Throughout the years, there have been numerous WWE WrestleMania matches that were planned at one point, but ended up never taking place.
Whether it was due to injuries, scandals or just a change in plans, the Mania history books would look very different if everything had gone ahead as initially planned.
With Mania 41 coming up this month, here are seven WrestleMania matches that ended up being canceled.
7. Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler vs. Co-Winners Of Women’s Battle Royal – WrestleMania 37
At WWE WrestleManias 34 and 35, a WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal was held during the kickoff show, serving as a counterpart to the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal in which male wrestlers competed each year.
Neither match took place at WrestleMania 36 because it felt safer from a Covid perspective to limit the number of wrestlers in the ring for each match, but by the following year it was deemed safe to hold a multi-person match of that sort again.
The men’s match returned, taking place on the SmackDown before WrestleMania and won by Jey Uso. However, the women’s match never returned. Apparently the original plan was for it to go ahead, with the two final wrestlers in the ring earning a shot at tag team champions Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler at Mania itself.
But somewhere along the way that morphed into a tag team turmoil match on night one, with the winners (Natalya and Tamina) facing the champs on night two. The WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal has not returned since.
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6. Triple H vs. Mike Tyson in a Boxing Match – WrestleMania X-Seven
These two had previous: The Game was a member of DX when they recruited Tyson for the Austin-Michaels main event at WrestleMania 14, only for the ‘Baddest Man On The Planet’ to switch allegiances and help Stone Cold to win the gold.
Given the mainstream attention garnered by that match, one can understand the logic of going back to the well three years later. According to Triple H, the early plan was that the two men would fight with boxing referee Mills Lane and wrestling referee Earl Hebner both in the ring for the contest.
“We were going to do six rounds,” Triple H recalled later. “I don’t remember if it was going to be full boxing rules, or whether I was wearing gloves. But it ended up being a deal where the whole thing just would have been a ludicrous amount of money, and it got pushed off.”
With Tyson wanting too much cash, the WWF switched plans and put Triple H in his first of three Mania matches against the Undertaker.
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5. Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal – WrestleMania 28
As one of the most charismatic basketball stars of all time, it was perhaps inevitable that Shaquille O’Neal would get involved in professional wrestling at some point.
Having dipped his toe in the water with WCW during the mid-90s, he returned to the sports entertainment world in July 2009 as a guest host of Monday Night Raw.
A heated face-off with the equally giant Big Show at the end of that broadcast seemed to be setting the table for a future match between the two – and it seemed as though it was set to happen in the months before WrestleMania 28.
Shaq announced in December 2011 that he would be in Miami to face the Big Show – but strangely this seemed to take WWE by surprise. The company put out a statement saying that O’Neal was not scheduled to compete at the show, having apparently decided they weren’t interested. Big Show took on Cody Rhodes for the Intercontinental Title instead.
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4. Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal (Again) – WrestleMania 33
After things fell through at WrestleMania 28, it looked as though the long-rumoured match between Shaq and the Big Show might finally happen five years later.
The two men had another face-to-face showdown during the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royal at WrestleMania 32, which was intended to lay the foundations for a match one year later. Over the coming months, the two men engaged in plenty of back and forth on social media, further cementing the idea that this was all heading somewhere. But then it wasn’t.
O’Neal has claimed that the deal fell apart because WWE kept changing their mind about whether they wanted the match, and about what kind of match it should be – it was apparently switched to a six-man tag at one point, and then briefly nixed altogether.
By the time the plans had to be finalised, scheduling issues made it impossible to proceed, and so history repeated itself and the match was abandoned again.
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3. Bret Hart vs. Kurt Angle – WrestleMania 20
Given how much of a dream match this would have been for fans, it might come as a surprise that it was considered at one point – at least by one Olympic gold medalist.
Kurt Angle has revealed that he called the Hitman in the buildup to WrestleMania 20 to enquire about whether there was any possibility of the two men locking up at Madison Square Garden.
It was always a long shot: relations between Hart and WWE remained decidedly frosty post-Montreal, and in any case Bret was still recovering from a stroke that he suffered in the summer of 2002.
“I understood why Bret didn’t want to do it,” Angle said in an interview years later. “Some things happened that made it medically difficult for him to come back and be at his very best. I told him, you know, listen, you didn’t even have to bump at all. I’ll do all the bumping and he was like, ‘Nah, it won’t be the Bret Hart match that I want it to be and I can’t do that.’”
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2. Shawn Michaels vs. Eddie Guerrero – WrestleMania 22
Another dream match that we never got to see at WrestleMania, and this one is for the saddest of reasons. According to Bruce Prichard, he had pitched the match in November 2005 as a story pitting two champions who had overcome their demons, found salvation in religion, and gone on to become all-time greats.
Both men had apparently signed up to the plan too, but it was only days later that tragedy struck: on November 13, Guerrero was found dead in a Minneapolis hotel room after suffering acute heart failure. His loss rocked everyone in WWE, and inevitably caused major changes to the card for WrestleMania 22.
Michaels ended up facing Vince McMahon in a street fight that, while thoroughly entertaining, could never be the classic that was originally planned.
Meanwhile, Rey Mysterio won the World Heavyweight Title in honour of his late friend, defeating Kurt Angle and Rey Mysterio in a triple threat. Guerrero was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame the night before the show.
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1. The Undertaker vs. Sting. Or John Cena. Or Braun Strowman. – WrestleMania 32
It was supposed to be the biggest WrestleMania of them all, featuring the greatest matches in the largest venue that WWE had ever run – but, man, did this one go off the rails.
With Sting finally in the company, a match with Undertaker was finally on the cards – until the Stinger got injured in September during a title match against Seth Rollins. Plan B was for Taker to finally have a WrestleMania match against John Cena, but Cena ended up having shoulder surgery in January.
Yet another plan was formed, this time involving the Dead Man against newcomer Braun Strowman. On this one, Undertaker put his foot down on the basis that the Monster Among Men was still too green to hold up his end of the bargain in such a high profile match.
Taker needed a veteran with enough skill and experience to guarantee a WrestleMania-calibre match, as well as a logical, well-told story to back it up. That’s why he (checks notes)… fought Shane McMahon in a Hell In A Cell match. Wrestling is weird sometimes.
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