The 8-Ball 03.09.12: Top 8 Weird Things About the First Wrestlemania

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the 8-Ball. I am Ryan Byers, and I am here to tell you exactly what I think about Wes Kirk.

Top 8 Weird Things About the First Wrestlemania

Over the course of the past ten years or so, all of the Wrestlemanias have started to look the same and follow a very similar format. They are the single biggest show of the year, the key matches of the year take place there, the most elaborate sets imaginable are built, and an insane number of fans travel from all across the world to take in the spectacle.

However, that’s not what Wrestlemania used to be. The event has evolved a good deal over the years, and, if you watch the first show from start to finish with no modern editing, it is clearly a completely different animal than what it would ultimately become. It’s not just the ‘Mania show itself, though. Over the past several months, WWE Classics on Demand has been airing a lot of the shows that built up to the first Wrestlemania, and this has resulted in me watching several of those shows for the first time in my life. I hate to be blunt or vulgar, but, simply put, there is a lot of weird shit going on during these television programs. The first Wrestlemania itself, as well as the programs that were supposed to get fans excited about watching it, contained a lot of things that are just outright bizarre to the modern professional wrestling fan.

With that said, let’s take a look at the Top 8 Weird Things About the First Wrestlemania.

8. Vince McMahon Says “Rape” a Lot

As any long-time fan will remember, the bodyslam challenge match between Andre the Giant and Big John Studd at Wrestlemania was set up by an infamous angle in which Studd, alongside Ken Patera and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan incapacitated Andre and cut off the bizarre Frenchie afro that had been a trademark part of his look for many years prior. Most who have watched the angle will probably remember the call of the action that play-by-play announcer Vince McMahon made while the beating was ongoing, claiming that the heels “raped the dignity” of the Giant. Making that call one time would be one thing. However, thanks to Classics on Demand, I have now within the past year watched literally every episode of WWE’s old talk show, Tuesday Night Titans, which aired between the time of the angle and the time of the Wrestlemania match between Studd and Andre. What is really unsettling is the fact that McMahon goes out of his way to repeat the “rape the dignity” line at every possible opportunity. He’ll say it when having a conversation with Lord Alfred Hayes. He’ll say it while interviewing Andre. He’ll say it when the Heenan Family is on set. Hell, I think that one time I even caught him slipping it into the middle of some ad copy that he had to read for Levi’s 501 Jeans.

It’s not just the fact that he says the phrase at every turn, though. It’s HOW he says the phrase. There is always this deliberate pause in the middle. It’s not “John Studd and Ken Patera raped the dignity of Andre the Giant.” It’s John Studd and Ken Patera raped . . . the dignity of Andre the Giant.” The pause is always there, and it’s always just long enough that you question whether Vince is going to complete the phrase or whether he’s just going to stop and let everybody believe that the setup for the match involved the unwanted sexual advances of Patera and Studd being forced upon the Eighth Wonder of the World. (Forget the Hulk Hogan sex tape, THAT is a disturbing mental image.) You could tell that Vince just loved how edgy he felt when he said the r-word, too. He wasn’t getting off on rape, he was getting off on saying rape, which is, in a way, even weirder.

So, yeah, a big part of the build for the first Wrestlemania involved Vince McMahon going on and on about rape. Imagine that happening today.

7. Anti-American Heels Win?

When Wrestlemania took place, there were essentially three men’s championships in the World Wrestling Federation. Yes, there were some weird peripheral championships that occasionally popped up like the WWF Junior Heavyweight Title or Antonio Inoki’s WWF World Martial Arts Title, but, by and large, the WWF Title, the Intercontinental Title, and the Tag Team Titles were where it was at. Given that Wrestlemania was supposed to be a big deal, it makes sense that a few of these championships were going to be on the line. WWF Champion Hulk Hogan had to tag with Mr. T in a match that was going be bigger than any championship bout that could have been held for the card. That meant the IC and Tag Titles had to represent the promotion’s top prizes, and that they did, with Greg Valentine defending the Intercontinental strap against the Junkyard Dog and the “US Express” of Barry Windham and Mike Rotunda putting their championships up for grabs against the Iron Sheik and Barry Windham.

Early on the card, the JYD defeated Valentine in their match, though unfortunately he won by count out and therefore did not earn the championship. That lead one to believe that Rotunda and Windham, the young, attractive, patriotic Tag Team Champions would get the better of the Sheik and Windham, giving us at least one “feel good” moment in the big championship matches. Then, out of nowhere, Freddie Blassie interjected his cane into the match, and the result was that Sheiky and Nikolai became your NEW WWF Tag Team Champions, despite all of their Ayatollah-praising, hammer-and-sickle-bearing antics. It would be one thing if they were heels who retained their championships like Valentine. However, these were heels who became new champs . . . and they did it while having the biggest possible cheap heat gimmick in that era, i.e. hating America. In recent years, we’ve grown accustomed to a couple of token heel title wins at ‘Mania, mainly because there are so many titles that it’s impossible to book the faces winning them up and down the card. In that era with those gimmicks, though, it always left me scratching my head that the bad guys took home the belts, especially when the Junkyard Dog was right there and would have made a serviceable IC Champion for a short run if the sentiment was that Wrestlemania needed to feature a men’s title change. Instead, the first ‘Mania ever included perhaps the least popular possible result that could’ve been booked on the show, short of having Roddy Piper submit Mr. T in thirty seconds with an atomic noogie.

6. Sarah the Soothsayer

We touched on Tuesday Night Titans a little bit earlier when discussing Vince McMahon’s love of talking about forced coitus. However, that blurb didn’t fully encompass just how bizarre TNT was. There were match clips here and there, but, by and large, this was a Johnny Carson-esque talk/variety show in which 99% of the guests happened to be professional wrestlers. I have no idea why a cable network would have given the OK on that one, aside from the fact that cable television was in its infancy and networks were trying to find programming anywhere they can get it.

However, there were some things that made wrestlers constantly guest starring on a talk show look normal. One of those things was the NON-wrestler guests who were booked for TNT. One such segment was the “World’s Oldest Wrestling Fan.” Another was a series of visits from Hillbilly Jim’s granny. All of these segments involved low, low level actors getting the biggest television exposure of their careers and then going on to prove exactly why ten minutes of air time on a pseudo-wrestling show would be the highlight of their resumes. Simply put, they were AWFUL. Despite these qualities, one of these screwball segments was used to promote the main event of Wrestlemania, the biggest match in WWF history up to that point.

Specifically, I’m talking about “Sarah the Soothsayer.” The premise was simple. Vince McMahon and Al Hayes joined a woman who looked like a reject from a casting call for MacBeth witches. This was all done on a set which I swear was recycled into Jake Roberts’ Snake Pit just a few years later. Hayes and McMahon would ask Sarah to look into her bubbling cauldron and see if she could make any predictions regarding the outcome of the main event of Wrestlemania. She would gaze into the smoke rising from her pot and would see . . . absolutely nothing. It would be one thing if this only occurred once, but it went on for WEEKS, culminating with Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff turning the cauldron over after the soothsayer proved to be completely inept at her job.

So, a big part of the build to the first Wrestlemania was Vince McMahon saying the word “rape.” Another big part was a phony fortune teller who couldn’t even be scripted to predict the future. How did this become a legendary show, again?

5. No Snuka Match

In 1983 and 1984, “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka was one of the single most over babyfaces in the World Wrestling Federation, at points even surpassing then-WWF Champion Bob Backlund. In fact, some people have speculated that, if the younger Vince McMahon was unable to sign a deal with Hulk Hogan, Snuka could have been the guy that the Fed’s national expansion was built around. It might sound preposterous now, but the statement isn’t quite as ridiculous when you go back and consistently watch some of the reactions that this man was receiving in the early 1980’s.

Yet, when it came time for the first Wrestlemania, the Superfly was put on the sidelines. It’s not as though he was injured, because he was on several cards building up to the big show. Instead, he just got stuck in the corner of Hogan and Mr. T, seemingly for no reason. If anything, you would expect that Snuka would’ve rematched with Bob Orton, Jr. from “The War to Settle the Score,” when the man from the Isles of Fiji dealt Orton the arm injury that would stick with him for the rest of his career. That didn’t happen, though. It’s almost as though Snuka’s role on the card was intentionally minimized to give people the idea that he was not as big as or bigger than Hogan. I don’t mean to make it sound as though there was a conspiracy against the Superfly, but, seriously, what other reason would there have been for one of the most popular guys in the promotion to not have a featured role on a show of this nature when people like David Sammartino and Matt Borne jobbing it up on the undercard.

Hey, speaking of that . . .

4. Lots of Squash Matches

Again, Wrestlemania in 2012 is the “granddaddy of them all,” a.k.a. the biggest and grandest stage in the entire world of professional wrestling. Accordingly, the show has gotten to a point where literally almost every match on it (with the possible exception of what the women are doing), no matter how important or unimportant, is supported by at least three or four weeks of build on television and in some way involves some established feud.

However, that’s not what the first Wrestlemania was. If you go back and watch some of the bigger Madison Square Garden shows from the few years before Wrestlemania existed, you quickly learn that, aside from the fancy name and availability on closed circuit television, ‘Mania was not that much different than those MSG cards. Literally the only big draw that made a difference was the involvement of celebrities like Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper. Otherwise, it was just a run of the mill Madison Square Garden shot for the Fed, with the same setup, pacing, and structure. Part of those MSG shows were preliminary matches. Real, true, honest-to-goodness preliminary matches which sometimes wouldn’t even feature one star in the ring, let alone two. So, when the first Wrestlemania rolled around and was a slightly souped-up version of the typical MSG card, those preliminary matches came along for the ride.

As a result, the very first match in ‘Mania history is not something epic or memorable. It’s Tito Santana, who didn’t have much going on at that point, going up against “The Executioner” (Buddy Rose in a cheap hood) in a match which was literally built around the fact that nobody had ever seen the Executioner before and didn’t know anything about him. I don’t mean that he was making a heavily-hyped debut, either. I mean, quite literally, the official on-camera reaction to him by the announce team was essentially, “Who the hell is this guy?” Combine that with matches that featured a then-unknown Matt Borne, David Sammartino, and S.D. Jones, and you’ve got a bunch of stuff on the first Wrestlemania that would barely fly on NXT these days.

3. Richter: Erased from History

Conventional wisdom tells us that Wrestlemania and the related national expansion of the WWF was built on the back of Hulk Hogan. However, that’s not entirely accurate. If you go back and watch the unedited television programs from the era, Wrestlemania wasn’t just built on the back of Hulk Hogan. It was built on the backs of Hulk Hogan and Wendi Richter, in almost equal proportions. However, even though she has not been completely forgotten, Richter’s role in the build of ‘Mania has been strongly downplayed in the annals of wrestling history, almost to the point of her being portrayed as just another person on the card as opposed to being a key part of the promotion.

Richter, for those of you who may not remember her, was essentially just another nameless, personality-less woman in the Fabulous Moolah’s travelling band of lady wrestlers until Cyndi Lauper decided that she wanted to get into the WWF, at which point the Women’s Title (which was essentially third match sideshow attraction up to that point) changed hands and became part of a real-life, bona fide feud between Moolah and Wendi. Modern wrestling fans may not realize how big a star Lauper was at the time, but she was HUGE, literally one of the three or four best-selling musical acts in the country and a Grammy award winner. Her endorsement was single-handedly enough to take Richter from nobody to mega-star, and Wendi was quite literally the number two babyface in the entire company behind Hulk Hogan. She was a significant drawing card on the first Wrestlemania and could have continued that role for years to come had her relationship with the Fed played out differently.

However, things turned south, and Richter and the WWF had a contractual spat, resulting in her leaving the company on very bad terms. Since then, the two parties have reconciled and Wendi has even gone into the WWF Hall of Fame. However, the fact that she was essentially a persona non grata from 1987 through 2010 meant that she was not built as being a big part of the legacy of the event for over twenty years, and there is little to nothing that can be done to restore her to her proper place in history now that the damage has been done.

2. Hogan & Mr. T: Insufferable

There have now been two entries on this list highlighting portions of the build to Wrestlemania that never would have flown in this day and age, i.e. Sarah the Soothsayer and Vince McMahon’s love of rape. In some ways, even though they are wacky, those portions of the build are forgivable because, in the grand scheme of things, they are relatively minor. However, there is one very odd part of the ‘Mania build that I have left to highlight. It’s high up on the list, and it’s high up on the list because it directly involves the two most important people on the card, not just wacky promoter/announcers and two-bit witchy actresses.

Yes, this one involves Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. As noted earlier, these two guys made Wrestlemania into what it was. Without them, you don’t have a card anywhere near the magnitude that it ultimately was. However, there’s one unusual thing about how Hogan and T worked to build up the card. They built up the card in part through a series of vignettes in which they trained with one another. What’s odd is that, in those vignettes, these two supposed top babyfaces in all of professional wrestling were the most obnoxious human beings on the planet.

Take a second and watch the video up above. This is very typical of the Hogan/Mr. T videos. They walk into a public place, be it a health food store, a gym, or a park, and they proceed to YELL AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS FOR FIVE STRAIGHT MINUTES WHILE TALKING OVER EACH OTHER AND ACTING IN WAYS NO REASONABLE HUMAN BEINGS WOULD ACT. Seriously, if I were the proprietor of any business that these two characters walked into, I would immediately have them removed. If I saw them walking up to my children in a park, I would grab those kids, throw them up over my shoulder, and run in the opposite direction as quickly as humanly possible. I defy you to watch that video a couple of times and find another top pro wrestling babyface who is more obnoxious. It’s amazing that these two managed to actually remain popular and draw as much money as they did.

1. It Wasn’t an Original Idea

If you watch any WWE production regarding Wrestlemania, the event is portrayed as being an historical one not just because it touched off a series of ‘Manias that has now lasted for almost thirty years but also because, according to the E’s version of events, it was something unique that was never tried before anywhere else in entertainment.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Wrestling promotions have been holding supercards for as long as there have been wrestling promotions, so that aspect of the business wasn’t new in the slightest. However, having one absolute barnburner of a show which was stacked almost from top-to-bottom and was available to watch live on closed circuit television (and, on a limited basis, pay per view during that medium’s infancy) was a new concept first tested in 1983.

What’s the problem with that sentence as it relates to Wrestlemania? The problem is that Wrestlemania didn’t come along until 1985. By the time ‘Mania made its debut, Jim Crockett Promotions and the NWA had already done the entire WM gimmick – minus the major mainstream celebrity involvement – twice. Really, Starrcade is everything that Wrestlemania was aiming to be, and it already had happened on two separate occasions (1983 an 1984) before Tito Santana and Buddy Rose set foot into the ring together.

I don’t say this to attempt to diminish what Vince McMahon and the WWF did with Wrestlemania, because, truly, they took the format that had been pioneered by JCP with Starrcade, refined it, and turned it into one of their major weapons that helped to break the back of the long-dominant NWA of which Crockett was a member. However, when I think of unusual things about the first Wrestlemania, chief on the list is the fact that many people have now forgotten that Vinny Mac has one of his primary rivals to thank for handing him the idea for the card that – at least if you believe Vince’s version of events – saved him from financial ruin and allowed him to build the WWF into the global juggernaut that we all know today.