The Oral History of WrestleMania I
The following is an oral history of unsourced quotes from numerous interviews over the years about the creation and execution of the inaugural WrestleMania event, and the 1980’s wrestling boom.
VINCE MCMAHON (wrestling promoter, executive)
“Professional wrestling has always been a show. When Abraham Lincoln wrestled, it was a show. You didn’t know that? Oh, yes, he did. I’m serious. You can look it up. Abe Lincoln was a wrestler.”
ANDY KAUFMAN (comedian, actor)
“There’s no drama like wrestling.”
WERNER HERZOG (filmmaker)
“I look with great interest at pheonomena like WrestleMania.”
CM PUNK (wrestler)
“Pro wrestling has always been ingrained into American culture. It was one of the first things that was ever on television, so everybody watched it. Countless people tell me, ‘I got into wrestling because my grandfather watched it.’” It was always there. No matter how much people want to pretend that they’re embarrassed by it, that they don’t watch it, everybody knows about it. It’s truly, I believe, one of the only art forms that America has actually given to the world, besides jazz and comic books.”
JESSE “THE BODY” VENTURA (wrestler, politician)
“Wrestling is ballet with violence.”
KING KONG BUNDY (wrestler)
“Wrestling is bullshit. It’s two men in their underwear pretending to fight.”
BUDDY ROGERS (wrestler)
“McMahon Jr. is the modern-day Hitler of professional wrestling. And if you told him that to his face, he’d take you out and buy you the biggest steak you could eat. He thrives on the people around him hating his guts. He loves it.”
DONALD TRUMP (former U.S. President, businessman)
“He’s a very unusual guy. And an amazing guy. I just love him.”
JOHN OLIVER (comedian, host, Last Week Tonight)
“Vince McMahon plays an asshole on TV, but is also an asshole in real life.”
“MR. WONDERFUL” PAUL ORNDORFF (wrestler)
“Whether you like him, dislike him, love him or whatever, the guy was smart. He knew what to do and he knew how to do it.”
LINDA MCMAHON (executive, politician)
“He clearly is a showman and understands that particular world. He really understands the man on the street.”
PETER LUUKO (general manager, Los Angeles Sports Arena)
“Wrestling always produced strong crowds, but it was often a very rough night — mostly males who were beer-drinkers and had a tendency to get into a lot of fights. Vince not only called it entertainment, he made it over into real entertainment — rock music, hype, stars, lights — and that brought fans out of the closet from every age and economic group — teens, children under 10, film stars, attorneys, bankers and the blue-collar people who came before.”
RIC FLAIR (wrestler)
“In terms of marketing and the production of the show, Vince McMahon set the standard. He’s done more to make our business big than anybody.”
AUBREY SITTERSON (writer, The Comic Book Story of Professional Wrestling)
“In the height of the territory days, every major NWA territory, and the more tenacious outlaw territories, were doing shows at least weekly. Even in less populated areas like West Texas, promoters would put on ‘loops’ of shows, bouncing around from town-to-town.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“You had all these different franchises, 25 to 30 of these territories, throughout North America. They all produced their own syndicated television show, they all had their separate crew of talent, their own roster of guys.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“[My grandfather] was promoting boxing and wrestling back in New York City, principally in one of the old Madison Square Gardens. And, from there, my dad, having helped his father promote wrestling and, more boxing in those days — putting show cards up and selling tickets and whatever it may be — it sort of got in my father’s blood. My father did some boxing, too, and was more or less New York–based, then opened up in Washington and did wrestling and some rock ’n’ roll, back when that was first starting. He founded the WWF in 1963.”
PAUL HEYMAN (promoter, manager)
“[Vince Sr.] was a true gentleman, the pope of Madison Square Garden.”
BRUNO SAMMARTINO
“He was probably the biggest promoter because where he promoted is where all the big arenas were. He always tried to cooperate with other promoters, so I would go to wrestle in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Texas and Florida. He was a guy that really wanted to get along with other promoters; he didn’t want any war, because occasionally there were wars amongst promoters where one would try to conquer the other one.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“My dad should have been canonized. He was a wonderful man. I didn’t meet him until I was 12 years old, and I fell in love with him the moment I met him. It was like going from rags to riches when I’d go to Washington, D.C., to see him.”
JESSE VENTURA
“You could be angry at [Vince Sr.] for a payoff; you’d walk in, you’d voice your complaint, you’d walk out, you’d feel great — and yet, you got no more money.”
KURT ANGLE (wrestler, Olympic gold medalist)
“Back in the ’60s and ’70s during Bruno Sammartino and Bobby Backlund’s day wrestling was very old school and much less demanding. Storylines seemed to be built around ethnic backgrounds like, Bruno’s Italian background and Bob Backlund’s Irish background.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“The difference between Dad’s and Granddad’s day and my day is pure presentation. There was too much emphasis on the sports element and not enough on entertainment in the old days.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“I had this instinct wrestling could be better, bigger.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“My dad tells me, ‘Look, the guy in Bangor, I just threw him the hell out. Go up there. You can’t ever say I didn’t give you an opportunity, but this is the first and last opportunity you’ll have in this company…’ I went to Bangor, the northernmost outpost of my dad’s territory. Now I’m hustling, promoting a product I love. People cheer and boo and have a good time — and I leave with some money in my pocket. Goddamn, life is good!”
JIM CROCKETT JR. (promoter)
“Linda is brilliant, and she helped run the business.”
LINDA MCMAHON
“I was the honors student and the civic leader in my hometown, and Vince was the local badass. There was a little bit of that bad boy aspect that I think was incredibly appealing.”
STEPHANIE MCMAHON (executive, performer)
“When my mother was pregnant with me, my dad had to take her to the courthouse, and their car broke down. He was actually in a tow truck to go declare bankruptcy.”
LINDA MCMAHON
“The bankruptcy came as a result of our taking some few dollars that we had saved early on and investing in a couple of businesses that we didn’t know anything about …[instead of] sticking to what we knew [and] growing that company.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“I knew my dad wouldn’t have really sold me the business had he known what I was going to do. My dad thought I was nuts, and he was right really, but I didn’t know I was nuts. And then we just went about doing it.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“In the old days, there were wrestling fiefdoms all over the country, each with its own little lord in charge. Each little lord respected the rights of his neighboring little lord. No takeovers or raids were allowed. There were maybe 30 of these tiny kingdoms in the U.S. and if I hadn’t bought out my dad, there would still be 30 of them, fragmented and struggling. I, of course, had no allegiance to those little lords.”
BOB COSTAS (sportscaster, NBC Sports)
“He either outfought or bought-out all of his competitors, and he became the driving force behind wrestling.”
DAVE MELTZER (journalist, Wrestling Observer)
“[Vince McMahon Jr.] took great strides in making the WWF the name brand nationally, picking off much of the top talent from the smaller regional groups who didn’t have the money to compete, as it had all the strong national cable outlets locked up along with the best syndication network and mainstream publicity the likes of which wrestling hadn’t received since the 50s.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“My major step was television on a local basis. We already had our network in the Northeast and we started selling these shows to stations in other fiefdoms. In Chicago, in Los Angeles, the WWF brand of wrestling was something new. We had better athletes — more upscale and more charisma. The local guys were lazy.”
“MEAN” GENE OKERLUND (interviewer, host)
“All those regional territories in Dallas and L.A. or Portland … it was just a matter of time that an operation like St. Louis would fold. They just couldn’t compete.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“My dad would get these phone calls from his cronies who had these little fiefdoms. ‘Hey Vince, what’s your kid doing? He’s coming into my territory. He’s gonna wind up dead. I’m gonna crush him like a grape.”
TITO SANTANA (wrestler)
“I think Vince Jr. was more of a brutal businessman than Vince Sr.”
“MR. USA” TONY ATLAS (wrestler, bodybuilder)
“Vince would let another company spend the money to build you up. Then he would call you up, offer you more money and get you to leave the company that made you.”
JIM CROCKETT JR.
“Vince tried to steal talent, and he stole some good talent from us.”
ERIC BISCHOFF (producer, booker)
“He raided territories and offered boatloads of money to guys who they wanted who were committed to smaller territories. He bought out markets and blackballed people.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“Promoters didn’t do much [back then]. Some were still doing studio wrestling, where you’d bring a crowd of 60 people into a studio. Magazines were on a cheap paper, all filled with blood and guts.”
GERALD BRISCO (wrestler, booker)
“Southern fans were used to studio wrestling.”
DAVE MELTZER
“The peak of Georgia Championship Wrestling, Inc. on a national basis was in 1981, shortly after it was renamed World Championship Wrestling as the name of the television program. For the year, it drew a 6.4 average rating on Saturday nights, making it the most watched show on cable television.”
ARN ANDERSON (wrestler)
“We concentrated on the bell-to-bell action. We didn’t have the splendor; we didn’t have all the gala, or the bells and whistles. It was basically a ‘blood and guts’ promotion. Our work rate is what we hung our hat on versus all the pomp and circumstance that Vince brought.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Many of the stockholders, including Jack and Jerry Brisco as well as the regional promoters, sold a controlling interest to Vince McMahon for $750,000, who promptly closed the company down and put WWF programming in the valuable time slots, thereby eliminating any serious threat for national competition during a pivotal historical period.”
GERALD BRISCO
“They call it ‘Black Saturday’ for a reason. It was a pretty volatile time. I think Vince even got few death threats from people looking to knock him off.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“I’ve been supposed to wind up at the bottom of so many rivers, it’s ridiculous.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Jim Crockett, Turner and McMahon reached an agreement where Crockett paid McMahon $1 million for the time slots, McMahon left, Turner canceled his deal with Watts, and Crockett attempted to go national based on his new penetration.”
HULK HOGAN
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“When you say to anybody off the street, ‘Hey, do you know anything about pro wrestling?’ They’ll say, ‘Yeah, wasn’t that guy Hulk Hogan a pro wrestler?’”
MEAN” GENE OKERLUND
“He is arguably the greatest wrestling talent per se that the wrestling industry has ever seen. You can talk about Lou Thesz, Verne Gagne, The Bruiser, Bruno Sammartino, but there was never anything like Hogan. He is a part of history. He really is.”
BRUNO SAMMARTINO (wrestler)
“I would never compare Hogan to any of the greats. He don’t belong, or deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.”
DON MURACO (wrestler)
“He was probably no Ray Stevens or Dory Funk Jr. when it came to wrestling in the ring, but when it came to dollar signs he was certainly the man. He was making me money and a lot of other people, too.”
THE IRON SHEIK (wrestler)
“He jabroni, but one of the best entertainers. Mr. McMahon make him number one draw on the earth.”
LARRY ZBYSZKO (wrestler)
“Back in those days, he was just Andre the Giant’s jabroni.”
DAVID SHOEMAKER (writer)
“Hogan had worked in the WWWF in 1979 and ‘80. When Hogan got cast in Rocky III, he has a falling out with Vince Sr., who supposedly felt that the role would call into question wrestling’s legitimacy.”
HULK HOGAN
“What [acting in Rocky III] did for me was, [Rocky Balboa] had this persona and this perception of greatness, and Thunderlips stood next to him, 100 pounds heavier and almost a foot taller… It put us on the map really quickly with a really good perception of what a wrestler should look like and be portrayed as.”
SYLVESTER STALLONE (actor, director)
“6’7” and 295 pounds with 24-inch biceps. He was an amazing athlete.”
HULK HOGAN
“I was on a talk show with Lou Ferrigno, and I was actually bigger than he was! I went back to the dressing room that night and all of the wrestlers go ‘Oh my God you’re bigger than the hulk on TV’ so they started calling me ‘The Hulk.’”
WADE KELLER (journalist)
“I had watched Hulkamania blossom in the AWA. Vince McMahon didn’t create Hulkamania. Hulk Hogan and the AWA fans created Hulkamania, and almost did so against the will of the AWA promoter Verne Gagne.”
“MEAN” GENE OKERLUND
“Verne Gagne syndicated a show called All Star Wrestling for the AWA. The AWA was based out of Minneapolis, but Verne ran the market all the way from Chicago straight on west to San Francisco.”
DAVID SHOEMAKER
“Capitalizing on his Hollywood celebrity, he worked as a hero, and where he struggled in vain for the championship, which was held (in storyline terms) by old-school baddie Nick Bockwinkel; in real world terms, Verne Gagne didn’t think he needed to put the belt on him just yet…Hogan felt underappreciated despite incredible fan support, and when Vince Jr. came calling, Hogan was eager to be snatched away.”
GREG GAGNE (wrestler)
“We get to St. Paul Christmas night, and Hogan doesn’t show up. I called him up and said, ‘Hulkster, what’s going on?’ [Hulk said], ‘Well, imma go to New York.’ He said, ‘Didn’t you get the telegram?’ I said, ‘Here’s the deal. If you wanna go to New York, do what everybody has done in this profession from years past. Fulfill all your commitments, go through Christmas week, and if you want to go, then go.’ [Hulk said], ‘Well, Vince paid me more money not to show up to the matches.’”
BOB BACKLUND (wrestler)
“As far as I know, [Vince McMahon’s] plan was for me to get the championship back from the Iron Sheik. Two weeks before the match, I was taken out and Hogan was put in.”
HULK HOGAN
“Bob Backlund speaks up, and he says, ‘I don’t think anybody should win the title that’s not a real athlete.”
BOB BACKLUND
“I thought that he didn’t meet the standards. If I would have been doing all this goofy stuff that [Hulk] was doing, he wouldn’t have liked me being champion.”
HULK HOGAN
“I go, ‘Vince Sr., all due respect, that’s not the deal I made with your son. But I just burnt a huge bridge in Minnesota. And Vince Jr. goes, ‘Aw. Let’s talk.’ Vince says, ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’ I guess he went to his dad, and he fixed it… I went out — and Iron Sheik did the job for me.”
THE IRON SHEIK
“Without the Iron Sheik, there never be a WrestleMania, and let me tell you why. When I start in this business, Mr. Gagne in Minnesota was my coach. One week before my [WWF Championship] match with Hogan, he called me and said, ‘Don’t drop the belt to that bleached-blonde jabroni. He’s a punk. I’ll give you $100,000. You get in the ring with him at Madison Square Garden, you break his leg, take his belt and bring it to the AWA. We put Vince out of business.’ I have a lot of respect for Mr. Gagne. I don’t know what to do. So I said, ‘I’ll call you back in 24 hours.’ Then, I talk to Sergeant Slaughter. I said, ‘Oh, Mr. Sergeant, I have a problem.’ Sgt. Slaughter is also trained by Verne Gagne. But he says, ‘$100,000 is nothing. We’re going to make millions working with Vince.’ So I told Mr. Gagne ‘No.’ I lose the match to Hulk Hogan. But I did it with pride and honor.”
DON MURACO
“All these different writers [said] Hulk Hogan was a bum, Hulk Hogan couldn’t wrestle, Hulk Hogan couldn’t do this, Hulk Hogan couldn’t do that. But goddamn, all the buildings were sold out. There was a lot of talent there and all the guys worked together, but Hulk was pretty much carrying the flag, you know?”
TITO SANTANA (wrestler, teacher)
“Personally, I was happy that I was on the same cards with Hulk. Vince McMahon got him hotter than a firecracker and he was drawing big, big crowds everywhere he went.”
ANDRE THE GIANT
DON MURACO
“There is another concrete pillar. Part of the foundation of WWE, was the Giant.”
CARY ELWES (actor, writer)
“He took the breath out of the room. You just gasp. It’s like the eighth wonder of the world, 7 feet, 450 pounds. The sweetest guy, a gentle giant. He’d give you the shirt off of his back, it’d be enough for 5 people, but he’d give it to you.”
JASON HEIHR (filmmaker, HBO’s Andre the Giant)
“In the ethos of pro wrestling, there is embellishment and exaggeration of what makes up that world. With Andre, he’s probably the greatest example of that.”
BRUNO SAMMARTINO
“I met Andre the first time when he was maybe 19, 20. I was touring Australia and from Australia, I went to New Zealand for a couple of matches, and he was there. You want to hear something funny? You know how tall he was — we actually weighed the same. This was in the 60s. I was 270. Andre was only about 270–275. He looked like a basketball player; he was so tall. I didn’t see him for years. I was in Montreal, Canada maybe four years later, five years later, something like that, and when I saw him, I didn’t know it was the same guy because by this time, he weighed well over 400 pounds.”
BRUNO SAMMARTINO
“We used to go out to dinner. Andre liked to hang around the bar. He was one guy you didn’t try to keep up with.”
TIM WHITE (referee)
“He could drink an airplane dry before it got to takeoff. He’d go into a restaurant and eat 12 steaks and 15 lobsters. He didn’t do that often, but if he felt like putting on a show and having some laughs, he’d go ahead and do that.”
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (actor, bodybuilder, politician)
“Andre the Giant and Wilt Chamberlin both went out for dinner several times in Mexico City. Andre always wanted to pay for the dinner. So, this one day I snuck out to give the waiter my credit card. The waiter gave me the bill to sign. All of a sudden, ‘NOOO…YOU MAKE ME VERRY ANGRY ARNOLD!’ They carry me out of the restaurant and sat me on the roof of my car out front.”
GERALD BRISCO
“He was one of the nicest guys, but I have seen idiots in bars all over the country challenge him, and with one little shove they’d be 10 feet away.”
“MACHO MAN” RANDY SAVAGE (wrestler, actor)
“Everyone had respect for him. Unfortunately, the guy was in pain all of the time.”
JACKIE MCAULEY (musician)
“They said ‘You’ve got acromegaly,’ He said ‘Yeah, I know. I’ve known about it for years.’ They wanted to operate and he said no. I couldn’t convince him. I guess at that point, it was a little bit late anyway. He said, ‘If this is the size that God wanted me to be, I’m going to be this size.’”
SHANE MCMAHON (wrestler, businessman)
“I’d always tell my dad and my mom I was going to grow up and be Andre’s tag team partner and I’m not going to be small like my father, I’m going to be big like Andre. So that’s how my mom really got me to eat my vegetables.”
MARK HENRY (wrestler, weightlifter)
“I was at the Beaumont Civic Center when I was nine. You see all the kids run to the barricades, once upon a time, I was one of them. But so many kids came behind that they knocked me over the barricade. My feet were on the barricade and my hands were on the ground, and Andre put me back on the other side of the fence. I’ll always remember how he grabbed me — it was like an angel descending down on me.”
ANDRE THE GIANT
“I am not supernatural. I’m just myself. So, what God gave me, I use it to make a living.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“MR. WONDERFUL” PAUL ORNDORFF
“In wrestling, if there is a legend, Roddy Piper is a legend, no doubt about it. Nobody was ever like he was. He knew how to put asses in the seats.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART (wrestler)
“Roddy changed the way promos were done. He changed the way business worked, and he raised the bar, and I don’t know if anyone ever topped him.”
RONDA ROUSEY (UFC fighter, wrestler)
“Without Piper, wrestling would look very formulaic, with a single mold for how every match should be promoted and performed. Without him, there wouldn’t be as much variety as we see today.”
JAKE “THE SNAKE” ROBERTS (wrestler)
“He’d bite you and scratch you. That’s what was so awesome about him — he was ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper, with those bagpipes, and the grit and the grind. If there was ever a working man’s hero, it was him. He was middle class, he had to fight his way up, and he had to fight all the way through.”
TITO SANTANA (wrestler)
“Nobody was better than him on the mic. He knew exactly what he wanted. I don’t think he was bigger than me, but he went up against big guys and didn’t go off his feet very much. He was a great heel.”
“COWBOY” BOB ORTON (wrestler)
“We had trouble in a lot of places and there were a lot of times that I’d say, ‘Roddy let’s just try to get through these people,’ and we’d be hiding under the bleachers — and you couldn’t blame us, because the people were nuts!”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“I always thought he should have been champion.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“I didn’t need [a World Championship run]. Only people who can’t draw money need belts… I packaged myself in such a way that I just need to get on TV. And the only thing that I do need is a great opponent, but I don’t need no belt to get over and they all knew that. It would be a waste of a belt. Give it to somebody who needs it.”
JAKE “THE SNAKE” ROBERTS
“Roddy started the whole idea of [Piper’s Pit]. That was his baby. He went to Vince McMahon and said, ‘Give me three minutes a week on television and I’ll get over without doing a squash match.’ Roddy was one of the best with a microphone…being one who likes to watch you hang yourself, Vince gave it to him. But Roddy didn’t hang himself — he came out on top.”
THE ROSTER
HILLBILLY JIM (wrestler)
“Our group of guys got woven into the fabric of American society. There’s been guys who’ve come along since that have been big for a spell but are then forgotten. Myself, Andre, Piper, Big John Studd, King Kong Bundy, J.Y.D., you know the names… People remember us.”
B. BRIAN BLAIR
“To me, Paul Orndorff was the best heel in the business in our era… He had so much energy. A lot of the fans don’t realize how much he got Hogan over. He really made Hulk Hogan look phenomenal because Paul was such an athlete.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON (actor, wrestler)
“It’s hard to articulate how ‘on fire’ [Jimmy Snuka] was in the early 80’s and how much he impacted and electrified the wrestling business. His promos had a quiet intensity that made you believe every word and you just knew that you had to buy your tickets.”
BOB BACKLUND
“In the ring, [Snuka] was a genius. Out of the ring he was an embarrassment to society.”
JIM CORNETTE
“It’s obvious if you go back and look at the facts of the [murder] case, something went on and something got covered up.”
ROWDY RODDY PIPER
“Bobby Orton [Jr.] was so great. I used to tell him, ‘You need to make a mistake sometimes so people can see how good you really are. I think the greatest, most honorable wrestling family I could think of is the Orton family.”
“MR. USA” TONY ATLAS
“[Big John Studd] was just a big sweetheart. Loved by everybody. Nobody could say anything bad about John Studd.”
“MR. USA” TONY ATLAS
“Wendi Richter started drawing the same crowd that Hogan did. That’s why they took the belt off her. She was getting as big as Hogan. They didn’t want the women wrestlers to be that big.”
PENNY BANNER (wrestler)
“I don’t have to dance around the subject — [The Fabulous] Moolah was a pimp… She sent trainees to wrestling promoters in set numbers. Renting them out to promoters in bulk, with the understanding that the girls would have sex with the promoter and wrestlers who wanted them.”
TITO SANTANA
“Junkyard Dog was a very good friend of mine. He was over big time in Louisiana. He was a very kind individual who would give you the shirt off his back.”
BARRY WINDHAM (wrestler)
“I was [in the WWF] for a few months. [Mike Rotundo] and my sister were newly married, and we’re really close friends. I just wanted to keep him and my sister fed. I shot it past Vince, and he said yeah, so here came Mike.”
NIKOLAI VOLKOFF
“We were huge. The Cold War, Hostages in Iran. I didn’t want to be a Russian sympathizer. Freddie Blassie told me the best way for me to fight communism was to show how evil it was. He suggested to Vince to put Sheik and I together. It worked right away. We had people jump in the ring and try to attack us. It was dangerous and very real in those days.”
THE IRON SHEIK
“I was not a character like other wrestlers. I loved this country. When I moved here, I was an assistant coach for the U.S. wrestling team. But my anti-U.S. comments were for business. I most hated man in America.”
“MR. WONDERFUL” PAUL ORNDORFF
“Tito Santana was one of the hardest working guys in the business. When Tito used to make that comeback, the people went crazy because he had so much fire. He had so much damn energy. He could just go and go and go.”
TITO SANTANA
“A babyface didn’t come any better than [Ricky Steamboat].”
DAVID SHOEMAKER
“There was no subtlety with King Kong Bundy, no fancy top-rope dives or even more modern-era monster moves like chokeslams and powerbombs. Nope, he just squashed you like a bug.”
BRUTUS BEEFCAKE
“Right after [Hogan] came in, he got me a tryout. We cooked up this Brutus Beefcake name and I got my chance. He got me that tryout.”
DAVID SAMMARTINO (wrestler)
“[The WWF] would never do anything with me — here I am, I’m David Sammartino, I’m the son of Bruno Sammartino, I had this talent — when I say talent, not only was I a strong man, I was a good wrestling technician, which made me a little different than other guys… I felt like I had really something to offer.”
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
“Bruno Sammartino was a legend. He was the American Dream personified. From his childhood in Italy hiding from Nazis to selling out Madison Square Garden 188 times as the biggest star of wrestling, he was a hero in every stage of his life.”
DON MURACO
“I don’t think there was ever anybody better as a manager or as quick-witted and brilliant as Bobby Heenan. What a quick-witted, funny, intelligent, comic genius. How entertaining was that guy? He was so brilliant.”
WENDI RICHTER
“Even though [Capt. Lou Albano] led a different lifestyle than I did, I liked him. You couldn’t help but like him. He was a little bit more outspoken than I am.”
BOBBY “THE BRAIN” HEENAN (manager)
“Everybody had a different style. Albano’s was to run around with his shirt ripped open, and rubber bands on his face. And people wanted to see him do that. And Freddie [Blassie], the reason he didn’t run around, or anything was because he was 97 years old! Freddie wasn’t going to take bumps; Freddie was in his 60’s or 70’s. His days were over. He would just bite you.”
JIMMY HART (manager, musician)
“When I was young, I was part of a group called The Gentrys and we had a million-selling record called “Keep on Dancin’”. So, we went out and signed with Dick Clark and we did tours with the Beach Boys and Sonny and Cher, and back then, there were all of these bus tours, but no matter where we were, I always watched wrestling… When Jerry Lawler wanted to cut a wrestling album, so he called me, and that’s how we first met. He asked me if I wanted to come down to Memphis and manage him, so I started managing Jerry, and I was in the business.”
DON MURACO
“Gene Okerlund, oh my God, what a voice. He wouldn’t steal the interview from you. If you got stuck, he could lead you. The guys that ran by themselves, he let them run. But he was just excellent. A witty, sharp, clever guy.”
BOBBY “THE BRAIN” HEENAN
“[Gorilla Monsoon] was one big, tough man. He was a decent, honest man.
WERNER HERZOG
“I liked Jesse Ventura, who used to be a bodyguard of the Rolling Stones and he used to be a studio wrestler who played the bad guy in the ring. Completely stylized. And he became Governor of Minnesota. And I always liked him for his down-to-earth approach. And he said once, about his time in the ring as a wrestler, one of those WrestleMania people, and he said ‘win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat.’ I really like him for that.”
THE GAMBLE
VINCE MCMAHON
“Certainly, it takes no genius to recognize there’s always this one big, huge event, whether it was sports or entertainment. So why not wrestling?”
GEORGE SCOTT
“At one point, Vince wanted to call the event The Colossal Tussle. I thought that was really stupid. So, I started flapping my arms and skipping around the room, going, ‘Oh, the Colossal Tussle, the Colossal Tussle.’
HOWARD FINKEL (ring announcer)
“I said, ‘The Beatles, when they came to the United States back in 1964, their phenomenon was dubbed Beatlemania. Why can’t we call our event WrestleMania?’”
VINCE MCMAHON
“It was the biggest gamble I’ve ever been involved with.”
DAVE MELTZER
“This was sort of a tenuous time for the WWF. They had a good 1984 in a lot of places (around the country) but they were in deficit spending at the time.”
LINDA MCMAHON
“We had spent years rebuilding. To take a risk like this again was quite scary. But Vince truly believed in this concept. It hadn’t been done before. Offering something on closed-circuit meant you had to broker individual deals with the venues themselves all across the country. You had to rent all of the equipment necessary to carry the event. We didn’t have that kind of cash. So then to convince a bank to give us a letter of credit to do all of this.”
HULK HOGAN
“I was in the office every day. I saw the pressure building in the pipes, as they were thinking, ‘How are we gonna pull this off?’ I do know that everything he owned and loved and cared about, he put up on the auction block.”
LINDA MCMAHON
“You just knew that letter of credit would be due the morning after WrestleMania, and it was tense that whole night. We hocked everything we owned for WrestleMania.”
DAVE MELTZER
“They would have been deep, deep into red ink. It’s almost like they said, ‘We’re losing money, so let’s put on a huge show and hopefully we make millions of dollars.’ And they did.”
ROCK N WRESTLING
JIMMY HART (manager)
“[In the 80’s], everything was so colorful.”
ROBERT THOMPSON (professor)
“So much of pop culture then was simple and cartoon-like, and I think wrestling fit into that. This campy, extreme style of someone like Cyndi Lauper or Mr. T with his bling … It was so consistent with what wrestling was doing, taking this idea of a look, a style, and amping it up and raising the voltage.”
BILL SIMMONS
“Suddenly, wrestling was cool, which made little sense because wrestling fans were fundamentally uncool. We felt vindicated and exposed all at once.”
JIMMY BRAWOLER (producer)
“All of a sudden, guys come out of the closet, looking around sheepishly until we figured out that a bunch of us were wrestling fans. It was like cocaine. Nobody admits to wanting blow until somebody breaks it out and everybody’s doing it.”
B. BRIAN BLAIR
“That whole Rock ’n’ Wrestling thing was unbelievable. When we started doing that, we knew that wrestling went from being a blue-collar kind of sport to an All-American, all-encompassing sports entertainment machine.”
ALAN HUNTER (MTV host)
“There were certainly a lot of wrestlers that were not too much a fan of this collaboration with MTV.”
“MR. USA” TONY ATLAS
“A lot of us old-timers didn’t like it. That was the beginning of Vince getting more people involved in the wrestling world other than just wrestlers.”
TITO SANTANA
“The wrestlers ourselves, we didn’t think we needed it. But Vince was thinking in a different way. He was thinking about giving us publicity with a different fan.”
JIM CORNETTE (promoter, manager)
“I mean, celebs were playing with Gorgeous George years ago. [Vince Sr.] had the chance to have the first major celebrity crossover in the modern era. Vince Sr. thought that it would be too ‘showbiz’, too entertainment and make the business look phony to have Andy Kaufman involved.”
“MEAN” GENE OKERLUND
“Look, there had been mainstream people involved in the business before. Retired boxing champions like Jack Dempsey and Joe Frazier had been brought in as guest referees. But the demographics they drew would not include people like Diane Keaton and Danny DeVito. Those celebrities came to WWF shows to see Hulk Hogan.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“Some guy’s taking pictures of my feet. Guy’s name was Andy Warhol.”
WENDI RICHTER (wrestler)
“Cyndi [Lauper] was on a flight from Puerto Rico with Lou Albano and they struck up a conversation on the flight.”
DAVE WOLFF (music manager, producer)
“We cast Cyndi’s actual mom to play her mother in the “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” video — she was terrific by the way — and I really thought that Captain Lou Albano would be perfect for her father.”
WENDI RICHTER
“[Capt. Lou Albano] announced that he was her manager on the wrestling programs [in storyline] without her knowledge until someone told her. She said that he wasn’t her manager and then he insulted her. She challenged him to a wrestling match, and I was selected [to wrestle on Cyndi’s behalf]. I don’t know exactly who selected me, but it was wonderful because her song ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ was my favorite song. So, it was like a dream come true. She’s a very, very good person. Very down to earth. She’s not what I thought a rock and roll superstar would be.”
LENNIE PETZE
“When Cyndi won the Grammy for Best New Artist, Hulk Hogan walked her out on stage. We asked him to pretend he was her bodyguard. It was cool.”
HULK HOGAN
“I picked her up in my arms and took a picture with her. From that point on, everybody thought we were dating. When Cyndi wasn’t involved with wrestling anymore, they would ask me about her and I’d say, ‘I had to kick her out, brother. Too much red hair dye on the pillowcase.’ But we were just very good friends.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“There was a big difference between Cyndi Lauper and Mr. T. While Cyndi came into our business not to take anything out, Mr. T thought, ‘What can I do for Mr. T?’”
JASON POWELL (writer)
“Mr. T was one of the biggest celebrities during this time period. He took part in the ‘America’s Toughest Bouncer’ contest and was spotted by Sylvester Stallone, who then cast him as Clubber Lang in Rocky 3. NBC furthered his career with the hugely successful A-Team television show in 1983.”
HULK HOGAN
“Piper and Orndorff basically didn’t want Mr. T there. We got ‘T’ in the ring a couple of times and they weren’t real nice to him.”
MR. T
“I wasn’t a guy coming in there to make a mockery of wrestling. I came to get down. I didn’t mind them being skeptical, I just wanted to be able to prove myself to them. Some accepted and some didn’t and that’s OK. Vince McMahon called me in so it didn’t matter if they loved me or hated me. They didn’t sign my checks.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“There was a press conference at Rockefeller Center leading to the event. Out of nowhere, Mr. T just dove on me. No discussion about it beforehand. He didn’t have any respect.”
“SUPERFLY” JIMMY SNUKA
“Mr. T was a good brudda, but that should have been my spot, teaming with Hogan. I had been there for several years and had had established myself in those feuds with Muraco, Piper, Bob Backlund, and Ray “The Crippler” Stevens, and I feel like I should have been wrestling in the main event at WrestleMania, and not just in Hogan’s corner. It was disappointing, for sure. That’s when I realized things weren’t working for me, and it wasn’t long after that I quit the WWF.”
MUHAMMAD ALI
“[I got my promotional skills] from seeing Gorgeous George wrestle in Las Vegas. I saw his aides spraying deodorant in the opponents’ corner to contain the smell. I also saw 13,000 full seats. I talked with Gorgeous for five minutes after the match and started being a big-mouth and a bragger. He told me people would come to see me get beat. Others would come to see me win. I’d get ’em coming and going.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“I really wanted to work with Ali at WrestleMania. But as we were going through the paces to build up the event, we realized it could get very ugly — and he could get very hurt — without some control. So, we made Ali a special official at ringside.”
MATT BORNE (wrestler)
“[Liberace] was just somebody that I never thought I would meet.”
LIBERACE (musician)
“[My mother] was a great fan of wrestling. If my mother was alive today, she would say, ‘Son, you’re finally a man.’”
THE ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA
LINDA MCMAHON
“The Governor’s office called; celebrities, everyone wanted to see WrestleMania live. Tickets for my family were stolen off my desk and scalped on the street.”
MATT BORNE
“Barry Orton, Bret Hart and I; we were all at this one show and they posted the line-up for who was on the card. They didn’t post the matches, but they posted for everybody that was going to be on WrestleMania, on this sheet of paper and posted it in the locker room there. And as soon as it was posted, everybody freakin’ gathered around to see if their name was on it. I can remember standing there with Barry Orton and Bret Hart and they were going ‘Shit’ and they said, ‘You lucky bastard; you’re on it’ and I was on it, and I just said ‘Sweet’.”
JASON POWELL
“I can’t stress how huge this show was in its day. Hogan and Mr. T actually hosted Saturday Night Live the night before.”
LENNY PICKETT (musician)
“We’ve had plenty of wrestlers on Saturday Night Live over the years and most have been great. They’re performance artists, doing a kind of physical quasi-humor, and stay in character or else ruin they’d ruin the joke. Similar imagery and outlandish personalities, made for a perfect match.”
BILLY CRYSTAL (actor)
“I said to Hulk Hogan, one of his pecs was heaving with laughter and he was wearing a tank top, and I said, ‘Look at your chest, it looks like Dorothy Lamour from behind walking to commissary.’ They just went, and when that happened the audience went wild, because it was live and it was right in front of them.”
HULK HOGAN
“Richard [Belzer] asked me to demonstrate a professional wrestling hold [on his show]. I put what’s called a front chinlock on the man and when I released it he fell and hit his head on the floor. It’s a situation where you need to be a professional at all times and the type of move, when I would put that on a professional wrestler, I would apply probably 10 times as much pressure.”
BRUTUS BEEFCAKE
“And when Hulk let go, Belzer fell down and split his head open on the stage floor. If someone challenges your livelihood, you answer. It might have gotten a few more people interested in seeing WrestleMania.”
JOHN STOSSEL (television personality, pundit)
“I taped a TV report on how pro wrestling is fake, and a wrestler beat me up, hitting me on both ears. Weeks afterward, loud noises hurt my ears. Someone then said that that the wrestler’s boss, Vince McMahon, told him to hit me, so I sued McMahon.”
HULK HOGAN
“My picture appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated. That picture gave me a level of credibility no other wrestler had ever enjoyed before. It put me in the same bracket as guys like Mantle and Gretsky, the all-time legends of sports. I was running with the big dogs, boom, in your face.”
SHAWN ASSAEL (writer)
“At a Ms. magazine benefit for Lauper, Wolff borrowed an MTV camera that was on hand for the event and stuck it in front of the face of one of the guests, Geraldine Ferraro, who had just run as the first female candidate for vice president on the Democratic ticket, and along with her running mate, Walter Mondale, had been defeated. ‘Geraldine, do me a favor,’ Wolff asked sweetly. ‘Just say, ‘Piper, you’re going down!’ To his utter amazement, she did.”
DAVE WOLFF
“She had no idea who he was, so when Vince started running the clip over and over, she was mortified.”
THE EVENT
VINCE MCMAHON
“I walk into Madison Square Garden with reverence.”
PAUL HEYMAN (manager, producer)
“Madison Square Garden to any New York kid is the center of the universe. Even going there as a fan is like stepping up to the plate at Yankee Stadium. You know you’re in the grand cathedral. This is a very special place to be and the congregation of fans that join you — for whichever event you’re going to — are all there to witness magic happen in what is rightfully known as the World’s Most Famous Arena.”
BRUNO SAMMARTINO
“Even around the world, this is how they know me. In Argentina, in Brazil, I remember going to Australia, all the trips I did in Japan, you know how they’d advertise me? ‘From Madison Square Garden, Bruno Sammartino.’”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“That crowd is a tough crowd, and if you win them over, you’ve really done something. You’ve got to work really hard for to earn their respect.”
PAUL HEYMAN
“It is center stage in the biggest media market in the world. It’s center stage in New York City… It’s playing Broadway. It’s hard for me to convey to a non-performer what it means to actually step into the spotlight in Madison Square Garden.”
LEILANI KAI
“ Even though we had done many events at Madison Square Garden, this one felt different. Seeing all the celebrities backstage was really different.”
LINDA MCMAHON
“A WWE employee said to me, ‘We just had some people come up on the freight elevator, and they are demanding seats.’ When I asked who it was, the employee replied, ‘The Hells Angels.’ They weren’t rude or threatening but they expected to be seated.”
“MEAN” GENE OKERLUND
“Vince pulled me into his office and said, ‘We don’t have anyone to do the Star-Spangled Banner.’ I thought we’d have Billy Joel or someone. Now, I’d lived my whole life in this country and had my allegiance to the USA. But I couldn’t have sang that Star-Spangled Banner if I hadn’t written the lyrics on my hand.”
TITO SANTANA vs “PLAYBOY” BUDDY ROSE
TITO SANTANA
“I was in the middle of a big angle with Greg Valentine, and I couldn’t figure out why I was in the first match. I couldn’t understand why Greg and I couldn’t have a main event match at this unprecedented event, until Vince Jr. said, ‘This is a do or die situation.’ The beginning is very important, he gave me a different perspective of what my job was — and I accomplished that.”
“PLAYBOY” BUDDY ROSE (wrestler)
“I was asked to be on the card [as “The Executioner”] but he didn’t want ‘Playboy.’ [George Scott] didn’t want to see Playboy lose because they had other plans for me. I wore a black suit that Ed Wiskoski wore wrestling in Portland, as the Convict a few years earlier. I remember my name was on the side of my boots and to hide my identity, I had to find electrical tape to cover up (the word) ‘Playboy.’ And I got Sweet Ebony’s mask to wear — he was a black guy wrestling in Portland. I hated wearing the mask, but it was the one and only time I wore it and I was just glad to be there.”
S.D. JONES vs KING KONG BUNDY
TONY ATLAS
“I am the only wrestler that was paid $2,000 NOT to come. I was there. I was getting ready to walk in the dressing room door and a guy named Arnold Skaaland, he came up to me and said, ‘Hey Tony, I got good news for you. You don’t have to wrestle tonight. Vince is gonna give you a day off. He wants to save you for something bigger. But he’s gonna pay you anyway.’ I took the money, I walked out of Madison Square Garden and went back to the hotel. They called S.D. Jones and asked S.D. Jones to take my place [versus King Kong Bundy].”
S.D. JONES
“I only did one Wrestlemania against King Kong Bundy and that was it. It was ok. It wasn’t my best, but I didn’t do too much as the match was 17 seconds. I let him squash me and that was it. It wasn’t one of my best.”
JASON POWELL
“Monsoon and Ventura put it over as a potential record for fastest match. Finkel actually announced the time of the match as nine seconds even though it was 24 seconds from bell-to-bell.”
S.D. JONES
“I was comfortable because I knew what they wanted… You’re doing a job, you’re making a living, and you just keep on going.”
RICKY STEAMBOAT vs MATT BORNE
JASON POWELL
“Steamboat was just getting started with the company.”
RICKY STEAMBOAT
“It didn’t matter whether I was in front of 50 people or 15,000 people. I always had the attitude of going out there, working hard and putting on a good show for the fans. If there was a match following me, my attitude would be, ‘OK boys, I’m going to set the bar, you try and follow that.’”
DAVID SAMMARTINO vs BRUTUS BEEFCAKE
BRUTUS BEEFCAKE
“I was a young guy just coming in my first year of coming to the WWF with Brutus Beefcake, a new gimmick, a cutting-edge character there. Being involved with Bruno, he’s a friend of mine til this day. He and his son don’t get along, and there was tension there. WrestleMania came and went, and we were setting sights for the next WrestleMania.”
DAVID SAMMARTINO
“We knew we had a big show, it was at Madison Square Garden and anytime you wrestled there it was a big show. But there was no pay-per-view then, it was closed circuit, it was just a big loaded card. We didn’t know there was going to be a WrestleMania 2 or if it was going to be this phenomenon.”
JASON POWELL
“Beefcake was early in his run as the character he was best known for. This was the most memorable aspect of David’s career. The double DQ set up a series of mixed tag matches with Bruno coming out of retirement to team with David against Beefcake and [Johnny] Valiant. Both wrestlers were green, and the star of the match was Bruno.”
WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP: THE JUNKYARD DOG vs GREG “THE HAMMER” VALENTINE
GREG “THE HAMMER” VALENTINE
“There was a lot of pressure because I was friends with Junkyard Dog, but we never worked together. The Dog wasn’t a traditional ‘wrestler.’ He was a great performer in another way, a great showman. I was proud of the match we had.”
JASON POWELL
“The Intercontinental Title was a meaningful strap back in these days. Valentine was a credible champion and was in a hot feud with Tito Santana, and JYD was one of the more popular babyfaces. You could sense the crowd was more into this match than everything on the undercard. Times have really changed as far as the reaction to the finish goes. The crowd seemed happy that the babyface won even if it was via count out.”
WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP: THE U.S. EXPRESS vs THE IRON SHEIK & NIKOLAI VOLKOFF
NIKOLAI VOLKOFF
“ I escaped from a communist country and I thought [Soviets] were bums. But Freddie Blassie told me, ‘If you hate them so much, show people how bad they are.’ The Sheik was really a bodyguard for the Shah and didn’t like the Ayatollah.”
MIKE ROTUNDO
“With Iran and Russia being America’s mortal enemies, it was a match made in heaven.”
THE IRON SHEIK
“To become the tag team champion at the biggest show at Madison Square Garden, it was a pleasure for me. It was great.”
$15,000 BODYSLAM MATCH: ANDRE THE GIANT vs BIG JOHN STUDD
BOBBY HEENAN
“Andre the Giant and John Studd. Boy, did that look great on paper. It didn’t look good in the ring.”
“HACKSAW” JIM DUGGAN (wrestler)
“[Andre] didn’t like Big John Studd. And if he didn’t like you, it was a long day out there.”
SGT. SLAUGHTER
“He’d get tears in his eyes, ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t like me.’ I said, ‘It’s because he doesn’t want to be slammed.’”
BOBBY HEENAN
“First of all, Andre is not going to be able to press John Studd over his head to give him big bumps cause Studd couldn’t take them. So now you got two big guys out there butting heads. Thank god they had me, because Andre could throw me around at the end.”
TOM BUCHANAN (photographer)
“When Andre opened up the bag and started throwing money away I was all smiles and grabbed a few handfuls that fell inside the barricades. I looked at my fists and just saw $5 and $10 bills. And since I was being paid well for the night, I passed the cash out to the appreciative crowd. I guess I was caught up in the excitement. Only later did I learn I had given away at least one $50 and one $100 bill. Years later, I learned the cash was just a prop, and Andre wasn’t to give it away at all. Vince McMahon was apparently going nuts backstage as his very real money was being shared with the crowd by the mischievous Andre the Giant.”
WWF WOMEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP: WENDI RICHTER vs LEILANI KAI
LEILANI KAI
“Wendi talked about having a farm one day. We talked much more about horses than wrestling.”
JASON POWELL
“Kai was a good worker, but her personality never clicked. The finish was actually as ugly as anything on the show. Lauper always seemed enthusiastic.”
WENDI RICHTER
“I just walked out [of WWE] because of how I was treated. I kept wrestling, but I wasn’t on television and I thought people would forget me, but a lot of people didn’t, to my surprise.”
THE MAIN EVENT: HULK HOGAN & MR. T vs “ROWDY” RODDY PIPER & “MR. WONDERFUL” PAUL ORNDORFF (SPECIAL REFEREE: MUHAMMAD ALI)
“MEAN” GENE OKERLUND
“Liberace was the special guest timekeeper for the main event. He came out with the Radio City Rockettes and they did a high-stepping dance in the ring. Now, the Rockettes probably wouldn’t mean jack shit to someone today. But back then, man, wrestling had never seen anything like this, and it meant something.”
PAT PATTERSON
“Vince instructed me, when Muhammad Ali arrives, let him know what he’s going to do as the referee. I kept talking to Ali and got the feeling that he wasn’t 100%. So I said to Vince, ‘I’ll referee the match and we’ll have Ali as a referee on the outside of the ring. At the very last minute, that’s what we did.”
HULK HOGAN
“We got the call that [Mr. T] was leaving because he couldn’t get his entourage in the building,” Hogan says. “He had started getting really sketchy. He was really getting kind of nervous. I knew if he pulled out of the Garden that close to showtime and copped an attitude we’d never get him back. I [told security to] let everybody in whether they have tickets or not. And I made sure I didn’t let ‘T’ out of my sight.”
MR. T
“I was a high school champion wrestler back in my day, so this was up my alley. I liked to get in there and get thrown around and do some throwing around, getting a little roughed up, so it was good for me.”
“MR. WONDERFUL” PAUL ORNDORFF
“I thought he was a piece of shit. He wasn’t that good of an athlete, and I had to go out there and make him look like King Kong. He didn’t sweat. I did.”
PAT PATTERSON
“At one point, Ali jumped into the ring to get at Paul Orndorff. That wasn’t expected. Orndorff then goes at Ali and threatens him. So, when Billy Martin heard that, he started to take his tuxedo jacket off, and we almost had a real brawl on our hands.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“I kept it to amateur wrestling with Mr. T. I wouldn’t let him throw a punch. At one point, he tried to get cute, and I got him in a front face-lock just for a second, to put him in his place. But when I saw him bend forward, I knew what I needed to do to make it look good. I told him to drape me over his shoulders and pick me up. He held me there, like a fireman’s carry, and stopped until I told him to spin me around. That’s the photo that went all over the world — me getting the airplane spin from Mr. T.”
“MR. WONDERFUL” PAUL ORNDORFF
“I knew a lot of new fans were watching, so I didn’t make the match too complicated. They remembered the finish and they knew what it meant. That’s all that mattered.”
HULK HOGAN
“Mr. T stepped up. He survived the match and did a good job. Pulling that match off with an actor in the ring, showed that we could pull that rabbit out of the hat.”
“MR. WONDERFUL” PAUL ORNDORFF
“Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper didn’t do nothing for me because I was a wrestling fan. I wasn’t into that kind of stuff. Was it good for wrestling? I don’t know. Did it hurt it? I don’t know. Do I care? Not really.”
JASON POWELL
“It wasn’t a pretty match by any means and unfortunately you don’t get a good feel for just how great Piper and Orndorff were as heels, but the match certainly worked and was a huge spectacle. The babyfaces showed concern for Orndroff because this led to a Mr. Wonderful babyface turn and feud with his teammates.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“When the match was over, Mr. T and Hogan were whisked off to a celebration function that had been preplanned. So Ace [Bob Orton] and I shower, dress and go back to our limos, and there were no cars. We walk down the ramp and the only thing I see there to protect us is one policeman on a horse. I’d had death threats, and the crowd in New York was pretty wild. So we pulled a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, opened the door, ran through the crowd, jumped in a cab and aggressively told the driver to go.”
THE AFTER PARTY
TOM BUCHANAN
“[There was] a killer after-party at a very swanky restaurant — it was the Rainbow Room — and I remember Andre being at the party. Linda McMahon had me take a photo of a small girl sleeping on his lap. That was Stephanie McMahon.”
LEILANI KAI
“They had a big, huge party and everybody was there and having a good time and dancing.”
“ROWDY” RODDY PIPER
“While Hogan and Mr. T were in the Rainbow Room, getting their picture taken, [Orton and I] went to the Ramada Inn, like it was just another night. We might as well have worked Poughkeepsie.”
LINDA MCMAHON
“We got a call around three o’clock in the morning…and I went to Vince and said we just broke even.”
LEILANI KAI
“It was the most exciting night of my whole life. I loved it.”
JIMMY HART
“My check from WrestleMania was three times what I was making a month in Memphis.”
THE JUNKYARD DOG
“My family couldn’t believe it. They thought I was selling drugs.”
TITO SANTANA
“We started to become bigger international stars. Everywhere we went we were recognized. The small arenas, we weren’t going to anymore. It happened pretty fast.”
“MEAN” GENE OKERLUND
“We weren’t just promoting wrestling matches anymore. WrestleMania tipped the scales purely into entertainment.”
PART TWO: Bigger. Better. Badder.
Wrestling Club with Darren & Brett is a podcast produced by WFMU.
