Appearing on the Power Players With Brian Sozzi podcast on Yahoo! Finance, TKO President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Shapiro admitted that WrestleMania 42 in Las Vegas was a “mistake” which is his fault.
Shapiro said that due to the huge success of the previous year in Vegas, he went to WWE President Nick Khan and told him to make the 2026 WrestleMania in Las Vegas again.
“I said to Nick Khan, ‘We’ve gotta go back to Vegas next year. We have to move New Orleans down the road and we got to come back to Vegas,'” Shapiro said.
But Shapiro said he has no regrets on the gamble of going back-to-back in Las Vegas and said the only reason everyone kept hearing that it wasn’t like the prior year is because there was no “first mover experience.”
The interview was actually recorded around the time of WrestleMania 42 but released a month later.
WrestleMania 42 was originally announced to be taking place in New Orleans by The Rock himself during an appearance on Smackdown. Money In The Bank this year is taking place in New Orleans instead, with a future WrestleMania returning to the city somewhere down the line.
