For the primary time since 2015, “WWE NXT” is not going to be a part of the WrestleMania weekend festivities because the brand’s annual Stand and Deliver Premium Live Event has had a change of dates. Many fans originally believed for “NXT” to have its annual WrestleMania weekend event on the morning of night one among WrestleMania 42 like last 12 months, but a recent announcement from WWE has confirmed that the 2026 Stand and Deliver event will now happen on April 4 at The Factory at The District in Chesterfield, Missouri.
Dave Meltzer was asked in regards to the change of dates during a recent episode of “Wrestling Observer Radio,” which led to him feeling like WWE simply doesn’t have the arrogance within the “NXT” brand that the corporate once did. “It really was telling to me, so far as their confidence in NXT that they might book a 2,100 seat constructing for his or her biggest show of the 12 months. Versus 5,000 [or] 7,000–there’s so many buildings within the St. Louis market that they might have run, to choose that one was really interesting. I mean it just principally says that they don’t have confidence that NXT, at this stage of the sport, can sell a whole lot of tickets.”
Meltzer did note that there are quite a lot of the reason why Stand and Deliver is going on two weeks before WrestleMania 42 outside of the shortage of confidence from WWE, with one other major point being that it ease the schedule for the production team over WrestleMania weekend. “It was just so hard from a production standpoint to go and do SmackDown on Friday night, Stand and Deliver on Saturday morning, plus it is the incontrovertible fact that it is the morning since it’s Vegas not within the afternoon, after which come back with Saturday night [for] WrestleMania.”
Please credit “Wrestling Observer Radio” when using quotes from this text, and provides a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.