<< Chapter 2: the territory era
While various wrestling promotions were enjoying a moderate degree of success in the early 1980s, the territory system of the NWA would soon be disrupted by the national expansion of WWF. Vincent K. McMahon (better known as Vince McMahon), son of Vincent J. McMahon, bought WWF from his father in 1982. He immediately withdrew the promotion from the NWA and worked to broadcast WWF programming across the country, overstepping the well-established boundaries between the territories.
McMahon signed several popular wrestlers from other promotions, most notably Hulk Hogan in December 1983. Hogan became WWF World Heavyweight Champion on January 23, 1984 by defeating transitional champion The Iron Sheik, who got the title by beating Bob Backlund a few weeks earlier. Soon afterwards, WWF began promoting shows outside their traditional territory in the Northeast, and obtained new television deals.
Hulk Hogan during his first reign as WWF World Heavyweight Champion.
In 1984 McMahon bought Georgia Championship Wrestling and the television time slot reserved for the promotion on WTBS (renamed TBS in 1987). On July 14, 1984, a day that became known as Black Saturday, McMahon appeared on World Championship Wrestling to announce the WWF takeover of the program. However, the new show only consisted of highlights of other WWF programs and clips from WWF events. This, together with the more cartoonish style of WWF, compared to the athletic and rough style that was common in the southern territories, resulted in a ratings disaster for the program. Losing money on the deal, McMahon soon sold the time slot to Jim Crockett, Jr., owner of Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP). This series of events led to a rivalry between McMahon and TBS owner Ted Turner, that would shape the history of wrestling for almost two decades.
JCP, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, became one of the cornerstones of the NWA in the early 1980s, and tried to counter the WWF expansion by consolidating the southern territories. On November 24, 1983, JCP held the first ever Starrcade event under the NWA banner. The show was headlined by Ric Flair, who defeated Harley Race in a steel cage match to win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. The event launched Flair to national prominence, and also established Starrcade as the premier NWA show and JCP as the main NWA territory.
Meanwhile, WWF parterned with MTV to organize two major shows. First was The Brawl to End It All, aired on July 23, 1984. While this show had eleven matches, only the main event was broadcast on MTV, and saw Wendi Richter, accompanied by singer Cyndi Lauper, defeat The Fabulous Moolah for the WWF Women’s Championship. By that time, Moolah had been champion (as recognized by WWF/WWE) for almost 28 years, since 1956. The event was a massive success, and became the most watched program in MTV history.
The Brawl to End It All was followed by The War to Settle the Score on February 18, 1985. Again, only one match was shown on MTV, this time the main event between champion Hulk Hogan and heel challenger Roddy Piper, who McMahon had signed from JCP. The match ended in a disqualification, with Paul Orndorff and Bob Orton, Jr. interfering on behalf of Piper, and Hogan being helped by actor Mr. T, who was sitting at ringside. The parternship between WWF and MTV became known as “Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection”, and gained mainstream media attention thanks to celebrity guests such as Mr T., Cyndi Lauper, Muhammad Ali, and many others, who appeared on the major WWF shows.
Thanks to this rising popularity, and the money earned by selling the TBS time slot to JCP, WWF organized the first WrestleMania on March 31, 1985 at Madison Square Garden. Following on the events of The War to Settle the Score, the main event of the show saw Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeat Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff in a tag team match. WrestleMania was a huge success, and became the most viewed wrestling event on closed-circuit television at the time. Held annually ever since, WrestleMania is to this day the flagship WWE show, and the largest wrestling event of the year.
Mr T. with Roddy Piper on his shoulders, while Hulk Hogan cheers in the background, during the main event of the first WrestleMania.
The success of WWF and WrestleMania earned the attention of large television networks, and in May 1985 NBC started airing Saturday Night’s Main Event, a series of special WWF shows, and the first wrestling program to air in primetime since 1955. 31 Saturday Night’s Main Event shows were held between 1985 and 1992, and five more were held during a brief revival between 2006 and 2008.
In the second half of the 1980s, WWF was already popular all over the United States, and Hulk Hogan, with his colorful, over-the-top, “All-American” persona, was the top star in all of wrestling. His wave of popularity became known as “Hulkamania”. The peak of this period of unprecedented popularity was WrestleMania III, held on March 29, 1987. According to WWF, 93,173 people attended the event at the Pontiac Silverdome near Detroit (the actual attendence is estimated to be around 78,000), making it the largest crowd for a live indoor event in North America at the time. The main event saw champion Hulk Hogan retain the title against André the Giant in what is often considered the most famous wrestling match of all time. Also on WrestleMania III was the match that saw Ricky Steamboat defeat Intercontinental Champion Randy Savage for the title, regarded as one of the greatest matches ever.
Hogan and André faced each other again at the first The Main Event, a spin-off of Saturday Night’s Main Event, on February 5, 1988. The match ended with André pinning Hogan thanks to corrupt referee Dave Hebner, twin brother of the real referee Earl Hebner. This ended the four-year-long reign of Hogan, but the new champion André the Giant immediately sold the title to heel wrestler “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase. As a result of these (kayfabe) controversies, the title was vacated, and a one-night tournament was held to decide the new champion on WrestleMania IV, which ended with Randy Savage defeating DiBiase in the final.
The story continued that August at the first ever SummerSlam event, when Hogan and Savage defeated André and DiBiase in a tag team match. However, the friendship between Hogan and Savage (dubbed as the “Mega Powers”) soon came to an end, and the feud culminated with Hogan defeating Savage for the world title at WrestleMania V in 1989.
Randy Savage as WWF World Heavyweight Champion in 1988, with his wife Miss Elizabeth.
In the late 1980s, the secret of kayfabe began to crumble. While for decades face and heel wrestlers traveled separately and remained in character at all times, there were a few incidents that exposed the reality of the wrestling industry. The most notable happened in 1987, when WWF wrestlers and on-screen rivals The Iron Sheik and “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan were arrested together after the police found them under the influence of drugs while driving a car. After the incident, both wrestlers were released from WWF, but they were rehired shortly afterwards.
The scripted nature of wrestling was acknowledged for the first time by a major promoter in 1989, when McMahon testified before the New Jersey Senate that wrestling was not a competitive sport, using instead the term “sports entertainment”. This admission was made in order to avoid the strict controls of state athletic commissions, reduce taxation, and avoid meeting the medical requirements of contact sports with risk of injuries.
While WWF’s popularity was booming, JCP kept trying to consolidate the NWA territories. First, they partnered with AWA, CWA, and GCW to create Pro Wrestling USA in 1984, but arguments between promoters brought the short-lived promotion to an end just a few months later. Between 1985 and 1987 JCP bought other southern territories, including CWF and MSW (by that time renamed Universal Wrestling Federation). JCP also began to run shows outside their traditional territory, and they held other supershows to counter WWF events, but the cost of this expansion started to become unbearable.
A fatal blow to JCP was dealt by McMahon in November 1987, when WWF held the first ever Survivor Series event on the same day as NWA’s Starrcade. McMahon threatened cable companies, saying that if they decided to broadcast Starrcade, they would be barred from carrying the next WrestleMania. Only five cable companies remained loyal to Crockett, who suffered a huge financial loss. Similarly, the WWF countered JCP’s Bunkhouse Stampede in January 1988 by airing the inaugural Royal Rumble event for free on USA Network.
The Royal Rumble event saw the introduction of the eponymous match, in which two participants start in the ring, and are later joined by others at timed intervals, until all 30 wrestlers (20 in the first Royal Rumble) have entered. Similarly to a standard battle royal, participants can only be eliminated by being tossed over the top rope with both feet touching the floor, and the winner is the last wrestler remaining in the ring. The concept was an immediate success, and went on to become one of the most popular and anticipated events of the year. Since 1993, the winner of the Royal Rumble match is tipically awarded with a world title match at WrestleMania. Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series became known as the “big four” annual events of WWF/WWE.
Crockett tried to counter McMahon’s challenges by running the first Clash of the Champions event on the same night as WrestleMania IV in 1988. While WrestleMania IV’s buyrate decreased from the previous year’s event, it was not enough, and JCP was at the verge of bankruptcy. On October 11, 1988, Ted Turner bought JCP and founded World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
WCW would soon become the main rival of WWF, with Ric Flair as NWA World Heavyweight Champion, and other rising stars such as Sting, Ricky Steamboat (who left WWF in 1988), Sid Vicious, Lex Luger, The Road Warriors and the Steiner Brothers dominating the first few years of the new promotion. Especially notable is the series of matches between Flair and Steamboat, often considered as some of the best matches of all time. The supergroup of The Four Horsemen, which included (in its original lineup) Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson, and Tully Blanchard, along with manager J. J. Dillon, was also heavily featured in JCP and WCW in the late 1980s.
The original lineup of the Four Horsemen in 1987. From left to right: Ole Anderson, Tully Blanchard, manager J. J. Dillon, Arn Anderson, and Ric Flair.
Another notable event in the early years of WCW was Ron Simmons defeating Big Van Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship in 1992, becoming the first Black world champion in professional wrestling history. A peculiar feature of WCW during this time was the WarGames match, that usually saw teams of four or five wrestlers face each other in two rings placed side to side and surrounded by a cage. The concept was created by Dusty Rhodes for JCP in 1987, and later became common in WCW.
WWF instead saw the rise of The Ultimate Warrior, who won the Intercontinental Championship and then defeated Hogan for the WWF Championship at WrestleMania VI in 1990. Warrior lost the title to Sgt. Slaughter at the 1991 Royal Rumble event, as part of a controversial storyline that saw Slaughter align with Iraq, with the backdrop of the real-life Gulf War. Hogan later defeated Slaughter and regained the world championship at WrestleMania VII.
WCW suffered a huge blow in 1991, when recently installed president Jim Herd had various disagreements with Ric Flair. Flair, who at the time was the reigning NWA World Heavyweight Champion, left WCW for WWF, and appeared on WWF programming with the physical championship belt, proclaiming himself as the “real world champion”. The title was eventually returned to WCW, but the reputation of the promotion was severely hurt.
Flair was involved in the match that saw Hogan lose the WWF Championship to young wrestler The Undertaker in November 1991, but Hogan regained the title in controversial fashion a few days later. The title was then vacated, and Flair became the WWF Champion by winning the 1992 Royal Rumble, often regarded as the best Royal Rumble match ever. In 1992, WWF also produced their first major event outside North America, with SummerSlam being held at Wembley Stadium in London, England. The main event of the show saw local hero The British Bulldog defeat his real-life brother-in-law Bret Hart (son of former Stampede Wrestling wrestler and promoter Stu Hart) for the Intercontinental Championship in a critically acclaimed match.
With WWF and WCW rising to national prominence, AWA fell behind and partnered with the surviving territories of WCCW and CWA. After years of financial struggle, AWA became inactive in 1990, and filed for bankruptcy the following year. Meanwhile, WCCW and CWA merged to form the United States Wrestling Association (USWA) in 1989, in a failed attempt at creating another national promotion. With dwindling crowds and a lack of talented wrestlers, USWA struggled for years before closing in 1997.
Chapter 4: the Monday Night War >>