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After a year of no fans, WrestleMania 37 opened in an unexpected way: With a weather delay. Tampa, Florida's Raymond James Stadium is open-air, and experienced heavy rain and thunder in the hours preceding the show. Michael Cole opened the main show at 5 p.m. PT explaining that there was a delay to wait for the weather to clear up. It took about 30 minutes for that to happen, with backstage promos and interviews filling the time. A bizarre half hour.
Still WrestleMania is back in front of fans. WrestleMania 37, which takes place on Saturday, April 10 and Sunday, April 11 on NBC's Peacock streaming service, is the first WWE pay-per-view to take place in front of a live crowd since last March. No amount of rain can drown the excitement over that.
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The main event of Night 1 will see Bianca Belair challenge Sasha Banks for the latter's SmackDown Women's Championship, as well as Drew McIntyre defending his WWE Championship. Other bouts include Braun Strowman versus Shane McMahon in a steel cage and, my personally most anticipated match, Cesaro versus Seth Rollins. Click here for a full run down of both night's cards.
© WWE Check back to this page from 5 p.m PT/8 p.m. ET on Saturday as the main card of WrestleMania 37 Night 1 begins, as I'll be updating it with results and analysis from the show.
WWE Championship
With Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks in the main event, the WWE Championship match is opening WrestleMania. After 30 minutes of weather delay, the show is really starting. McIntyre's entrance and the reaction from an actual live crowd has given me goosebumps.
Weather delay opens the show
The Tampa, Florida area that's housing WrestleMania had heavy rain and storms in the hours preceding WrestleMania, and the main show opened with Michael Cole explaining they have to delay the action for a few moments due to weather concerns. Brutal.
They're now stalling with backstage interviews. We hear from Shane McMahon, before Bobby Lashley comes into the backstage area to talk trash about Drew McIntyre. McIntyre then joins the set and they get into a confrontation. Lashley is sequestered off and McIntyre cuts a fiery promo.
WWE is clearly stalling on the fly here, transitioning from backstage interviews to the kickoff-show panel to the announcer's at ringside. The promos are actually pretty good, way better than the scripted stuff we see each week, but this is still grim.
At 5: 25 p.m. PT, Cole tells us the weather delay will end within five minutes. After a brief Bianca Belair interview, a promo for the WWE Championship match opens. Here we go.