4/10 WWE WrestleMania 37 Night 1 On-Site Report: Frustrations with mismarked tickets, weather delays, lack of social distancing and mask wearing

PWTorch reader William from San Diego sent the following report regarding his experience attending WrestleMania last night.

I attended WrestleMania 37 and I need to vent a little regarding how frustrating an experience it was.

Firstly, yes, while the show was much shorter than previous years, I actually felt more tired attending this first night than I did when I attended the notoriously long and tiring WrestleMania 35. It’s currently 12 a.m. as I’m writing this heading to my car, and I got here at around 3:30 p.m. Silly me thought gates would actually open at 4:30 (as was listed on my mobile ticket) and that the show would start at 6:30 (as was listed on my ticket, as well as in multiple emails I received from WWE and ticket master). Instead, gates opened at 5:00, and the show “started” at 8:00 (and then got delayed) and it finished around 12:00.

So for all intents and purposes, this might as well have been an eight hour WrestleMania. In fact, an eight hour WrestleMania would’ve been better because at least there would’ve been matches to watch instead of just having to look at my phone the whole time waiting for the show to get started. And I wasn’t the only one; hundreds of fans showed up early – at the announced gate opening time – because everyone was excited and ready for WrestlemMnia to get started!

Now, obviously I can’t blame WWE for the bad weather. But it didn’t help. The least they could’ve done was give out complementary rain ponchos (they didn’t). But instead, I think (?) they were selling them in the merch stands(?) but they didn’t advertise it anywhere (I only found this out through the Raymond James Stadium Twitter account) and I didn’t even bother trying to buy one because the lines were so long and slow moving, and I was probably one of the few people there actually worried about social distancing or wearing their mask in a way that properly covered their nose.

There were two severe weather warnings where everyone was evacuated to the concourse: the first one was issued literally 20 minutes after the gates opened, and the other one (as you know) literally as soon was WrestleMania started. The latter, from my perspective, really killed the crowd.

I have no definite way of telling how “hot” the crowd would’ve been had that weather delay not happened, but judging by the intro where Vince McMahon came out with the entire locker room to welcome everyone in attendance, and the way everyone reacted to “America the beautiful,” I know people were definitely excited, and the delay took some of that away.

The saddest part is, I actually thought this was a fun show! But I was already feeling exhausted by the time the opening match started, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

I don’t know how it all came across on TV. I’m excited to listen to the podcast for that reason alone. But, for now, I’ve learned my lesson for night two: Show up late, and bring a poncho (even if it’s 80 degrees and sunny outside when you leave your hotel).

If you attend a live wrestling event, sent details to pwtorch@gmail.com.