Where Will WWE WrestleMania 38 Rank Among the Last 5 Showcase of Immortals?

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Credit: WWE.com

WWE WrestleMania 38 features a stacked card of icons, current Superstars and mainstream celebrities, headlined by a Winner Takes All Match for the WWE and Universal Championships between Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns that feels like the biggest main event the company has produced since The Rock vs. John Cena a decade ago.

With a strong undercard featuring the likes of Ronda Rousey, Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Seth Rollins and Drew McIntyre, the show has the potential to be one of the best in recent memory.

But where does the card rank among the last five Showcases of the Immortals, at least on paper?

Ahead of this weekend’s sports-entertainment extravaganza, relive the events in question and find out for yourself.

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WrestleMania 33 was a show with plenty of potential that, ultimately, will go down in the annals as a disappointment.

Sure, AJ Styles and Shane McMahon kicked off the show with a better-than-expected grudge match, and the Hardy Boyz shocked the wrestling world with an unforgettable return before capturing the Raw Tag Team Championships, but matches like Chris Jericho vs. Kevin Owens and the Fatal 4-Way Match for the Raw Women’s Championship failed to live up to expectations.

Throw in an underwhelming Universal Championship match between Brock Lesnar and Goldberg and you have a show that, while good and containing all of the pomp and circumstance you expect from WrestleMania, did not deliver between the ropes.

Most notably the night’s main event, featuring Roman Reigns vs. The Undertaker. What should have been a coronation of The Big Dog as the undisputed face of WWE’s future was, instead, the latest evidence of The Phenom’s deteriorating health.

The lackluster exclamation point on the night’s festivities left fans underwhelmed and set the stage for the events that would proceed over the next five years. 

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In hindsight, it was somewhat of a miracle that WWE was able to produce WrestleMania 36 at all.

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic that saw the entire country shut down, WWE opted to forge ahead with its biggest show of the year, presenting it live from its Performance Center in Orlando.

The result was, arguably, the most claustrophobic show in event history but it did do one very important thing to help shape the future of the extravaganza: it introduced the two-night format.

No longer was the show a bloated spectacle that kept fans up beyond midnight, waiting to see how the main event played out. Instead, the broadcast was succinct, featured better-than-expected matches given the circumstances, and included the Match of the Year between Undertaker and AJ Styles in the pretaped cinematic classic Boneyard Match.

Is the show an all-time great? Absolutely not. A disappointing Edge vs. Randy Orton match that dragged on entirely too long, and a Drew McIntyre vs. Brock Lesnar main event that was incredibly too short, helped pull down the overall quality of the show. 

Then there was the lack of fans, through no fault of WWE’s own.

In all, the show is a surreal look at how even the biggest, worldwide entertainment company was affected by the pandemic and how a group of performers and crew members came together to ensure the show went on.

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The 2018 event was looking like one of the best shows in company history early.

Seth Rollins, The Miz and Finn Balor tore the house down with an Intercontinental Championship Triple Threat that ranks as one of the greatest hidden gems in WrestleMania history. From there, Charlotte Flair and Asuka had a fantastic match for the SmackDown Women’s Championship while Ronda Rousey made her in-ring debut by tagging with Kurt Angle against Triple H and Stephanie McMahon in a Match of the Year candidate.

Then, like many of the more recent WrestleMania shows, things fell off.

The show failed to maintain that quality, even with the likes of AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura still to come.

It was the night’s main event that soured fans and led to WrestleMania 34 failing to rank higher on this list.

Roman Reigns challenged Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship in a match so one-sided, misguided and flat-out bad that it adversely affected the overall quality of the event.

The headline match is the last thing people see. It leaves the greatest impression on fans and is often billed as the biggest match of the year. When said contest sees Lesnar beat, brutalize, suplex the hell out of and essentially squash Reigns in a match no one was uber eager to see at that time, it is difficult to justify placing ahead of shows with better marquee bouts.

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WrestleMania 38, on paper, is shaping up to be a strong card. Some will denounce it for its use of celebrities in multiple matches, or because of the stars not on the main lineup, but it still features several matches with the potential to be great and one that could help define this era of The Showcase of the Immortals.

Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns have done the dance before on wrestling’s grandest stage, to varying results. Their 2015 main event split the audience in terms of quality and was quickly overshadowed by Seth Rollins’s shocking cash-in of Money in the Bank in its final moments. Their 2018 contest was…not so great.

Sunday, they have the opportunity to deliver the match both they and the fans deserve; an iconic bout with both the WWE and Universal Championships on the line that will provide closure to their feud and an undisputed titleholder.

If they can bring the intensity they have to this point, the match has the potential to be a brutal, physical, violent clash of heavyweights. A main event befitting WrestleMania.

That match is not the only thing to look forward to on the card.

Both women’s title matches (Charlotte Flair vs. Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch vs. Bianca Belair) should deliver and Edge vs. AJ Styles is a wrestling fan’s dream match. Throw in what should be better-than-typical celebrity performances and you have a show that has every potential to be great.

Whether WWE can resist toying with timing, format or booking and just let the matches deliver up to their potential, remains to be seen. That uncertainty, which has plagued other WrestleManias in recent years, is why this card can only justifiably rank at No. 3. 

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WrestleMania 35 was an event defined by historical occurrences.

Kofi Kingston defeated Daniel Bryan to capture the WWE Championship in the culmination of KofiMania, becoming the first black man to win the top prize in the company on wrestling’s grandest stage. 

Becky Lynch defeated Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair in a Winner Takes All Triple Threat Match, ending the show by holding both the Raw and SmackDown Women’s Championships high overhead. It was the first time women competed in the main event of the broadcast.

It was also the scene of both Batista and Kurt Angle’s legendary in-ring careers with WWE as both men wrestled their final matches.

A solid card from the top to bottom, which also saw Seth Rollins stun Brock Lesnar in just over two minutes to capture the Universal Championship, it provided the moments we expect from WrestleMania and some solid-if-unspectacular undercard action.

It ranks at No. 2, though, largely because of the length of the event.

The bloated, 16-match card (including the Kickoff Show) ensured the show did not end until after midnight. A seven-hour show, it featured so many matches jam-packed into that run time that it became easy to forget what happened earlier.

By the time Lynch hoisted those titles, what Rollins accomplished earlier felt like an entire show ago. What should have been a defining event and one of the best in recent memory was still very good but bogged down by WWE’s attempts to get as many matches and stars onto the show as possible.

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With fans in the stands for the first time in over a year, WWE returned to the WrestleMania stage with a show that featured the pomp, circumstance, drama, history and extraordinary in-ring action that you demand from the annual extravaganza.

Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks stole the weekend with an emotional battle over the SmackDown Women’s Championship, the first time two Black women competed in the main event of the show. Their match, a contender for the best of the year, saw The EST capture gold and implant herself as one of the faces of women’s wrestling in the company.

Speaking of Match of the Year candidates, the event’s second night of action concluded with Roman Reigns smashing, stacking and pinning Edge and Daniel Bryan in one of the most dominant displays in WWE history. The match that preceded it was fantastic; one of the best WrestleMania main events in recent memory.

Then there was the rest of the card, which saw Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley deliver a banger for the WWE Championship, Bad Bunny show out in his celebrity appearance alongside Damian Priest against The Miz and John Morrison, and Cesaro and Seth Rollins threaten to steal the show.

The undercard was solid and only Randy Orton vs. The Fiend managed not to live up (or down?) to expectations, making WrestleMania 37 the most complete and consistent of the last five spectaculars.

Hopefully, WrestleMania 38 is a show that not only performs up to expectations but exceeds this list’s ranking of its card, slotting in at the top of the countdown in retrospect.