“I said, ‘This guy’s crazy. This guy’s going to piss everybody off, all these little territories. Vince is going to get everybody so mad that everybody who works on the WrestleMania card will be blackballed. And if Vince fails, I’ll never be able to go anywhere else and make a living.’” - Hulk Hogan.
March 31, 1985: The Night the WWF Died
On this Sunday night, the World Wrestling Federation launched its answer to the NWA's Starrcade event, WrestleMania. The culmination of the Rock N' Wrestling Connection, the show featured a card where Andre the Giant slammed Big John Studd to claim 15 grand, Wendi Richter reclaimed the Women's Championship from Leilani Kai, The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff took the tag titles from the U.S. Express, Greg Valentine kept the Intercontinental Title against the Junkyard Dog via count-out and in the main event, Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeating the team of Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff in a tag-team match. It took the grounded but theatrical world of professional wrestling and took it to the mainstream, bringing in celebrities from the worlds of sport, music, and television into the fray with the larger-than-life personalities of Andre, Piper, and Hogan. It made the WWF and its sports entertainment style of wrestling the leader of the industry and brought in a new wave of fans.
...Or it would have if anyone had actually seen it. You see, it all started with the Civic Arena closed-circuit showing where the feed cut out during Ricky Steamboat vs. Matt Borne. They never got the feed working and fans were livid, throwing garbage at the screen and storming the box office for refunds. And they weren't the only ones. Theaters soon were losing feeds midway through David Sammartino vs. Brutus Beefcake and without any hope of recovery in sight, many angered patrons were soon being refunded in droves until it became wrestling lore that the only people who saw WrestleMania were the 19.000+ in attendance at Madison Square Garden.
What was originally meant to be over a million watching all around the country turned into the MSG crowd and a few stations in California who were by some miracle not part of what became known as the “WrestleMania Snafu” but these numbers were not enough and with the mounting refunds and paying out for the replays to compensate, WrestleMania had been considered an utter failure for the WWF.
And with it came worse losses. CBS and NBC, who the WWF had penned television deals with before the event, backed out immediately upon the flop of WrestleMania, taking a good deal of money. WWF's owner, Vincent Kennedy McMahon, was immediately jumping more towards litigation as he went after the cable companies who provided the closed circuit for 'Mania (who he saw as ether negligent or even outright attempting to sabotage his event) which would be how he spent his 1985 as the company began to suffer in ratings and house shows. Around the country, people were still bitter over wasting their money on WrestleMania and were either changing the channel to Jim Crockett Promotions or heading to any wrestling show that wasn't tied to the 'Fed.
Their efforts to try and draw better by catering more to the styles of wrestling of towns they toured in (Texas brawling, Memphis rasslin', Minnesota's amateur-flavored style) all fell short due to the distinct sports entertainment vibe they gave off, often leaving them looking like a poor New York imitation. When running against the companies that ran those towns, they would be outsold and outclassed, dragging the WWF down further until they were basically only able to survive thanks to their work with the MSG Network.
After a successful lawsuit (earning him a cool 5 million) Vince McMahon opted to sell his shares of the company and leave them to dry with the efforts of Gorilla Monsoon going from attempting to right the ship to simply getting as much for the boys as he could. After a whirlwind four months, the World Wrestling Federation closed its doors on July 6, 1985, and the roster was soon set out for parts unknown to find work with any wrestling promotions that would take them if they felt so inclined.
A regular question that gets asked in the comments here at
DarkMatch Wrestling is what would have happened if WrestleMania had succeeded. What if people had gotten to see the marquee matches, what if the feed hadn't cut out and the show not been a financially crippling move? Vince McMahon had always said that WrestleMania was a gamble, so what if the gamble paid off? Well, I don't get paid enough to speculate on that, but I imagine the wrestling world would be very different with the WWF still around.
- Eddie Harper, Amateur Wrestling Historian