The Oral History of WrestleMania — Part Four: Hulk Still Rules
The following is a continued oral history of unsourced quotes from numerous interviews over the years about WrestleMania from the early 90's, assembled by Wrestling Club with Darren & Brett, part of the non-profit radio station, WFMU.
Read Part 1: The Granddaddy of ’Em All
Read Part 2: Bigger. Better. Badder.
Read Part 3: What The World Is Watching
PASSING THE TORCH
MICHAEL HARPSTER (marketing president, New Line Cinema)
“Looking at the numbers from the [market research] testing that we did [for No Holds Barred], I saw that Hulk Hogan has incredible recognition. He possibly even exceeds Freddy Krueger in recognition, but it is a very narrow audience.”
HULK HOGAN (wrestler, actor)
“It took time to pass that torch, which should have been passed at the end of the ’80s. I mean we tried with a couple of guys, putting the belts on them and stuff, but they weren’t ready to run.”
BRUCE PRICHARD (producer)
“The perennial babyface was Hulk Hogan. Warrior beat the biggest attraction in the business.
JIM ROSS (commentator, executive)
“[The Ultimate Warrior] was never a perfect fit for pro wrestling. He was a downer, he wasn’t a team player, all about himself and people knew he was a little strange.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Hulk was still an attraction and people were still paying to see Hulk, and the argument was made that a lot of people thought, ‘Well, shit’. It’s hard to give Warrior that flunking grade, if you will, when Hogan’s still active, because now, I’ve got a choice. The truer test probably would have been taking Hogan out of the equation and seeing how Warrior draws on his own. Given a choice, I think the people preferred Hulk.”
THE UNDERTAKER
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART (wrestler)
“It was bizarre to meet Vince’s new gimmick: a towering red-haired kid from Houston named Mark Callaway, his Huck Finn features hidden by the dark circles painted under his eyes to give him the look of a cadaver. He was dressed all in black, complete with a wide-brimmed hat. He was The Undertaker.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN (wrestler)
“I didn’t know The Undertaker very well, I didn’t know Mark very well. He’s a Houston guy, and I grew up 100 miles from there and we were watching the same stuff.”
JIM ROSS (commentator, wrestler)
“I helped get him into WCW from World Class Championship Wrestling. I thought at the time, you don’t see too many 6-foot-9, 300-pound guys who were athletic. Young Mark Calaway was an athletic beast.”
THE UNDERTAKER (wrestler)
“My [WCW] contract comes up. I remember Jim Heard, Jim Barnett and Ole Anderson all in the CNN Tower there. To tell you the truth, kid, you’re a great athlete, but no one is ever going to pay money to see you wrestle.”
SGT. SLAUGHTER (wrestler, producer)
“When I was working in the [WWF] office up in Connecticut, part of my job was to go through the boxes of letters and resumes. One of them happened to be a young kid by the name of Mark Calaway, who has short red hair and he was working down in WCW. It was a tape and a little letter saying he’d be interested… WWE brought him into Rochester, N.Y. I showed Mark where to go. I said, ‘You’ll be the first match on the show.’ Halfway through the match, I was on the headset and I hear Vince McMahon say, ‘Where did you find this guy? Send him to my office.’ Mark came out of the ring and asked me how he did, and I said Vince wanted to see him. He thought he did something wrong…”
THE UNDERTAKER
“I get the question. You got any hidden talents? So, I’m trying to be funny, right. Well, you know, I’m a pretty good singer, I sing in the shower pretty good. And you know, Vince how he is. Oh really? You singer in the shower, huh? On the inside, I’m just cringing. You are going to be shower boy or something like that.”
THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR
“They brought him in and kept him off the TV [at first], thinking about what character to give him.”
THE UNDERTAKER
“They were doing this promotion where on the show. They had this gigantic egg on the set. And then, all of a sudden, my mind just starts going like, oh man. They are going to bring me in — now, this is how outlandish the gimmicks were then. I’m going to be ‘Egg Man.’”
J.J. DILLON
“There was this egg, and Gene Okerlund was there, and then when the egg popped open, he had to go out and conduct an interview with The Gobbledy Gooker.”
THE UNDERTAKER
“So one day the phone rings. ‘Hello.’ ‘Um, yeah, is this The Undertaker?’ All this is going through my mind. I’m not even sure it’s Vince. I think it is, but i’m not sure. I’m thinking somebody might be ribbing me. No caller ID. ‘Is this The Undertaker?’ That sure as hell ain’t Egg Man. ‘Yeah, this is The Undertaker.’ ‘This is Vince, can you be here tomorrow?’ ‘Yes, sir, I’ll be up there tomorrow.’ And that was — I had no clue what Undertaker was, what it meant, but it sounded a whole lot cooler than Egg Man.”
THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR (wrestler)
“The people really got behind The Undertaker gimmick. It was creatively stimulating. I liked it, man.”
THE UNDERTAKER
“The story boards, you know, he’s an old western Undertaker. You remember in the old westerns — they’d have the gunfight out in main street and The Undertaker would come out and measure to see how long he’s going to make the box…At that point, I’m doing leapfrogs, drop-downs. I’m still working like Mean Mark and then I’m starting to study now. Now I’m kind of figuring out what this guy is. Michael Myers and then Jason Voorhees from Friday The 13th, I started thinking about how those guys were. Those guys never moved fast at all, but they always seemed to be at the right place when it was time to cut somebody’s throat. And it was vicious.”
JIM JOHNSTON (musicial director)
“The Undertaker was presented to me as, ‘He’s a dead guy.’ I didn’t know what that meant. I pondered it over a day or so and it finally landed on me that his theme was, from the perspective of the audience, something funereal and that’s what I wrote. I wrote it on piano in a delicate, high register, and once I had that, I figured, OK, it has to have a monstrous church organ, a huge choir, and then I thought about the bell tolls. I knew I needed the biggest bell in the world so I used three different bells and a few other noises to make it feel like it was the bell from the center of the earth. [That theme] has stood the test of time.”
THE UNDERTAKER
“I lived my gimmick. I lived it for years and years. It was easier before there were cell phones everywhere, I went in street clothes, even though it wasn’t my black leather coat, I was in black. You go in my house back then, open up my closet, I dare you to find something that wasn’t black. I lived it.”
BRUCE PRICHARD (producer)
“Bill Moody, who was [manager] Percy Pringle, came in for a job interview. In the middle of it, they said, ‘What do you do?’ because he wasn’t active in wrestling at the time. He said, ‘Well, I’m a mortician by trade. I always keep my mortician’s license active.’ And everybody started laughing. He’d be perfect for the Undertaker!”
THE UNDERTAKER
“[Paul Bearer] had that high-pitched creepy thing, you know, then I said, ‘Rest in Peace’. I always thought, you had people screaming and hollering. But somebody starts talking low. He’s going to put you in the ground and worms eat your rotting flesh? It’s just stuff people hadn’t heard in the wrestling world. And thanks goodness they become enthralled with the darkness and how morbid the stuff was that we were doing. It really gelled well.”
THE STARS & STRIPES CHALLENGE
VAUGHN JOHNSON (writer)
“This WrestleMania was memorable before it even began because of the change of venue. The event was originally scheduled to take place in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which could have had more than 100,000 spectators, but the event was moved into the Los Angeles Sports Arena where the event was seen by less than a fifth of that amount.”
VINCE MCMAHON (owner)
“WWE has always been controversial. I think that’s part of its charm and part of its appeal.”
SGT. SLAUGHTER (wrestler)
“My phone rang and on the other end I hear, ‘Sarge, it’s Vince.’ He said, ‘Are you ready to go back to work.?’ I said, ‘Yes, yes I am.’ So he told me to meet him the next day and that he had an idea… [Vince] says, ‘We want you and [Hulk] Hogan to be the main event.’ I said, ‘Okay, how are we going to make Hulk Hogan the villain?’ He said, ‘Hulk Hogan? No, he’s not going to be the villain. You’re going to be the villain!’ I said, ‘Well, how we gonna do that?’ Vince says, ‘I want you to be on the side of Saddam Hussein.’ I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it.”
GENERAL ADNAN (wrestler, manager)
“Knowing that Sarge was a babyface for so many years, [Vince] was going to use him as a villain, but he was not going to get over with the people. The one that was going to get him over was me, being his manager from Baghdad, Iraq.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“There’s good guys and bad guys in the WWE and also in real life. So you can’t cross those two worlds all that often. If you do it, you have to do it with a great deal of sensitivity.”
SGT. SLAUGHTER
“They wanted me to burn an American flag. And I wouldn’t do that. So, I gave them a better idea: I thought, put the Hulk Hogan shirt on a flag pole and I’ll burn that and say, ‘It’s Americana!’ So, that’s what we did and I think that it got the right type of ‘heat,’ as we say in our business.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“Then the war breaks out.”
SGT. SLAUGHTER
“I came home from back to Philadelphia after winning the title from the Ultimate Warrior in Miami at the Royal Rumble, and one of the backstage hands said, ‘Hey, have you talked to your wife?’ And I said, ‘No.’ ‘Have you talked to Vince McMahon?’ ‘No.’ We didn’t have cell phones, so, I get on the phone, my wife’s answering machine. I call Vince, ‘Oh yeah, Sgt., I just talked to your wife and I sent her to a hotel.’ I said, ‘What happened?’ Well, somebody called up the wrestling office this morning and said they’re gonna kill you, and kill me, and kill our families; Blow up our houses and cars.”
JOE FURIN (event manager, Los Angeles Coliseum & LA Sports Arena)
“It was not our decision to move the event. We just worked with them and made it work for them when they decided to make the move.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“We better bring it back indoors and control it better, tone it down because some of it was…art imitating life.”
WRESTLEMANIA VI
ROAD WARRIOR ANIMAL (wrestler)
“The seventh WrestleMania was conducted in Los Angeles, of all places, so I expected to see famous people everywhere I turned. I wasn’t disappointed. When we were walking around the back of the LA Memorial Sports Arena, I remember seeing Willie Nelson, Lou Ferrigno, Henry Winkler, Alex Trebek, and Donald Trump.”
VAUGHN JOHNSON (writer)
“This was the first WrestleMania that did not have Jesse “The Body” Ventura on commentary. While I loved Ventura and Gorilla Monsoon together, Ventura’s departure gave way for Monsoon to partner up with Bobby Heenan, who provided very entertaining banter between each other.”
THE ROCKERS vs HAKU & THE BARBARIAN
BILL GOLDBERG (wrestler)
“[Haku] and The Barbarian would have made a huge splash in the MMA world. I don’t know of a human being alive that could take out [Haku]. It took like 13 guys to get him out of a bar with Ric Flair. He was pepper-sprayed and laughed at the cops, and broke the cuffs right in front of them.”
KERRY VON ERICH vs DINO BRAVO
SKIP HOLLANDSWORTH (writer)
“In 1984, the Von Erichs drew 41,000 to Texas Stadium for what was then the largest audience ever to see a wrestling match in North America. At the time, Kerry had been named the most popular wrestler in the country by national wrestling magazines, more popular even than Hulk Hogan. He looked like Samson, with his long curly hair and magnificent body. He was followed by thousands of teenage girls, the first true pinup star in wrestling. A national tour was planned. The Von Erichs were poised to become the first family of American wrestling. But then came the deaths of David and Mike, and the motorcycle wreck that knocked Kerry out of the ring for 16 months.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Kerry had lived in many ways the ultimate fantasy life up until he was in his mid-20s. The reality after that period was the harshest imaginable. Three brothers died. His other brother suffered a near death experience. One of his brothers’ children died at birth. He was involved in a motorcycle accident that left him crippled. The company that was his by birthright went out of business, ending with him having little money left to his name. The superstardom that was seemingly his not only by birthright but through ability and charisma as well, slowly slipped away. Because he was broke, he hooked up with the biggest wrestling company in the world, and for a time, he got to relive his past fame.”
VAUGHN JOHNSON (writer)
“Bravo had appeared in numerous WrestleManias until this point and was a mainstay in WWE, but retired from wrestling in 1992. This was Von Erich’s first and only appearance at the big show. Unfortunately, both men died within a month of each other in 1993.”
KEVIN VON ERICH (wrestler)
“He said, ‘Kevin, I’m about to kill myself…’ We had talked for about an hour. We told some good dirty jokes, we laughed. I thought I had him talked out of it. Thirty minutes later they found his body.”
THE BRITISH BULLDOG vs THE WARLORD
BRYAN ALVAREZ (journalist)
“Following a couple tours of Europe and Japan, [Davey Boy] Smith returned alone to the WWF in late 1990 as the British Bulldog, complete with a new, significantly larger body and dreadlocked hairstyle.”
DAVEY BOY SMITH (wrestler)
“I quit with [Dynamite Kid] from the WWF and went back to Japan with him, but I had a big house at that time and I wasn’t making enough money, basically, to make my payments. Vince McMahon had come to All Japan Wrestling to talk to Baba, he came in the dressing room, and said to Dynamite, ‘Dynamite, you’re looking good. When do you want to come back?’ Dynamite muttered something in the terms of, ‘In about ten years,’ and all the boys started laughing and kind of wanted to embarrass Vince. I didn’t think that was cool at all, and then he turned around and said to me, ‘You’re looking as big as ever, Davey. When would you like to come back?’ I said, ‘Well, whenever the door’s open.’ To my face, [Dynamite Kid] said, ‘If you go back to WWF, you won’t make it as a single,’ blah, blah, blah. He said, ‘Good luck to you,’ and I said, ‘Thanks,’ and then that’s the last time I ever saw him.”
BLINDFOLD MATCH: JAKE “THE SNAKE” ROBERTS vs RICK MARTEL
VAUGHN JOHNSON (writer)
“The blindfold match between Jake Roberts and Rick Martel was pure comedic gold. Seeing Martel bodyslam Roberts and attempt to follow it up with an elbow drop, only for Roberts to no longer be there was hilarious. Seeing Martel poke at the air with a steel chair was hilarious also. What’s funny is that the time Roberts and Martel spent searching for each other actually built up anticipation with the crowd. Every time they did come into contact, the crowd went nuts. Roberts and Martel had one of the hottest matches from a crowd standpoint and did maybe six moves between the two.”
DAVE MELTZER (journalist)
“Given the limitations of a gimmick match in which both men have to pretend to be unable to see, it was a good performance. However, as a wrestling match, this would have been negative as many stars as are in the Texas sky.”
RICK MARTEL
“I never had done a blindfold match before, and it was so weird. I was nervous enough as it was, with it being WrestleMania. As we got into it, Jake and I both just had fun doing it, and then to watch it afterwards was just mind-blowing.”
WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP: THE HART FOUNDATION vs THE NASTY BOYS
JERRY SAGS (wrestler)
“Verne Gagne’s daughter down in AWA gave us the name. After one night out with us, she said ‘you boys oughta just go as the Nasty Boys, cause that’s what you are.’”
BRET HART
“I loved that match at WrestleMania VIII. Jim and I went on early in what was really a call to kick the show into high gear.”
BRIAN KNOBBS
“For a guy like Bret Hart telling me that him and Jim really loved that match made me and Sags feel really good.”
GREG “THE HAMMER” VALENTINE vs EARTHQUAKE
GREG “THE HAMMER” VALENTINE
“We were supposed to have a 12-minute match at WrestleMania 7, then time constraints cut us down to four minutes. I threw a fit, couldn’t find Vince, almost quit on the spot and ultimately got a few extra minutes added on to the match so that it wasn’t a squash.”
“SUPERFLY” JIMMY SNUKA vs THE UNDERTAKER
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“This marked the WrestleMania debut of the Undertaker. He beat up Snuka pretty bad to begin his legendary streak. No one had any idea that he would have such a run.”
“SUPERFLY” JIMMY SNUKA
“I looked forward to that, brother, when Vince Jr. told me to wrestle The Undertaker, brudda, I loved it. Here’s a kid that’s blowing up. He looks the part. It was a pleasure for me to go in there and work with him. I’m not a glory guy, so I didn’t mind [losing to The Undertaker], I predicted that he would be a big star.”
VIRGIL vs TED DIBIASE
TED DIBIASE
“You know the thing about Virgil, or his real name is Mike Jones, when we were together he was never a problem. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t do drugs, and he was always on time. Of course, you know you lay the foundation down when the relationship begins, and I think Virgil understood at least what his job was and he knew where his place was in means of the pecking order. There was never any real problem with the guy. I guess the nicest way to say it is sometimes you didn’t think that the elevator went to the top floor. He wasn’t the brightest guy, you know? I always got along with him though.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Roddy Piper came to ringside on a crutch as he was working a bad knee to set up the angle for down the line. DiBiase had a difficult time trying to carry Virgil. Bout itself would have been a dud except the antics with Piper during and after the match were very good. DiBiase was counted out arguing with Piper. DiBiase then put Virgil out with his Million Dollar Dream and began working over Piper’s ‘bad knee’ with the crutch when Sherri came out — new alliance — and they both worked on Piper for a while. The highlight here was that Sherri was working so hard that her wig came off, not acknowledged in the commentary.”
CAREER MATCH: THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR vs “MACHO KING” RANDY SAVAGE
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“The retirement match between Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior was a classic with a number of near falls, including Savage hitting five elbow drops only for Warrior to kick out. The two wrestlers looked legitimately spent in the latter stages of the match, which only added to the drama.”
DAVID SHOEMAKER
“Warrior’s best match by a mile. Sherri Martel was immaculate, Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan were hitting on all cylinders, and the recurring shots of Miss Elizabeth in the audience were perfectly done.”
SENSATIONAL SHERRI (wrestler)
“Randy faxed him over 29 pages of notes for their match.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Savage came off the top rope outside and Warrior caught him with a punch. Warrior delivered three shoulderblocks for the win. After the bout Sherri attacked Savage and was putting the boots to him...”
BRET HART
“Up in the crowd tiny Miss Elizabeth left her seat, climbed into the ring and with superhuman strength hurled the robust Sherri over the top rope. Then she made up with Randy in the middle of the ring to a huge pop.”
DAVE MELTZER
“There were fans legitimately crying, they were so moved by this.”
DAVID SHOEMAKER
“Even if you go in knowing the ending, it’s impossible not to get wrapped up. The endgame — five Savage elbow drops failing, then three huge shoulder blocks from Warrior to set up the pin — was ahead of its time. And the reunion at the end was amazing. Don’t set aside the ending — he didn’t go out on top, but this is every bit a worthy Retirement Match.”
TITO SANTANA vs THE MOUNTIE
“THE MOUNTIE” JACQUES ROUGEAU
“To be honest with you I had the greatest moments as The Mountie in my career. I had so much fun with that character and I honestly made people believe that I thought I was The Mountie. I had a brother-in-law who was a real Royal Canadian Mounted Police who gave me some tricks and some moves that they used when they arrest a guy so all those moves that I used in the ring were actually legit.”
WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP: BIG BOSS MAN vs MR. PERFECT
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“This was the final WrestleMania appearance for Andre the Giant, who walked down during the match on Boss Man’s behalf and attacked Heenan.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Perfect did his normal one-man show of exaggerated but excellent bumps. These two really worked well together but nobody in the world had enough talent to carry a match through a finish involving Andre the Giant.”
GENICHIRO TENRYU & KOJI KITAO vs DEMOLITION
LANCE STORM
“In Japan, a man is measured by his honor and Tenryu is a great, great man.”
DAVE MELTZER
“He was recruited while in eighth grade for sumo, at the time, the national sport of Japan. Amidst a lot of fanfare, Giant Baba signed Tenryu for pro wrestling. It got major newspaper publicity that a star of that level was joining AJPW.”
ALEXANDER PODGORSKI (writer)
“Genichiro Tenryu’s Super World of Sports promotion had a working relationship with the then-WWF. This led to Tenryu and Kitao defeating Demolition in a short match at WrestleMania VII, though there wasn’t any follow-up to that random match-up.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Of course, there was no heat because fans didn’t know the Japanese wrestlers. And Kitao didn’t make it any better since he looked just horrible.”
THE LEGION OF DOOM vs POWER & GLORY
PAUL ELLERING (manager, wrestler)
“I could see something in Hawk and Animal that comes along once a generation and personifies what this business is about.”
ROAD WARRIOR ANIMAL
“If you blow the roof off the place with your music and the crowd goes crazy it’s called a ‘Road Warrior pop’. That’s kind of cool that it will always be remembered in the wrestling business because it is something different that not everyone can achieve.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ
“There was really never a team like them before. They stormed the ring to the tune of Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’ and just laid complete and utter waste to everyone.”
ROAD WARRIOR ANIMAL
“Vince had a WrestleMania agenda to showcase the Legion of Doom. Unfortunately, for Power & Glory, this was translated best in Hawk’s prematch interview: ‘Power & Glory? When we get through with you, you’ll be Sour & Gory.’ Hawk and I smashed through Herc and Roma in a 59-second squash match from hell.”
WWF CHAMPIONSHIP: HULK HOGAN vs SGT. SLAUGHTER
SGT. SLAUGHTER
“At WrestleMania there were all these celebrities I was excited to meet and they wouldn’t even talk to me. Willie Nelson just shook his head when he saw me and said, ‘I can’t believe you, Sarge.’”
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“Hogan’s act had begun to wear a little thin… Hogan was still a huge star and the people were more than fired up to see him come out with the American flag, but the match itself felt like a rerun of a weekly television show with the only difference being the villain. Hogan faced seemingly insurmountable odds, fought from behind and made a miraculous comeback to once again become the champion. We’d seen this story before. Sure, the Gulf War backdrop gave this main event a different wrinkle, but it still wasn’t enough to really give it the sizzle Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior had the year before.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“They looked like two elephants tussling over a water hole. Slaughter tapped Hogan on the head with a steel chair. Even with the blood the match was a hokey affair, with Hogan wagging his finger in Slaughter’s face before the big boot and the leg drop. Same old story.”
THE STEROID SCANDAL
HULK HOGAN
“I would tell kids to train, say their prayers and take their vitamins. But it wasn’t just vitamins I was taking…”
THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR
“Bodybuilding and wrestling are more circus-like — people want to see the ‘freaks.’”
LEX LUGER (wrestler)
“You get on these steroids and you train better, eat more. gained 15 pounds in about two months.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“The performers were making exorbitant amounts of money. Not all of them took steroids. But, later, if you added prescription painkillers to the mix of sex, drugs and rock and roll, it was a deadly cocktail. For some, habits never changed. They continued with the same lifestyle. You can’t do that at age 40…”
SENSATIONAL SHERRI
“There was so much that we put our bodies through on a daily basis…things that God did not intend us to do. And in turn, people find ways to compensate to get through it. I found ways…and it got to the point where I could not control it anymore. It affected my job, it affected the people I was around…”
BRET HART
“By mid-July the latest WWF crisis was an interview that Hogan did on The Arsenio Hall Show in which he flat-out lied and looked bad doing it. I was embarrassed hearing him say he’d never taken steroids, except once for an injury. If he’d been honest, it’s likely we’d never have heard another word about it. But now the media was all over Hogan, calling him a hypocrite because he had always preached to kids that they could be like him by saying their prayers and taking their vitamins.”
HULK HOGAN
“I’m not making excuses, but they were everywhere. And a lot of that had to do with what we knew about them, which obviously wasn’t enough. The most commonly prescribed were testosterone, Deca-Durabolin and Dianabol. I never had a question about whether I would take them.”
BRET HART
“Investigators found FedEx waybills that linked shipments from [WWF physician] Dr. George T. Zahorian directly to the homes of several wrestlers, including Hogan, as well as to Vince himself, at his new monolithic office building in Stamford, Connecticut.”
HULK HOGAN
“It was part of my daily regimen. Did you take a shower? Yeah. Did you brush your teeth? Yeah. Did you take your steroids? Yeah. That was the deal. It was how I lived…”
MISSY HYATT (manager, commentator)
“I’m sure Hulk Hogan in his head thought if he denied extensive steroid usage in 1991, the media would move on. Who would have ever thought his denial would cause a steroid media buzz which attacked wrestling so fierce with major ramifications? Desirable TV time slots were lost. Merchandise died in retail stores. Sponsors left in droves. The fan base dwindled…”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Vince called a meeting to let his wrestlers know that starting in just a few weeks he would voluntarily implement a brand new drug testing policy that was even stricter than the one used for Olympic athletes: Everyone had to get off the juice.”
“NATURE BOY” RIC FLAIR
BRYAN ALVAREZ
“To anyone who lived through the 80s, to the hardcore NWA fans, Ric Flair is the single greatest in-ring performer in the history of the business. Nobody was as consistently great as Ric Flair.”
RIC FLAIR
“It’s easy to say you want to be thought of as the best father that ever lived, but I wasn’t. And I certainly wasn’t the best husband. So I guess I’ll just have to settle for wanting to be thought of as the greatest wrestler that ever lived.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ
“He was involved in a serious plane crash along with Johnny Valentine, Tim Woods and Bob Bruggers. The pilot was killed, Valentine’s career was ended, and Flair broke his back in three places and was told his career was over. Six months later, though, he was back in the ring and soon took on the Nature Boy persona with the bleached hair and the fancy suits. The rest was history.”
DOLPH ZIGGLER (wrestler)
“Not only did Ric Flair style and profile for real — he showed up in suits, his hair looked perfect, he had shades on indoors — he was just the man.’”
RICK RUBIN (musician, producer)
“You’d see him just getting destroyed in a match, begging, really acting un-champion-like, getting beaten up for 20 minutes, and then he’d hit a low-blow and steal the victory. And then they’d interview him in the back, and he’d have this big smile on his face, bragging about how he destroyed the guy. It’s unbelievable. Flair’s the ultimate. He’s the greatest character, says the funniest things; he’s incredible in the ring — the idea of him giving his five best shots to his opponent, and it having no effect on them, and his reaction to that, when it hits him that he’s done his best and it has no effect, and the way he runs away and the way he gets caught. It’s funny every time it happens, and as soon as he gets the upper hand, the arrogance kicks in. Plus, his falls, the delayed reactions, he takes three-or-four steps, as if everything is fine, and then the complete face-plant, he’s like a cartoon character. It’s so surreal. I love it when it’s surreal.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ
“Over the next 33 years Flair would win the World Title — well, who knows. We do know it was more than sixteen times. The best number is probably eighteen. There were so many moments. His feuds and title wins and great matches against so many legends. The Horseman in all their incarnations. The legendary 45-minute draw with Sting. The Steamboat matches and Terry Funk feud that defined 1989.”
RICKY STEAMBOAT
“I’d look across the ring at Ric, he would look at me, and here we go. And we would just push and push and push. Fifty minutes into the match, the guys backstage watching would go, ‘How in the world are you guys able to go at the speed you’re going?’ and we’ve already put in 50 minutes.”
HULK HOGAN
“Ric Flair has had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of one-hour matches. I’ve never had one. He’s 10 times better than I am. I mean, it’s a no-brainer.”
BRYAN ALVAREZ
“He was a guy that could go out and have a great match with anyone, then go out partying, living the Ric Flair gimmick, driving around in limos and surrounding himself with beautiful women and tying balloons to his penis and bouncing credit cards on $30,000 tabs, and stay up all night and up a little longer, and then get up in the morning like nothing had happened, go to the gym, head to another arena, have another great match, and then do it all again.”
JIM ROSS
“You’d walk into a hotel bar with about 30–40 strangers in it, and Ric would just walk up to the bar and order 100 kamikazes, take them around to all the tables, do the Flair strut and the woooooooo’s. Obviously, most of the people knew him, but he didn’t know them. He’d buy kamikazes for the whole bar and watch them all get hammered. It would cause an Animal House-like environment where all these strangers would be hugging each other. You’ve got insurance salesman woooo’ing, women swooning, music would come on, and he’d start dancing with everybody’s wives, having a great time. That was not an unusual night.”
RIC FLAIR
“[Executive Vice President] Jim Herd is the total reason I left [WCW]. He had a lot to do with the destruction and bankruptcy of the company — 10 years before it did bankrupt. Jim Herd wanted to make me into a gladiator! He was taking an established commodity — who’d been the flagship of the company — and changing it stupidly. When the NWA was in existence it was controlled by a board of directors. Whoever the champion was, they had to put up a $25,000 bond. It was a statement to say that the champion wouldn’t leave with the belt. I put up a bond for 25 grand and when I asked for my money back, Herd said, ‘Fuck you and the belt!’ He thought he was a tough guy. I said, ‘It’s not fuck me, it’s fuck you — watch where the belt is next Monday…’ I called Vince and I said, ‘I’ll come [to the WWE] as the champion if you want me to be…’ I sent the belt to WWE and Bobby Heenan took it out on TV the next week.”
BILL APTER (writer, editor)
“For years at the Pro Wrestling Illustrated family of magazines, we teased matches between Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair.”
RIC FLAIR
“When I got there, [McMahon] said that’s a possibility.”
MEAN GENE OKERLUND
“The match between Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan was supposed to be the big one.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Whether Hogan vs. Flair was scheduled for the Hoosier Dome at any point is something that only Vince would know for sure.”
RIC FLAIR
“I know Hulk wanted to go out and do the show Thunder in Paradise and they weren’t getting along and I guess they decided to go another way. Some people said it was a cash flow problem. I’ve never heard an explanation.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Flair started with WWF in September and worked all the weekend house shows with Hogan. They drew well, but the reality of that program in WWF, is that the more they promoted it, in ineffective manner, the weaker it was.”
GERALD BRISCO (wrestler)
“Ric was a different style, a different character than Hogan.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Flair wanted to do 25 minute matches and Hogan wanted to do his usual 10, and they compromised at 11:35, with Hogan saying that we have to save the 25 minute match for Mania. I remember being told that in September and I thought it was weird since I knew what Sid [Justice] was promised. Jim Herd confirmed to me that Sid was leaving because he was promised the WrestleMania main event.”
HULK HOGAN
“Vince just shut it down and switched gears on us.”
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan had some great moments together, but WrestleMania VIII has to be one of their best nights together. They were on fire during this show. From Heenan calling Reba McEntire ‘Ariba McEntire,’ to Monsoon calling out Heenan’s bias toward Flair, to Heenan losing his cool after Flair lost the title, everything they did on this show was awesome.”
DAVE MELTZER
“The [Legion of Doom] interview was way too long and it didn’t seem like many people knew who Ellering was. LOD didn’t seem to have a definite program or purpose for the interview other than to debut Ellering and make it clear they’ve returned.”
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“Lex Luger for theWorld Bodybuilding Federation. This was Vince’s attempt to mix the world of bodybuilding with all of the pageantry of pro wrestling. This did not last long for a number of reasons. Chief among them was the steroid scandal.”
“EL MATADOR” TITO SANTANA vs SHAWN MICHAELS
KOFI KINGSTON (wrestler)
“In my opinion, the greatest wrestler of all time is Shawn Michaels. He was able to be at the top of his game across almost four decades. I’ve never seen him have a bad match and most of the matches he’s in are great. There are very few people out there who can wrestle anybody, regardless of their size or style, and Shawn Michaels is the best at doing that.”
JEFF JARRETT (wrestler)
“There’s a Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky or whatever greats that you have in each respective industry at Shawn’s athletic ability.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“[The Rockers] were at this shoot for a cereal box that was coming out. Everybody was getting five grand a piece for it. Marty and I were getting 2500 for it. Marty got hot, and threatens ‘We’re gonna leave, we’re gonna go to WCW.’ I get a call from Vince. ‘I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving.’ What? He said, ‘Well Shawn, I’ll tell you what, he can leave but you’ve always got a singles career here…I think you’re gonna be a big star.’ I hung up with him and called Marty and said, ‘I didn’t know you were gonna call and tell them we were quitting without consulting me…my ultimate goal has been to go singles. I think it’s time for us to work that angle that we’ve always talked about.’”
MARTY JANNETTY
“The barbershop window segment was actually setting up a match at WrestleMania VIII between Shawn and I. A few things didn’t go the way someone wanted, so they ended up completely scrapping that idea, but that was the whole idea of the barbershop.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“I had the boots on and that one was a little snug, I will say that. Every now and then, it does get away from me. But I have to say that Marty took that like a champ for heaven’s sake.”
MARTY JANNETTY
“I used to hear from the boys saying damn your partner can’t hold back on that kick, can he? I’d say, why do you say that? And then I’m looking at that damn bruise underneath my chin.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“I received a phone call about how they were putting me with Sherri, and I got the music and stuff like that. I remember them playing [theme song “Sexy Boy”] for me. Pat Patterson said, ‘Look, Sherri has been with two guys, okay DiBiase and Savage both top guys. You get put next to her and that is going to put you on another level.’”
SENSATIONAL SHERRI
“He was the total package.”
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“Santana’s loss was his seventh loss in a row at WrestleMania… In one respect, it’s kind of laughable as it’s the streak you don’t want to have. But it’s a testament to the consistency Santana had to be able to make eight WrestleManias in a row.”
WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP: BRET “THE HITMAN” HART vs “ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
BRET HART
“I think I was maybe the first wrestler to come along in a long time that it wasn’t about how big I was or how big my arms were. I didn’t have 24-inch pythons or face paint. I just had my wrestling skills, and the stories I could tell in my matches. Being a Canadian may have set me apart from some of the American heroes, like Macho Man or Ultimate Warrior. I always had a softer approach to my interviews and promos. I was not that wrestler that was yelling at the screen, I was the one talking to my fans.”
JIM CORNETTE (manager)
“Bret Hart was a fucking high-level worker, an elite level worker.”
X-PAC
“He’s one of those guys that you just, I mean, the term ‘ring general’ in the dictionary will have his picture up next to the definition. You could just go out there and listen to the guy.”
DISCO INFERNO (wrestler)
“His interviews were never that entertaining — like catchphrases. What he did have was is a level of seriousness in his tone of voice that strengthened the angle that he was in. A lot of guys don’t have that these days.”
BRET HART
“In Germany and some of these other countries, the pink and black and the whole look with the sunglasses and the leather jacket was the right kind of hero they could get behind, and I think that really set me apart from everyone else. For some reason in the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and all the other markets that we had in those days, I had a completely different reaction from the fans in North America. I was well received in Canada and the United States, but it was so much bigger over there.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“I went 17 and a half years, I never took a dive for anybody, nobody pinned me. Bret needed a launch. He put in the time that it takes for someone to know that he could carry the banner high. But he’s gonna have to earn it.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Roddy pulled me aside to tell me that he had some big news: Vince had told him that I’d be losing the IC belt to Jacques Rougeau, who now cartooned as The Mountie. Roddy explained the angle: I’d supposedly come down with the flu, and despite gallantly trying to defend the IC belt against The Mountie, he’d beat me for it. Then Roddy would fill in for me two days later at the Royal Rumble, challenging The Mountie to an IC title match, and Roddy would win. After that, he’d drop the IC belt back to me at WrestleMania VIII. Roddy said he was giving me advance warning, so I’d be prepared when Vince told me at the next TVs. I hauled my stomach out of my boots: Yes, I was losing the belt, but if Roddy put me over at WrestleMania VIII, it would be the biggest thing to ever happen to me.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“It was interesting, half the fans were cheering for him, half the fans were cheering for me.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“We gave the illusion that it was a real fight. You weren’t allowed to have blood in a match in WWE, but we had blood in that match. The funny thing about that is Flair and Macho Man went on right after us and they had blood in their match, and they got fined. Flair got fined $5,000 for having blood without permission. Macho Man got fined, too, just because he was in the match. They thought it was [unintentional] in our match — we never got fined.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Piper clotheslined Hart to the floor and gave him a good shot to the ring steps. Piper then brought the ring bell to the ring and paused forever deciding whether or not to hit Hart.”
“ROWDY RODDY PIPER
“I don’t know that anybody’s ever heard this from a crowd. [The crowd] was shouting to me with such love, ‘No! Please don’t do it!’ The tone that came brought a reality to the situation that I, myself, have never had in any other wrestling match. They were sincere, one, they wanted to like me and two, they really liked Bret.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Piper then put on the sleeper, Hart kicked off the turnbuckle on fell backward onto Piper for the pin.”
BRET HART
“Thanks to Roddy, that was my first WrestleMania classic.”
WWF CHAMPIONSHIP: “MACHO MAN” RANDY SAVAGE vs “NATURE BOY” RIC FLAIR
JOEY STYLES (commentator)
“What made this match so dramatic was the fact that Ric Flair claimed to the world that he had a “romantic” relationship with Randy Savage’s wife, Elizabeth. Flair even went so far as to provide altered photos to WWE Magazine long before the advent of Photoshop or TMZ. Maybe “The Nature Boy” thought that getting inside “Macho Man’s” head would make Savage lose focus, get disqualified and in doing so, fail to win the WWE Championship.”
RIC FLAIR
“There was so much tension at that time between Randy and Liz. I felt bad. I was honored to be a part of it and be in a main event at WrestleMania but there was so much going on behind the scenes that I felt bad for everybody involved. Not for me, but they were going their separate ways and it was difficult.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Mr. Perfect gave Flair a foreign object and he hit Savage, but Savage kicked out. Flair got the figure four on, Savage reversed it. Savage schoolboyed Flair using the tights and got the pin. Flair kissed Elizabeth, who started slapping him, after the match.”
RIC FLAIR
“We had a really good match. We gave them a hell of a show and it was awesome. That was my first ‘Mania and one of the finest memories of my career.”
DAVE MELTZER
“At this point, there was no way this card could have been a thumbs down. But it might as well have ended here because the best thing on the show after this point was either the intermission or the British Bulldog vs. Berzerker match that didn’t take place because they were running late on time.”
WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP: THE NATURAL DISASTERS vs MONEY INC.
TED DIBIASE
“[Money Inc.] was a company decision. I liked it. I didn’t know Mike [Rotunda] real well at the time, but I’d seen him work and I admired his work. We did real well as a tag team.”
MIKE ROTUNDA
“We kind of fed off each other and knew what the other one was going to do. I think that’s what makes certain tag teams gel — the two guys involved just kind of mesh together to make it work.”
FRED “TUGBOAT” OTTMAN (wrestler)
“I was with my brother from another, Earthquake, the most fantastic partner and my best friend. My opponents, Money Incorporated, Ted DiBiase and IRS, [were] phenomenal. I was nervous, sweatin’. I went through the curtain and it all disappeared in front of all those people. You know it is live worldwide. It is just incredible!”
BIG BOSS MAN, “HACKSAW” JIM DUGGAN, VIRGIL & SGT. SLAUGHTER vs THE MOUNTIE, REPO MAN & THE NASTY BOYS
SGT. SLAUGHTER
“When lives were being lost from the war we backed out of [the heel character] and I went to ask for my country back. And people accepted me back.”
OWEN HART vs SKINNER
STEVE KEIRN (wrestler)
“I had just participated in the alligator harvest in Florida. I brought a skull, a hide, a paw, a bunch of pieces of alligators and laid them on [Vince’s] desk and said, ‘I don’t know what you want me to be, but I just killed 15 alligators, if that gives you any idea.’ He said, ‘Steve, have you ever seen ‘Deliverance?’ I said, ‘Yes, several times,’ and he goes, ‘I want you to be one of those guys.’ I say ‘Sure, I can be Burt Reynolds!’ He stopped me and said, ‘No, no, no…I want you to be one of the two guys in the woods with Ned Beatty. This was my first opportunity to depict a character. I was relaxed and just had a blast with it.”
HULK HOGAN vs SID JUSTICE
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“The main event between Hogan and Justice just seemed odd. The title wasn’t on the line, Hogan was playing up this retirement angle and Harvey Whippleman was Justice’s manager, who seemed out of place. Even worse, was that the match itself ended in a DQ.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Hogan had perhaps the worst looking foot-to-the-face he’s done in a long time, followed by the bodyslam and legdrop, Justice kicked out and the ref called for an immediate DQ.”
CHARLES “PAPA SHANGO” WRIGHT (wrestler)
“If I was late [doing a planned run-in], it was on whoever gave me the instruction to go. I would have watched the screen and known when, but I was waiting for the cue.”
DAVID SHOEMAKER
“Warrior made his shocking return at WrestleMania VIII, again to help Hogan, as he was being brutalized by Sid Justice and Papa Shango. And so the Ultimate Warrior was back, picking up where he left off. Or was he? This new Ultimate Warrior had a shorter haircut, blonder hair, and a fleshier, less-defined physique.”
DAVE MELTZER
“This was the closest thing ever to a steroid-free pay-per-view pro wrestling show from any company [up to that point].”
“MEAN” GENE OKERLUND
“The components were there for WrestleMania VIII, but something didn’t coagulate, and as a result, you had a so-so WrestleMania.”
MASS EXODUS
MIKE JOHNSON (journalist)
“For the most part, the wrestling industry is in the toilet in 1993. WCW was pathetic and basically running TV tapings only, ECW was running bars and the WWF was on top, although their business had dropped considerably. The group was still reeling from the McMahon steroid case against the Government — Vince won. They had also adjusted their product away from the larger, lumbering performers.”
HULK HOGAN
“The hard days of 300 days a year on the road, with 500- and 600-mile car trips between towns, were all behind me before the kids came along.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Hulk saw the opportunity with Thunder in Paradise to go off and become a David Hasselhoff in the syndication world, so he saw bigger and better things.”
HULK HOGAN
“So am I an actor who wrestles or a wrestler who acts? Either way it works. After 15 years of yelling and screaming as Hulk Hogan, I was getting stereotyped as a wrestler. You’ve got the big, stereotypical guy with the tan body, the yellow tights. This sweaty bald-headed maniac. I think it insulted the heck out of those hard-core fans. Their reaction is ‘How could you do this?’ Like: ‘You gave up wrestling for this?’”
MIKE JOHNSON
“Rick Rude left WWF after he was injured. At the time, WWF was still advertising him in main event bouts for house shows, so his name was drawing the gate, yet he felt he wasn’t being paid commensurate with the money made on the shows while he was hurt. When his deal expired, he signed with WCW, debuting in October 1991.”
DAVEY BOY SMITH (wrestler)
“Wembley Stadium. [Summerslam] was the biggest of events. My most nervous event. I’d come back from staph infection of my knee. Not wrestling for six weeks, and then going into the ring with Bret for 40–45 minutes in front of 83,000 people. Wow. Having Lennox Lewis carry my flag out to the ring.”
MIKE JOHNSON (reporter)
“Davey Boy Smith was fired in late 1992 by WWF alongside Ultimate Warrior when both were accused of using HGH during a time period where WWF was doing everything in its power to clean up the company due to the impending indictment of Vince McMahon for steroid distribution.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“Ultimate Warrior basically came to me and figuratively held a gun to my head and said, ‘Hey, I’m not going to perform unless you pay me x number of dollars.’ So I reluctantly agreed to Warrior’s demand, knowing what I was going to do as soon as he came out of the ring. It gave me great pleasure to fire him and to let him know why I was doing it.”
MIKE JOHNSON
“Ric Flair asked for his release and got it in January 1993. He and McMahon had an agreement where if he wasn’t going to be used as a main event player, he could leave.”
RIC FLAIR
“Vince wanted to go youthful.”
“MACHO MAN” RANDY SAVAGE
“They wanted me to do the commentary thing. I just wasn’t ready to take off my boots.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“I patiently sat in a chair at the end of a long backstage hallway. Vince waved me over. He shut the door behind us. ‘You’ve been with me now for how many years?’ ‘Eight years,’ I replied, realizing that I’d been with him longer than any other working wrestler left in the company. Everyone from the early days was gone. Vince praised me for my dedication. Then he said, ‘I’ve done everything I could think of. I don’t know what else to do with you.’ The blood going to my heart began to churn thick as mud, when suddenly Vince broke into that goofy grin and said, ‘So that’s why I’ve decided to put the World belt on you tonight!’ I was in complete and total shock as I shook Vince’s hand, promising him that I’d do the best I could every night for him and the company.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Business was down and Vince McMahon wanted to find someone new to face Ric Flair, someone fresh, and wanted to move in a different direction. We had been going back and forth to negotiate with Steve [Sting] to bring him in but talks always dropped. Bret Hart got the nod due to his popularity, especially internationally. So, we thought we’d see how he did everywhere else as champion
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“On October 12, 1992, I came out to a sold-out crowd in Saskatoon, where I’d had my very first pro wrestling match fourteen years earlier. Saskatoon.”
“MEAN” GENE OKERLUND
“Where the hell is Saskatoon?”
DAVE MELTZER
“I was called by one of the wrestlers after the match and told Bret won the title in Saskatoon, and didn’t even tell anyone for a day or two because I thought it was a rib or that the guy was mixed up.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“No one figured I’d be the one to pull the sword out of the stone. I had to respect that Flair at least passed the torch to me.”
RIC FLAIR
“He couldn’t draw a dime and they couldn’t wait to get rid of him.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“I came back through the curtain, limping and holding my finger, to an ovation of handshakes and backslaps, Owen clapping the hardest.”
WRESTLEMANIA IX
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“Aesthetically, the show was fantastic. Since the show took place in Caesars Palace, the WWE spent a lot of money presenting the show with a Roman theme. The company went as far as to dress the announcers, cameramen and ringside hands in togas, place columns around the stadium and provide live animals for select entrances, including a raven for the Undertaker and a camel for Bobby Heenan. The sunny skies provided a completely different backdrop for any WrestleMania before or since. For the production alone this show is memorable.”
JIM ROSS
“At that time, I came from a chaotic WCW with all the changes in management.”
TODD PETTENGIL (host)
“My very first pay-per-view I was wearing a toga at Caesars Palace.”
JIM ROSS
“Vince McMahon asked me prior to the show if I felt uncomfortable wearing the toga and that if I did, I didn’t have to work and could start my WWE career after WrestleMania. Heenan tried to convince me to go ‘commando’ for that event — no underwear under my toga. The wise Monsoon intervened when he heard ‘The Brain’ putting the sales pitch on me and stopped the proceedings before anyone’s shortcomings were exposed.”
DAVE MELTZER
“There were timing problems with the early matches running long… The Kamala-Bigelow match was canceled — like anyone really missed it — and several of the matches later in the card were cut short on time.”
JIM ROSS
“At no time during that PPV event was I ever sure what Randy [Savage] was going to say or when he wanted to say it. At times, he looked as if he was going to explode while watching his peers perform in the ring while he was sitting at ringside doing commentary with the great Bobby Heenan, and some jabroni who had only been in the business 19 years before making his debut in the bigtime of the WWE. Randy’s insecurities that day mirrored my own — but, perhaps, for differing reasons. Randy Savage was having a hard time being the ‘Macho Man’ while sitting at the announcer desk watching the very WrestleMania event that he headlined just years before.”
WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP: TATANKA vs SHAWN MICHAELS
TATANKA
“Taker did not want me to lose my spot. he said, ‘You’ve got a great spot, you’re doing fantastic but last year Shawn went around spreading rumors with his Kliq that you were getting an attitude, they were going to give you the belt.’ I was getting ‘an attitude,’ and they changed the decision to a count-out. That’s probably why you didn’t see a rematch. At that time I was undefeated, I was very hot, the fans connected with me. At WrestleMania IX after they rang the bell, I did my war cry, the whole place lit up. They wanted me to win the title that night, but also Shawn knew if I won the belt, I’d have it for a while.”
CRUSH vs DOINK THE CLOWN
MATT BORNE
“I never would have ever dreamed of being a clown…I just fell right into it; I did my homework and watched a lot of the Joker and Jack Nicholson. Just a lot of standing in front of the mirror, making goofy-ass faces and switching from being happy to being out there and just changing things on the drop of a dime.”
DAVE MELTZER
“A second Doink ran in and hit Crush with a fake arm and the ref counted the fall. Fans were cheering the finish. The two Doinks were making weird faces at each other doing a mime bit that was really well done. The second Doink was Steve Keirn (Skinner), who had shaved off his beard to play the role. He hid under the ring from before the show started and stayed under the ring until the show was over and all the fans had left the building, which explains his disappearance with nobody seeing him.”
MATT BORNE
“It was different for me because I was one of the featured matches on it, as opposed to the first WrestleMania, where I was a preliminary match and I was actually to go out there and get Ricky Steamboat over, which at WrestleMania IX, we were getting Doink over. I was supposed to wrestle Hogan, but Hogan refused. I don't know if he was afraid to work with me. The second choice was Davey Boy Smith and he refused to work with him too. A lot of people were wary of the clown character, so it ended up being me and Crush at WrestleMania IX.”
WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP: THE MEGA MANIACS vs MONEY INC.
KENNY CASANOVA (writer)
“[Hogan and Beefcake] grew up together, they went to the same high school, they played on the same teams and stuff. They were friends for 34 years or something like that.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Beefcake had been critically injured in Tampa. An out-of-control, bikini-clad parasailer had fallen out of the sky and smashed full force into his face with her knees. When they dragged Beefcake out of the water, his eyeballs dangled out of their smashed sockets.”
BRUTUS BEEFCAKE
“My accident, it’s a miracle I survived and it’s a miracle that I had no permanent brain damage or neurological damage. I could have been in a wheelchair and they could have been watering me like a tulip for the rest of my life. God smiled down on me about three or four times in that thing. I was blind. It didn’t look too good for me and somehow I ended up walking away from that.”
HULK HOGAN
“I get home to Clearwater, nobody’s home, so what do I do? ‘Hey guys, come on over.’ You know. Ellis Edwards, and Brutus [Beefcake] and [Randy Savage], so here we go. I used to keep four Sea-Doos behind my house, and there’s a crazy storm coming in, and here we go, taking out on those jet skis. And as we’re going through the Clearwater pass, we’re jumping these crazy waves in this storm. And Brutus takes off, going straight ahead, Macho [Man] takes off going straight ahead, and Ellis is kinda sticking with me. And so as I jump this wave, I get thrown over the front of the ski. And I got a life jacket on, so as I go into the water, I try to duck down underwater, but that damn life jacket brought me back up. And the jet ski hit me in the face. My whole eye is just blasted open, my orbital socket is broken because that 600-pound jet ski hit me right in the face,” said Hogan. I get to the emergency room, I get all stitched up, I have this two-hour operation trying to fix my orbital socket. Jimmy Hart comes over, ‘Oh my god, oh my god, baby, baby, oh my god, Vince is gonna kill you.’”
“MACHO MAN” RANDY SAVAGE
“Elizabeth and I were having problems. It happens that at the time Elizabeth and Hulk Hogan’s wife [Linda] were very, very, very best friends. And they were running around together. I didn’t think it was healthy for our relationship.”
MATT BORNE
“Elizabeth was seeing this producer, who happened to be a friend of Hogan’s. Savage found out about it. That’s why [Hogan] had the black eye. Randy Savage gave it to him. I’d bet my left nut and my son’s life on it.”
HULK HOGAN
I go to [Las] Vegas, Vince sees me and he goes, ‘You’re not wrestling, that’s it. And I said, ‘BS, if I pass a physical, I’m gonna wrestle.’ So I actually wrestled, my eye socket was completely shattered. I wrestled the tag match with I.R.S. and Ted [DiBiase], they didn’t touch my face.”
THE STEINER BROTHERS vs THE HEADSHRINKERS
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“The Steiners left a successful career in WCW for Vince’s promise of even bigger money, which hadn’t materialized. Rick and Scott were impressively built, both outstanding NCAA wrestlers out of Michigan.”
RICK STEINER
“The first thing I noticed [after joining the WWF] was the structure. They were in control and knew what they wanted.”
JEY USO (wrestler)
“My dad [Rikishi] was on the card against the Steiner Brothers and I remember him saying his feet were burnt because the mat was so hot from the sun.”
BOB BACKLUND vs RAZOR RAMON
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“Despite being one of the longest-reigning WWE Champions of all time, Bob Backlund never worked at WrestleMania until 1993.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“He was the epitome of what a champion should be. He was and is, a credit to our business. Most of all though, you know, Bobby has a heart of gold.”
SCOTT HALL (wrestler)
“Vince goes, ‘Well, I understand your father’s in the army.’ I said ‘Vince, if you want me to be G.I. Joe, I’ll be the best G.I. Joe I can be.’ I said, ‘Did you ever see Scarface?’ He said ‘No.’ I went, ‘Say hello to the bad guy.’ I just started doing that schtick and he loved it. I’m ripping off the movie and he thinks I’m a genius. Of course, I never corrected him about the genius part.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“He cut promos with an obviously put-on Cuban accent and a toothpick dangling from his lip until he flicked it away. His neck was adorned with fake gold chains and a tacky razor medallion, his unshaven face was framed by long, greasy black hair and one casual curl carefully positioned to hang right down the middle of his forehead. On Curt Hennig’s suggestion he was dubbed Razor Ramon.”
SCOTT HALL
“Vince flies to South Beach in Miami with me and personally directs the vignettes. I’m wearing a vest, with no shirt, gold chains, silk pants and loafers and we’re going through Miami International Airport. So, everybody is spotting Vince at the airport and they’re looking at me and going, ‘Who’s that Vince?’ ‘Oh, he’s the next big thing on the way up. he’s the bad guy, he’s Razor Ramon.’ So, Vince is like plugging me as we walked through the airport. It was great.”
BOB BACKLUND
“I went back [to the WWF] to be Bob Backlund — with the Mom and Dad, and apple pie — but people didn’t want to hear about it.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Razor was getting a babyface reaction. Big, good looking guy — tough guy and the crowd was really drawn to him. He had natural charisma and he was oozing machismo, man.”
KEVIN NASH (wrestler)
“We were the first guys in wrestling to recognize the anti-hero was becoming the hero. Vince always wanted to push the guy waving the flag, but we were at a state where the guy lighting the flag on fire was the hero.”
MR. PERFECT vs LEX LUGER
LEX LUGER
“Vince McMahon came up with [“The Narcissist”] along with the creative team. Back then, they told me it fit me in my real life character naturally. So I’m like, is that a compliment?”
RIC FLAIR
“To be fair to Lex, he never had time to learn because he was rushed to the top too quickly. He hadn’t prepared for it.”
LEX LUGER
“They thought ‘we better give him Curt, so he has a good match’ We went over the match all day and when we got in the ring to lock up, you can see the look in my eyes during the match when Curt forgot the match. It was so funny. We managed to get through the match. I was almost in a state of shock when Curt asked me in the match ‘What are we doing?’”
THE UNDERTAKER vs GIANT GONZALEZ
JIM ROSS
“I was amazed that Undertaker’s skill level was able to garner a solid match against the very limited Giant Gonzalez. WrestleMania 9 was a testament to the fact of just how great Undertaker was as an in-ring performer.”
HARVEY WHIPPLEMAN
“Gonzalez wasn’t probably the greatest opponent that The Undertaker has gone up against at WrestleMania. But he was certainly the biggest.”
WWF CHAMPIONSHIP: BRET “THE HITMAN” HART vs YOKOZUNA
DAVE MELTZER
“Plenty of people in the entertainment business who are great in their craft live permanently in the shadow of more charismatic people who don’t have anywhere near their talent in the same profession.”
BRET HART
“I was the perfect contrast to Hogan, especially for fans who were sick of his all too familiar act. If Hogan was the Elvis of wrestling, I was the Robert De Niro.”
DAVID BIXENSPAN (writer)
“Pro wrestling has long been a land of giants, a playground for literally outsized men to act out metaphorically outsized tropes and storylines for the teleological gratification of the masses. Nevertheless, when a 500-pound man makes his way down the aisle, people stop to pay notice. A few things to clarify about Rodney Anoa’i up front: He was not Japanese, as was implied by the flag that preceded him into the ring. He was Samoan and was announced as being from the South Pacific Islands or Polynesia, though you could hardly hear it over the traditional Japanese music that attended his arrival…”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“I had seen Rodney in Pensacola and Alabama, working for the Fullers as Kokina. Afa wanted to bring him in for a tryout. I sung his praises because for a 350 pounder, he moved like a 150 pounder, and he was so agile. Sgt. Slaughter was a huge fan as well and once Vince saw him — the first time that Yokozuna went out in the robe, and took the robe off, the reaction of the audience, ‘ohhhhhh’ they were just in awe of him. He was a big boy, and then he could move on top of it.”
DAVID BIXENSPAN
“Vince repackaged Anoa’i as Yokozuna, a nominally Japanese powerhouse that set a new bar for racial caricature. Mr. Fuji, who was already a one-stop shop for Asian stereotypes, traded in his black suit, bow tie, and bowler hat for a formal kimono, and he would accompany Yokozuna to the ring tossing salt from a wooden bucket. They were escorted by geisha girls for higher-profile matches. Yoko would scream in pidgin Japanese as he bullied his opponents, and his matches almost always culminated with him yelling “Banzai!” and jumping off the second rope, butt-first, onto his victim’s chest.”
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“Yokozuna was the first man to earn a match for the WWE title by virtue of winning the Royal Rumble, a tradition that lasts until this very day. Before then, there was no real reward for winning the Royal Rumble besides bragging rights. In 1992, the winner received the vacant WWE Championship, but in 1993, WWE decided to make the winner the number-one contender for the title at WrestleMania.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Vince asked me to come to his suite to talk. He said, ‘I want you to drop the belt to Yoko tomorrow.’ I was totally crushed. By the time I got to the dressing room the following afternoon, word that I was losing the title had leaked out to the boys. Most of them were quiet and some were angry. Knowing I was losing the belt didn’t stop me from planning on having a great match. I went over everything with Yoko and designed the match so that all the best moves were left for the final minute.”
JIM ROSS
“Hart, thanks to the ‘salt’ in his eyes thrown by Yokozuna’s manager Mr. Fuji, lost the WWE title to the 600-pounder.
ROMAN REIGNS
“I was at Rikishi’s house watching it with the Usos and tons of family. We’re all rooting for our cousin Rodney, and he had just won the title, and everybody’s going nuts, and is so proud of him, and here comes Hulkster.”
JIM ROSS
“Hogan came to the Hitman’s aid . Amazing irony at the end of the day.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Fuji stayed in the ring, absurdly challenging Hogan to a title match with Yoko right then and there. Yoko was still teetering from exhaustion and looking for a second wind that wasn’t there. Hogan blinked in astonishment at his sudden good fortune. As scripted, with my face buried in the crook of my arm, I waved him to avenge my loss. ‘Go get ’em, Hulk!’”
WWF CHAMPIONSHIP: HULK HOGAN vs YOKOZUNA
HULK HOGAN
“To the best of my recollection, I knew I was leaving. I couldn’t remember if I was going to do a movie, but I talked into, ‘Hey man, what’s the finish in the main event?’ He told me what it was and I said, ‘Brother, if I go out and help Bret Hart. Hulk Hogan, Yokozuna, you can book us in the next pay-per-view.’ It was my hare-brained idea and it caused quite a controversy.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Go ahead, Hogan, take from me what I worked so hard to get.”
HULK HOGAN
“The reasoning was because of the international tour we had coming up. It was going to be Hulk’s farewell tour in a lot of respects and we felt it would be better to have Hulk as the champion.”
BRET HART
“Before I’d even made it backstage, he simply ducked the powder Fuji threw in his face, clotheslined Fuji and dropped his big leg on Yoko. I could hear the one . . . two . . . three, the roar of the crowd and Hogan’s music thumping. I couldn’t help but stare at the TV monitor watching Hogan work the crowd with the same old posing routine, a hand behind the ear, shaking the World belt in the air as if to say it belonged to him all along.”
BRET HART
“A few minutes later, Hogan came up to me excited and happy and said, ‘Thank you, brother. I won’t forget it. I’ll be happy to return the favor.’ I looked my old friend in the eye and said, ‘I’m going to remember that, Terry.’”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“In 1993, I think I would have loved to turn Hulk Hogan heel. There was a segment of the audience already booing him so just kind of flip the script. I would have loved to work an extended program with Bret Hart ending up with the WWF Championship. It would have been a tough road I’ll say that because there were pockets that Hulk Hogan was the hero, and nothing was going to change that.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Through those building years, there were no two closer people in the business than Vince and Hulk, that helped develop all those aspects of Hulkamania. So there was a personal friendship. Hulk going, it was personal.”
PART FIVE: (coming soon)
Back to PART ONE: The Grandaddy of ’Em All, PART TWO: Bigger. Badder. Better., PART THREE: What The World Is Watching
Wrestling Club with Darren & Brett is a podcast produced by WFMU.
