Ask 411 Wrestling: Who Had the Most Matches Over Wrestlemania Weekend?

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Iain from Winnipeg wants you to know he’s not Tyler. He also wants you to know that he has a question:

Who has the most matches over Wrestlemania weekend? Your choice as to whether to include Wednesday’s AEW show. That would probably gives Jeff Cobb an early lead, as of this morning he’s had at least three matches.

Here’s another one of those questions that I simultaneously love and hate, because as soon as I read it I knew that I’d find the answers interesting but I also knew that it would take gobs of time to answer.

Before we begin, let’s set some ground rules. I decided to define “Wrestlemania weekend” as the period of time beginning on Thursday, March 30 and continuing through Monday, April 3. So, I’m not including AEW Dynamite, because even by the most charitable definitions of the word, I have never heard anybody refer to Wednesday as part of the “weekend.” I am also only counting shows that actually occurred during that time, not shows that were taped earlier and aired during Mania weekend. That means AEW Rampage doesn’t count, either, among others. Finally, I am counting shows that happened anywhere in the world, not just matches that occurred within in the general vicinity of Wrestlemana in Los Angeles. I made that decision because, even though I was virtually certain somebody who was in LA was going to take top honors given the sheer volume of shows, I wanted to see how others wrestlers in other locales held up against them.

With those parameters in place, we will take a look at some general statistics about the volume of wrestling over the weekend, because I have them after counting all the individual wrestlers’ matches.

During Wrestlemania weekend, there were wrestling shows on all the populated continents except for one: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Specifically, there were 136 recorded wrestling shows put on by 87 different wrestling promotions. As near as we can tell, there are 1,854 wrestlers who appeared on these cards. I say “as near as we can tell,” because there were a coupe of instances in reading results in which there were matches with unknown competitors listed. I did not include those unknown competitors in my count because, for all I know, they could be wrestlers who were already counted elsewhere. Also, it is technically possible that one wrestler used two or more different ring names over Mania weekend and I did not catch it, as I did not look into the history and identity of ever single worker when doing this research. (It took enough time as it was.)

Having covered that, let’s move along to the folks who had the most matches over the course of Wrestlemania weekend.

Of those 1,854 people who wrestled last weekend, there are 134 individuals who had at least three matches during what we are defining as Wrestlemania weekend. However, we are not going to focus too much on those individuals who only had three matches. Why? Because there are a ton of them. A large reason for this is that New Japan Pro Wrestling was in the middle of its Road to Sakura Genesis tour during WM weekend, and most wrestlers on an NJPW tour are going to be wrestling between five and six days per week. Also, there were several independent shows throughout the world that featured eight-person one night tournaments, making it easy for the people who went to the finals of those tourneys rack up three matches during the weekend, even if they only wrestled on one show.

However, I do want to point out some people who had three matches during Wrestlemania weekend. Why? Because the WWE-contracted wrestlers who had the most matches during the weekend had three matches. Despite the fact that Wrestlemania weekend and all its associated ballyhoo only exists because of WWE, the number of actual WWE shows is fairly small, and you’ll only see the company’s biggest stars in action once.

There are three WWE stars who wrestled three times around Mania, and they are Raquel Rodriguez and the Street Profits, the only wrestlers to have matches on the Smackdown before Wrestlemania, Wrestlemania itself, and the Raw after Wrestlemania. I doubt that this is part of some grand plan to push those performers as much as it is a result of dumb luck.

Moving it up a notch, there are 36 wrestlers who had at least four matches during the weekend.

Of the wrestlers who had only four matches, six of them come from the same small independent promotion in France, called the Atlas Wrestling Club. Atlas ran two shows each on April 1 and April 2, giving members of their roster an opportunity to rack up four matches pretty quickly. The individuals who did that are named Ravage, Feyyaz Aguila, Stan Corey, Jazze Parry, TLB, and Luchanord.

Many of the other individuals who had four matches racked them up thanks to Game Changer Wrestling, which ran numerous themed shows in and around Los Angeles during Wrestlemania weekend. Individuals who got their four matches purely on GCW-affiliated shows are Cole Radrick, Gringo Loco, Effy, and Allie Katch.

Then, there are individuals who got to four matches by wrestling on three GCW cards and one other miscellaneous show. That includes Sawyer Wreck, who wrestled on three GCW shows in LA and then, by the end of the weekend, was in New Jersey working on a show for the promotion H2O Wrestling. Lucha stars El Hijo Del Vikingo and Komander also wrestled three GCW shows in Los Angeles and one other show, thought their “other” show was also in the LA area and was Ring of Honor’s Supercard of Honor. Joey Janela also did something similar, though, instead of ROH, his fourth match was for Japanese promotion DDT, as they had their own stand-alone card in California during Mania weekend.

There is also a group of guys who wrestled four matches for a mix of promotions. Titus Alexander wrestled two matches for Circle 6 (an indy group that has run shows in Los Angeles since 2022), one match for Prestige Wrestling (an Oregon promotion that occasionally runs California as well), and one match for GCW. Calvin Tankman appeared on two GCW shows, one Prestige show, and once Circle 6 show. Willie Mack had two GCW shows, the pre-show for ROH Supercard of Honor, and one show promoted by Santino Brothers Wrestling, the promotion associated with the Santino Bros. wrestling school in Southern California. Clint Margera, who as far as I know is no actual relation to Bam Margera, wrestled on three Circle 6 shows and one show for Crimson Crown Wrestling, a California indy active since 2016. Perhaps the biggest non-WWE name on this list so far, Alex Shelley, appeared on two GCW shows, the TNA/New Japan co-promoted “Multiverse” show, and one Prestige Wrestling show.

Do you like asterisks? I know you like asterisks. There are some wrestlers who you can say had four matches over Wrestlemania weekend, but only if you put an asterisk next to their accomplishment. I’m speaking of Chris Brookes, MAO, and Yoshihiko. They get asterisks because results show them wrestling four matches, but at least two of their “matches” were title changes of the DDT Iron Man Heavymetalweight Title, which operates much like the WWE 24/7 Title. Also, Yoshihiko should get a second asterisk because they’re not a human person but rather an inflatable sex doll.

Though GCW contributed a lot of shows to Wrestlemania weekend, there are some people who wrestled four matches over the weekend despite never competing for Game Changer. Matt Tremont, a deathmatch wrestler who has found himself on Jim Cornette’s shitlist in the past, had two matches for the New Jersey indy ICW, one match for the Ohio-based Ruthless Pro Wrestling, and one match for the aforementioned H2O Wrestling. Similarly, a wrestler called Hoodfoot was one one Circle 6 show in LA and then headed back to the east coast, wrestling on the same ICW and and RPW shows as Tremont. Joshi wrestling star Miyu Yamashita was on TNA/NJPW Multiverse, the immediately following episode of TNA Impact, Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling’s Los Angeles show, and the previously discussed Prestige Wrestling show. New Japan legend Hiroshi Tanahashi was on the same two TNA shows, though he also hit ROH Supercard of Honor before popping back to Japan and competing on the April 3 show of New Japan’s Road to Sakura Genesis tour.

The last two wrestlers who had four matches over Wrestlemania weekend have a special distinction, because they did it without even coming to the United States. Both individuals are fairly low level Japanese independent wrestlers. One of them is Mikiya Sasaki, who over the weekend had bouts for Japanese indy groups KOBE Meriken Pro Wrestling (often shortened to MeriPro), Fighting Underground Crazy Kings (abbreviated to FUCK!), Dotonbori Pro, and 2Point5 Joshi Pro. The other is Koju Takeda, whose four Japanese indy matches over the weekend were for Itabashi Pro, 666, Big Japan Wrestling, and PPP. It is interesting that these two individuals had the same number of Japanese indy matches in one weekend without ever overlapping on the same card – and it goes to show just how much wrestling there is in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Now, we move on to the next tier: Wrestlers who had FIVE matches over Wrestlemania weekend. There are seven of those individuals. They are . . .

Jeff Cobb, who was on two GCW shows, TNA/NJPW Multiverse, the ROH pre-show, and the April 3 New Japan card.

Kyle Fletcher and Mark Davis of Aussie Open, who were on all the same shows as Jeff Cobb except they made the main show of Supercard of Honor.

Dr. Redacted, another guy who split time between Los Angeles and New Jersey cards, appearing on two Circle 6 shows and the Crimson Crown show in LA before returning to Jersey for an ICW show and the Ruthless Pro show.

Jack Cartwheel, a wrestler from Sacramento who was on FIVE Game Changer Wrestling-affiliated cards over the weekend.

Jimmy Lloyd, who was on four of the Game Changer shows and one show for No Peace Underground, a Florida indy that somehow scrounged up the resources to run in Los Angels over Maina weekend.

And finally Kohei Kinoshita, another Japanese indy guy who remained in his home country and worked for 666, FUCK!, MeriPro, and Big Japan, in addition to a stand-alone card produced by wrestler Shota Nakagawa.

However, five matches over Wrestlemania weekend isn’t the record. What if I told you there is one man and one man alone who had SEVEN bouts over the big weekend? That man is . . .

“Speedball” Mike Bailey.

Bailey appears to be making up for lost time, as visa issues prevented him from entering the United States for five years. As part of that effort, he was on six GCW shows over Mania weekend, namely the Mark Hitchcock Memorial, Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport, Early Morning Guy Steele’s Early Morning Show, GCW vs. DDT, Joey Janela’s Spring Break, and GCW Emo Fight. On top of that, he also wrestled on TNA/NJPW Multiverse United.

So there you have it. Mike Bailey is your king of having a lot of matches over Wrestlemania weekend. Will he be able to make it back into the country to defend his crown next year?

Only time will tell . . .

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.