Update On WWE Plans For WrestleMania 38 In Dallas
A potentially blockbuster report regarding WrestleMania 38 has given an indication as to the future scheduling of the event. Will be one night or two? We may have got an answer to that question.
For the last thirty-six years, WrestleMania has been The Showcase Of The Immortals, where stars have been born, titles won, careers ended, and history made. For thirty-four of those years, The Show of Shows has taken place on Sunday in either late March or early April. Following WrestleMania 30 in 2014 and with the advent of the WWE Network, WrestleMania did become a monster of a show lasting several hours.
In 2020, things were turned on their head due to the pandemic and for the first time WrestleMania was held behind closed doors with no fans in attendance. The decision was then made to hold WrestleMania over two nights on Saturday and Sunday. This spread the excitement for wrestling fans over two days and kept the shows to more traditional pay-per-view lengths.
Earlier in 2021, with fans able to return albeit in limited numbers to Raymond James Stadium, WWE decided to stick with the two-night event. WrestleMania Saturday was headlined by Bianca Belair winning the SmackDown Women’s Title from Sasha Banks while Sunday saw Roman Reigns defeat Edge and Daniel Bryan in that night’s main event.
Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp has now reported that the working plan within the company for WrestleMania 38 due to take place in Arlington (Dallas), Texas in 2022 is to continue holding the event over two nights. The show would therefore take place on both Saturday the 2nd and Sunday the 3rd of April and could potentially be the first two night WrestleMania held in front of a full stadium. The report also states that the two-night WrestleMania events have been greeted unanimously as positive by those in the WWE locker room.
With WWE reporting an attendance of over 100,000 fans the last time they held WrestleMania in the AT&T Stadium (WrestleMania 32 in 2016), the company could potentially play host to over 200,000 fans over those two nights in early April next year.
In January 2020 before the pandemic hit, New Japan Pro Wrestling held their WrestleKingdom show over two nights for the first time in the Tokyo Dome. Over seventy thousand fans packed the Dome over January 4th and 5th for the event that ultimately saw Tetsuya Naito emerge as the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Champion.
The video below, which is from this past April, features Texas native “Stone Cold” Steve Austin hyping up WrestleMania 38 in Dallas.