As the speculation over whether or not WrestleMania 36 gets canceled continues to swirl around the Internet, wrestlers and wrestling personalities from all over are giving their two cents on what they think should and will happen. Some wrestlers, including WWE Hall of Famer Lita, have pushed for the show to be canceled for the sake of the health of the fans in attendance. But fellow Hall of Famer and AEW commentator Jim Ross believes that there’s no way WWE cancels it, even as every major spots league closes its doors for the foreseeable future.
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“I don’t think it’ll [get canceled],” Ross said on a recent episode of the Grillin’ JR podcast. “It would be a shocker, it would be a huge loss for not only the WWE financially but also for fans that are planning on going and making it a part of an annual excursion or there first WrestleMania ever. WrestleMania is a major event and that’s an understatement obviously, but it’s a major event from the standpoint that many other companies use WrestleMania as a source of creating new revenue.
“It could be detrimental to a lot of companies, but knowing the wrestling mantra as I do, I don’t think it’s going to be cancelled,” he added.
Both Raw and SmackDown have already been moved from their respective scheduled arenas to the WWE Performance Center in Orlando. As for Mania — scheduled for April 5 — Tampa city officials said this week that they’ll give WWE until this coming Thursday to cancel/postpone/reschedule before they’re forced to make a decision.
“We know that right now WrestleMania is out about three weeks, and we came to the conclusion [that] right now we don’t want to pull that plug,” Hillsborough County district commissioner Les Miller said. “However, we wanted to give it at least a week to see what was going to happen, if the WWE was going to do anything at all. And if that don’t, at that point I would suggest we do bring this body back together in an emergency meeting to discuss what we do at that point in time.”
WWE then put out a new statement of its own.
“While we remain committed to hosting WrestleMania at Raymond James Stadium on Sunday, April 5, we are putting contingency plans in place in the event that it is cancelled by government officials, civil authorities and/or local venues,” the statement read. “The health and safety of our fans, performers and employees are our top priorities and we are monitoring the situation closely with our partners and government officials in Tampa Bay.”
