This year’s WrestleMania Kickoff show, like last year’s, was two hours long. That’s before a five-hour main card, mind you. the WrestleMania 33 Kickoff featured three matches: a great match between Neville vs. Austin Aries for the Cruiserweight Championship, an extremely fun installment of the André the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, and an Intercontinental Championship match that definitely happened in real life.
The Kickoff show and WrestleMania 33 exist on WWE Network as two separate shows, the same as pretty much every Kickoff that exists on the Network. And by and large, the vast majority of people who are going to rewatch WrestleMania 33 are likely going to watch it on the Network.
But for those of you who are DVD collection completists (perhaps just for WrestleManias), there appears to be some unfortunate news. Wrestling DVD News reports that the U.S. version of the WrestleMania 33 DVD and — which come out this week — omit the Kickoff and its matches entirely. The sets DO include the Hall of Fame ceremony in its entirety, but not the Kickoff.
The U.K. release of WrestleMania 33 will include the Kickoff matches, however. So congrats to our neighbors across the Atlantic.
Now obviously, this isn’t the biggest bummer of all time … as mentioned, the WWE Network shows will be there as long as it exists, and you probably have plenty of ways to stream that content on your television. But if you were hoping to be able to pop in a Blu-Ray and experience Gronk in glorious ultra HD or whatever, you’ll have to head to England to make that happen.
