WrestleMania 42 is headlined on Sunday Night 2 caps off with CM Punk putting the World Heavyweight Championship on the line against 2026 Royal Rumble winner Roman Reigns. Originally slated for the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, the event was relocated to Las Vegas following the financial success of WrestleMania 41, with Vegas submitting a higher bid to host the event again. Retired 17-time champion John Cena returns as the event’s official host, appearing at WWE for the first time since his retirement last December.

The Night 2 main event is as layered and complex as any match in recent WrestleMania history. CM Punk, the World Heavyweight Champion, faces Roman Reigns, the 2026 Royal Rumble winner who earned this very title shot. When Reigns won the Rumble, he appeared on Raw to claim his shot, and it was Punk himself who challenged him to take the hard road and face the World Heavyweight Champion rather than the SmackDown title. This is also a historic broadcast milestone: WrestleMania 42 marks the first WrestleMania to air live on ESPN’s linear channels, with the first hour of each night broadcasting on ESPN2 (Night 1) and ESPN (Night 2) before the full show streams on ESPN Unlimited in the US and Netflix internationally. Punk reminded Reigns that he was responsible for bringing him to the main roster as part of The Shield back in 2012, adding a layer of mentorship and resentment to an already loaded rivalry. This is a dream match years in the making.

AJ Lee came back at the tail-end of 2025, much to the adulation of the WWE Universe. A woman who practically carried a dying division in the 2010s, Lee’s comeback brought even more life to the now thriving WWE Women’s Division. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks that way; as a matter of fact, they detest the notion that AJ Lee spearheaded a division that they wanted to kill for so long, and that woman is Becky Lynch. To her credit, Lynch is undoubtedly the face of the Women’s Revolution, producing some of the highest of highs this period of the Women’s Division has ever seen. “The Man” took it upon herself, by hook or by crook, to thrust the women’s professional wrestling industry into unimaginable heights, and she succeeded in doing that and more.

The problem is, Becky Lynch feels like she’s not getting her due diligence, with stars coming back, like AJ Lee, claiming they were trailblazers when she feels like she was the one who saved and led the way for women’s professional wrestling in WWE to thrive. On the other hand, AJ Lee sees it as every era contributing to the big picture, and she’s not here to take anyone’s spot, but if Lynch views it that way, she just might have to. The match at Wrestlepalooza, Lee winning the Women’s Intercontinental Title at Elimination Chamber, among many other disputes, has led to this. For the Women’s Intercontinental Championship, two generational wrestlers collide as AJ Lee defends the gold, in her first WrestleMania match since 2015, against Becky Lynch. Two of the best of any era finally settle the score, and they do it for all the marbles on the “Showcase of the Immortals.” Once the best of friends, they have a student-mentor relationship that mirrors brothers. Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes and the “Apex Predator” Randy Orton duke it out in the main event of night 1 at WrestleMania 42. It was all supposed to be easy, as Randy Orton pointed out: win the Chamber and face Drew McIntyre and claim his legacy-defining 15th world title.

Unfortunately, Cody Rhodes also had revenge on his mind and wanted to reclaim the title that had always been precious to him since he won his first at WrestleMania 41 against Roman Reigns. All these events led to Orton unleashing his darker side, prompting Randy to violently torture Rhodes on the way to their championship match at ‘Mania 42. Of course, Cody Rhodes would not let this go and proceeded to fire back both verbally and physically, especially when Pat McAfee entered the picture. The mind behind the transformation of Orton back to his old vicious self, McAfee reminded the master of the RKO that he’s an icon of the business, and he needs to “save it” from the likes of Rhodes and the fresh batch of talent that will inherit the business. Now, on the first night of a two-night extravaganza, a legacy-defining match is afoot as Cody Rhodes defends the Undisputed WWE Championship against Randy Orton, a deranged individual hellbent on capturing gold after half a decade away from his grasp, who will stop at nothing to cement his legend further.