This year’s WrestleMania will always be remembered for the rain delay. Never in the history of World Wrestling Entertainment has an event delayed because of rain or any other natural phenomena. WrestleMania 37 has been started 45 minutes after the scheduled time because of rain.
WWE did cover up this delay by continuing the event even after the scheduled time was over. They did not compromise with any booking time they set for the matches. Once the event started, it did not look like the event has been stuck with such an incident.
Drew McIntyre Talks The Rain Delay Of WrestleMania 37
The former two time WWE World Champion Drew McIntyre recently spoke about this rain delay of WWE WrestleMania 37. He recently appeared as a guest on the NotSam Wrestling podcast where he said;
“Everyone is passing me and I’m hearing we might be delayed. Everyone is passing me, giving me fist bumps and high fives, ‘you got this!’ and they don’t know we’re about to get delayed, but I do. Bobby doesn’t know either, so I’m the only one aware. Finally, everyone is passed and I’m like, ‘What the F is going on?’ Sure enough, we’re delayed.
“The staff is instantly like, ‘What do we do?’ We start getting plans together to buy time live on WrestleMania. Someone grabbed me and was like, ‘Drew, we need you right now.’ We’re walking, I’m not sure what is going on and then I see Lashley and MVP talking. ‘Go crash that.’ It hadn’t even crossed my mind that we’re live on WrestleMania. We’re in there and I’m in the moment, Lashley was in the moment.”
He also said that he loved the unscripted pre-match promo he cut with Bobby lashley;
“I watched that 40 minutes back and I enjoyed how real it felt. We can do a little more of that on the show, just going with what feels right and speaking from the heart. I really had to watch my swearing, but I enjoyed it.
“Not swearing was probably the hardest part. I remember poor Sarah [Schreiber] was panicking, she did a great job and was very professional, but on the spot people were worried. I was not worried whatsoever. I was instantly like, ‘turn this way.’ We used to do promo class back in the day with Vince and sometimes he would do stuff on the show and change the finish just to see how they would react, I think it’d be cool if he brought that back.”
This 40 – 45 minutes delay was unexpected and of course unscripted. WWE did not have any plan to manage this delay. So they had to cover up this time by organizing some backstage promos featuring the wrestlers that were scheduled to perform on the night. It did not go very well but there were no big botches, thankfully.
H/T and transcribed by Fightful