What’s the story?
WrestleMania 33 will hail from the Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida on April 2nd, and the show is rumoured to be more than six hours.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter was asked by a fan how long WrestleMania 33 would be going this year, including the preshow and Meltzer responded by claiming this year’s show could be as long as 6 ½ hours.
In case you didn’t know...
The following are a list of all official matches for WrestleMania 33:
- Goldberg (c) vs. Brock Lesnar – Universal Championship
- Bray Wyatt (c) vs. Randy Orton – WWE Championship
- Chris Jericho (c) vs. Kevin Owens – United States Championship
- Bayley (c) vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Sasha Banks – Raw Women’s Championship
- Every available SmackDown Women’s Wrestler vs. Alexa Bliss – SmackDown Women’s Championship
- Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson (c) vs. Enzo and Cass or Sheamus and Cesaro – Raw Tag Team Championships
- John Cena & Nikki Bella vs. The Miz & Maryse
- Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal
The following includes possible matches that have yet to be announced, but are clearly being built up on WWE programming:
- Neville (c) vs. Austin Aries – Cruiserweight Championship
- Dean Ambrose (c) vs. Baron Corbin – Intercontinental Championship
- Roman Reigns vs. The Undertaker
- Triple H vs. Seth Rollins
- AJ Styles vs. Shane McMahon
The heart of the matter
Last year’s WrestleMania was seven hours including the kickoff show on the WWE Network at 5 PM ET, the TV Pre-show at 6 PM ET, and the main card which started at 7 PM ET and ended around 11 PM ET.
Aside from any last-minute announcement for a similar pre-show pattern, then the WWE seems to have decided to knock a few minutes off their show.
What’s next?
There’s still plenty of time until WrestleMania, so the WWE could easily add some more matches for the pre-show and make it as long as last year.
Sportskeeda’s take
Last year’s WrestleMania was an example of what not to do for several reasons. Aside from the matches, which disappointed fans, the length of the show and some matches were too much for most fans to enjoy the show at all.
While they may have cut their time down by about 30 minutes, the fact remains that they could get this exact same thing done in six hours as opposed to 6 ½. In fact, previous WrestleManias have not only entertained fans in less than 6 hours but have managed to do it in less than 5.
There are more than 12 matches that will take place at this year’s WrestleMania so the extra time makes sense, but as last year demonstrated, long doesn’t mean good; it just means long.
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