10 Fascinating WWE WrestleMania 10 Facts
The tenth WrestleMania provided the world with two all-time classics.
In the barren wasteland of steroid trials, dwindling crowds, and the long road to recovery from a wrestling boom gone bust, WrestleMania 10 was truly an oasis. While the event itself wasn't enough to solve WWE's myriad of problems during its several hours of duration, it did end up serving as a monument to the sorts of trump cards Vince McMahon can pull from hidden orifices when backed against the wall.
How often does WWE stage an event with two genuine five-star matches, let alone one? The fans were spoiled when Bret and Owen Hart enthralled them with twenty minutes of expert wrestling intertwined with well-spun sibling rivalry. More than ninety minutes later, Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon equaled the preceding greatness by putting ladder matches on the map to stay. Even before the fans' choice of Bret Hart reclaimed the WWE Championship at the end of the night, it was abundantly clear that WrestleMania 10 had overachieved.
It was the first WrestleMania without Hulk Hogan. It was the last one with Randy Savage. When McMahon grunted that WWE would "blast off into the next decade" with Hart as champion, he was stating what had been plainly obvious for some time: this wasn't the WWE you were used to, nor could it really be.
10. A Gossip Columnist Overheard Wrestlers Discussing Finishes
A WWE urban legend is spawned from this story. The rumor that made the rounds for years is that Lex Luger was supposed to win the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 10, but plans changed when he publicly blabbed about it, and word got out, prompting WWE to go with Bret Hart instead. This isn't the case.
For some time, Hart knew he would wind up with the belt by night's end (more on this later). But shortly before WrestleMania 10, a gossip columnist from the New York Daily News reportedly overheard Luger, Hart, Crush, Stan Lane, and Johnny Polo at a steakhouse in the city, talking about what was to happen on the Sunday pay-per-view.
The columnist apparently misunderstood some of the details, believing that Luger was to have beaten Yokozuna. An article in the NYDN that ran on March 22, two days after the show, claimed that WWE changed the finishes as a form of misdirection, but there's no evidence of that.