Episode 3! We discuss the lead up to the first Wrestlemania! Hogan vs Piper, The Rock and Wrestling Connection, The Cold War, Super Mario, you could say this episode has a bit of everything.
The waning days of the territory system ends with a thunderous event called “Wrestlemania”, helping propel the WWF to not only international status, but also into the mainstream consciousness.
*water*
Please drink some.
Make sure to follow us on all social media platforms @feudrewind
Email: feudrewind@gmail.com
Thank you!
Episode 3! We discuss the lead up to the first Wrestlemania! Hogan vs Piper, The Rock and Wrestling Connection, The Cold War, Super Mario, you could say this episode has a bit of everything.
The waning days of the territory system ends with a thunderous event called “Wrestlemania”, helping propel the WWF to not only international status, but also into the mainstream consciousness.
*water*
Please drink some.
Make sure to follow us on all social media platforms @feudrewind
Email: feudrewind@gmail.com
Thank you!
ep-3-hogan-vs-piper-the-rock-n-wrestling-connection
===
Benza Lance: [00:00:00] Hey, this is Ben with Feud Rewind, with a quick word from our first unofficial sponsor. Water. You need some. I need some. We all need some. We're made of it. Guess what? It comes in a bunch of different varieties. Hot, cold, frozen. You can get it flavored, you can get it plain. With bubbles, no bubbles, out of your tap, out of a bottle, out of a box.
The possibilities are endless. Regardless, you need some. Before we get started, go get a glass. I'm gonna get one too. We'll meet back here and start the show. Thank you so much. Water.
March 31st, 1985. Madison Square Garden, New York. The first ever Wrestlemania is taking place. The main event is currently happening. It is a multi [00:01:00] person tag match featuring Mr. T, Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff, Cowboy Bob Orton, And the two men of the hour, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan. Why were these two men chosen to be in the main event of the inaugural showcase of the immortals?
Well, let's roll it back with a rewind.
All right. So before we get started, just for full disclosure, I was barely alive when all of this was taking place. I was born in the last half of 1984. So I don't necessarily have first hand experience of being able to witness and be enveloped in all these emotions [00:02:00] live and in real time. I of course had to go back and Watch it 30, 40 years after it happened.
Um, what I can tell you is the emotions are very palpable. Um, to really understand where we were in 1984 and 1985, you have to have a, at least a, at least a novice's understanding of the situation. What professional wrestling was early in the mid eighties. Um, since wrestling promotions had started at least state side, they ran on a, uh, territory system, a different promotion would cover a different region like mid Atlantic or mid South or Portland in the Pacific Northwest, which we will be talking about when it comes to Roddy [00:03:00] Piper and there was a gentleman's agreement with all the promoters.
That you would not infringe on talent. There was sort of a, um, you know, uh, the, the talent are still to this day, independent contractors, they don't have W 2s. Um, and back in the day in the territories, you would work a territory for. A couple months and then go on to a new territory. It kept characters fresh.
It kept, honestly, feuds going for prolonged periods of time and you were able to, you're able to come into a territory, start a feud, maybe build it up, blow it off or build it up, leave and come back and then blow it off. So going into the eighties, Vince McMahon, as we know him today, is Vince Jr. and his dad owns the company at the time of the WWF.
Vince buys the company from his dad and [00:04:00] promptly starts reneging on the gentleman's agreement and buying up talent and quickly promotions are going under. The reasoning behind this from all sides is money. Back in the territory days, you weren't reliant on national TV contracts. There wasn't any national TV, the TV back in the seventies and eighties.
If you didn't live during those decades, hell, I would say into a good portion of the nineties as well. We had regional. You know, cable providers at best. The territories need the local revenue of the house show circuit. That is not necessarily untelevised shows, but shows that aren't televised live.
They're reliant on ticket sales and people showing up and getting a cut of concession stands probably [00:05:00] for Vince. He saw the money and taking the product national and. International, as we would see. Um It was a big risk. He put everything on the line to make that happen. And, for all of his personal faults, I will give one slight hat, tip of the hat to Vince.
For, uh, putting it all out on the line for his company, and in this case WrestleMania 1. And, we all get to reap the benefits. The benefits of that down the road. Is he a scumbag on a personal level? Absolutely. Uh, professionally back in 84 and 85, I'm going to give him an A plus. Um, and in order for him to make this big ginormous push happens, he has to have [00:06:00] not only top talent, but he has to be able to cross over somehow, luckily for Vince at this.
time and over the few years preceding What would be Wrestlemania one? a New tv channel was created that was mostly Directed towards the youth population. It was called MTV and they played this new fangled thing called a music video this was a Potential golden goose for anyone who could really latch on to The youth, this, had it happened before.
Um, A lot of the companies had sort of, out on capitalizing on counterculture in the 60s in much the same way that they would end up being able to in the 80s and 90s, and a lot of that has to do with the advent of MTV [00:07:00] and the MTV generation that came along with it. Minds that were. Ready to be shaped and, not to say manipulated in a negative way, but manipulated in such a way from companies where you could maybe convince them that wrestling was cool.
B. S. Wrestling is really cool. Being able to cross over into the mainstream would guarantee better ad revenue, better sponsorship opportunities, more eyes on the product, these are all great things. And in order to do that, Vince is gonna need two insanely over popular in both positive and negative ways top talent, in order to build a program around, and this all happens in.
Very, very short order. This isn't a [00:08:00] long play, this is the first stick of dynamite that starts this process of international takeover from the WWE. One side of the equation is, of course, going to be Hulk Hogan, which at this point almost goes without any type of bio breakdown. But you have to understand where we are in 1985, so coming into this, Hulk isn't Hulkamania.
Hulkamania, it starts here. Gorilla monsoon. is often and I would attribute him to be accredited with coming up with the Hulkamania tagline. Um, but before this Hulk is, you know, in and out of the WWF. He actually was employed at one point and he was fired because he took the role as Thunderlips in Rocky 3.
Um, I was personally [00:09:00] fond of his feud in the AWA with Nick Bockwinkle, which was what he was doing right going into WWF. That was a masterclass in storytelling, not a long term feud by any means, sort of like with this one, but something that was beautiful and will definitely deserve a deep dive at some point.
And also, too, he has a storied early history in Japan wrestling for New Japan Pro in Antonio Inoki. In Japan, he's known as Ichiban, which means number one in Japanese. Um, he wrestles a distinctly different style in Japan. much more technical. He uses a different finisher, actually. It's called the Axe Bomber, which is a crooked arm lariat.
It looks brutal in the early eighties. It would probably still work nowadays. Why he didn't do all this stateside [00:10:00] years later, he simply said he. Didn't have to. You hulk up, um, hit the leg drop, big boot, 1, 2, 3, go home. But anyway, I digress. Um, at this time, Hulk was the quintessential real American. He was freaking massive, 6'7 very muscular.
He took a lot of, uh, Uh, vitamins that I were, I'm sure were prescribed by a, uh, an accredited doctor and he was saying his prayers and he was frankly over like Rover. He had cartoons and TV shows and. Most of them got awful, but all that still happened. Hulk was freaking massive. They were riding the edge of a lightning bolt with the type of talent this guy had and the type of bull [00:11:00] that he had on the audience, especially people like the younger audience, the young kids, that slice of the pie chart that you need for that true crossover appeal.
It was awful. It should be important to note too, that at this time in the eighties, we were still in the cold war. It was starting to wane down a little bit, but a certain brand of American exceptionalism was.
Hey there, this is Benzo with Feud Rewind coming at you with a quick word from our second unofficial sponsor. The sun. That's right. Summertime is here, and the living, if your living is like mine, is extremely difficult. But what's not difficult is popping in your earbuds, [00:12:00] putting on those headphones, and Using a little Bluetooth speaker and going on to the sun while you're listening to this podcast, you and me, let's go get some vitamin D while we enjoy the sun.
Thank you, son. Now back to the show.
Always going to sort of get over with a crowd in a state like this. And Hulk was the type of person granted his opponent in. Rowdy, Roddy Piper wasn't your quote unquote, you know, atypical communist, but we had plenty of the evil foreigners happening, not necessarily in WWF, but all over professional wrestling.
We had [00:13:00] Iron Sheik, Nikita Koloff, just to name a few, that were the quintessential You know, bad, un American, foreign, heel, bad guy trope. Thankfully, Roddy didn't embrace that image at all. In fact, if anything, Roddy sort of played the role as the touch older generation. You need someone who is not necessarily feared, but you need someone whose ass you would love to see get kicked.
At this time, bottom line, it's easy to say top three Roddy Piper. Of all time, as far as heels go. But at the time there wouldn't be anybody really similar. And this does sort of create a interesting dichotomy. [00:14:00] Um, Piper is much smaller than Hulk. He's about five inches shorter and you know, 50 to 80, a hundred pounds lighter in the muscle department.
What Piper does have is a mouth. He is Deadpool in wrestling form. Roddy Piper is hilarious and scathing at the same time. During his time with the WWE, he has a segment called Piper's Pit. Most of the time he just uses it to shit talk people, and it's great. Famously, he does hit Jimmy Superfly's snooker in the head with a coconut, which is racist.
Um, he also does get into a little scuffle with Bruno. They have a Hell in a Cell match in 86 to blow that off, but [00:15:00] that's a story for a different day. Um, but Piper uses his Piper's Pit segment to infuriate crowds all across the nation and he is just a Maven as far as wordsmithing goes he has the gift of gab.
He knows what to say to get under people's skin and Most importantly he hates the whole Mainstream, what would be come to be known as the rock and wrestling connection. He doesn't like that crossover appeal on a real, very real shoot level. He doesn't like it. He likes to keep his wrestling and his entertainment separate, which is sort of funny because he did act in quite a few movies, but he didn't want to see.
The wholesomeness, I don't think. Um, [00:16:00] he wanted something more gritty and visceral. And, especially when you're talking about some of the players involved. Um, how this really gets started is America's Sweetheart and one of my first personal crushes, Cindy Lauper, has a little song you might know of. It's called Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
In the music video for that, professional wrestler Captain Lou Albano plays her dad. And little known fact, but that song went out to be, yeah, relatively popular. Um, little side note, for those of you who don't know Captain Lou Albano, if you remember the short lived 1989 Mario live action show, he was Mario.
Side side note, the actor who played Luigi [00:17:00] in the 1989 live action Mario was Charlie the bartender on The Jeffersons. Anyway, back to the first crush of my life, Cindy Lauper. She had a really big hit. Girls just want to have fun. She shows up on December 28th, 1984 to present an award to Lou Albano. And who shows up to ruin this fricking rowdy, rowdy Piper.
He attacks Lou Albano, he kicks Cyndi Lauper, which, if Roddy was still around I'd probably slap him in the mouth for, cause that's just uncalled for. And Hogan comes in to make the save. This is where the feud starts. And our feud, as far as calendar length and amount of matches goes, it's very, very short.
[00:18:00] Two matches. That's not to say that this isn't a worthwhile feud. For Christ's teeth, this is building up to the main event of Wrestlemania. And we're doing this in about a month. Now one thing that does take a little bit longer than a month is really building this rock and wrestling connection that Vince and MTV are trying to propel really each other into the mainstream consciousness.
They accomplished this by having a couple of events. The first one is the Brawl to end it all, which takes place July 23rd of 1984. Hogan is going to retain his title versus Greg Valentine, who is severely underrated. The match that we're really going to focus on is the war to sell the score, which takes place.
February 15th, 1985 out of Madison Square Garden, New York. [00:19:00] Hulk is going to win via DQ ish. Roddy sort of throws him into the ref. And after that all hell breaks loose during the match, Paul Orndorff and Bob Warren jr both tried to interfere and. Well, like I said, the wheels come off this train, so to speak, very, very quickly.
Mr. T and Sidney Laufer also both get attacked by Piper, which is what's going to be setting up Wrestlemania. The real travesty in trying to research this is the brawl to end it all and the war to settle the score. Neither one are on peacock, or As far as I can tell are on the WWE Network if you're outside the United States.
Uh, I had to find the chopped up into [00:20:00] two and three parts version on, uh, various video hosting platforms in order to watch that. Uh, in order to sell the score and brawl to end it all. Specifically, it's really sort of a bummer, but I know stuff gets complicated when you're talking about different companies and corporations working with each other.
I can sorta get it. Part of what makes this era so much fun is the fact that we are trying to Invoke a lot of pomp and circumstance, and we certainly see that at WrestleMania 1, which you can definitely check out on the WWE Network slash Peacock, and you definitely should. What a lot of fans of a certain age, and I am of a certain age, don't realize is wrestlers didn't used to have entrances.
Even in the mid 80s, this was still a relatively new thing. [00:21:00] So, the entire pomp and circumstance, from Roddy coming out with an army of bagpipes leading him, to Hulk and Mr. T being shown in the tunnel beforehand doing the cross and saying their prayers before they come out to this huge ovation. It was something that had never been seen on such a grandiose scale before.
And they had one chance to hit it out of the park and you need to go back and watch it. The match itself, of course by today's standards, it's doesn't necessarily hold up. Personally, I was laughing the whole time out of just sheer joy. It was a lot of fun to watch and just knowing the history between everybody involved [00:22:00] was, it was just phenomenal to watch it unfold.
And of course it's going to be a tag match. It's not a singles match. It's Hogan and Mr. T, they're going to be a company with Jimmy Superfly Snooka. They're going to be battling Rowdy Roddy Piper and Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff. Cowboy Bob Orton is going to be along there with them. Um, Muhammad Ali is the special guest referee.
Um, he dips like midway through because he just, Sort of can't handle it anymore. And he starts taking swings. So Pat Patterson comes and fricking love Pat. And the match is just super fun. Hogan pins Orndorff last about 20 ish minutes. A lot of shenanigans at the end of the match. Just. Once again, completely falls [00:23:00] apart.
That's one of the things that makes moments like this and feuds like this, even if they're sort of a mini ish feud so great is it, it can be a little messy at times, but life's messy. And as long as the payoff is worth all the cleanup they have to deal with, then Ultimately, anything's sort of worth it if you think about it that way.
And this certainly fits that bill. It is important to note, and this is a sort of juicy little nugget just for the whole feud. At least with these two matches, we don't ever see Piper really get his comeuppance. In this match, Paul Ohrendorf is going to eat the pin from Hulk. In both this [00:24:00] match and the War to Settle the Score, Piper doesn't get pinned.
He does eat some offense, but he doesn't really give the crowd the true closure they want. However, the emotions are pretty good. So hi, this guy is such a trash talker and his friends are behind him every step of the way that just to see SOMEBODY get punched in the face, SOMEBODY eat the big boot, to see SOMEBODY eat the leg drop, And somebody eat the one, two, three Is really all that needed to happen in that moment What takes it to the next level are all the segments in piper's pit?
where he's building the heat with the audience where he's demeaning people where he's Literally just treating him Like pieces of dirt and making [00:25:00] him feel intellectually inferior And on the other side you have Hogan, who is really riding this wave of Americana coming out of the waning stages of the cold war.
And it was just a confluence of factors paired with this bubble of pro wrestling going from territorial to national where. All these gears need to line up in order for this to be a home run. We could still hit a double if you don't have the right bad guy, or group of bad guys for Hogan to beat. If we can use a baseball analogy.
But to hit that Grand Slam, you had to have the golden hero in Hulk. You [00:26:00] had to have the smarmy, sniveling bad guy in Piper. You had to have one of the cutest people ever in Cyndi Lauper. And Mr. T, who's, um, Mr. T's pretty cool too. And that MTV generation that was just booming, all of this leads to not only the overwhelming success of WrestleMania 1, which has now taken us 40 years to get to what's going to be happening in a couple weeks.
None of this would have happened without all the people involved. It would have been far less enjoyable. If Hulk and Piper weren't the pro and antagonist of this story.
Anyway, for this week, that's the Feud Rewind. [00:27:00] Once again, if you have any comments, questions, let me know. Email is feudrewind at gmail dot com. You can send me a DM or a public comment on any of the social media platforms if you'd like to. And I will be back next week. My name is Ben Zedlance, and this is the Feud Rewind.
Thank you!