"The War to Settle the Score" between Hogan and Piper took place on February 18, 1985 at Madison Square Garden. Unlike Moolah-Richter, this was a major happening as a live event, selling out both the Garden and Felt Forum with more than 24,000 fans, and doing a 9.1 rating on MTV. It was the highest rated wrestling show ever on cable television, and it's doubtful that record will ever be broken. Lauper was involved again, attacked by Piper, until an enraged Mr. T made the save. In the days before there was a UFC, all the myths about bad ass fighters were prevalent. To the general public, there was nobody badder than Mr. T. He had been the star as lead heel in a box office smash movie with a storyline right out of pro wrestling, Rocky ill, as Sylvester Stallone's most dangerous opponent, a movie that saw Hogan gain his first mainstream exposure in as well. Mr. T had won a gimmicked contest as the world's toughest bouncer, to make a rep. He then became the big drawing card on one of the country's highest rated TV shows called "The A Team," the hottest drama series on the air. It would no, be much of an exaggeration to say Mr. T, at the time, was the biggest short-term TV star in the country. While Lauper garnered a lot of publicity for wrestling, it was nothing compared to what Mr. T doing a wrestling match would give, not to mention the rub McMahon Jr.'s biggest star, Hogan would get, by towering over the 5-foot-I0 inch man who everyone feared as supposedly the world's toughest. street fighter, because of both hype and because of how deceptively small Sylvester Stallone really was. In addition, his top heels, Piper and Orndorff, would get the rub of being in the match with him and standing up to him. Piper, in particular, verbally took the ball and ran for a touchdown, becoming a legend for his comedic and often racial remarks at the guy the public thought was the real deal. Well before that MTV special, the idea of Wrestlemania was born.
This was a huge gamble on a lot of levels. Even though WWF was winning on more fronts than it was losing in the wrestling war, the company was losing money in doing so. As much as live business falling, what did in nearly every promotion from the territorial days was the escalating cost of television, from the example McMahon set. Television stations saw wrestling as a product that would pay them big money to air, and when warring companies bid against each other, the rates quickly skyrocketed. It was the cost of maintaining TV exposure in the big markets that played a major part, although not the only part, in doing in both Watts and later Crockett, as well as, years later, both Jim Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling and Paul Heyman's EC W. McMahon was way behind in paying his TV bills, and Wrestlemania was very close to a necessary gamble because he needed some major cash.
It was funny, because even though Mr. T was an actor, it was he who gave the event legitimacy. Even though he was smaller than his opponents, people believed he was the real tough guy in the match because he picked up such a reputation as a bouncer and bodyguard with his unique look and menacing scowl. They believed that while wrestling was fake, Mr. T was real, and many believed the match would be a shoot, especially because of how effectively Piper was riding him on his promos. It was funny, because wrestling fans at the time saw it exactly opposite. Within wrestling, Mr. T was heavily resented for walking in and getting a main event without earning his stripes, nor, at least being a football star, as pro wrestlers of the era saw NFL players as at least something real and felt they gave wrestling sports credibility. David Shults, a noted tough guy in pro wrestling, ended up losing his job in the WWF because he wanted to pick a fight with T, when he was making a promotional appearance at a house show in Los Angeles. A rival promoter made an offer to Bruiser Brody to hop the rail and try and take out Mr. T with a quick sucker blow as he came to the ring to ruin the show, which Brody never took seriously. They almost didn't need to do it, because Mr. T decided to back out the day of the show. At the same time, McMahon and Hogan had their hands full, because neither Piper nor Orndorff were willing to put over a non-wrestler, which was part of the agreement to get T to do the match. Hogan managed to convince Mr. T to come back, as he was scared to death, never having done pro wrestling and fearful something would go wrong and it would kill his reputation. Orndorff eventually agreed to do the job. But even though it was Mr. T who drew all the media attention and made it the event it was, it was clear, to the audience that paid that Hogan got an even bigger reaction. The fallout was that all questions were answered. Hogan was now the bigger star on the wrestling turf.
McMahon booked 200 arenas around North America for March 31, 1985. It was a given that Madison Square Garden would sellout, and it did, immediately, for Hogan & Mr. T, with Snuka in their corner, against Piper & Orndorff, with Bob Orton Jr. in their corner. The last attempt at closed circuit for pro wrestling, All vs. Inoki nine years earlier, was not a success, and All was far more of a proven fighting draw than Mr. T. McMahon went wild, bringing in Ali as a ref for the main event (in actuality, Pat Patterson was the ref to make sure the match stayed under control while All was outside the ring wearing a ref shirt and doing one planned spot), Billy Martin as ring announcer, Liberate and the Rockettes dancing. Still, with a week to go, the advances in most of the country were bad and it looked like a disaster. About 70 arenas were canceled because of poor sales. But the show picked up tremendous momentum in the last week, from Hogan & Mr. T doing Letterman and Saturday Night Live, and Hogan choking out talk show host Richard Belzer, which cost him several hundred grand, but also bought him and the show more than that in late publicity. It was a huge success—in most places, and clearly established McMahon as the greatest promoter in the business. It appeared the war was over—except, old-line promoters like Watts, Paul Boesch, Adkisson and Crockett took solace. Wrestlemania bombed in their territories, and with more publicity than any event in history had ever gotten. In St. Louis, the show drew about 3,000 fans and was not well received, and WWF had trouble drawing in that city for many years afterwards. This strengthened their belief that McMahon's style of wrestling wasn't going to work where fans were weaned on top quality in-ring wrestling.
But they were the kings of New York, and New York was where all the decision makers lived. Dick Ebersol convinced NBC to put a wrestling special on the Saturday Night Live time slot on May 11, 1985, and it drew an 8.8 rating a show where Hogan pinned Orton and Mr. T made an appearance, a little above what SNL was doing at the time. By October, they were running every month or two in the time slot, and beating SNL's ratings almost every time out. On January 4, 1986, a show headlined by Hogan vs. Terry Funk drew a 10.4 rating, the second highest rating for a television show in that time slot in the history of U.S. television. They created a merchandise empire, a television cable and syndicated package which when all the ratings of the different shows were combined for one week, using unique mathematics, was billed as one of the highest rated syndicated television shows in the country. Hogan was the star of a Saturday Morning cartoon on CBS. The NBC exposure put WWF so far ahead of the pack except with the pre-1984 fans, and with most of the top talent wanting to jump on board, the regional promotions were inevitably going to lose their top draws. The handwriting was on the wall, even though it took a few years before it came to fruition.
McMahon did suffer one significant loss, that of TBS. McMahon made no friends early when tapes of his matches took the place of the TV studio matches in Atlanta with the Georgia wrestlers. Ratings dropped, although not to nearly the level they would after he lost the time slot. With more than a thousand complaints after July 14, 1984, known at the time in wrestling as "Black Saturday," when McMahon took over the show with tapes of the same matches that were already airing on the USA Network , Turner immediately gave Ole Anderson a time slot at 7 a.m. to keep a local wrestling show with icon announcer Gordon Solie on and enabling Anderson to open up a new promotion, the short-lived Championship Wrestling from Georgia, Inc., infuriating McMahon who thought he had just purchased Georgia Championship Wrestling to legally shut it down. Worse, in early 1985, Turner made a verbal partnership with Watts, giving him a Sunday one hour time slot for Mid South Wrestling, which was to prelude the two becoming partners. Turner agreed to bankroll Watts to run nationally against McMahon. The Mid South show was an immediate embarrassment to McMahon. Watts' Mid South Wrestling was generally considered the best booked and most entertaining wrestling show at the time. But it was also a very regional looking show that ESPN turned down because of perceived lack of star power and production values, being taped at the Irish McNeill Boys Club in Shreveport, instead of a major arena. It was post produced in Bill's garage by his son Joel. Given a time slot not familiar to wrestling fans, Watts' show on TBS outrated both the McMahon shows on the station as well as his shows on the USA Network, averaging a 5.3 rating, and for the first 13 weeks, was the highest rated show in the country on cable television. Turner was about to throw McMahon off the station, give the prime slots to Watts, and work with him in going national. Jim Barnett, who knew Turner better than anyone in wrestling and who was a VP at the time for McMahon, became the intermediary in brokering a deal with McMahon and Crockett. Crockett paid McMahon $1 million for the rights to wrestling on the station and promised to tape weekly in the studio. Turner was happy to be rid of McMahon, and knew Crockett, with area favorites like Rhodes and Flair, had bigger stars than Watts. Watts, a public ally of Crockett as he used Flair and Rhodes often on his big shows, bowed out gracefully in public after losing the power play. On the final episode of Mid South Wrestling on TBS, he told fans it was their last episode on the station, but that you'd be seeing great wrestling on the station from the NWA from that point forward. Again, history was changed going forward in ways nobody will ever be able to truly ascertain.
Business fell off greatly after Wrestlemania, enough that McMahon was worried. Even though the event was very profitable and gave him incredible publicity, McMahon's opponents relished in the idea he'd done himself more harm than good and shot his wad. McMahon even got David Sammartino, who he was using as a prelim wrestler, to convince his father to come out of retirement to try and revitalize Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston and his other Northeast strongholds. Sammartino, who was 49, had settled his lawsuit against the company after Sr. passed away, and agreed to work for the company again as a television announcer alongside McMahon (later, Jesse Ventura was added to the team), working 17 dates per year, where he would do commentary on three shows per taping, for $100,000. Under the guise that it would be the boost to David's career that he needed, and as a way to try and make up because the two had a rocky relationship, he agreed to return as part of a father-and-son tag team. Sammartino proved the rules of a nostalgia act. He drew turn away crowds the first time in almost every arena that he had a history in (the exception being Madison Square Garden where even an appearance by Sammartino and a Hogan vs. Don Muraco match drew 15,000), better than Hogan was doing at the time. But repeat business fell off greatly, even more than it did with Hogan.
Hogan and Flair remained the top stars as the war continued on all fronts, with both groups drawing well, although McMahon may have been rockier with a higher payroll and higher television expense commitments. On July 6, 1985, at the Charlotte Baseball Stadium, Flair wrestled a muscle head stiff named Nikita Koloff, and sold the stadium out, drawing 27,000 fans and $300,000. The success of Koloff, whose main attributes were freaky shoulders and menacing eyes, was a tribute to Rhodes' character development. Koloff had never wrestled, and had barely been trained (he was in the same Minnesota group as the Road Warriors, Rick Rude and Barry Darsow, but was injured early in the camp and mainly just watched). Rhodes came up with the idea that he was a superheavyweight weightlifter from Russia, the nephew of veteran. heel Ivan Koloff, who was taking his grudges out on the Americans who he blamed politically for the Soviet boycott of the 1984 Olympic games. He was protected even more than the Road Warriors, who by the time Nikita had showed up were right at the top of the list of biggest stars in the game world wide. He sold for nobody, and they all sold for him. Probably the best equivalent was a Russian Bill Goldberg. When he attacked TV announcer and co-promoter David Crockett, Flair was put in the role of having to tame the beast for the U.S. on a show Rhodes named "The Great American Bash."
But the big money match was Flair vs. Rhodes, and eventually, one of them had to turn. Flair was more popular at the time and a bigger draw, but also more comfortable working heel, and outside the Carolinas was mainly a heel anyway. It was a hugely controversial decision within the Carolinas to turn their native son and biggest star heel, but at first, the Flair-Rhodes program paid huge dividends. Rhodes, as booker, turned Flair heel in late 1985 using the a reprise of a legendary angle he had done with Ole Anderson years earlier in Atlanta that had such impact that people were talking about for years (and students in OVW still have to study it). After Flair had beaten Nikita Koloff in a cage match, he was being ganged up on by a variety of heels. Rhodes saved Flair. Then everyone in the cage all turned on, and injured Rhodes, leaving him for dead and taking him out of action with a worked broken foot. It was even done in the same building, the Omni in Atlanta. The third Starrcade, an annual Thanksgiving night closed-circuit show with live events in both Atlanta and Greensboro, was headlined by their first big singles match. The differences between the third Starrcade and the first Wrestlemania were huge. This was faster paced, more heated and far bloodier wrestling, with nearly everyone on the show blading. Crockett did $936,000 at the show between the two live gates and closed-circuit. While that couldn't compare with the $4.3 million Wrestlemania had done, he did it on a far more regional basis, with 17 locations and 2 live spots ad opposed to 133 locations and one live spot, and with no mainstream media or celebrities. But Crockett got a huge slap in the face when at about the same time, Sports Illustrated did a monstrous story on the pro wrestling boom, and Hogan was put on the cover with photos of the wackiest and freakiest looking gimmick wrestlers of the time, like Kamala and the Missing Link. It was the highest profile mainstream exposure Hogan and wrestling had gotten. In the nearly 20-page story, neither Flair nor Rhodes' name were ever mentioned.
On August 13,1985, the WWF booked a live event as part of the Ohio State Fair in Columbus, OH. It was a free show with a $4 admission to the fair that night. Promoters of fairs around the country were stunned as more than 50,000 fans watched Hogan beat John Studd, breaking the all-time attendance record set on June 30, 1961 when Buddy Rogers won the NWA title from Pat O'Connor at Comiskey Park in Chicago. However, an attempt to capitalize on Wrestlemania, without celebrities, saw McMahon do a PPV show called "The Wrestling Classic" from Chicago on November 7, 1985 , headlined by Hogan vs. Piper in a singles match. Piper once again refusing to do the job, so it ended with a DQ finish on Piper. The show only drew about 12,000 paid, and flopped on PPV with 50,000 buys (which was actually a 2.5 percent buy rate, but they were expecting far more). The one-night tournament included classic (for the time) confrontations like Ricky Steamboat vs. Davey Boy Smith and Dynamite Kid vs. Randy Savage (where U.S. fans saw their first superplex off the top rope). Plans for running PPV shows every two or three months were dropped, and it wasn't until 1989 that the company ran four PPV events in the same year.
The second Wrestlemania was not the success of the first. This was an attempt to outdo Starrcade's two locations, running three, the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, the Horizon in Chicago and the Los Angeles Sports Arena, each for one hour. Each city would get its own main event, with Mr. T vs. Piper in a boxing match in New York, Hogan vs. King Kong Bundy in a cage match in Los Angeles, and a Battle Royal in Chicago involving several NFL football players, including William "Refrigerator" Perry of the home town Bears, who had become the biggest media star in football that year.
Chicago only drew 9,000 fans, the weakest turnout ever for a Mania event. Nassau was sold out, and Los Angeles was close. Hogan and Bundy had shot an angle where Bundy squashed and injured Hogan on a Saturday Night's Main Event. Hogan came back going for revenge beating Bundy with TV star Robert Conrad as referee in a less than ordinary match. It was not a Wrestlemania dream match, nor anything mainstream media cared about, but with a slew of celebrities, Mr. T and Perry, they show got plenty of ink again that wrestling would not normally get. It was more than worthwhile in the end, even though business was down about 20% from the first Mania. T, who knew the truth of his facade as the baldest man on the planet, was supposed to train under Joe Frazier to get in shape for his worked boxing match. Piper himself had boxed as a teenager and was known in wrestling for his hand speed, and considered a tough guy even though he was a relatively small heavyweight at the time. T wouldn't train, feeling that if word got out of people seeing him train that he had no boxing ability, or worse, that he was getting handled by boxers in training, his entire rep would be shot. Piper and T had two secret training sessions, and those who saw them knew well in advance the match would be a disaster, because T had no stamina with the gloves on. Worse, the public had almost done a 180 on him over the course of the previous year. Piper, who taunted him with racial remarks became the babyface, which forced the promotions' hand in turning him. As the new face, Piper got bigger face pops than Hogan, but Hogan still remained the big drawing card over the summer and fall. The Battle Royal showcased Andre, who was far bigger than Perry, and Andre went over. The visual of Andre in there with several big football players including genuine stars like limbo Covert, Bill Fralic, Russ Francis (who himself wrestled years earlier and came from a wrestling family) and Ernie Holmes (who had retired and who very briefly tried pro wrestling in Georgia a few years earlier) and towering over them made newspapers around the country. The Battle Royal was also notable as the forgotten only in-ring Wrestlemania appearance of Sammartino.
It was funny, because even though Hogan had become the biggest mainstream name in U.S. pro wrestling since at least Gorgeous George, and maybe farther back than that, McMahon always had the feeling he wasn't going to have a long shelf life. And he wasn't alone. The fear was more that Hogan's receding hair line, which made him look older than he was really, would inevitably hurt his drawing power. It got to the point where both Piper and heel announcer Jesse Ventura were told in no uncertain terms that various criticisms of Hogan were not allowed on television, and the biggest one was about his hairline.
The first person McMahon considered as Hogan's eventual replacement was a story with almost comical ironies. Stu Hart had just started training one of the most unique athletic specimens anyone had ever seen. If you could tailor make a wrestler, the guy would almost be the prototype. Tom Magee was about 6-5 and 275 pounds. He was less than an inch shorter than Hogan, with movie star looks, had a competition bodybuilder physique that was even more impressive than Hogan's. He was nine years younger, just 24, but already had a versatile athletic resume like few in history. He was a World's Strongest Man contest winner. He had already won the Canadian national powerlifting championship four times in the superheavyweight division, with a 573 competition bench press and 860 squat and was a world champion in that sport and was among the strongest men in the world. Where he differed from other strongmen types is he wasn't nearly as heavy, and had a small waist with great muscular definition and proportions. He had won bodybuilding contests, and had a background in both boxing and gymnastics, as well as holt a black belt in karate. A movie had already been made about him called "Man Steel." He could do back flips in the ring, and land on his feet after taking a backdrop. His first pro match was a year earlier, a main event on a major All Japan show where he lost to Riki Choshu, a company where people in their first pro match aren't exactly considered for main events. Magee had many talking about him as the next big thing. He was the greatest combination of strength and agility the business had ever seen, and it was evident after only one pro match.
But as it turned out, there were a few "minor" flaws. He couldn't wrestle to save his life, although guys with great physiques were getting over in those days with minimal and in some cases no working ability. But worse, he had almost an amazing lack of charisma, and another even worse talent. The more he trained to wrestle, the worse he got. He also came off as almost effeminate in the ring, and his offense looked so horrible that fans trained to be marks for physiques wouldn't even get behind him. After three years in wrestling he had a match against an almost as untalented aging national sumo hero in Japan named Hiroshi Wajima that quickly became a classic as the measuring stick by which bad matches were judged.
But on October 6, 1986, those weaknesses weren't known. He was simply a green super athlete getting his first shot at the big time. McMahon brought Magee into Rochester, NY, for a television taping for a dark match try-out, figuring it was his first chance to see a future superstar live. The crowd saw this large, impressive looking unknown back flip into the ring on his ring entrance, and were immediately stunned. He was put in the ring with one of the company's solid mid-card heels who was expected to catty him, and kind of surprise people, when he beat the established star. The place went nuts, and the match blew away everything else on the show. The newcomer was far better than they hoped for, or thought possible. McMahon, watching the monitor, screamed loudly, so that everyone could hear, "That's my next champion." As he came through the curtain, McMahon and Pat Patterson fawned all over him. Everyone in the company was told about the guy who they had just signed up, who would be kept off television and working "C" team shows, always being put over, to gain experience for a megapush maybe a year down the line, and when the time w-right, the WWF title. They named him Tom "Megaman" Magee. McMahon Patterson were hardly the only ones fooled by the match. Bob Matthews, the sports columnist in the local newspaper in Rochester, who attended the show, also wrote that he had seen the most impressive newcomer he'd ever seen, and also pegged him as Hogan's inevitable replacement. As it turned out, they all had, in that match, seen Hogan's eventual replacement and the future WWF champion when McMahon decided Hogan's time was up. But it was the job guy who made one of the most untalented wrestlers to come along look like he was the second coming-Bret Hart. It was more than a year before McMahon and the rest of the company were able to figure out why Magee, who had looked so incredible, this giant doing Tiger Mask gymnastics, was having so many off nights in a row afterwards, and seemingly getting worse by the week.
But it may have subconsciously triggered something in McMahon. In May 1987, shortly after Wrestlemania III, after McMahon recognized Magee as a failed experiment, another huge bodybuilder came knocking. Jim Hettwig had already gained notice in wrestling as having just about the best physique and least ability in a business that was being more and more populated by guys with good physiques and little ability. The 29-year-old former Mr. Georgia, who had placed in the top six in his weight a few years earlier in the Mr. America contest, had, in 18 months, been fired by both Jerry Jarrett and later Bill Watts, after both had tried to push him to little or no avail. He wound up in Texas, given the name Dingo Warrior, where he didn't have good matches nor did he seem to have a grasp of what the business was about, balking at the idea of putting people over who didn't have a physique comparable to his, which basically meant, nobody. He also was terrible on interviews, but he did get over as a babyface. He left after a pay dispute, and at about the same time he was contacted by officials of New Japan Pro Wrestling, the company that first made Hogan into a bonafide superstar and major draw.
In an attempt to copy McMahon's star making formula, they enlisted the country's most famous late night talk show host, their version of Johnny Carson (or by today's terms, Jay Leno), to manage a huge American monster-the biggest bodybuilder to ever step foot in Japan. Remember, this was coming on the heels of the success of the Road Warriors, who were huge in Japan even though they were not great wrestlers. He would be wearing a mask, and have a futuristic ring costume complete with a headgear that blew some sort of steam out of large horns. The character would be named Big Van Vader.
But before he was to go, he was given a WWF tryout. After seeing him in the ring, he got what would be considered today something equivalent to a developmental contract.
After Magee, nobody was proclaiming the latest big bodybuilder of the month as Hogan's replacement. Hellwig was just told he would be given regular work on "C" shows, and put on television when he was ready. While terrible in the ring, that audience reacted to good physiques provided there was a modicum of charisma to go with them. Hellwig had learned that much in Texas, and he was getting tremendous reactions on the "C" shows. Just before he was scheduled to leave for Japan and become the newest foreign superstar, he was brought to television quicker than expected, and renamed The Ultimate Warrior, which was actually a nickname Calgary wrestler Badnews Allen coined for himself, and had used for years. The crowd reacted so well to him that before long, he was the next man on the list of "the guy to eventually replace Hogan." He backed out of his Japan deal, and scrambling, Masa Saito found a much bigger, but fatter, equally green ex-football player who had just debuted in the AWA named Leon White to take the costume.
Following on the success of the show a year earlier in Charlotte, Crockett tried his most ambitious promotion yet, "the Great American Bash on tour." Rhodes peaked a number of angles, with the idea that Flair would defend the title 17 times against 17 different opponents (although actually the latter wasn't the case) throughout July and early August of 1986. They also booked country music star David Allan Coe to perform at all the stops, but while to Rhodes, the mixing of pro wrestling and country music made sense, it didn't to wrestling fans, who treated Coe's performance like it was a long intermission. They also jacked up ticket prices to levels that WWF had never taken them, with $50 ringside, in a day when $12 or $15 was the norm for a big show. The tour started out as a disaster on July I in Philadelphia at Veterans Memorial Stadium. Flair vs. Hawk drew a little over 10,000 paid to the huge stadium, although they did break the city's all-time gate record at more than $212,000. But in their attempts to use blood to win Philadelphia, they were doing juice in just about every match. Midway through the show, after more than a half-dozen wrestlers had sliced their forehead, a razor blade got lodged into the forehead of Wahoo McDaniel. Commissioner James J. Bins was repulsed, and decided to cancel the show. A panicked Rhodes and Crockett, fearing it would kill them in Philadelphia, as none of the biggest stars had even come out, begged him to let them continue. He let the show go, but ruled there would be no more blood . Not just on the show, but in Pennsylvania, as blading would cause their promoter's license to be revoked and cause the wrestler doing it to be suspended. Maryland soon followed suit, and Crockett's big advantage over the bloodless McMahon shows was gone. The tour had its hits and misses. They drew 23,000 fans in Charlotte with Flair vs. Ricky Morton at the stadium. With jacked up prices, Rhodes beating Flair for a two-week title run nearly sold out Greensboro and did $260,000. A match with Flair vs. Rhodes at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC did well under 10,000. A match with Road Warrior Animal was a disaster at Riverfront Stadium, doing about 5,000, and a cage match with Rhodes at Fulton County Stadium did 10,000-all numbers they could have put into an arena.
WWF only tried one stadium show that summer, and it changed what everyone perceived was possible for a big match to draw. Orndorff, who was one of Hogan's early victims and a top heel through Mania, had turned face and formed a tag team with Hogan. A former college football star at University of Tampa, who had an NFL tryout and also played in the old WFL, he was considered one of the best athletes and toughest guys in the business. More importantly, the 36-year-old Orndorff was considered one of the best performers in the business at the time, a hard working and aggressive heel. Naturally, in McMahon family tradition, when the champion starts working tag team matches, in most cases it is an obvious build for a turn. It was Hogan's most successful house show run of his career, and probably the most successful in company's history until the real golden period under Austin. Hogan and Orndorff set attendance and gate records in their first meetings almost everywhere in the late summer and fall of 1986.
Their most famous match was August 28, 1986 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. It was known ahead of time this was going to be a hot feud, and Toronto had in the past drawn more than 20,000 fans for stadium shows involving Flair and Harley Race over the NWA title, and this was expected to break that city's all-time mark. But the demand was at unheard of levels on the first day, leaving everyone stunned. When all was said and done, they sold out the stadium with 61,470 paid (about 64,100 in the building, but reported as 69,300) and a gate of $1.1 million Canadian, destroying every North American record by a huge margin. Few took the Hogan-Studd record from the previous year that seriously, as it was really a free show. But this was the real deal and it was something no event in pro wrestling history in North America had ever approached. They did DQ finishes in all the first meetings, in all but a handful of cases with Orndorff getting his hand raised to set up title can change hands via DQ rematches. Two notable exceptions were the Toronto stadium show, where Hogan won via DQ, and sort of in their first Detroit meeting where they sold out Joe Louis Arena with more than 18,000 fans. The crowd was so hot that night that an audible was called, as fearing a riot if they did what was planned, they decided to raise Hogan's hand via DQ. Since interviews had already been cut for the market based on the planned finish, later in the show, when announcing a return match on the next show, it was announced the decision from earlier had been changed and Orndorff was ruled the winner via DQ.
Because the feud was expected to be so hot, they changed the normal booking pattern of Hogan being a two or three time a year attraction in the major market cities, and decided to send him on two, and in most cases, three consecutive shows with Orndorff, with the third meeting being cage matches, where Hogan would decisively win.
The first meeting drew well everywhere, and sold out in many markets that Hogan had never sold out in before, and set pro wrestling attendance and gate records in numerous cities. It is largely forgotten that the second meetings were down 40 percent across the board, and even the climactic cage matches didn't do much better.
It was also in the middle of this program, with Orndorff, earning $20,000 a week, an unheard of number in wrestling in those days, that he suffered a similar neck injury as many of the recent WWE wrestlers. He was told by doctors that he needed surgery and should retire. He didn't walk away from this kind of money, and the nerve damage caused his arm to atrophy. He was never the same in the ring, and was forced to retire for several years. He did make a comeback and wrestled well into his late 40s, but was never anywhere close to the same level of a star or performer, and became almost known for his disproportionate physique with the weak side. Probably the most famous thing he did after this program, was in a WCW dressing room while working as a road agent and getting into a heated argument with Vader about getting ready for a promo. In the melee, he clocked nearly 400-pound Vader with his weak arm in a brawl, knocking the big man down, and putting the boots to him, When the feud ran its course at the arenas, which at the time were still the key moneymakers for the company besides Mania, it ended with the final cage match, that aired on the January 3,1987 Saturday Night Main Event. This was the original cage match tie finish in getting out and hitting the floor though the magic of post-production. causing them to re-start. Hogan won one of his longest matches of the era, lasting 15:00. The show broke the previous ratings record with a 10.6. The company now, officially, had the highest rated show in the history of television in that time slot.
Still, drawing that kind of a crowd in Toronto led to the most ambitious plan of all and what is generally considered the high point of Hogan's reign as champion, and some say McMahon's as promoter (although I would heavily dispute that), Wrestlemania III at the Pontiac Silverdome.
From 1974, when he first started touring around the world, until probably 1982, when Hogan caught fire in the AWA, the biggest attraction in wrestling was Andre the Giant He was the biggest man in the profession, with freakish proportions, because his hands and head due to acromegaly were far larger than even a normal giant. But by that time ,Andre, who due to his disease, aged much faster than a normal man, was old and crippled. He was 40 years old, and was in excess of 515 pounds on his 6-10 frame.
When McMahon went national, the days of Andre touring the different circuits was over, and he became a regular. He had a successful program with John Studd as a battle of the giants, but he knew his career was aver. In 1984 and 1985, he did what he considered his farewell matches as a main event attraction, when he put over Canek clean in Mexico City after a bodyslam and Antonio Inoki clean in Japan by submission with an armbar. He had done few jobs during the previous 16 years since arriving in Montreal after being discovered while wrestling in Europe and Japan. He hadn't done any clean ones in more than a decade and most fans generally believed he had been undefeated for his entire career, as he was always promoted. But his last program in the U.S. where he donned as mask as Giant Machine, teaming with Super Machine (Bill Eadie, later Demolition Ax), against Bundy& Studd, was probably the worst drawing main event feud since the company went national. He had back surgery and considered retirement Although he ended up living six years longer, there was fear he wasn't long for the world. While physically he couldn't do a thing because of his back problems, if he was going to do what he did for Canek and Inoki in North America, it was clear this had to be the year.
Andre went heel, managed by Heenan. The match was made in January. Andre was kept out of the ring until a Battle Royal, in Detroit on February 21, 1987. Hogan and Andre were in it, and they only did a spot or two to tease. Andre, totally immobile in the ring, went over in the Battle Royal. The show aired on March 14, 1987 in the Saturday Night Live time slot, and drew what is still the largest rating in television history in that time slot, an 11.6. It is a record that, due to the changes in television with so much more competition, will also probably never be broken.
Still, this Mania was very different from the first two. The first two were built around celebrities and mainstream media coverage. While time has blurred memories and because of the size of the live crowd, people think it got mainstream attention like never before, the opposite was the case. Wrestlemania III got very little mainstream attention except Hogan and Andre going on with long-time wrestling fan Regis Philbin (where co-host Kathy Lee Gifford, having seen both, noted they looked to be about the same height and Regis, freaked out because of Andre's supposed 7-foot-4 myth, and said nervously that Andre was eight inches taller). But it was much bigger than the previous two. It was built around a simple pro wrestling angle and match. Two unbeatable forces were facing off (Hogan himself had stopped doing joTbs when he left the WWF in early 1981 and the new generation of fans was never even aware he had a first WWF run). Fans simply couldn't perceive of either of them losing. There were no celebrities in the ring, or even managing at ringside. Almost nobody had seen Andre ever lose, and the WWF, which was rewriting history far more in those days, claimed not only that it never happened, but that the two had never wrestled before (even though they had feuded from Alabama to Japan to WWF to Toronto to the Superdome in New Orleans, the Omni in Atlanta and the Los Angeles Sports Arena from 1978 through 1981 in very high profile matches). In Detroit, which was the major market near Pontiac, Andre had lost in his early U.S. days to The Sheik, but the fans of those days were long gone by 1987 and it was a totally different game.
Submitted November 12, 2016 at 05:32PM by DorkChopDX http://ift.tt/2fZLxVZ TheDirtsheets
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