WWE Had Different Plan For WrestleMania 42 Announcement
The Rock has revealed that WWE had something else in mind for their WrestleMania 42 announcement.
It had been reported earlier in February that WrestleMania 42 would take place in New Orleans. It was just a matter of when WWE decided to make it official.
Since Super Bowl 59 was in New Orleans on February 9th, there was speculation that WWE would announce WrestleMania 42 during that week since there would be a lot of media there.
During WWE SmackDown in New Orleans, The Rock did a lengthy promo segment where he confirmed WrestleMania 42 will be in New Orleans at the Caesars Superdome on April 11 and 12, 2026.
While speaking at the post-SmackDown news conference on YouTube, The Rock confirmed the Super Bowl announcement plan and explained that something came up to prevent it from happening.
“We were — and I’ll share this with you. We were going to be part of the Super Bowl and make the announcement at the Super Bowl that we were coming here to New Orleans. We had a couple of hiccups that we couldn’t make that happen.
But in any event, we’re here now and the improvements made to the Dome played a great factor into what we’re doing.”
New Orleans Is A Familiar WWE WrestleMania Host
A big reason why WWE likely chose New Orleans as the host of WrestleMania 42 is because they are familiar with the city after they hosted WrestleMania 30 in 2014 and WrestleMania 34 in 2018.
WrestleMania 30 will always be remembered as “Yes-leMania” because it ended with Daniel Bryan becoming the WWE Champion and the entire Superdome chanting “YES” because they were so happy to see it. That show also featured The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak ending against Brock Lesnar, which most didn’t expect to happen.
There was also a memorable opening segment with Hulk Hogan saying the Silverdome instead of Superdome, which led to Steve Austin and The Rock mocking Hogan for it during their segment together.
The WrestleMania 34 event featured Brock Lesnar retaining the Universal Championship over Roman Reigns in the main event. John Cena also faced The Undertaker at that show, but it was not a classic match since Undertaker beat Cena in under three minutes.