Women to close out WrestleMania for first time
WWE superstar Becky Lynch explains how she rebuilt herself after being away from wrestling for 7 years and the moment she turned the corner in WWE. (2:06)
For the first time in the 35-year history of WrestleMania, WWE’s biggest annual pay-per-view, a women’s match will close out the show as the main event.
Everything you need to know about WrestleMania 35 — the match card, results, news, features, history and more from ESPN.com.
Less than four weeks out from WrestleMania 35, the Kofimania movement is in full swing, with a meteoric ascent pushing him all the way to No. 1 in the latest ESPN WWE Power Rankings.
The Raw women’s championship match between Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair will close out the show, which is April 7 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Rousey, the current WWE Raw women’s champion, joined WWE in January 2018 after a groundbreaking career in the UFC, where she was the first UFC women’s bantamweight champion. Not only was Rousey the first women’s champion in UFC history, she also main-evented two of the top 10 UFC pay-per-view events (by buy rate) in that company’s history.
Flair, a seven-time WWE women’s champion, and Lynch, a two-time SmackDown women’s champion, helped foster dramatic changes in the WWE’s women’s division over the past six years. As part of a group that called itself the “Four Horsewomen” — a callback to Flair’s father, Ric Flair, and his rotating quartet of industry-defining compatriots in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s — Charlotte Flair and Lynch, along with Bayley and Sasha Banks, promoted a more physical style of performance.
It’s been my…it’s been OUR goal to main event #WrestleMania. It was never just talk, it was the hard work of every woman past, present, and future to get us here. We won’t let you down. 13 days. #HERstory #Evolution 👸🏼
The Four Horsewomen reshaped and built up NXT, WWE’s training ground that has become a global brand of its own, through a series of “TakeOver” specials that redefined the style of women’s wrestling on display in WWE.
At WrestleMania 32 at AT&T Stadium, Flair, Lynch and Banks performed for the newly-created WWE women’s championship, which replaced the overstylized Divas championship in a moment of symbolism for the company. WWE also began referring to all of its performers as “superstars” rather than differentiating between men and women by calling the latter “divas.”
Lynch is on record as far back as 2016 campaigning for a WrestleMania closing match for women.