Category: Ramblemania (2024)

Date: April 7th, 1986
Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum – Uniondale, New York
Rosemont Horizon – Rosemont, Illinois
Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena – Los Angeles, California
Combined Attendance: 40,085

(Note: The following post was written prior to the McMahon lawsuit from January 2024).

Wrestlemania proved to be such a big hit that for the following year’s event, WWF wanted to make it even bigger than before. Sadly, they hadn’t reached the point of filling entire stadiums… because Shea Stadium doesn’t count, I guess… so rather than hold the show at any ol’ arena, they’d broadcast the show from THREE different arenas, each with their own unique cards. They wouldn’t attempt something like this at this scale ever again and it’s probably for the best because the end result was one of the more uneven shows I’ve seen.

The original Wrestlemania event wasn’t necessarily a showcase of immortals, but it was a showcase of the sports-entertainment style that Vince McMahon was pushing to make the WWF the premier brand of the industry. The wrestling on the show wasn’t up to snuff, but it had a hot main event that people paid money to see and would be the start of a long-running extravaganza the likes of which no other wrestling event – not even the NWA’s own Starracade supershows – would ever achieve at the time.

But while Wrestlemania I was the showcase of sports-entertainment at its best, Wrestlemania II was a show case of… of… well, I’m actually not quite sure, actually.Apparently, this was the sequel so massive that they needed three arenas to produce it. I honestly don’t know what they were trying to achieve with this (apparently Jim Crockett attempted something similar before and it bombed) but you’d think that with three venues to book, they’d give each arena equal care, but that didn’t seem to be the case, since the WWF/WWE never attempted something like this since…

Continue reading “Ramblemania Rewind 02 – WWF Wrestlemania 2 (1986)”

March 31st, 1985
Madison Square Garden – New York, NY
Attendance: 19,121

(Note: The following post was written prior to the McMahon lawsuit from January 2024).

The showcase of the Immortals had to start somewhere, I suppose. And in 1985, Vince McMahon presented the inaugural Wrestlemania event to a live captive audience in Madison Square Garden and close-circuit television.

The original Wrestlemania pretty much set the standard for what others would follow – bigtime matches, celebrity starpower, and a sense of grandeur that gave the show something of an epic feel. From the perspective of someone who had never seen that first iteration previously, I could honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed watching the show, both for the card itself and for the overall historical interest. It surely shows how far the event has evolved from its rather humble beginnings.

Even for its sense of grandeur that it was invoking, Wrestlemania was still pretty low-key. I liked the pre-match interviews that take place during each match, I liked that there was less of a focus on overdone skits and more of a focus on in-ring action, and I liked that my VHS copy of the show kept in the original “Eye of The Tiger” theme that served as Hulk Hogan’s entrance music at the time, rather than redub the track with “Real American” as had been the practice in some of the more recent releases from WWE.

For the sake of history, you can’t say that this was a bad show because if it was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Although the undercard were less-than-stellar, it wasn’t entirely horrible and the much-hyped matches sold the show itself with its appeal and intrigue if not for its in-ring work. As a whole, it’s a worthwhile viewing to see how far we’ve come and gone.

Continue reading “Ramblemania Rewind 01 – WWF Wrestlemania (1985)”