The main event was a four-way elimination match for the WWF Championship involving reigning champion Triple H, The Rock, Mick Foley, and The Big Show, which Triple H won after last eliminating The Rock, in the first time a heel won the main event of WrestleMania.

WrestleMania is considered the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF, now WWE) flagship pay-per-view (PPV) event, having first been held in 1985.

Results were predetermined by writers of the World Wrestling Federation,[8][9] while storylines were produced on WWF's weekly television shows, Raw is War and SmackDown!

On the January 3rd, 2000 edition of Raw, Triple H regained the WWF Championship, which he had previously lost to The Big Show at Survivor Series in November 1999 due to underhanded means.

Once back inside, the champion hit the Pedigree on the challenger to win the match, retain his title, and send Cactus Jack into retirement.

[15][16][17][18] The night after No Way Out, Triple H informed The Rock that he had to start all the way at the bottom of the pecking order since he was no longer the number one contender, and forced him into a match with The Brooklyn Brawler.

Stephanie would then decide to give The Rock a chance to be added into the WrestleMania main event, provided he could pin either Triple H or Big Show, who had formed a formidable, but uneasy alliance in the previous weeks in spite of Big Show's challenger status to Triple H, in a handicap match in that night's main event.

Two weeks later, The Rock challenged Big Show yet again and this time agreed to put his career on the line in order to get to WrestleMania.

Shane would go on to appoint himself as the special guest referee, but during the course of the match, Vince McMahon returned from his own exile following Stephanie's betrayal of him at Armageddon the previous December.

He knocked Shane out with a chair and counted the pin for The Rock, who won his way into the WrestleMania main event, making it a Triple Threat match.

The following week on Raw, Vince announced that the Triple Threat match between the three men would take place that night instead of waiting until WrestleMania.

On the January 17th edition of Raw, Jeff Hardy was scheduled to face Bubba Ray Dudley in a singles match.

The win was given to Matt via disqualification,[20] after Jeff and Bubba Ray made their way to the ring, causing both teams to begin brawling with one another.

[20] At the Royal Rumble, the Hardys defeated the Dudleys in a tag team tables match, with Jeff performing a Swanton Bomb onto D-Von from the arena's balcony.

This magnificently backfired on Crash, as he would be ambushed and challenged in impromptu matches for the title in various places such as a laundromat, a hotel room, an amusement park, and even the baggage claim at Newark Liberty International Airport.

[24][25] The Godfather and Brown gained the early advantage over Buchanan and Bossman, as they were able to execute a leg drop and a splash combination.

[29][23] At the beginning of the first fall, all three men exchanged pin attempts leading into midway into the match where Benoit broke up a Chicken wing submission by Angle onto Jericho.

[23][26] The situation allowed Benoit to climb to the top turnbuckle and delivered a Diving headbutt on Jericho into a pinfall to win the Intercontinental Championship.

[29][30] The final match on the undercard was the tag team encounter between Kane and Rikishi against D-Generation X (X-Pac and Road Dogg).

After the match, The Rock, who was badly bruised and being helped out of the ring and towards the backstage by official referees, angrily returned to the ring and proceeded to execute Rock Bottoms on Vince, Shane, and Stephanie McMahon, before executing a People's Elbow on Stephanie to close the show.

The only one-on-one match being the ludicrous Catfight between Terri and The Kat, the other congested WrestleMania bouts suffered from constant stalling of one form or another as wrestlers lay prone for extended periods of time or engaged in low-impact brawling on the outside of the ring so that the audience could direct their attention to the other participants.

... Ironically, the first-ever All-Day-Long pre-show recapping the history of WrestleMania for eight hours prior to the premiere wrestling event was better than the card itself."

The main event between Triple H, Mick Foley, The Big Show and The Rock for the WWF Championship was rated 4 out of 10 stars, and both the Two-fall Triple Threat Match for the WWF Intercontinental and European Championships between Kurt Angle, Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit and the Triangle Ladder match for the WWF Tag Team Championship between The Dudley Boyz, The Hardy Boyz and Edge and Christian both received the highest rating of 8 out of 10 stars and The Cat Fight between Terri and The Kat received the lowest rating of 0 out of 10 stars.

[33][34] The following week on Raw, the feud intensified, where The Rock defeated The Big Boss Man and Bull Buchanan in a handicap steel cage match.

[35][36] After the match Triple H, Shane and Vince McMahon attacked The Rock, however, which caused him to lose a great amount of blood.

[37][38][39][40] At Backlash, The Rock, with help from Stone Cold Steve Austin and Linda McMahon, defeated Triple H to win the WWF Championship.

The Irish Film Classification Office (IFCO) banned the video release of the event, owing to its use of realistic weapons, including metal chairs, timber wrapped with barbed wire, shinai and sledgehammers.

Deputy censor Audrey Conlon also cited the "gladiatorial bloodlust" of the crowd baying for increasingly extreme violence.

Clear Vision Ltd., which released material from the WWF under its Silver Vision imprint, lodged an appeal (the result of which is unknown) and claimed that "our fans love the wild soap opera element", but the IFCO countered this by stating, "This is one of the most dangerous and pernicious aspects of the entire business.

The universal distinguishing feature of all soap opera is that the storylines are regularly made more explicit and, in many instances, more violent, simply to keep audience share.