WRESTLEMANIA 1

Wrestlemania 1

Madison Square Garden (New York, New York)

Original airdate: March 31, 1985

So here it is. The beginning. The patient zero of pay per view professional wrestling. And much like I am trying to do with this blog (which I'm sure 2 people will read, but I digress), the WWF was clearly still trying to "iron out the kinks" at this point. While watching this show, I was going back and forth in my head as to how to format the blog. My initial thought was to do a straight forward list of the matches and review each one individually, but that seems too hacky. So what I think I'm going to do is just write my various jumbled thoughts on the show freeform, and then list the results at the end of the entry. That leaves me a lot more freedom to write about different PPVs from different angles, and in some cases, actually come up with an interesting angle from which to write about a crappy, uninteresting show. (if my memory serves me correctly, this will be a particular problem from about 1993-96. Those were dark years for the company).

And much like I am currently doing on a 1000000000000000000000% smaller scale, the WWF was clearly trying to find their identity a bit with the very first Wrestlemania. Don't get me wrong, the seed of genius is CLEARLY there. It wouldn't have lasted 26 years and counting if it wasn't. But it wasn't quite sussed out yet.

There are a couple of problems. One is that (at least to me, the actual product (wrestling) isn't quite up to par yet. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly some great workers on the card. Ricky Steamboat is rightly regarded as one of the greatest of all time, but here he is paired in an extremely forgettable 5 minute match with a generic heel named Matt Borne (Borne eventually acheived some degree of fame years later portraying Doink, an evil clown, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it). There are also an abundance of wrestlers who, while not anywhere near legendary status, were certainly solid WWF fixtures for many years. Case in point: Tito Santana. Tito, who spent about a decade being good (not great) in the company has the honor of kicking off the show against a masked wrestler named The Executioner. I consider myself a near expert on modern era WWF trivia, but that one stumped me. I had to look up who portrayed the Executioner. Turns out it was "Playboy" Buddy Rose, who spent most of the remainder of his career (before his untimely death) poking fun at his own weight problem. The Executioner must have been extremely shortlived. His match with Tito is just as forgettable.

I think the other thing that makes this show less than memorable is the lack of angles. I'm not really sure how much to explain wrestling lingo, since I'm not sure who (if anyone) will read this, but for the unitiated, an "angle" is the story behind the fake fights in wrestling. In many ways, they're very comparable to much more testosterone laden soap operas. Anyway, there weren't a ton of angles leading into the first Wrestlemania. While Vince Mcmahon clearly had a vision to wed wrestling with other popular culture (WM1 features appearances by singer Cyndi Lauper, "musician" Liberace, Yankees legend Billy Martin, and then extremely popular actor Mr T), but I don't quite think he had the right vision for his own product yet. But that would come in time, obviously. I don't even think they really had the right grasp on production values yet. Everything is way too dark, and little things are distracting, like the fact that the ring ropes are clearly too loose.

The main event serves as a nice glimpse into what is to come, though. It pits Hulk Hogan and the aforementioned Mr T against Rowdy Roddy Piper (who still had some good years with WWF left ahead of him) and Mr Wonderful Paul Ordorff (who would be out the door within a year or two). It's by no means a gem or an all time classic match, but the crowd is clearly more invested in it than any of the other bouts. And while Hulk was still maybe 2 years off from being the full fledged phenomenon he would eventually turn into, you could tell people had already gotten behind him a fair amount. Plus, the inclusion of T was a clever bit of cross promotion, Unlike the women's match, which essentially served as an extended commercial for Cyndi Lauper's song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun".

All in all, a good start and certainly extremely important in a historical sense, but not an essential event in any way, unless you consider yourself a total WWF completist (which I guess I will be when this blog is said and done) or if, like me, you can't get enough of the Iron Sheik refering to "Mean" Gene Okerlund as "Gene Mean".

Card:

Tito Santana def. The Executioner

King Kong Bundy def. Special Delivery Jones

Ricky Steamboat def. Matt Borne

David Sammartino (w/Bruno Sammartino) fought Brutus Beefcake (w/Johnny Valiant) to a double DQ

The Junkyard Dog def. Intercontinental Champion Greg Valentine by countout (Valentine retains)

Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik (w/Classy Freddie Blassie) def. The US Express (Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo) (w/ Capt. Lou Albano) to win the Tag Team Championships

Andre The Giant def. Big John Studd (w/Bobby "The Brain" Heenan) in a "15,000 dollar Bodyslam Challenge"

Wendi Richter (w/Cyndi Lauper) def. Leilani Kai (w/The Fabulous Moolah) to win the Womens Championship

Hulk Hogan and Mr. T (w/ "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka) def. "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and "Mr Wonderful" Paul Orndorff (w/ "Cowboy" Bob Orton)