10 Most Transformative WWE Events

10. WrestleMania I

It's a toss-up as to which was more significant: the very first WrestleMania, or the meeting a few month earlier in which Howard Finkel was said to have coined the name "WrestleMania", thereby saving us from thirty-plus years of "The Colossal Tussle".

This just about edges though, because it's hard to imagine WWE without its annual showpiece extravaganza, which has in the time since become the focal point of the wrestling calendar to such an extent that fans often start predicting how the card will shape up a full year in advance.

The phenomenon of WrestleMania was what initially helped lift WWE out of the entertainment fringes in the 1980s, and it has remained peerless in its ability to command the attention of the mainstream national press like nothing else in the industry.