WWE WrestleMania 37 was a two-night event, as was 36, and while reports suggest 38 will go back to one-night, here's why that shouldn't happen. Going back to holding WrestleMania entirely on one night in 2022 might seem the logical thing to do, as the Coronavirus vaccine rollout should hopefully have alleviated any pandemic concerns by next spring. Also, it's certainly the traditional thing to do, as WrestleMania was a one-night event for the first 35 years of its long existence as an iconic entertainment spectacle.
Yet, it's not always the best move to go back to one's old ways simply because they feel comfortable. While pandemic rules and limitations may have made a two-night show a necessity for the last two years, unplanned and initially unwanted change can sometimes be a blessing in disguise. WWE owner Vince McMahon may not see that quite yet, but he and other elites at the company would be wise to sit down and fully discuss their options before setting a one-night WrestleMania 38 in stone.
WrestleMania is the type of event that will sell out just about any venue it goes to, no matter how many nights it runs. For the millions of wrestling fans watching live around the world on streaming and pay-per-view though, there's a very distinct advantage to keeping WrestleMania spread across back-to-back evenings.
WWE WrestleMania Has Grown Too Large For One Night
For most of its existence, WWE's WrestleMania event was a three-hour show, which gradually expanded to four hours in the early 2000s. When WrestleMania 20 ran for five hours in 2004, it was a deviation from the norm. In the past five years or so though, WrestleMania's length has gotten wildly unpredictable, usually ranging from five to sometimes over seven hours. Even when the overall show is good, fans regularly complain about how exhausting WrestleMania has become to sit through. The most recent one-night WrestleMania, 35 in 2019, was a show with largely crowd-pleasing matches and outcomes, such as Kofi Kingston winning the WWE Championship, and many fans still found the length a chore.
With WrestleMania 36 and 37 being spread over two consecutive nights, the length of each nightly presentation has dropped to between 3 and 4 hours, like the old days. This still allows the matches on tap time to breathe and develop, the requisite celebrity guests to appear, and more wrestlers to compete on the card and get a big payday, while not requiring fans to sit through the equivalent of two back-to-back Avengers: Endgame screenings in order to watch WrestleMania live as it happens. As an added bonus, two nights with 100 percent arena capacity enables even more fans to not be shut out of getting tickets to the event, and puts more cash in WWE's pocket.