While fans are gearing up for the two-night spectacle of WrestleMania 42, they have one final stop on the road to “The Show of Shows”: the high-stakes go-home episode of Friday Night SmackDown. This final broadcast is a long-standing WrestleMania tradition that serves as the ultimate bridge, ensuring every rivalry reaches its boiling point before the weekend ahead.
While we can expect several promo segments in a final effort to drum up interest for certain matchups, the real highlight will be the annual Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, which will likely take place at the start of the broadcast and gives the roster superstars not involved in the big weekend a chance to claim their own WrestleMania Moment a night early.
The prologue to this annual match began in 2014, when Hulk Hogan announced it on the March 10 episode of Raw as a tribute to “The Gentle Giant.” One of the many hallmarks of Andre’s legendary career was his mastery of the battle royal. He was so dominant in them that he earned the nickname, “King of the Battle Royal.”
The inaugural match took place at WrestleMania 30, featuring an iconic moment where Cesaro body slammed Big Show over the top rope for the win. This moment served as a visual homage to perhaps the most legendary feat in WrestleMania history: Hulk Hogan body slamming Andre the Giant at WrestleMania 3.
An interesting element that seems to have been lost is that the match was mainly designed to give 20 mid-card talents who didn’t have a singles or tag team bout a chance to compete on the “Grandest Stage Of Them All.” While the match remains an annual tradition, it hasn’t stayed on the WrestleMania card, appearing only five more times after its debut before moving to SmackDown in 2021.
Two reasons in particular led WWE to move this match from WrestleMania to the go-home episode of SmackDown. First, WWE manages a tight timeline; even with the event spanning two nights, moving the match frees up 20–30 minutes of valuable time on their biggest show.
The second reason was to boost the value of SmackDown’s go-home show, setting the tone for the episode as the official kick-off to the weekend’s festivities.
Now that the match has moved away from WrestleMania, for it to stay prestigious, it needs a fresh format that offers more than just a trophy. Before discussing how WWE can elevate the event in the future, let’s predict the winner for the 2026 Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal.
