50 Fascinating Facts About WWE in The 1980s
26. The Wrestling Classic Was Supposed To Launch A New Series
Ever heard of WrestleVision? No, it wasn't a new-fangled way of watching wrestling that quickly faded away. It was, in fact, a new venture created by the WWF that hoped to follow up on the wild success of the first WrestleMania. WrestleVision was going to be a series of five special pay-per-view events, and The Wrestling Classic was going to be a dreamy introduction.
Pity it was one of the worst PPVs ever committed to tape. In hindsight, following up on 'Mania's excitement with a rotten tournament that didn't even feature megastar Hulk in the main event picture was a poor piece of planning from McMahon and cronies. Hogan retained his WWF Title vs. Roddy Piper via DQ in the midcard (remember, no clean jobs!), but the tourney itself failed to grip fans.
Wrestling Classic performed so poorly at the box office that the rest of the WrestleVision project was put on the scrapheap immediately. The 7 November 1985 card didn't cut it, and so WrestleVision went blurry before going blind. Vince would call off four subsequent shows, then focus his efforts on 'Mania II instead. It maybe says everything that it turned out to be the sole PPV of 1986.
A crowd of around 14,000 fans watched Wrestling Classic live, but the show was a tangled mess of 16 matches. Most of them went less than five minutes. The WWF tried this tournament concept again a few years later at 'Mania IV. That was slightly better, but not by much. Oh well, it was worth trying.
RIP WrestleVision. We hardly knew ye.