John Cena told me WrestleMania is coming to London – and I believe him

The epic event has never been held outside of North America. Until now....?

If you haven’t kept up with wrestling since its heyday in the nineties and early 2000s, I have incredible news for you: it still rules.

Sure, Kane became the mayor of a city in Tennessee, Stone Cold records podcasts for his arch nemesis Vince McMahon, and who even knows where the Rock ended up? But WWE – and the industry as a whole – is still going from strength to strength, selling out stadiums, collaborating with mainstream celebrities, and making record profits.

This past weekend, I experienced some of that magic first hand, when I attended a taping of WWE’s weekly television show SmackDown and its special Money In The Bank pay-per-view event at the O2 in London. It was the first big WWE show to come to the city in 20 years, and only the second to come to the UK in that same period.

I don’t want to oversell how good it was, but I finally understand why people go to church. Me and 20,000 other screaming wrestling fans, starved of live content since a time when Triple H still had hair, made that place sound like the world was ending.

That’s probably why, halfway through the show, John Cena made a surprise appearance to tell us that WWE was planning to bring its flagship WrestleMania event to London at some point in the future.

While it isn’t quite a lock just yet (Cena has made similar promises in the past, albeit on a much smaller scale), the proposal has already been enthusiastically supported by several MPs, including Labour’s shadow digital, culture, media and sport minister Alex Davies-Jones, who said the event “would be phenomenal for our economy”.

If you’re of the opinion that wrestling died sometime around the point that Kurt Angle’s knees did, that will probably sound crazy to you, but it’s true (it’s damn true). WrestleMania regularly draws Olympic-level crowds, and the fact that the event has never been held outside of North America means that it could make London a hotspot for Europe-wide tourism, as fans who could never afford to travel across the Atlantic flock to the city to see Roman Reigns retain the championship for the millionth time in a row.

It has such huge potential for tourism, in fact, that it might be an even better idea to hold it elsewhere in the UK. Last year WWE held Clash at the Castle in Wales, which drew around 60,000 fans to the Principality Stadium in Cardiff and by all accounts did wonders for the city’s economy. Imagine holding WrestleMania – which now runs over two consecutive nights – plus that week’s Raw and SmackDown tapings in a venue like Old Trafford in Manchester, or Celtic Park in Glasgow.

I understand why that probably won’t be the case, though. The goal here will likely be for WWE to sell out Wembley Stadium’s 90,000 seat capacity, not only because it’s the largest venue in the UK, but because WWE’s biggest competitor All Elite Wrestling (AEW) recently announced a show there.

AEW’s upcoming All In event, to be held on 27 August, has already sold around 75,000 tickets for a reported $8.35 million gate, making it the highest grossing wrestling show in Europe ever and one of the highest grossing in history. They’ve managed this despite being a much younger company with less brand recognition, a less impressive roster, and having not yet announced a match card.

AEW’s show has acted as something of a canary in the coal mine, showing that holding a much more prestigious wrestling event (by a significantly more established brand) in the venue would be a slam dunk in terms of ticket and merchandise sales. I should know – on Saturday I spent £200 on a wrestling belt that was signed by a guy I don’t even like that much. Imagine the damage WrestleMania could do to my walllet.

Honestly, I don’t really care where in the UK they hold it, as long as it’s somewhere I can get to on a train. For most UK wrestling fans, ‘Mania is an unachievable dream. It’s how I imagine football fans probably feel about the prospect of going to the World Cup (if the World Cup was contested inside a steel cage, and one of the teams has magic zombie powers).

Holding it here would be special. In that arena on Saturday night, as we screamed for the return of hometown boy Drew McIntyre, and chanted obscenities at Logan Paul, the atmosphere was electric. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to scale that up to the levels that WrestleMania would bring. Sure, it would be great for the economy, that’s a no-brainer. But it would also make this country a hub for a type of ride-or-die enthusiasm that you don’t get in any other form of entertainment.

When I tell people that I like wrestling, the response is predictable: “You know it’s all fake, right?” I understand why: it’s one of the few forms of entertainment where you’re asked to not only suspend your disbelief, but really participate in the magic of the show.

Of course, none of us actually believe that what we’re seeing is real. But when the crowd is hot, and the match is right, and the referee goes for that three count, we believe harder than we’ve ever believed in anything. That’s how good fiction works. It’s how good storytelling works.

I don’t know if WrestleMania really will come to the UK. It seems like one of those things that’s just too good to be true. But I have to believe that it will. That’s just how wrestling works.