A WrestleMania main event can be a launchpad, a turning point, a farewell—or simply one chapter in a longer career. WWE’s official history and announcements document several very different outcomes, from Hulk Hogan’s changing championship fortunes to Shawn Michaels’ in-ring farewell. This is a sourced cross-section, not a complete year-by-year census of every WrestleMania headliner.
What counts as a WrestleMania main event?
Here, “main eventer” means a performer in the match WWE identifies as that edition’s main event. That distinction matters: a wrestler can have a major title match or a career-defining farewell on a WrestleMania card without that match being the event’s headline. WWE’s official event archive, history pages and corporate announcements do not provide one consistent, complete roster of main events across every edition. Multiple headline matches and, in later years, multi-night cards also complicate a simple one-match-per-year count.
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The examples below show what happened after selected headline matches; they should not be read as an exhaustive list of performers or as a measure of how often main-eventers retired, won titles or returned.
Selected WrestleMania main events and what followed
| WrestleMania | Headline match or historical designation | What the cited WWE account establishes next |
|---|---|---|
| I (1985) | Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeated “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff. | Hogan headlined again against Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III, continuing the event’s celebrity-driven spectacle into a major championship story. |
| III (1987) | Hulk Hogan defeated Andre the Giant. | WWE’s historical timeline describes the match as a defining main event and Andre’s first pinfall loss in WWE. Hogan later headlined WrestleMania VI against Ultimate Warrior. |
| VI (1990) | Ultimate Warrior defeated Hulk Hogan in a title-versus-title match. | The result marked a change in the championship story at the heart of the headline match; the cited history establishes the result, not a complete account of either performer’s subsequent career. |
| XXVI (2010) | Undertaker defeated Shawn Michaels in a Streak-versus-Career match. | WWE’s history describes the bout as Michaels’ in-ring farewell. It says he entered the WWE Hall of Fame the following year. |
| 35 (2019) | WWE billed the match involving Ronda Rousey, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch as WrestleMania’s first women’s main event. | The cited announcements establish the first-time designation, participants and “Winner Takes All” stakes for both women’s titles. They do not establish the wrestlers’ later career outcomes. |
| 42 (April 18–19, 2026) | WWE’s Sunday recap says Roman Reigns defeated CM Punk to win the World Heavyweight Championship. | The archive provides a current endpoint for the record of headline results. That result alone does not establish what either performer did next. |
When the farewell was the story
Shawn Michaels: a planned career-versus-Streak ending
Michaels’ loss to Undertaker at WrestleMania XXVI was explicitly framed as a career-ending condition: his career was at stake against Undertaker’s WrestleMania Streak. WWE’s historical account calls it Michaels’ in-ring farewell and records his Hall of Fame induction the following year. Those are WWE’s retrospective descriptions of the match and its aftermath.
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Ric Flair: retirement after WrestleMania XXIV
Flair’s retirement match at WrestleMania XXIV was against Michaels, who won. WWE Corporate’s March 31, 2008 announcement said the loss forced Flair into retirement and described him as a 16-time World Champion and a 2008 WWE Hall of Fame inductee. The announcement also reported Undertaker defeating Edge for the World Heavyweight Championship at the event. Flair’s farewell is a major WrestleMania career moment, but it should not be confused with a claim that his match was the event’s main event.
Edge: the retirement came after the event
Edge defended the World Heavyweight Championship against Alberto Del Rio at WrestleMania XXVII in 2011. WWE’s historical timeline says he announced his retirement on Raw a week later because of a spinal injury. In this case, WrestleMania itself was not the final match: the retirement announcement followed the event. The cited account supports that timing and reason, but not a broader claim about every later appearance or role.
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How the headline changed
The early examples show WrestleMania’s main event as both spectacle and a place to advance a title story: Hogan and Mr. T’s celebrity pairing in 1985, Hogan against Andre in 1987, and Hogan’s title-versus-title loss to Warrior in 1990. WWE’s March 25, 2019 corporate announcement marked a different milestone, stating, “For the first time in WWE history, a women’s match will be the main event of WrestleMania.” The match took place at WrestleMania 35, with Rousey, Flair and Lynch announced as participants; an April 1 release described the two-title stakes.
By WrestleMania 42, WWE’s maintained event archive documented a two-night edition across April 18 and 19, 2026. Its Sunday recap records Reigns defeating Punk for the World Heavyweight Championship. A changing format makes an “every main eventer” list dependent on consistent choices about which match or matches count as the headline on multi-night cards; the documented examples here do not settle that question for every edition.
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- On March 31,1985, the Wrestlemania legacy was born at Madison Square Garden in New York City.This sold-out event is the origin of what has become the greatest sports-entertainment franchise in American history. WrestleMania has dazzled millions of fans over the past 20 years by showcasing the greatest WWE Superstars of all time in marquee matches and featuring celebraties from music,sports and ent
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