WrestleMania 36

WrestleMania 36
PromotionWWE
Brand(s)Raw
SmackDown
NXT
DateMarch 25–26, 2020[1]
(aired April 4–5, 2020[a])
CityOrlando, Florida
VenueWWE Performance Center[b]
Attendance0 (behind closed doors)[c]
Tagline(s)Too Big for Just One Night![2]
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WrestleMania 36 was the 36th annual WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE. It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw, SmackDown, and NXT brand divisions. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event was filmed on March 25 and 26, 2020, at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida and was broadcast as a two-night event on April 4 and 5. This marked the first time the event was broadcast over two nights as well as aired on tape delay. On pay-per-view, the two productions were sold as individual shows, with both available as a package deal. National Football League (NFL) player Rob Gronkowski served as the host of the event.

The event was originally scheduled to take place solely on April 5, 2020, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida and was to air live. In mid-March, all WWE programming was relocated to the Performance Center training facility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with no audience and only essential staff present. WrestleMania 36 was the first major professional wrestling event to be affected by the pandemic, and is in turn the only edition of WrestleMania not to feature a live crowd. Taking advantage of the format, two cinematic matches—a "Boneyard match" and a "Firefly Fun House match"—were filmed offsite in an atypical, cinematic style. In June, Florida lifted restrictions on paid spectator attendance at sporting events with the next year's WrestleMania 37 moved to Raymond James Stadium; WrestleMania 37, in turn, adopted much of the buccaneer-themed marketing originally used for WrestleMania 36, including a similar logo.

The card comprised 18 matches which were divided between the two nights, including one match on each night's Kickoff pre-show and a dark match on the second night. In the main event of the show for Part 1, The Undertaker, partly returning to his "American Bad Ass" character for the first time in over 16 years, defeated AJ Styles in a Boneyard match, which was later revealed to be Undertaker's final match, while in the final match from the Performance Center, which was SmackDown's main match, Braun Strowman defeated Goldberg to win the Universal Championship. In other prominent matches, Becky Lynch defeated Shayna Baszler to retain the Raw Women's Championship, and Kevin Owens defeated Seth Rollins in a No Disqualification match. In the main event for Part 2, which was the main match for Raw, Drew McIntyre defeated Brock Lesnar to win the WWE Championship, after which an impromptu dark match occurred in which McIntyre retained the title against Big Show, which was shown on the April 6 episode of Raw. In the penultimate match, "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt defeated John Cena in a Firefly Fun House match. In other prominent matches, Edge defeated Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing match, which was Edge's first singles match since April 2011, and in the opening bout, Charlotte Flair defeated Rhea Ripley to win the NXT Women's Championship for a second time, which was the first and so far only time an NXT championship was defended at a WrestleMania.

  1. ^ Johnson, Mike (March 21, 2020). "WWE taping updates". PWInsider. Archived from the original on March 22, 2020. Retrieved March 22, 2020.
  2. ^ "WrestleMania 36". WWE. Archived from the original on March 21, 2020. Retrieved March 20, 2020.


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