10 Obscure WWE WrestleMania Facts You'll SWEAR Aren't Real

5. Rewriting PPV History

WrestleMania I
WWE

It’s very easy for wrestling fans to misinterpret history due to the longevity of WrestleMania and assign it with honors it doesn’t deserve.

Some individuals will suggest that WrestleMania I made history as the first wrestling PPV, and that’s not entirely true. The March 1985 event was primarily available via closed-circuit television (CCTV), which involved the event being broadcast on large screens at various locations, rather than exclusively in individual homes via pay-per-view. (However, WrestleMania was available in some markets via PPV.)

WWE’s first true PPV (a wrestling event available for viewing exclusively via PPV) came later that year with The Wrestling Classic.

However, even if you want to bend the definition of “PPV” to include the CCTV model, WWF’s WrestleMania I wasn’t the first wrestling event to break that ground. 

That honor belongs to Jim Crockett Promotions’ Starrcade in November 1983, more than a year before Mania debuted. (JCP’s second Starrcade on CCTV also took place in November 1984, a few months prior to WrestleMania I.) While WrestleMania has outlasted Starrcade and is the oldest ongoing PPV/PLE in wrestling history, it wasn’t the first out of the gate.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.