10 Outrageous WrestleMania Moments That Made Mainstream News

4. Roddy Piper Vs. Mr. T

In an attempt to top the first Wrestlemania, Wrestlemania 2 saw the event split over 3 locations. And a huge selling point to this show, and one that brought with it a whole load of press coverage, was the one-on-one meeting of €œRowdy€ Roddy Piper and Mr. T. Mr. T was a huge star at that time, known by near-enough everybody for his role as B.A. Baracus on The A-Team TV show, and it was clear that he and Piper had some legitimate beef with each over that was overhanging from the first Wrestlemania. So it would be, Piper and Mr. T would go up against each other in a boxing match. The publicity around this match-up was huge, drawing on Mr. T€™s mainstream popularity, Roddy Piper being at the top of his heel game, and the now well-known hatred between the pair. When the dust settled, the match was awarded to Mr. T after Piper was disqualified. It was an intense blurring of lines between sports and entertainment, with Vince McMahon even then trying to steer his WWF ship towards the seas of sports entertainment. The mainstream coverage of this whole feud was so big that both Mr. T and Roddy Piper are still regularly asked about this topic to this very day.
Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.