WrestleMania 3 is the one people always talk about. It is the show that made WrestleMania the famous event that it is today. It had over 93,000 fans pack the Silverdome in Detroit to see one of the most famous matches of all time: Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant for the WWE Championship. It felt big even when watching it nearly 30 years later.
In my experience of watching the earliest WrestleManias, this was a joy to watch. It clearly was the highlight of the early WrestleManias. It helped it had likely one of the best matches of the 1980s as well.
With all of this in mind, I present my list of the top five things I learned from WrestleMania 3:
#5 This is the first WrestleMania to feel like one
The first two WrestleManias felt small. Quick matches and way too many celebrities put a damper on what could have been wrestling’s biggest party. That was not the case here.
The opening shot was a wide shot of the arena. Wow, that building was completely full and led to an amazing visual. This was the first WrestleMania that felt grand. That continued with Aretha Franklin singing “America the Beautiful”. It sounds great to open the show in a big way. The first time a celebrity was utilised properly.
This show had other nice touches to make it feel big. It was the first WrestleMania to have hype packages showing the history of the major feuds. It had lots of backstage promos to hype especially the main event.
My favourite touch was the small rings that wrestlers went in as most of them were transported to the ring. It was a logical choice but also made the entrance seem grand and special too. The tagline for this show was “Bigger! Badder! Better!” It certainly showed that for the first time here. It seemed big. It seemed like WrestleMania.
#4 Managers were an important part of early WrestleMania History
There were twelve matches at WrestleMania 3. Eleven of those matches had a manager involved in some way. Only the painfully bad midget match had no manager. Even Bobby “The Brain” Heenan didn’t want a part of that.
Whether it was Heenan, Slick, Mr Fuji, Jimmy “The Mouth” Hart, Johnny V or Miss Elizabeth, the show was filled with managers that had an impact throughout the show. You could also tell how much fans hated the cheating manager.
Look at how excited they were when Slick was attacked by Tito Santana or when Jake “The Snake” Roberts threw the snake at Jimmy Hart. The heel manager is a lost art form.
The best of the best is Bobby Heenan. His promo setting up the main event with Andre the Giant is about as good as a heel promo gets. The manager is a relic of a bygone era and one that really worked at WrestleMania 3.
#3 That would have been a perfect send-off for Piper
Piper might have been one of the best heels in WWE history. Simply look at my reviews of WrestleMania 1 and 2 to see how hated he was. But this match was the opposite. He was loved.
This was billed as Piper’s retirement match.
It was a hair vs. hair match with Adrian Adonis. The crowd absolutely loved everything Piper did in the seven-minute match and his work was among his very best. You could see how much he loved it as he left the ring.
It might have been a perfect send-off for any wrestler. The hated heel becoming beloved in a final match in front of 93,000 screaming fans. Piper would come back for some other memorable matches years later but this was likely his best chance to retire.
#2 Yes, Steamboat versus Savage is as good as you have been told
I have a sad confession to make: I had never seen Steamboat vs. Savage from WrestleMania 3 before this review. You can take my wrestling card if you want but I had certainly heard of the match as being influential to many wrestlers going forward.
How could this supposed classic live up to the hype? Easily. It was one of the most influential matches in pro wrestling history and one that set up the way wrestling matches would look like for decades to come.
It seems to sum up what the best matches are all about. It had an extremely fast pace for a 15-minute match. It has about twenty near falls in an era of very few. The match looked aggressive and never had a dull moment.
When Steamboat won the IC Title, the crowd was about the loudest it would be the entire night. When you learn that Savage had planned out the entire match in advance, it is simply an amazing script brought to perfection.
The only thing that made me sad was these two didn’t get a rematch at WrestleMania IV or really ever again. It was special 30 years later and worthy of the hype.
#1 Andre the Giant versus Hulk Hogan is one of the biggest WrestleMania moments ever
Gorilla Monsoon’s line was perfect, “the irresistible force meeting the immovable object”. The sums up perfectly what is likely the loudest crowd and easily one the biggest matches in WrestleMania history. If you take the two bigger stars in the company and face them off, you get big moments like this and the quality of the match is really irrelevant.
Andre the Giant was not in the best shape but he sure worked with every ounce of his remaining ability to put over Hogan in a major way. Hogan was at the height of his popularity and the crowd loved every moment and moves he did. Do you want to argue that Hogan’s powerslam wasn’t the loudest pop in wrestling history? I will happily debate you.
This was the case of two wrestlers doing everything in their power to make a match and show feel big. It is fitting the most important main event in WrestleMania history was what made ‘Mania what it is today.
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