What The First WrestleMania Was Really Like

On March 31, 1985, the World Wrestling Federation held an event that would change the face of sports entertainment forever. Held at the iconic Madison Square Garden in New York City, the inaugural WrestleMania looked to reinforce the then WWF as the dominant force in professional wrestling, while also solidifying wrestling's place in the American mainstream through big names, huge spectacles, and the use of celebrities.

Despite this year's WrestleMania being the 41st edition of the event, 2025 will be the year that the "Grand Daddy of Them All" celebrates its 40th anniversary. After all, the day you are born isn't your first birthday, and the day someone gets married isn't their first wedding anniversary, even if WWE tried to make you forget about that mathematical problem in 2009 when WrestleMania 25 was marketed as the 25th anniversary of the event, even though it was the 24th.

Anyhow, with such a landmark anniversary on the horizon, and with footage and photos becoming lost media over the years, WrestleMania 1 is an event that more and more people are looking back on with fondness. However, millions of WWE fans around the world have either no idea what the event was like, or haven't even watched it despite many international fans being able to watch it on Netflix. 

This brought us to the idea of rolling back the years and exploring arguably the most important event in the history of wrestling. So sit back, relax, and join us on a journey to Manhattan circa 1985, where we will look back on the historic build-up, the legendary event itself, and what the first WrestleMania did for WWE, Vince McMahon, and wrestling itself, while also exploring what might have happened had the event been the disaster some thought it would be.

The nostalgia people have for the 1980s is still strong in the modern era, with fashion, music, and even movies still borrowing from this iconic decade as it was the first to truly embrace television and all the technological advancements that occurred at the time. 

If you woke up on the morning of March 31, 1985, and needed some music to get you in the mood for a day in Manhattan, you would be met with the sound of "One More Night" by former Genesis drummer Phil Collins, as that was the song that reached number one on the Billboard 100 that week, surpassing Madonna's "Material Girl" and last week's number one "Can't Fight This Feeling" by REO Speedwagon.

WrestleMania didn't last all day, so if you wanted to kill some time before or after the event at the movies, you could have been one of the many people who flocked to a theater to see "Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment," which not only knocked "Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning" off the top spot at the box office, but the movie also had the biggest opening weekend gross for a feature released in March in this history of American cinema. With that said, that's a record that "Police Academy 2" no longer holds, now being the 185th biggest opening weekend in March history, $164 Million behind the current record holder, the 2017 live-action remake of "Beauty and the Beast."

Finally, as far as TV is concerned, shows like "Dallas," "The Cosby Show," and the most watched program over the 1984-85 season "Dynasty" ruled the television landscape of the United States, but an honorable mention should go to NBC's "Saturday Night Live" as they will get a special mention later in the article.

One week after the 57th Academy Awards ceremony took place in Los Angeles, California, which saw "Amadeus" walk away with eight Oscar statues, WrestleMania has ended up becoming he most newsworthy event that took place over the weekend of March 29-31, 1985, but there was certainly a lot going on in the world of news, particularly sports.

In golf, Calvin Peete became the most successful African-American player in history when he won the Tournament Players Championship in Florida, scoring 66 in the final round and being the only player in the entire tournament to break par across all four days of action. Virginia's Old Dominion University defeated the University of Georgia in the 4th NCAA Women's Basketball tournament 70-65, and in the short-lived United States Football League, the Baltimore Stars ended the unbeaten streak of the Houston Gamblers, with Houston's quarterback Jim Kelly throwing three interceptions. The Baltimore Stars would go on to win the championship in July, but the league was canceled in 1986 but did almost return in 2022, only to be merged with the newly reformed XFL, now owned by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, to form the UFL.

Due to many local news broadcasts being lost to time, there isn't much in terms of what was going on in and around the state of New York at the time, but aside from WrestleMania, The New York Times reported the death of Dr. Luther L. Terry, who passed away on March 29. The 9th Surgeon General of the United States died in Philadelphia after suffering a heart attack, but he is most commonly remembered for being one of the first major figures to make the country aware of the dangers of smoking, with his studies and findings still being used to this day.

In the 1980s, there was no bigger platform to market something to a younger audience than MTV. Launched in 1981, by the time 1985 rolled around, MTV had become a pop culture juggernaut that didn't just help songs stay in the charts, but legitimately launched the careers of several younger artists through excessive airtime. Knowing the impact MTV could have on WrestleMania, Vince McMahon landed a deal where WWE could air specials on the network to build up to WrestleMania, with both specials featuring the partnership of Wendi Richter and Cyndi Lauper.

Richter's match with The Fabulous Moolah for the WWE Women's Championship from the 1984 "Brawl To End It All," and Richter's loss to her eventual Mania opponent Leilani Kai from "The War to Settle the Score" were both aired on MTV, and both matches saw Lauper at ringside to corner Richter after getting into the wrestling business thanks to her friendship with Captain Lou Albano. This promotion worked like a treat for WWE as Richter and Kai were given the semi-main event slot (primarily because Lauper would be there), with the match being plastered all over MTV after the show was over.

Elsewhere in the world of TV, Hulk Hogan made multiple headlines for both the right and wrong reasons. His interview on the "Hot Properties" talk show with Richard Belzer didn't go well as he choked Belzer unconscious to prove wrestling isn't for children, leading to Belzer cracking his head open which led to a lawsuit. However, Hogan and his Mania partner Mr. T did host "Saturday Night Live" the night before WrestleMania which went a lot better, and WWE has only ever had one other active superstar host the show in the 50-year history of "SNL," that being The Rock in 2000.

To say WrestleMania was a gamble would be the understatement of the century. Not only was it originally slated to be called "The Colossal Tussle," a name that wouldn't have looked anywhere near as appealing on a marquee, but Vince McMahon had bankrolled the entire event to the point where the question of "What if WrestleMania failed?" has been thrown around for years.

To put it simply, had WrestleMania failed, WWE would have failed, Vince McMahon would have failed, and I might not be writing this article right now as there would be literally no wrestling business in America that could fill the void of WWE as they would have likely gone out of business. This wasn't just the opinions of many wrestling insiders at the time, but it was also the opinions of the WWE wrestlers at the time. Bret "The Hitman" Hart admitted during a live Q&A event with "Inside The Ropes" that some people thought wrestling would be a short-term high for people, and that if WrestleMania didn't work, especially with the amount of money wrestlers were earning from the event, they simply have to find other places to work as the NWA and AWA were still fully operational at the time.

However, not everyone had that mindset. Jim Cornette stated on his own podcast in 2022 that no one fully knew how much money McMahon had at the time, so there is every chance that WWE would have simply had to run a tighter ship as they still performed well in the North East of the country, while also noting that McMahon had received money from Ted Turner and Giant Baba around WrestleMania that would have kept WWE afloat a little longer had the event bombed.

These days, wrestling events are usually held in the evening. The anticipation for an event builds and builds throughout the afternoon with fans going to conventions, bars, and restaurants near the venue to take in some of the atmosphere, before heading to wherever an event is being held when their excitement is at its highest, eager to see all the action unfold live. However, that wasn't the case for the first WrestleMania as people who attended Madison Square Garden on March 31, 1985, would have left the venue while it was still light outside.

According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the inaugural WrestleMania actually started at 1 PM and ended up finishing at around 3:30 PM. This was reportedly due to the fact that the event was broadcast on closed-circuit television and that the venues that were set to air the event were mostly arenas that needed to have a quick turnaround as a number of them had basketball games taking place that same day. While the show would air live on the East Coast, it would then air on tape delay throughout the country so that every time zone in the country could air the show at the same 1PM start time.

Madison Square Garden didn't need to make a quick turnaround as WrestleMania was the only show taking place at the venue that day, but the New York Knicks did have a basketball game against the New Jersey Jets the night before, and U2 performed a concert with Maria McKee as their support act the following day, which required a big stage set up. As for WWE, they wouldn't return to Madison Square Garden for another three weeks after WrestleMania, with their next event being the April 22, 1985 edition of "WWE on MSG Network."

At WrestleMania 40, American singer-songwriter CoCo James opened up the proceedings in Philadelphia by giving the fans in attendance a rendition of the United States National Anthem. Singers and musicians have become commonplace at WrestleMania as we've already mentioned with Cyndi Lauper, but James singing the national anthem was actually a rarity for WrestleMania as Vince McMahon notoriously hated his own nation's anthem, preferring whatever artist was booked to perform "America The Beautiful" instead.

While the reasoning behind McMahon hating the national anthem has been put down to the former WWE Chairman's weird quirks that sit alongside him hating people sneezing as it shows a lack of control, and the fact that he hated the word "belt," one could argue that it was because of the rendition that was sung at WrestleMania that put him off the anthem for life.

"Mean" Gene Okerlund is one of the greatest wrestling interviews of all time, and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2006 by his close friend Hulk Hogan, but one thing that no one ever calls Okerlund is a singer. Now, we aren't saying he can't sing (that would be the pot calling the kettle black in this case), but considering that WWE would get Aretha Franklin to sing at WrestleMania two years later, Okerlund's rendition of the national anthem is a fun fact about the first WrestleMania that is often forgotten.

You can see for yourself how Okerlund did, and to his credit, his deep voice carries his performance to a standing ovation from the New York faithful, but it's a good job he had the lyrics written down on a card to help him as he had reportedly written all of them on his hand moments before the show.

Of all the matches on the first WrestleMania, two stood out as having the most excitement surrounding them. Wendi Richter (with Cyndi Lauper of course) vs. Leilani Kai for the WWE Women's Championship, and the main event which had Hulk Hogan and Mr. T team up for a huge tag team match against Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff. The match itself is significant from a historical standpoint, after all, it is the very first WrestleMania main event, but it's also significant in that it was the catalyst for one of the biggest rivalries of the "Rock N' Wrestling" era of WWE.

Piper was not a big fan of Mr. T getting involved in wrestling as he felt that the role of celebrities should be what the likes of Lauper, Liberace, and Muhammed Ali were on the show, which was not wrestling. However, Mr. T had trained hard for WrestleMania, and thanks to his role in "Rocky III," he had undergone serious boxing training, meaning that he was no slouch when the bell rang. This would ultimately lead to the two men having a boxing match at WrestleMania 2 in 1986, which has gone down as one of the worst matches in the history of WWE. 

With all that said, Mr. T and Piper never actually hated each other and their feud was simply all for show. Mr. T even admitted that Piper was the "ultimate professional" out of the ring and respected the actor's belief of wanting to sell WrestleMania and not take anything away from the wrestlers who made the event possible. The two men would reunite at WrestleMania 30 in 2014 alongside Hogan and Orndorff in a backstage segment, their last interaction in WWE before Piper's untimely passing in 2015.

WrestleMania was marketed as "The Greatest Wrestling Event of All Time" by Vince McMahon. It had the pomp and circumstance to warrant it being the biggest wrestling show that had taken place at that time but to say it was the greatest is not entirely true.

In the 40 years that have passed since the event, the first WrestleMania has been widely regarded as average at best, and actively bad at worst. On Cagematch.net, the internet's largest wrestling database, WrestleMania currently has a score of 4.85 out of 10, which by Cagematch's ratings deems the first WrestleMania to be somewhere between adequate and satisfactory. The only match to earn a significant match rating from Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter was between Ricky Steamboat and a pre-Doink The Clown version of Matt Borne, which earned three and a quarter stars out of a possible five, but outside of the main event that saw Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeat Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff (which didn't get great reviews either), a lot of the show isn't fondly remembered.

Having matches with both disqualification and count-out finishes might have been the trend at the time, but they are match endings that haven't aged particularly well. Neither has the Andre The Giant victory over Big John Studd in the $15,000 "Body Slam Challenge," a simple match that looked to put over the strength of Andre, but is one that doesn't have much replay value outside of the fact that Andre wanted to throw all of the money into the crowd. Given the technical advancements of wrestlers since 1985, a rewatch of WrestleMania is usually reserved for completionists and historical significance, but if you watch it, don't expect "The Greatest Wrestling Event of All Time"

Regardless of reviews, Gene Okerlund's singing, and whether Mr. T and Roddy Piper actually hated each other, WrestleMania ended up being the success story that Vince McMahon always knew it could be. For some, it was the launching pad for WWE as it became THE brand in professional wrestling on March 31, 1985, while others actually see it as the peak of WWE's golden era of the 1980s thanks to "The Rock N' Wrestling Connection," with the success of WrestleMania 3 two years later being seen as part of the era's honeymoon phase.

As we've already mentioned, WrestleMania 41 will take place over Easter Weekend this year, and thanks to the company's deal with Netflix, the company has entered a new era of popularity that is not too far away from where WWE was in 1985. Replace the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Mr. T with Travis Scott and Logan Paul, Hulk Hogan's popularity can be equaled, and even surpassed by The Rock who now holds legitimate power in WWE, and almost every building the company goes to these days sells out weeks in advance. Without WrestleMania in 1985, none of today's success would be enjoyed by anyone.

As far as the immediate aftermath of WrestleMania, the success of the show was enough to convince NBC to go ahead with the deal that they had been negotiating with Vince McMahon in the lead-up to WrestleMania, which ultimately led to the creation of Saturday Night's Main Event less than two months after WrestleMania. Saturday Night's Main Event turned into WWE's biggest televised show for almost seven years, moving to FOX in 1992, but has since been revamped for a modern audience, and once again airs on NBC four times a year, while also streaming on Peacock.