40 Years Of Fascinating WWE WrestleMania Facts (Part 2)
9. WrestleMania XII: WrestleMania Goes Hollywood But Stays Pro Wrestling
Star-laden but with little genuine quality output to show for it, WrestleMania XI was a failure at the box office and survives today as one of the weakest standalone cards in the event's history.
One year later, and WWE elected to save money on the frivolity of celebrity wages even though the very logo of the show aped the 20th Century Fox branding and Roddy Piper and Goldust engaged in a suitably cinematic "Hollywood Backlot Brawl".
With a main event sold on the idea of the two very best wrestlers in the history of the organisation having potentially the very best wrestling match of all time (enormously high expectations, that fell enormously short) and a budget that didn't exactly stretch beyond paying the wrestlers and keeping the lights on, the company made the 12th iteration of the show the first not to feature any guests from outside of the industry.
They probably wouldn't have made a massive difference to the buyrate, such was the down-cycle WWE's business was still mostly in, but the approach reflected an output that had never felt quite as culturally irrelevant. Things were quite bad, but had to get worse before they got much, much better...