The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal was once a staple of WrestleMania, but the match quietly disappeared from the event after the pandemic. Now a new explanation has revealed why WWE made that decision.
The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal was originally created to honor the legacy of Andre the Giant while also giving more members of the roster a chance to appear on the WrestleMania card. In recent years, however, the match has not been held during WrestleMania itself.
During the March 14, 2026 Fightful Select Q&A, Sean Ross Sapp explained that WWE changed its approach after the pandemic and no longer believes WrestleMania needs to feature as many wrestlers as possible.
“I’ve asked a million times because I’ve always thought this was the way to do it, to get everybody on the show. And I was told, well, they don’t need to get everybody on the show anymore. That’s just not the way that they do it. They don’t have to do it like that.”
The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal has instead been moved to WrestleMania weekend episodes of WWE SmackDown rather than the pay-per-view itself. Sapp pointed out that the change has remained consistent since the pandemic era.
“But I mean it’s not just the Women’s Battle Royal. It never returned to WrestleMania on the men’s side either after the pandemic. Like they didn’t do it in 2020 and they’ve never brought it back after that for actual WrestleMania. It’s been on SmackDown every year since.”
Although the tradition has shifted away from the main WrestleMania card, Sapp said he still believes the match could work if WWE decided to bring it back in a different way.
“But yeah, I had been told they didn’t necessarily need to do the ‘get everyone on the card’ thing and they’ve kind of moved away from that culture. But I do think that doing one on each night of WrestleMania would be kind of cool.”
The Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal debuted at WrestleMania XXX and has been won by several notable WWE stars over the years, making it one of the more unique traditions tied to WrestleMania weekend.
Do you think the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal should return to WrestleMania itself, or does it work better being held on SmackDown during WrestleMania weekend? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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