10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE Saturday Night's Main Event
Iconic network television show returns, but what's the real story behind it?
When WWE brings back Saturday Night’s Main Event this weekend, it’s not just embarking on another navel-gazing nostalgia tour. Sure, that is part of this venture, but isn’t the entire story – and fans would be forgiven if they didn’t understand the significance of that is about to unfold.
Nearly 40 years ago, the then-WWF launched a revolutionary program that contributed mightily to the company’s rapid evolution and expansion as the sports entertainment juggernaut that we know today. Saturday Night’s Main Event brought the WWF into the mainstream in a way that promoters could only dream about, and it helped set the table for PPV growth and new television programs like Monday Night Raw.
Nothing like SNME existed before 1985: a national network program that beamed into millions of homes several times a year, helping to make wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Andre the Giant household names and “WWF” synonymous with the term “professional wrestling.” The NBC program changed the game for the WWF in ways that even the company couldn’t have predicted.
But how did Saturday Night’s Main Event get its start? And why was it so revolutionary? As WWE prepares to relaunch the popular show, it’s worth digging into the past to understand why this should be treated as a huge deal, and it might explain why the company is seemingly going all-out with big matches and a ton of promotion.
Let’s get to it…
10. The How And Why
To understand the basis for Saturday Night’s Main Event and how unprecedented it was, you have to cast your mind back nearly 40 years ago, at a time when wrestling still was almost entirely a regional network of territories.
The WWF had already begun its national expansion, airing two specials on MTV and holding WrestleMania I in March 1985. Based on the success of those shows (and the high ratings of the MTV programs), Dick Ebersol, who was then the executive producer of Saturday Night Live, approached the WWF about creating a wrestling show that would broadcast in the slot that SNL occupied rather than air a rerun of the sketch comedy show. The first Saturday Night’s Main Event would air in May 1985.
The notion of putting wrestling on network television in a time slot that was reserved for one of the most popular programs of the era might have seemed impossible just a year or two earlier, but Ebersol saw enough from the two MTV programs to justify taking a chance. Had it not been for that and the success of WrestleMania I, WWF might have continued to toil away with cable TV programs.
Saturday Night’s Main Event gave the WWF a major platform to launch them into the stratosphere, but their partnership with Ebersol and NBC also reshaped their entire presentation. NBC also benefited from the arrangement, showing original programming in a slot where lower-rated reruns normally would have aired.