10 Most Outstanding Career Revivals In WWE

After breaking his neck in 1976, and having been a phenomenal draw as the WWWF’s World Heavyweight Champion for years, the legendary Bruno Sammartino passed the title to ‘Superstar’ Billy Graham in April 1977. No longer the main event, he provided colour commentary for the New York territory’s television programming, occasionally performing in exhibition matches around the world.

All that changed in late 1979, when his protégé Larry Zbyszko came to him with an idea. Business had been down since Sammartino took a back seat, and Zbyszko knew the fans still only really came out in droves to see one man, and that was the Man. Why not capitalise on that connection with the crowd to put together a red hot angle, one that could make Zbyszko into the company’s new top heel, and put thousands of asses in seats at the same time?

It might have been Zbyszko’s idea, but the layout of the feud was all Sammartino: a brutal take on the classic pupil-turns-on-beloved-mentor storyline. The McMahon’s took some persuading - they weren’t sold on Zbyszko by any stretch of the imagination - but the money was too good to pass up.

From the bloody chair shots of the heel turn in January 1980 to the blow-off in a steel cage at Shea Stadium in front of 36,000 people seven months later, the angle was incendiary.

Zbyszko was a marked man across the east coast for years, and Sammartino had proven to the world that he didn’t need the title to draw huge crowds.