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April 2nd, 1989
Trump Plaza (a.k.a. Boardwalk Hall), Atlantic City, NJ
Attendance: 18,946

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

Here’s a rarity; Trump Plaza played host to Wrestlemania for the second year in a row, having hosted Wrestlemania IV and the WWF Championship tournament that saw Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage winning his first World title. While there have been venues who would play two-time hosts to the event, there hasn’t been another occurrence of the venue playing BACK-TO-BACK hosts. Whether this was by design or purely coincidental booking on their part, I can’t help but sense a touch of irony that Randy Savage would return to the building where he won the championship, only to walk out empty-handed and lose the title to his rival, Hulk Hogan. I suppose this is the WWF’s subtle way of wiping the stench of ‘Mania IV’s abysmal tournament from the year prior, including the guy who won it. Not to worry, though. Macho stuck around for a bit. No biggie.

Sadly, in an attempt to replace Mania IV’s abysmal stench, Wrestlemania V ended up stinking up the joint far worse than that show could ever hope to achieve.

Back in my original Ramblemania post from 2012, I noted that I wasn’t too fond of the show. It was a show with very few highlights – mostly any match that involved a championship at stake. I had accused this show of stuffing as much crap as possible to fill a four-hour runtime. A runtime, mind you, that was justified the previous year because you had the big WWF title tourney. As much of a chore as that was, it was a legitimate excuse for expecting fans to sit through a four-hour sloth… but this show?

Yeah, I’m showing my hand a little early, aren’t I?

Continue reading “Ramblemania Rewind 05 – WWF Wrestlemania V (1989)”

Date: March 27, 1988
Trump Plaza (a.k.a. Boardwalk Hall), Atlantic City, NJ
Attendance: 19,199

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

So you’ve just booked perhaps the greatest main-event in wrestling history. Where do you go from here? Proper logic suggests that you build for the eventual rematch for the next big show. And certainly with Hogan and Andre leading 5-man teams in the inaugural Survivor Series PPV, you’d think that would be the logical course of action to take.

Unfortunately, the rematch to the most important match in wrestling history took place not at a grand stage or big-time PPV such as, oh I don’t know, Wrestlemania IV where it should have been, but instead it took place on The Main Event, a free show airing at NBC. Andre won the match and the title, but circumstances vacated the title and it was decided that the new WWF champion would be crowned at ‘Mania via a tournament that would be determined at the show.

Single-night tournaments are a tricky thing because it requires that every match taking place holds the audience’s interest through the duration of the show, lest they get bored and uninterested. Survivor Series 98 had a pretty entertaining tournament that flowed through nicely throughout three hours. Wrestlemania IV did not.

A lot of the matches often fell into two categories; too short to actually go anywhere or not good. There are seldom few gems to be found here and chances are they’ll be missed by whoever is watching this because they will have passed out. Subsequently, the show was just a chore to sit through, with some going so far as to call this Wrestlemania BORE. And no, kids. Not even the Ultimate Warrior’s match with Hercules Hernandez could save this show.

On the bright side, Macho winning the title at the end is actually pretty touching. A shame it would all go crashing down afterwards…

Continue reading “Ramblemania Rewind 04 – WWF Wrestlemania IV (1988)”

March 29, 1987
Pontiac Silverdome, Pontiac, MI
Attendance: 93,730 (78,000 actual paid attendance)

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

If there was any single show that was truly worth of the moniker “showcase of the immortals”, it would be Wrestlemania III.

Some would regard this as the most important PPV in professional wrestling simply because it’s responsible for putting the sports-entertainment genre on the map. Despite being the third, it is considered the pinnacle of the industry and the most successful show that made the WWF the hottest thing going. With a heavily-hyped and anticipated main event in the WWF Championship match between Hulk Hogan and Andre The Giant that delivered in drama along with a solid undercard, Wrestlemania III is the gold-standard for what a big-time PPV should be and what all big supercards strive to be. It is perhaps the purest highlight of the sports-entertainment form that McMahon was pushing, with a healthy balance of grandeur, celebrity, and wrestling that makes the whole thing work.

Continue reading “Ramblemania Rewind 03 – WWF Wrestlemania III (1987)”

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)”