WrestleMania 31

WrestleMania 31 was a 2015 professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE. It was the 31st annual WrestleMania and took place on March 29, 2015, at Levi's Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Santa Clara, California. This was the last WrestleMania to be held in March, as all WrestleMania events since have been held in April.

Nine matches were contested at the event, including two matches on the Kickoff pre-show. In the main event, Seth Rollins cashed in his Money in the Bank contract as the scheduled match between defending champion Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns was in progress, and won the resulting impromptu triple threat match to capture the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. In other prominent matches, The Undertaker (in his first on-screen appearance since the previous year's event) defeated Bray Wyatt and John Cena defeated Rusev to win the WWE United States Championship. The event was also notable for Sting's debut match in WWE, as well as his only WrestleMania match, in which he was defeated by Triple H.

Despite criticism for its build-up, the event received highly positive reviews from fans and critics alike; some critics called it one of the greatest WrestleManias of all time. Praise was focused on the quality of a vast majority of the matches, as well as the ending of the main event. Another point of praise were the lack of matches considered to be "filler" and making the most of their time, while the women's tag team match was subject to this very criticism. Retrospective criticism has been focused on Triple H's win over Sting, which was viewed as an unnecessary ode to WWE winning the Monday Night War. WWE reported that the show was the highest grossing WWE event ever, drawing a revenue of $12.6 million. The company also claimed an attendance figure of 76,976. This was also the first WrestleMania to incorporate WWE's current logo that was originally used for the WWE Network.

WrestleMania is WWE's flagship professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event, having first been held in 1985. It was the company's first pay-per-view produced and was also WWE's first major event available via livestreaming when the company launched the WWE Network in February 2014. It is the longest-running professional wrestling event in history and is held annually between mid-March to mid-April. It was the first of WWE's original four pay-per-views, which includes Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, referred to as the "Big Four". The event has been described as the Super Bowl of sports entertainment. Much like the Super Bowl, cities bid for the right to host the year's edition of WrestleMania. Announced on December 9, 2013, WrestleMania 31 was scheduled to be held on March 29, 2015, at Levi's Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Santa Clara, California. It was the first WrestleMania event to be held in the San Francisco Bay Area, the sixth to be held in the state of California (after 2, VII, XII, 2000, and 21) and the sixth to be held in an open-air venue (after IX, XXIV, XXVI, XXVIII, and 29).

The logo for the event included a red "play" button. According to a San Jose Mercury News article, Vince McMahon explained that the play button highlighted the technical prowess of Silicon Valley. There were two theme songs for the event. The main theme was "Rise" by David Guetta featuring Skylar Grey, while the secondary theme was "Money and the Power" by Kid Ink. The event included live musical performances from Skylar Grey, Kid Ink, Travis Barker, and Aloe Blacc. Grammy Award winner LL Cool J appeared in the opening video package for the event.

Travel packages for the event went on sale on September 29 with the exclusive California Dreamin' Travel Package ranging from $5,500. The VIP Package, Platinum Premium Package, Gold Package and Silver Package was available on October 6 with prices starting from $3,250, $1,650, $1,150 and $900 respectively including tickets to WrestleMania, hotel accommodation, airfare, and other activities through WrestleMania Axxess. Individual tickets went on sale on November 15 ranging from $35 to $1,000.

The event comprised nine matches, including two on the Kickoff pre-show, that resulted from scripted storylines. Results were predetermined by WWE's writers, while storylines were produced on WWE's weekly television shows, Raw and SmackDown.

At the Royal Rumble, Brock Lesnar successfully defended his WWE World Heavyweight Championship against John Cena and Seth Rollins in a triple threat match. Rollins also held the Money in the Bank briefcase, guaranteeing him a future title match at a time of his choosing. Later that night, the Royal Rumble match was won by Roman Reigns, making him the #1 contender for Lesnar's title at WrestleMania. However, the reaction to his victory was overwhelmingly negative, much of it due to the early elimination of fan-favorite Daniel Bryan. On the February 2 episode of Raw, in response to this, Reigns agreed to put his WrestleMania title shot on the line in a match at Fastlane. Later in the night, Bryan defeated Rollins to face Reigns at the event. At Fastlane, Reigns defeated Bryan to remain the #1 contender for Lesnar’s title, enraging the fans even more. From then until WrestleMania, Reigns had only two face-to-face interactions with Lesnar, with critics describing his title match as "being built on whether or not he is even worthy of being in the match in the first place". Reigns was also described as having "experienced no adversity on his journey", as he "chatted with (Lesnar's manager) Paul Heyman one week, got a shirt and then, played tug o' war" with Lesnar (a reference to the final in-ring confrontation between Lesnar and Reigns on the March 23 episode of Raw in which the two grappled with the WWE World Heavyweight Championship belt). It was acknowledged in the storyline that Lesnar's contract was set to expire not long after WrestleMania, but less than a week before the event, amid speculation that he would be returning to UFC, Lesnar signed a new WWE contract and retired from MMA.