At this point, it’s almost worth considering calling the Superbowl, the Wrestlemania of American Football as much as vice versa as, now in its 34th iteration, Wrestlemania is an undeniable, bona fide, institution. It’s the time of year when everything in the WWE comes to together and comes to a head, if there was a Season Finale to WWE, it would be Wrestlemania. Of course, confusing that analogy is that the season premiere of WWE is the RAW after Wrestlemania, which we’ll get to in a bit. Either way, Wrestlemania is a big deal, one deserving of a worthy package to make it a must-buy, the sort that if you only buy one WWE DVD a year, make it this one. Let’s find out if it’s worth it.

Now, like with the last Network Special review, I won’t be going into too much detail about the show itself because we’ve covered it, extensively. I will be using this time to talk about what you get for your money. Now, to start with, they’ve improved over last year’s ‘Mania package by including the KickOff matches which, while the two Battle Royals are no great shakes, it does have the unsurprisingly fantastic Cruiserweight Championship match between Mustafa Ali and Cedric Alexander. From there on, we obviously get the full five hours of ‘Mania, from the fantastic Intercontinental title triple threat between Seth Rollins, The Miz & Finn Balor through to the Universal title match between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar. While it’s nice having so much content, there’s nothing here that’s exclusive to the DVD, not even any subtitles, making it once again feel quite bare bones.

Luckily, just to make the set feel more complete, this bumper pack comes with the previously mentioned RAW after ‘Mania and the previous night’s fantastic NXT TakeOver: New Orleans show. The RAW show brings a more completist edge as it feels like the fun afterparty to what was quite a draining ‘Mania (I cannot recommend watching it all in one go) and has a couple of nice surprises which I won’t spoil for you, instead I’ll let our very own Amanda Why do it for you. It’s hardly a fantastic show but it is a nice addition to the package. What really makes it worth it, is the opportunity to get the Takeover special on DVD. While, yes, all this is available on the Network, simply having it available in hard-copy brings for eyes to watch it beginning to end, a basically perfect two and a half hours of entertainment. It would seem that whoever curated this DVD set knows this as Takeover positioned on the final DVD so that if watching it in DVD order, nothing has to try and follow it. Honestly, if you haven’t watched Johnny Gargano vs Tommaso Ciampa in an Unsanctioned Match, you are missing out on one of the greatest matches of all time. Not just of the year, of All Damn Time!

Once again, it’s a good presentation but it really does struggle to make itself necessary when the DVD is at least £14.99 and it’s only £9.99 for one month of the Network but if you are the sort of person I mentioned earlier who wants to own hard copies and you’re wondering if it’s worth it, this is probably worth the money. It has enough content to give a complete picture of the event and as I previously mentioned, the Takeover special is good enough to justify a purchase. Just don’t expect anything more than what you can find on your Network subscription.

WWE: WrestleMania 34 is out on DVD now.