The 5 Biggest Hits and Misses from WWE WrestleMania 42 Weekend
WrestleMania 42 is in the history books and in its wake, it has left several hits and misses from the two-night spectacular, including each of the shows' main events, which saw Cody Rhodes defeat Randy Orton to retain the Undisputed WWE Championship and Roman Reigns best CM Punk to win the World Heavyweight Championship.
Dive deeper into those topics, as well as the other three, with this look back at WWE's 2026 Showcase of the Immortals.
Miss: Saturday's Main Event
1 of 5
Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton were tasked with delivering a WrestleMania main event on Saturday night that made sense of the ridiculous shoehorning of Pat McAfee into the storyline while also providing in-ring action that served as a subtable conclusion to the first night's card.
They did their best, all while trying to implement other elements of the story, including Rhodes matching his opponent's depravity, but the final product was an incoherent contest that never seemed to know what it wanted to be.
Was it about Rhodes and Orton potentially executing a double turn? Was it a morality play of sorts for The American Nightmare? Was it an Attitude Era schlockfest featuring an obnoxious ESPN host?
The match never seemed to have an answer, and as a result, the match went down in WrestleMania lore as one of the toughest ones to follow narratively, even if the action itself was inherently solid.
Hit: CM Punk vs. Roman Reigns
2 of 5
While one main event was the mess we knew it would be, CM Punk vs. Roman Reigns for the World Heavyweight Championship, Sunday night was not only an epic match befitting the biggest show of the year, but it was also an instant classic that will stand among the best show-closing bouts in WrestleMania history.
From Punk's goosebump-inducing entrance to an in-match narrative that forced Reigns to fight from underneath and challenged the world champion's ability to hang with him.
It put the supremely confident OTC on the defensive, played up the idea that Punk was too old, and saw the champion go down like a Western gunslinger, defiantly swinging at his physical superior until he had nothing left to give.
The match operated in the realm of Punk, a smartly wrestled wrestling match instead of the cinema-heavy main events that populate the main event scene today.
The result was a match that far exceeded even the loftiest expectations and emerged from a jam-packed weekend as the best match in Las Vegas.
Miss: Street Fight?
3 of 5
Suddenly and inexplicably, the match between Dominik Mysterio and Finn Balor became a Street Fight on Sunday night, with notice or advertising it as such.
Thankfully, too, because it proved to be just another chair-swinging, table-cracking, half-assed gimmick that did nothign to elevate the match between two rivals any higher than it was.
Balor won with a Coup de Grace through a table, the Judgment Day exploded, and all was right with the world. Still, that taken into consideration, the gimmick was useless, watered down an already tired gimmick, and saw Balor's Demon persona get the measure of revenge against Mysterio that was long overdue.
Hit: Oba Femi Dominates Brock Lesnar
4 of 5
Oba Femi defeating Brock Lesnar and immediately rocketing up the ranks in WWE was the easiest layup of the entire WrestleMania weekend and the company did not miss.
Femi shrugged off all of Lesnar's biggest stuff before popping up, delivering a chokeslam and powerbomb to score the win.
The Ruler established himself as an elite talent in WWE after absorbing everything Lesnar threw at him, then unloading it back on his opponent. By night's end, it mattered not that Roman Reigns had regained the World Heavyweight Championship but, rather, that he may be face-to-face with a new challenger sooner than he expects.
Miss: Gunther Gets Overshadowed
5 of 5
Despite a new graphic that reads "Career Killer," Gunther emerged from Saturday's victory over Seth Rollins worse off than he was entering it.
Not only was the Austrian-born wrestler nearly left off the card altogether when plans for a match with Rey Mysterio did not manifest themselves, but he was also an afterthought amid his own victory as Bron Breakker returned from injury to level The Visionary with a pair of massive spears.
A former world champion and the man who retired both John Cena and AJ Styles, Gunther appears directionless and overshadowed coming out of WrestleMania, not necessarily labels that one would assign to him as late as three months ago.
How he climbs out of his creative hole and regains his status as the last great heel in WWE remains to be seen.
_0.png?w=600 "Real Winners & Losers At Mania")
