Real Reason Revealed: Major WrestleMania 42 Match Changed Last-Minute

WrestleMania 42 recieved a lot of mixed reviews for fans as many believed the Night 2 was far better than the first night of the show. However, the show featured several great matches including the Night 2 Main Event match for the World Heavyweight Championship between Roman Reigns and CM Punk. Another major match saw the Demon Finn Balor defeat Dominik Mysterio in a brutal Street Fight. Balor recently revealed why the match was turned into a Street Fight at the last-minute.

After Finn Balor was kicked out of the Judgement Day, he began feuding with the group and vowed to destroy them. This led to WWE announcing that Balor will face Dominik Mysterio at WrestleMania 42. Later on, it was revealed that Dominik won’t face the Prince in Las Vegas but instead, his opponent was going to be the Demon. In a backstage segment at WrestleMania 42, the match was turned into a Street Fight by RAW General Manager Adam Pearce.

In a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet, Balor revealed the real reason why the major change was made to the match’s stipulation. He told Chris how he had popped one of his ribs before WrestleMania 42 and it would’ve been hard for him to compete in a normal match on the Show.

“It was kind of touch and go, and that was kind of a factor into why the match was changed to a street fight because I was able to rely more on the toys, the weapons and stuff, than have to actually, you know, wrist locks and twists and rolls and stuff like that,” he said. [H:T/Fightful]

Despite his injury, Finn Balor put on a great match alongside Dominik Mysterio at WWE’s biggest show of the year.

Finn Balor reflected on working with CM Punk ahead of WrestleMania 42

At the start of 2026, Finn Balor had a short feud with CM Punk which eventually led to his babyface turn. Both men had to matches against each other with one taking place on RAW in Belfast while the other one was at Elimination Chamber in Chicago. In the same interview, Balor revealed that he had heard horror stories about CM Punk being difficult to work with, but Punk was really humble during their feud.

“I’ll go on the record as saying I’d heard horror stories about Punk being this a**hole, being difficult to deal with. You know, big-headed guy, that no one wants to work with; And when he came back to WWE, it could not have been the opposite. I met this guy who was humble, polite, wanted to work with people. I’m pretty sure he went to the office, and he said he wanted this match. Like, I don’t think it came from the office. I think it came from Punk,” he said.

CM Punk recently returned on RAW to win the Undisputed WWE Championship and will be on SmackDown from now on. It will be interesting to see if WWE will book another match between these two as they’re both on the same brand again.