WWE rolled into Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on Saturday 18 April 2026 for Night One of WrestleMania 42, hosted by John Cena. Seven matches, four titles on the line, one unsanctioned grudge match and a returning former Divas Champion — here is how it all went down.
Review
John Cena, in a suit and playing host, opened proceedings by welcoming Allegiant Stadium and declaring that the time to talk was over. From there, it was straight into the opening six-man tag, and for all the build, the match itself came and went in a touch over seven minutes. The Usos and LA Knight never got out of second gear before Knight hit BFT on Austin Theory — set up by a botched double-team from an increasingly frustrated IShowSpeed — for the pin. The post-match was where the spectacle lived: Logan Paul turned on Speed, setting up a babyface pile-on that ended with Speed crashing off the top rope through the announce table onto The Maverick. Good television moment, thin opener.
Things got considerably more interesting the moment Jacob Fatu’s music hit. The Unsanctioned Match with Drew McIntyre turned into a full brawl immediately — staple guns, chairs, a wrench, a toolbox and a leather belt all making appearances. A Claymore Kick couldn’t put Fatu away, and the finish saw Fatu moonsault off the top rope through a table laid across McIntyre for the three. Fourteen minutes of grimy, largely coherent violence and the biggest singles win of Fatu’s main-roster run to date.
The Fatal Four-Way for the Women’s Tag Team Championships became the first genuine talking point of the night. Nikki Bella came out on crutches, unable to compete due to her ankle injury, and introduced Paige as her replacement — the former two-time Divas Champion’s first WWE appearance in nearly a decade. The match itself was a busy, tightly packed eight and a half minutes that leaned on the star power of the returning name more than on the wrestling. Flair and Bliss got their near-falls, Valkyria and Bayley had their moments, but the finish was always going to belong to Paige. Nikki clocked Flair with the crutch to break up a pinfall, and Paige caught Bliss off the top with a Ram-Paige to end Lash Legend and Nia Jax’s fifty-one-day reign. An emotional return and a fresh champion pairing — the match was built as the vehicle for the moment rather than the other way around, and that is exactly how it played.
Becky Lynch and AJ Lee never quite clicked in the way the build promised. The Women’s Intercontinental Championship rematch from Elimination Chamber went a shade over eight minutes, with Lynch in full heel mode — exposing the top turnbuckle, shoving the referee, stomping Lee in the corner. The exposed turnbuckle paid off when Lynch planted Lee with a Man Handle Slam for the three. It was Lee’s first WrestleMania match in eleven years, and both women got in their signatures, but the sequences felt truncated. Lynch gets the title back; Lee walks out with the longer-term story still open.
Seth Rollins vs. Gunther was the match of the night by some distance. Fifteen and a half minutes of the contest Gunther has quietly made his calling card — measured, brutal, built on chop exchanges and the constant threat of the sleeper. Rollins gave as good as he got, pulling out the full box of tricks, but Bron Breakker’s return did the work. Charging down the ramp and spearing his former Vision running mate out of his boots, Breakker set Gunther up for the sleeper, and that was that. Gunther’s first WrestleMania singles win since 2023 and the clear recommended bout of the card on pure in-ring merit. The Breakker turn also reshuffles the upper-midcard for Raw in one clean movement.
Stephanie Vaquer’s run as Women’s World Champion came to an abrupt end in the co-main event. Six minutes and fifty-one seconds — the shortest match on the card — with Judgment Day’s Roxanne Perez and Raquel Rodriguez at ringside and doing exactly what you would expect them to do. The distraction allowed Liv Morgan to finish the job, ending Vaquer’s run of over two hundred days and sending the belt back to Judgment Day. Given what Vaquer had built up going in, there was genuinely no time for this one to find a rhythm, and the finish leaned heavily on the overbook. As a WrestleMania match, this was the weakest segment of the night.
RHODES VS ORTON
The main event delivered in layers. Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton worked a long, slow, methodical twenty-two minutes that was as much about storytelling as it was about wrestling. The pre-match spot saw Pat McAfee try to jump Rhodes, only for Jelly Roll to emerge and elbow-drop the commentator through a table — McAfee was stretchered out and it looked for all the world like he was done for the night. Orton sold back damage from the opening exchanges, blood came around the twelve-minute mark, and an RKO at minute eighteen looked for a split second like it might be enough.
An eye poke then caused Orton to accidentally catch the referee with an RKO, bringing McAfee back down the ramp in a neck brace and referee’s shirt. Another RKO from Orton — McAfee slow-counted to two, Orton lost it and laid McAfee out with an RKO of his own, and the distraction gave Rhodes the opening for Cross Rhodes and the retain. Orton refused to let the story end there, punting Rhodes in the head after the bell and standing over the champion holding the Undisputed WWE Championship as Night One faded out. A clear main-event bookend to the evening, if not quite the classic the build was reaching for.
Elsewhere on the night, Bianca Belair made a surprise appearance to announce her pregnancy, explaining her continued absence from television.
Overall
Night One of WrestleMania 42 was a show of moments rather than matches. Paige’s return, Bron Breakker’s interference, Jelly Roll laying out McAfee and Orton’s post-bell punt will keep the highlights reel busy for a week. The in-ring bar, though, was set by one match: Gunther and Rollins. Outside of that, the card ran short, leaned heavily on run-ins and surprise returns, and largely kept its bigger stories open for Night Two and beyond. Watchable throughout, genuinely great in patches, but some way off the vintage the venue and the brand demand — and with three title changes stacked into the middle of the card, the weight of the evening never quite landed on any single one of them.
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