NXT TakeOver Moved To Friday Night Of WWE WrestleMania 35 Weekend
WWE Hall of Fame now on Saturday...
Dec 3, 2018
It was recently announced that the WrestleMania 35 weekend NXT TakeOver special will be taking place on Friday 5 April, with the 2019 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony taking place one night later on Saturday 6 April.
WWE sent out emails to those who have purchased WrestleMania travel packages, outlining the changes for the weekend's events. The company also issued a public statement on the matter which read: “WWE will be going back to its previous WrestleMania Week schedule with NXT TakeOver on Friday, April 5 and the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Saturday, April 6. We believe this better serves our fans."
No real reason has been given for the change in schedule, although many online believe it's down to one of two reasons. First of all, it could have been done to break up a stretch of four straight days of WWE wrestling shows, with WrestleMania, Raw and SmackDown Live all following TakeOver on consecutive days. While the other seems to suggest it's been done so NXT does not directly clash with ROH/NJPW's G1 Supercard, which takes place on the Saturday at Madison Square Garden (TakeOver: New York, like the four summer Brooklyn cards we've seen so far, will be taking place at the Barclays Center).
While we all know that TakeOver will be unaffected by the change in schedule, well, because it's an NXT TakeOver and they always deliver, it's going to be interesting to see if WWE changes the format of the Hall of Fame. The four-hour extravaganzas that they have become have been criticised in recent times, with this year's headliner Bill Goldberg telling our good pal Kenny McIntosh's Inside The Ropes that it needs to be changed "cause it sucks."