10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE Saturday Night's Main Event

5. A Title-Defending Machine

Saturda
WWE Network

These days, seeing a men’s world champion defend his title is an almost monthly occurrence on PPV/PLE. Fans also regularly see each brand’s top champion appear and even wrestle on weekly television.

What today’s fans don’t realize is that they’re spoiled compared to fans in the 80s, who had to either buy a ticket when the WWF came to town, or hopefully catch a match on local cable. If the world champion did wrestle on a televised program, it usually was a squash. Hulk Hogan in 1984-85 defended his title on WWF Challenge and All-Star Wrestling just a handful of times against lower-level talent such as Tiger Chung Lee, Jerry Valiant, Johnny Rodz and Rusty Brooks.

Saturday Night’s Main Event changed how WWF fans experienced their world champion. In an era when there was only one PPV per year – WrestleMania – SNME provided audiences with PPV-quality title matches several times a year. Hogan defended his first WWF Championship 10 times on Saturday Night’s Main Event against mainstays such as Bob Orton, Nikolai Volkoff, Paul Orndorff, The Magnificent Muraco, Hercules and King Kong Bundy.

For 80s wrestling fans, SNME was their best bet to see the world champion defend his title in somewhat competitive matches on free television, which is something that carried over to Raw and SmackDown the following decade.

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.