The WWE has announced a change to their WrestleMania Week schedule with the news that TakeOver will be moved to Friday and the Hall of Fame ceremony will take place Saturday.
The company stated that the move “better serves our fans” with the announcement taking place before tickets to either event go on sale.
By moving TakeOver, it eliminates the head-to-head battle between the WWE and Ring of Honor on Saturday night, with the latter running their biggest card ever from Madison Square Garden on Saturday, April 6th alongside New Japan Pro Wrestling. Both TakeOver and the Hall of Fame ceremony will take place from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
In 2020, this could cause a conflict as SmackDown will be airing on Friday nights on Fox and it would not make sense for the WWE to have two live events going against each other. Given it’s more a year away, there is plenty of time to figure that aspect out and you have options between TakeOver moving back to Saturday, or the idea that SmackDown could serve as a lead-in and TakeOver would begin at 10 pm Eastern in the same arena.
Those that had purchased WrestleMania travel packages for next April were alerted of this change by e-mail.
As far as Smackdown is concerned I don’t think WWE will care or even FOX would care they are running a NXT Takeover event live against SmackDown.(NXT is seen is an Alt World where only hardcores watch a small percent of there overall fans. so wouldn’t surprise me. They could do Takeover or HOF on Thursday if they Don’t Smackdown will compete against one unless do the Takeover at 10 god knows they wont put the HOF on at 10 be there to 6 am.
side note if anybody follows TV ratings FOX is killing it with the Friday night lineup this season and they are atrocious with there Tuesday night lineup. speculation but most likely both Tuesday night shows will get cancelled. So either Fox moves there Friday night lineup to Tuesdays to make room for Smackdown on Friday. Or they might want to keep there Friday shows proven they work there and keep Smackdown live on Tuesdays. (I Know both WWE and FOX stated Friday and it is but I wouldn’t be surprised if we get an announcement on a possible change have to wait to the network upfront time for that however.) would solve the Scheduling mania conflict and I Think if it was up to WWE they would want to stay live on Tuesdays.
Running scared? If anything the WWE is helping g out the other companies that are holding events the same day…let’s be honest, between the Garden show and NXT…there would be no fans available to give any other shows a profit.