Here’s what matters today in wrestling 👇
Image Credit: WWE
WrestleMania ticket sales are down 18% from this point last year, and everybody is looking for someone to blame. As the head of creative, Paul Levesque makes for an easy target, and the reported constant changes of plans for the two-day extravaganza have people looking at him. Of course, there’s no shortage of external factors to look at. Tickets are more expensive. Tourism is down everywhere in America right now, people from other countries don’t want to come here for various reasons. The economy isn’t great unless you’re in a certain tax bracket that most wrestling fans aren’t in.
I try not to get on wrestling creative types for plans changing, as many times plans must change. WWE is working through quite the injury bug involving some folks you’d think would have big spots at WrestleMania. Maybe guys like Seth Rollins & Bron Breakker will be good to go for the event, but you can’t announce them for anything right now with any certainty. Add in the fact that we’re still more than two months away and I think most of these issues will be sorted out. Maybe WWE won’t make as much money off WrestleMania as they did last year, but they’ll still make more than enough.
I also wonder how many of these changes come from Levesque working people for his WWE Unreal project. We’ve seen that’s a thing he loves to do.
WRESTLING HEADLINES 👊🏽
• Update on Bad Bunny Potentially Returning to WWE
Image Credit: WWE
You knew that once AEW got some viral attention due to fans chanting “F ICE” on Dynamite that WWE was going to home in on that market. It makes sense from a business perspective, Bunny’s a bigger star now than he was when he previously showed up in WWE, and he silenced the critics last time by putting in the work and doing awesome stuff in the ring. It also wouldn’t hurt WWE to do business with someone that publicly repudiates their political values, and the folks with hurt feelings can run their own wrestling show on YouTube & have it watched by a small fraction of the audience.
Image Credit: AEW
AEW will return to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center for their big event that’s traditionally held at the end of May. Previous AEW Grand Slam events have been held at Arthur Ashe Stadium, but that venue is undergoing renovations that are expected to be done for the 2027 US Open. (The stadium will still be used for this year’s Open, but not for other events like this.) Louis Armstrong is a smaller stadium, but that should help the feel for an AEW show. As a wrestling fan that also likes tennis I always like it when AEW hits this venue, and I wish they’d do the same with their Grand Slam Australia show.
MORE MUST-READ LINKS FROM 411MANIA
→Hall's WWE Raw Review 2.9.26
→A Look Back at the Phenomenal Career of AJ Styles Part 2: The Face of TNA
→Pantoja’s Top 100 Matches Of 2025 (#10-1)
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– Steve Cook