Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Wrestlemania

Episode Date: April 10, 2021

Every year, around this time, one of the largest entertainment events is held. Wrestlemania. However, this isn’t just a wrestling show. How it came about is a story of business consolidation, modern media, and celebrity culture. Even if you aren’t a fan of professional wrestling, the story behind the business of Wrestlemania is fascinating. Learn more about Wrestlemania on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year around this time, one of the largest entertainment events has held, WrestleMania. However, this isn't just a wrestling show. How it came about is a story of business consolidation, modern media, and celebrity culture. Even if you aren't a fan of professional wrestling, the story behind the business of WrestleMania is fascinating. Learn more about WrestleMania on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes. It makes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuleline podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by audible.com. My audiobook recommendation today is, We promised you a great main event, an unauthorized WWE history by Bill Handstock.

WWE is an extraordinary business success and an underappreciated pop culture phenomenon. While WWE soared to prominence during the Hulk Hogan years, as the snakes grew more and more extreme, wrestlers face steroid scandals and assault allegations. The whole story is here, good, bad, and ugly, from the heights of iconic cultural moments like WrestleMania 3 to the arrival of global superstars like The Rock and John Cena. We promised you a great main event is an exhaustive, fun account of the McMahon family and WWE's unprecedented rise.

You can get a free one-month trial to Audible and two free audiobooks by going to audibletrial.com slash everything everywhere or by clicking on the link in the show notes. First, I would like to wish everyone a happy WrestleMania. This is the time of year when friends and family gather around the television to celebrate body slams, drop kicks, and pile drivers.

A time when champions are crowned, new feuds are ignited, and where B-List celebrities make appearances to revive their stagnant careers. However, it's much more than that. It's usually one of the biggest single in-person events to take place in the United States. It has a larger attendance than the Super Bowl

almost every year for the simple reason that they can put fans on the field in addition to in the stands. Cities compete to host WrestleMania just like they do other major sporting events because it can have as much as $170 million impact on the host city. Forbes has ranked WrestleMania

as the fifth most valuable sporting event in the world, behind the Super Bowl, Fife Men's World Cup, and the Summer and Winter Olympics. So, how did WrestleMania come about? To understand this, you need to understand the history of the wrestling business, because WrestleMania really is the antithesis of almost everything which professional wrestling stood for for decades. If you remember back to my episode on K-FAB,

professional wrestling got its start by doing legitimate wrestling matches at carnivals and fairs. These were real grassroots. appelling exhibitions, and they were for the most part boring. They soon realized they could make more money by fixing the results, and thus pro wrestling was born. Eventually, wrestling promotions arose, but they all had very regional focus. A promotion might only cover part of a state, in the case of Texas, or several states in the case of the American Wrestling Association. In 1948, the National Wrestling Alliance, or NWA, was formed. This was a consortium of the owners of the various regional promoters which

work together to select a world champion and to protect each other's territories. There were about two dozen territories across the United States and Canada in the early 1950s. It was in the early and mid-50s that wrestling became a really big draw for the new medium of television. Every network had wrestling programming on until it became oversaturated and the shows were taken off the air. The NWA was a very conservative organization, which was more concerned with protecting everyone's territory than it was with growing and innovating wrestling. Two of the largest wrestling promotions left the NWA in the 1960s, the American Wrestling Alliance, which was based in the Upper Midwest, and the Worldwide Wrestling Federation,

or WWWF, which was located in the northeastern United States. The WWWF was originally founded as the Capital Wrestling Company by Jess McMahon in 1953, and it was passed down to his son Vincent J. McMahon who changed the name to the WWF. The NWA and the regional system of wrestling continued into the 1970s, and they were able to prosper because of the media technology at the time. There was no easy way for wrestling fans to communicate with each other, so most people were ignorant of what was happening in another promotion. Only serious hardcore fans who subscribed to wrestling magazines would know what was happening,

and even then it could be months or weeks after a match-trial. took place before they would know the results. Television at the time was also basically three major networks. Most wrestling appeared on television via syndication on local TV stations, which reinforced the regional system. Someone in Omaha would see totally different wrestling than someone in Memphis would. The thing that changed the professional wrestling business forever took place in 1982, when Vincent J. McMahon sold the WWF to a son, Vincent Kennedy McMahon,

aka the current CEO of the company, Vince McMahon. Vince realized the enormous potential in destroying the regional wrestling system. One of the very first things he did after taking control of the company was, one, leave the NWA, which the WWF had rejoined in 1971, and changed the name of the company to the World Wrestling Federation, or WWF. Vince began syndicating TV programming nationwide, which angered many of the regional promotions. While there was nothing illegal about it, there had been an understanding for decades that this just wasn't supposed to be done.

He used the revenue from this larger television audience to begin poaching all of the top talent from the various regional promotions. In 1984, he hired a wrestler named Hulk Hogan, who was the top wrestler for the AWA and who had also appeared in the movie Rocky 3. He then hired Hogan's biggest rival, Rowdy-Roddy Piper, as well as other wrestlers who became some of the biggest names in the 80s wrestling boom.

These included the Iron Sheik, Jesse Ventura, Jimmy Snooka, Nikolai Volkov, junkyard Dog, Paul Orndorff, Greg Valentine, and Ricky Steamboat. McMahon himself explained the strategy in an interview with Sports Illustrated when he said, quote, In the old days, there were wrestling fiefdoms all over the country, each of which had its own little lord in charge. Each little lord respected the rights of his neighbor little lords. No takeovers or raids were allowed.

There were maybe 30 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, unquote. The WWF also began a nationwide touring schedule with far larger, more expensive stage production than any other promotion, which just rubbed salt into the wounds of the other regional promotions. The WWF was making a lot more money than any other wrestling company, and had a much larger audience, but they were also burning through a lot of cash.

In many markets, their presence was resented because they had caused several regional promotions to go to business. The WWF at this point was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The thing that would make or break the business was a giant promotion that would be sold

on closed circuit TV. The name of the show was dubbed by their ring announcer Howard Finkel. It was called WrestleMania. There had been other big super shows before, however, they were just wrestling shows. WrestleMania was to be a mix of wrestling and pop culture. The WWF had been programming on MTV.

Cindy Lauper, who had been working with the WWF, was on the show. They got Mr. T. to take part in the main event match with Hulk Hogan. Muhammad Ali was a guest referee. New York Yankees manager, Billy Martin was a ring announcer, and Liberace was a guest timekeeper. It took place on March 31, 1985, at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The event was a huge success. Over a million people watched it on the closed circuit,

making it the largest pay-per-view event in history at the time. The company made $3.8 million, which made the company solvent. WrestleMania became an annual event and quickly grew in size. WrestleMania 3 in 1997 was held at the Pontiac Silver Dome in Detroit and had attendance of 93,173, which was the largest indoor event in history up to that point. 2021 marks the 37th WrestleMania. In 2020, because they couldn't hold a live event with spectators, WrestleMania was held in a studio over two days with no fans.

WrestleMania is now actually a week-long event, complete with a Hall of Fame induction ceremony and a fan fest. Many other independent wrestling promotions will host shows in the town that WrestleMania is in during the same week, as the town will be full of wrestling fans anyhow. A modern, non-pandemic WrestleMania can now make up to $40 million. So whether you call it the greatest stage of the mall, the showcase of the immortals, the greatest spectacle in sports entertainment, or the granddaddy of them all,

WrestleMania is one of the biggest, not quite sporting events in the world today. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. if you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read your review on the show. Welcome, everyone, Guerilla Monsoon here at Ringsside with my colleague Jesse the Body Ventura

as the World Wrestling Federation presents the wrestling extravaganza of all-time WrestleMania. Enjoy it, folks, and right now, let's go up to our ring announcer, Howard Finkel.