After 40 years of WWE hosting its premier WrestleMania event, there have naturally been a number of notable matches that were at one point set to take place at the biggest show on the calendar, but fell through for varying reasons.
Whether it was because of injuries, scandals or simply a change of plans, we’ve missed out on a number of dream matches that would have changed the WrestleMania history books in a major way.
With the 41st Mania coming up in under a month, here are 14 matches that were planned for WrestleMania throughout the years, but ultimately ended up being scrapped.
14. The Undertaker vs. Drew McIntyre – WrestleMania 26
Having signed for WWE in 2007, Drew McIntyre spent some time on SmackDown before being sent back to developmental to hone his skills. When he returned to the main roster in 2009, Vince McMahon publicly touted him as ‘The Chosen One’, and the Scotsman seemed destined for a major push.
In fact, he was pencilled in to be the next WrestleMania opponent for the Undertaker, and potentially to be the man who would end the Deadman’s legendary streak. Plans changed when the powers that be decided the better option for Taker was a rematch of the previous year’s all-time classic against Shawn Michaels, this time with HBK’s career on the line.
McIntyre instead entered the Money In The Bank ladder match and was considered by many to be the favourite, but lost to Jack Swagger. From there he slipped down the card and was released in 2014, eventually returning three years later and becoming a WrestleMania main eventer in 2020.
In hindsight McIntyre has conceded that he probably wasn’t ready for a WrestleMania match with Undertaker so early in his career.
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13. Kurt Angle vs. Jason Jordan – WrestleMania 35
An accomplished amateur wrestler, Jason Jordan drew comparisons to Kurt Angle in the early part of his WWE career – so inevitably, WWE decided to pretend they were related.
In July 2017, during Angle’s run as Raw general manager, he ‘admitted’ to being Jordan’s father. Jordan then moved from SmackDown to Raw so he could work with his ‘dad’, and the two interacted multiple times on television during the next few months.
Unfortunately, Jordan suffered a neck injury in early 2018 that later proved to be career-ending. Among other things, this killed off the father-son storyline which – according to Angle – would otherwise have culminated in a match a year later at WrestleMania 35.
Instead, Angle entered into a feud with Baron Corbin and told Vince McMahon a few weeks before the big event that he wanted to retire immediately afterwards. The forgettable match between the two in MetLife Stadium proved to be Angle’s last, which is a shame. A showdown with on-screen son Jason Jordan might have been a much better sendoff, but it wasn’t meant to be.
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12. Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart – WrestleMania 13
Following their 60-minute Iron Man Match in the main event of WrestleMania 12, Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart were pencilled in for a rematch the following year. According to Bret, this time would have been a shorter match (perhaps 30 minutes) but aiming to match or surpass the intensity of the original.
“I wanted to do a thing where Shawn… goes to give me that big kick as I stagger over to him, just like at the iron man match,” Hart later explained. “Except this time I would take Shawn’s foot, catch it in the air and get him to the ground and put some kind of a shoot hold on his foot and break his foot right in the middle of the ring. I wanted Shawn to tap out like they do in UFC.”
Of course, by 1997 the two stars were not on the best of terms, and Michaels forfeited the belt in the notorious WWE Raw segment where he claimed to have a knee injury and said he had “lost his smile”.
The rematch took place at Survivor Series that year instead, where it passed entirely without incident. Ahem.
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11. Seth Rollins vs. Shane McMahon – WrestleMania 38
Having not been seen on television for several months, Shane McMahon made an unexpected return at number 28 in the 2022 WWE Royal Rumble, eliminating Kevin Owens from the match and lasting until the final three.
Shortly after the show ended, reports emerged that Shane had irritated many of the roster during the buildup to the match, for allegedly obnoxious behaviour and an insistence on booking himself to look stronger than many of the full time wrestlers. There seemed to be some truth to the reports, as Vince McMahon quietly ditched Shane’s on-air comeback just a few days later.
Prior to that incident, he was apparently being lined up for a big WrestleMania match. “Shane McMahon was going to be in the [Elimination] Chamber and set up a feud with Seth Rollins for WrestleMania,” reported veteran wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer. “I don’t know if that was going to be the championship match, but obviously… that was changed.”
Rollins wrestled a returning Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania instead, which – let’s face it – was almost certainly a better match.
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10. Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair – WrestleMania 8
If you liked both the WWF and WCW in 1992, this was the biggest WrestleMania main event you could imagine – a showdown between the two men who carried their respective companies through much of the past decade.
When Flair dramatically jumped ship to join Vince McMahon’s organisation in 1991, the dream match seemed not just possible but almost inevitable – Flair entered the WWF claiming to be the “real world’s champion”, and even cost the Hulkster the WWF Title at Survivor Series that year.
When Flair won the Royal Rumble to claim the vacant championship, Hogan was announced as his challenger for the biggest show… and then suddenly, everything changed. Flair was moved into a match with Randy Savage, while Hogan faced Sid Justice in a match dubbed as potentially being Hogan’s last ever.
Why the change? Matches between the two weren’t really clicking on the house show circuit, and McMahon did not want to put the strap back on Hogan while he was at the centre of the steroid scandal engulfing the company. The stars simply did not align, so the match never happened on wrestling’s biggest stage.
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9. Lita vs. Trish Stratus – WrestleMania 21
Given that these two were probably the biggest female stars of their generation, it seems like a missed opportunity that they never had a one-on-one match at WrestleMania – but there were plans for one in 2005.
It all began when Stratus mocked Lita for putting on weight after she suffered a storyline miscarriage (stay classy, WWE), causing the two to feud through the autumn, including their famous Raw main event in December 2004 where Lita beat Trish for the Women’s Championship.
Trish won the title back at New Year’s Revolution in January, in a match where Lita unfortunately tore her ACL. That put a stop to plans for their feud to continue through WrestleMania, with Lita instead being an on-screen mentor for Christy Hemme, who faced Stratus at Mania in her place.
The two women never had a singles match with each other at WrestleMania, although they were part of a triple threat in 2002 and a six-woman tag match in 2023.
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8. Triple H vs. The Rock (Iron Man Match) – WrestleMania 2000
Four years after the Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels iron man match, WrestleMania was back in the same building and WWE planned to recreate the epic feeling of that main event by putting its two top current stars in another 60-minute encounter.
Since Steve Austin had been sidelined with a long term injury the previous November, The Rock was the undisputed number one babyface in the company and Triple H was the top heel, running the company (in storyline) as one half of a maniacal power couple with Stephanie McMahon.
An iron man match would have been the perfect culmination to the two men’s feud, but Vince McMahon decided to postpone that for a couple of months and go with a fatal four-way at Mania instead.
Big Show and Chris Jericho were the two names originally added to the match (promotional material was even made with Jericho included), but Y2J was swapped out for Mick Foley during the buildup after Foley’s incredible feud with Triple H during January and February.
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7. Brock Lesnar vs. Bray Wyatt – WrestleMania 39
After being surprisingly released the previous year, Bray Wyatt returned to WWE in late 2022 as a tortured soul being tormented by a mysterious figure known as Uncle Howdy.
This menacing new incarnation of Wyatt initially entered into a feud with LA Knight, finally beating him at the Royal Rumble before turning to his plans for WrestleMania. He announced that he would face the winner of the Brock Lesnar versus Bobby Lashley match that was scheduled for Elimination Chamber – with the initial plan being that Brock would be victorious and go on to face the former Fiend.
However, Lesnar didn’t want the match, feeling it would be wrong for his character, so Lashley beat him via disqualification at the PLE, and a match between Lashley and Wyatt was set for Mania instead.
Sadly that never happened either, because Wyatt was taken ill before it could. After his untimely death later that year, we learned that in fact he had been suffering from Covid, which had exacerbated an existing heart issue.
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6. ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin vs. Hulk Hogan – WrestleMania 18
Steve Austin was not a happy bunny in the spring of 2002. His dramatic heel turn at WWE WrestleMania X-Seven the previous year had proven to be a damp squib, causing him to pivot back to being a fan favourite after the WCW invasion angle fizzled out in the autumn.
Creatively frustrated, he would end up facing Scott Hall in a midcard match at WrestleMania X8, after which he no-showed Raw and later walked out on the company altogether.
In fact, there had been no shortage of ideas for high profile opponents he could have faced at Mania: one early plan was for him to face Triple H, potentially even with Bret Hart as referee if the Hitman could be talked into it. Then, before the returning Hulk Hogan was booked into his iconic match with The Rock, there were thoughts of running Hogan v Austin instead – but Stone Cold vetoed it.
“Physically and mentally where I was at, I could go,” Austin later said. “I think Hogan probably would have been a step or two behind that. That wasn’t acceptable to me.”
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5. Hulk Hogan & Mr T vs. Roddy Piper & David Schultz – WrestleMania 1
Did you know that ‘Dr D’ David Schultz nearly took Paul Orndorff’s place in the main event of WWE’s first ever WrestleMania?
According to notoriously reliable source Hulk Hogan, Schultz was the person who actually came up with the idea of having the tag match headline the show.
“We hadn’t started promoting it but Vince was thinking it through,” Hogan told Steve Austin’s podcast in 2019. “But David decided to shoot his own angle at the LA Forum where Mr T was sitting at ringside and David rolled out of the ring and bitchslapped the hell out of him. A shoot slap. Chief Strongbow sent the cops down and they shackled David behind his back and carried him out. After that, he was pretty much done.”
Schultz was already in hot water after his notorious backstage assault on news reporter Jon Stossel three months before the show, and had been fired from the company entirely by the time Orndorff replaced him at WrestleMania.
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4. The Rock vs. Brock Lesnar – WrestleMania 30
During the WWE WrestleMania 29 rematch against John Cena, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson tore his abdomen and adductor tendons and had to miss the following night’s Raw – which is a shame, because he was due to take part in a major angle that night to set up a one-year build for his next Mania match.
The idea was that he would be attacked by Brock Lesnar, which would write him off television for several months, before he could make his triumphant return and challenge the Beast to a rematch of their Summerslam 2002 main event, 11 years later.
Unfortunately, his real-life injury caused him to miss the premiere of his latest movie ‘Pain & Gain’, as well as delaying the filming schedule of his next production, ‘Hercules’, all of which caused some consternation in Hollywood.
“He was pushing it too hard,” said ‘Pain & Gain’ director Michael Bay. “He needs to grow up and stop wrestling 300lb men.” Johnson clearly took that advice to heart: his match with Lesnar never happened, and Rock didn’t wrestle a full match again until 2024.
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3. Hulk Hogan (w/ Donald Trump) vs. Big Show (w/ Vince McMahon) – WrestleMania 23
Two decades after Hulk Hogan dropped Andre The Giant in a bodyslam seen around the world, WWE returned to Detroit for the 20th anniversary.
Future president Donald Trump had agreed to be part of the show, and Vince McMahon envisioned a ‘Battle of the Billionaires’ where each man would select a wrestler to represent them in a match, with the losing tycoon having his head shaved by the winner.
Originally, the plan was for Hulk Hogan to be Trump’s pick in a match against Big Show, who many saw as the heir to Andre The Giant given his enormous size. That would have allowed for a recreation of the bodyslam, before Trump picked up the win.
Unfortunately Hogan wanted too much money and Big Show needed to heal lingering injuries, so the two men ended up being replaced by Bobby Lashley and Umaga. Meanwhile, The Great Khali and Kane recreated the bodyslam spot in their match – which wasn’t quite as cool, obviously.
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2. The Rock vs. Roman Reigns – WrestleMania 40
We all know what happened here. WWE spent a year building towards Cody Rhodes getting another shot at finishing the story against Roman Reigns, but things got complicated at the end of January 2024 when our pal Dwayne joined the board of directors at WWE’s parent company TKO.
Rhodes was then told on the afternoon before winning the 2024 men’s Royal Rumble that the plans were changing, and on the following week’s SmackDown we learned that Rhodes had changed his mind about challenging Reigns, stepping aside into a match against World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins instead, so that The Rock could face his cousin.
The fanbase revolted in response, with chants of ‘We Want Cody’ and ‘Rocky Sucks’ filling arenas for the next few WWE shows – and, to their credit, WWE responded. Cody announced at a media event in Las Vegas that he wanted to face Reigns after all, causing Rock to turn heel and do all he could to derail Rhodes.
It was a well-judged pivot that made for arguably the best WrestleMania main event build of all time.
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1. The Rock vs. John Cena vs. CM Punk – WrestleMania 29
It would be hard to deny that CM Punk was the most consistently entertaining part of WWE television in 2011 and 2012. After his legendary ‘pipe bomb’ promo and the ensuing ‘Summer of Punk’, many people thought he deserved to be in the main event of WrestleMania 28 – but of course that spot had already been filled by the year-long buildup for John Cena versus The Rock.
By the time 2013 rolled around, Punk had been WWE Champion for over a year and arguably had a stronger case than ever to be granted headliner status.
According to The Rock, a triple threat main event featuring all three men was actually the plan at one point, but Vince McMahon ultimately opted for a straight Rock-Cena rematch instead. Punk got a pretty good consolation prize, though: he became the 21st and final victim of the Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak.
Punk himself believes that this was the show’s true main event: “I went out there and I f**king absolutely destroyed it,” he said. “They couldn’t follow me, no matter what they said.”
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