleMania even if they were not on the main card.

While speaking on Fightful Select Q&A, Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful revealed why the match format was dropped from the live event.

I’ve asked a million times because I’ve always thought this was the way to do it, to get everybody on the show. And I was told, well, they don’t need to get everybody on the show anymore. That’s just not the way that they do it. They don’t have to do it like that.

But I mean it’s not just the Women’s Battle Royal. It never returned to WrestleMania on the men’s side either after the pandemic. Like they didn’t do it in 2020 and they’ve never brought it back after that for actual WrestleMania. It’s been on SmackDown every year since.

Sharing his opinion, Sapp claimed that claimed that if WWE could have booked it for each night of WrestleMania,

But yeah, I had been told they didn’t necessarily need to do the ‘get everyone on the card’ thing and they’ve kind of moved away from that culture. But I do think that doing one on each night of WrestleMania would be kind of cool.

WWE has yet to announce the battle royal match and its participants for the 2026 edition of WrestleMania Weekend.

H/T: Ringside News