WrestleMania 2026 review: Match grades for 6 hours of ads and some wrestling

There was a time when WrestleMania felt special; it felt magical. An event that culminated a year’s worth of drama, storytelling, and feuds into one epic three-plus-hour display of the greatest professional wrestling on the planet. My first live WrestleMania was XIII, defined not by the ho-hum main event between The Undertaker and Sycho Sid — but the undercard no-holds-barred match between Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin, which left a blood-covered Austin passed out in the center of the ring, and regarded to this day as one of the greatest Mania matches ever.

Legendary WrestleMania moments kept rolling through my mind over the two-night course of WrestleMania 42, in equal parts nostalgia and utter despair. A near-constant reminder of how far this once-great event has fallen. The “Showcase of the Immortals” and “Grandaddy of Them All” is barely on par with a low-tier event from two decades ago. Nothing lasts forever, and after WrestleMania 42, we’re on the verge of that Old Yeller feeling where WrestleMania, at least the idealized version in our heads, needs to be put out of its misery.

Let’s establish very quickly that this has nothing to do with the talent. This was unquestionably two days of everyone doing the best they could in an absolute ass situation. Over the course of two nights and over six hours of “wrestling,” we only saw two matches last longer than 20 minutes. Meanwhile, we had SIX of the 13 matches end in less than 10 minutes. That isn’t enough to tell a story in the ring. It’s not enough to have an ebb and flow in the action. No performer can put a cap on a year-long rivalry with seven minutes in the ring.

But hey, at least we got advertising! Lots, and lots, and lots of advertising. If you’re into trailers and brand synergy, then WWE has got you covered! From deifying the Hulk Hogan documentary on Netflix, to the Street Fighter movie, to Mortal Kombat 2, and everything in between — this was the Super Bowl of brand alignment. Everything is manufactured, nothing even has the slightest veneer of realism, and when someone brings out a table, you best believe it’s because Slim Jim is the official table sponsor of WrestleMania and some TKO executive promised them X number of showings over the weekend.

Even at its very best, this show made very little sense. Before I depress myself anymore, remembering what WrestleMania used to be, let’s get on with reviewing this year’s debacle.

Night One

The USOs and LA Knight defeat The Vision and IShowSpeed

This match is only going to be remembered for the fact that IShowSpeed was better in the ring than he had any right to be. This isn’t going to be some Logan Paul-esque turn to wrestling, because Speed doesn’t have the WWE size to ever work in this company. Still, the match had some high spot fun. At the end, I was more wondering why the hell LA Knight is resigned to the celebrity show opener when he’s one of the most organically over wrestlers in the company.

Grade: C

Jacob Fatu defeats Drew McIntyre

Easily one of the bright spots of the weekend in terms of match quality, but this really got on my nerves. Fatu and McIntyre worked a hell of a match, made even more impressive by the fact that they were only given 14 minutes of ring time. Still, if you bill something as an “Unsanctioned Match,” it comes with a tacit understanding that things are going to get violent. There was no blood, no high stakes, nothing that told us why this match was so dangerous. It was all pretty ho-hum on the extreme-o-meter, but at least Fatu managed to put McIntyre through the Slim Jim table for the win.

Grade: B-

Brie Bella and Paige defeat The Irresistible Forces, Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss, and Bayley and Lyra Valkyria

This match was decided the second Nikki Bella came out on crutches, and Paige was her replacement. Just an utter waste of time as a match that took many of the best women’s wrestlers in the company, put them all in one match, and gave them seven minutes to decide a tag championship. It ended up being a total affront where everyone was more concerned with getting their moves in than having a cohesive match. Paige is back… and the crowd goes mild.

Grade: D

Becky Lynch defeats AJ Lee

It’s a match that happened. Full disclosure: I wrote about all of night one, then realized I totally missed this match on the card, so I double-backed to write about it. That’s how unmemorable it was. This was clearly about the ends justifying the means, because the only point of this was to get the belt on Becky. They did that, and nothing that led to it happening is worth thinking about ever again.

Grade: D

Gunther defeats Seth Rollins

This was the best match on the card for the night, and for the most part, it lived up to the billing. Gunther is incredible, Seth is fantastic — and while this match should have gone for longer, they did the most with the 17 minutes they had. I don’t love getting Bron Breakker involved, because Gunther and Seth can carry this match without an additional pop, but the aim was to clearly keep Seth looking strong in defeat, so he can start a long program with Breakker. I’m not sure what Gunther’s role is anymore. He is unquestionably the most talented, technical, brilliant big man WWE has had in forever — but he’s going to be totally passed on for someone we’ll talk about on night two. It’s a shame.

Grade: B+

Liv Morgan defeats Stephanie Vacquer

I had high hopes for this, and maybe there’s an alternate timeline where it worked — but in this universe, the women only had six minutes to work a match for the FRIGGIN’ WOMEN’S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, telling us how little WWE regards this best, or its female wrestlers. I’ll buy that perhaps Liv still isn’t 100% healthy, but that doesn’t excuse how rushed this match felt.

Grade: D

Cody Rhodes defeats Randy Orton

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. I can safely say that I have never seen an important wrestling match operate for 20+ minutes and manage to make absolutely no sense the way this shit show did. There was absolutely no internal logic to the match, as if it were conceived by 20 different people at once, and they shared everyone’s ideas.

It seemed like we were going to get the overbooked mess out of the way early with Rhodes taking out Pat McAfee and then Jelly Roll dropping an elbow on him. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

The weirdest part of this match was that, whether real or not, Randy Orton displayed a back injury for the entirety of the match. This was weird because he was supposed to be the heel. Then Cody worked his back with forearms, delivered a low blow, poked Randy in the eyes — which are all heel tactics. If the idea was that Rhodes was willing to do “anything to win,” it missed the mark. Yet, that still wasn’t the weirdest part of all this.

Orton, who for 25 years has been renowned for his instincts and awareness, RKO’d the referee when it made zero sense. McAfee came down the ramp as the replacement, but then SLOW COUNTED an Orton pinfall — which made no sense. Then Orton RKO’d McAfee — which made no sense. Cody won, and maybe, just maybe, we were going to get a heel turn from Rhodes as Orton tried to hand him the belt?!

JUST KIDDING!

Orton punt kicked the champion to establish that he’s the heel, Cody is the face, and the crowd was cheering that Rhodes got his head kicked in because they’re so tired of him holding the belt. This was the single worst WrestleMania main event of all time.

Grade: F

Night Two

Oba Femi defeats Brock Lesnar

This was the obvious result we all saw coming, but I don’t think anyone thought this would be four minutes long. One of the most anticipated matches of the weekend fell flat because there was just no thought put into this. There’s a very real chance Brock can’t physically go for more than five minutes at this point, but it was still just a little sad. We got some good power moves, and a predictable ending. Femi is a future megastar, and this match established it.

I’m giving an extra half-grade for Femi winning in dominant fashion, and another half-grade for Brock retiring.

Grade: B+

Penta defeats Je’Von Evans, Dragon Lee, JD McDonagh, Rusev, and Rey Mysterio

FINALLY we get a match that actually felt worthy of WrestleMania. This was the obligatory “hungry young guy match,” albeit with the realization that half the guys in this match were over 40. It doesn’t matter, though, because they really put everything into this match. It might not have had the once-in-a-lifetime moments as past ladder matches at WrestleMania, but that didn’t matter — because for the first time in the weekend, we got a match that felt worthy of the spotlight.

To be honest, I’m grading kindly here because this was one of the few matches worth a damn. Truth be told, this would have been a mid-tier match in the past, but during this WrestleMania it was a standout.

Grade: A

Trick Williams defeats Sami Zayn

It’s really cool to see Trick Williams get his first main roster singles title, and it was much deserved. Williams has been an NXT standout who recently got the call up, and there deserves to be a rocket strapped to him. That said, there were two big issues I had with this match construction: Firstly, Williams entering second just because Lil Yachty was with him was stupid. I don’t care that they landed a celebrity to be ringside; you don’t alter the basic wrestling convention that the champion enters second.

The other is that AGAIN we just didn’t get enough time. The pacing of this match went directly to it appearing that Zayn was going to squash Trick, then he turned around and won. It needed a first act that had a little back-and-forth to raise the stakes. The end result was a match that just felt flatter than it should have been, but the storytelling was decent.

Grade: B

“The Demon” Finn Balor defeats Dominik Mysterio

Nothing about this match really made sense from a booking perspective. I don’t know why this was barely given a one-month build. I don’t understand what precipitated this match that required Finn Balor to bring out “The Demon,” and it’s still not really clear why Dom hates Balor as much as he does.

This absolutely typified the weekend. A lackluster build, nonsensical storytelling, and a justification only to have “The Demon” for a WrestleMania entrance, not because the story necessitated it. Aside from the logic, this was another mediocre contest. Dominik isn’t a good enough worker to have an elite match with Balor, which required him to slow things down a little.

One of the few times this weekend, a match only went 10 minutes but felt too long.

Grade: C+

Rhea Ripley defeats Jade Cargill

Two great things happened here: Firstly, Cargill looked better than most of her matches (which isn’t saying much), and secondly we got the damn belt off her.

It’s high time we had the biggest prize in WWE women’s wrestling put back on someone who can actually work. When we get down to brass tacks, WWE pushed Cargill far too early as an eff-you to AEW for signing her away — which is fine, but then they pushed her into a place where they were backed into the corner. Jade has the look, she can talk — but the wrestling quality isn’t really there. Thankfully, it came somewhat together for this match, which managed to make it work.

Also don’t like that Jade came out first before Rhea, which seemed to spoil the finish.

I don’t love throwing interference into the finish when it didn’t need to be. It’s okay to have a title match end clean, I promise.

Grade: B

Roman Reigns defeats CM Punk

Michael Cole tried his damndest to gaslight the audience by calling this “one of the most anticipated WrestleMania main events of all time,” even though nobody cared about it. Thankfully, this match had logic, which is more than we can say for most of the weekend — but it was also really, really bad.

Reigns and Punk don’t have good chemistry in the ring. Conceptually, this should have been about Reigns using strong, methodical offense, then Punk breaking through with some quick, rapid-fire strikes to even the score. The issue is that Punk looks and wrestles old. Any rapidity he once had was gone. Reigns already works slow outside of his Superman punch and spear, so this whole match just felt slow. It was given 34 minutes of time, and it felt like every bit of a 30+ minute match.

This was typical heel work from Punk, using every trick in the book to try and get the win. Roman as the face who prevailed through it all. The best thing to say is that at least the match actually felt epic and like it really belonged on the WrestleMania stage, but the downside was that it was still a pretty poor match. The weird part is that it felt incredible, simply because everything else around it was so mediocre.

Also, please let’s not lose sight of the irony of having CM Punk working a main event with the ad boards all covered in Saudi Arabian tourism ads. It’s just too delicious.

Grade: B+

Final thoughts

With a total runtime of over six hours across two nights, WrestleMania 42 had two hours and 47 minutes of in-ring action. The rest of the time was made up with entrances, in-ring segments, bragging about the attendance, and lots and lots of ads.

Neither of wrestling’s two major companies has figured out how to pace a PPV show. AEW still loads their card with 25-minute epics for mid-card rivalries that could be told in half the time. WWE doesn’t give any room for talent to tell a story, cutting them off in under 10. It’s important to discuss time as an element of this show because WrestleMania 42 was supremely disrespectful of the audience’s time. This was engineered as six hours of marketing, with just enough wrestling sprinkled in to stop people tuning out.

The match quality wasn’t up to the standards of WrestleMania. The segments weren’t particularly entertaining. There was no logic, no consistent storytelling — just a field of ‘blah,’ which won’t be thought about in a month, let alone place this year’s iteration in any “greatest” lists.

Everything about this generation of WWE is about playing it safe. The product is designed to appeal to a TikTok, YouTube Shorts generation with no attention span for anything lasting longer than 10 minutes. Business deals have been made in such a way as to ensure there’s zero pressure from ratings or networks to improve the product. Hell, even veteran reporters are being blocked from obtaining credentials to cover events like WrestleMania over thin-skinned concerns that they will criticize the product. The audience doesn’t matter, the fans don’t matter, the quality of the product doesn’t matter — so long as the money printer keeps on ticking, and sponsors keep lining up to put their branding on everything under the sun.

But hey, at least we have Michael Cole to lie to us about why this was the “most anticipated WrestleMania of all time.”

Final Grade: 4/10 — A soulless, mess of a WrestleMania that will rival WrestleMania IX for the worst of all time.