Sports

First Night Of WrestleMania 42 Leaves WWE Fans Divided

WWE's decision to turn WrestleMania into a two-night event years ago has had plenty of ups and downs. Unfortunately for fans, the first night of WrestleMania 42 this year seems to be trending down.

The seven matches that took place on Saturday lasted around a combined 86 minutes, with some of the highlights being an event-opening tag team match featuring Logan Paul and IShowSpeed, a match between Gunther and Seth Rollins, and the main event's world title match between Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton.

But throughout the night, fans seemed to find themselves underwhelmed by the experience. Complaints ranged from the excessive commercials to the number of celebrities to the match lengths to the lack of crowd noise.

Complaints

"This does not feel like a WrestleMania. Am I the only one who feels this?" one user on X remarked midway through the card.

"Nice that they threw in some matches to break up the commercials tonight," Robbie Fox of Barstool wrote.

"Wrestlemania used to mean something. Too many ads, zero flow, and too much filler," a third said bluntly.

"- Ads after ads after ads… - Insanely short matches - Too many celebs - One of the worst main events of all time. Night 1 of WrestleMania 42 was an absolute disaster."

Not everyone had complaints though. Some fans argued that they enjoyed this WrestleMania a lot more than some recent ones.

"Eh I disagree. Think there was many positives. Yeah the ads, and timings were bad but other than that the matches were all good. Gunther vs Seth is a classic. The main event was good compared to what I expected. Not perfect but not horrible. Decent."

"The main event was great. It was confusing, yes, but the match was decent."

"Its crazy to see so many people being negative about Night 1. As a long time fan I enjoyed the matches. Ads, are just part of everything now. Celebs are always apart of Mania. But this was better than the last few Manias in my opinion."

You can never really tell what the consensus is just from using social media though.

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This story was originally published April 18, 2026 at 9:55 PM.

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