How WrestleMania Almost Killed WWE
Back within Titan Sports' walls ahead of the big show, McMahon was encountering entirely new dilemmas as part of the entirely new world he was trying to occupy. Celebrities were key, but getting celebrities was expensive, and convincing them that wrestling was worth their time wasn’t easy. Mr. T, the key to the main event, almost walked away multiple times, frustrated with the wrestling business and worried about how it would affect his image. Roddy Piper had no intention of letting T make him look bad after legitimate tension developed between the pair. It nearly derailed the main event; tension boiled over in heated confrontations during press events, and there was concern that Piper might go off-script during the match itself.
And even when both the wrestlers and the television stars ostensibly had control over situations, things still happened that could have pole-axed everything. During an appearance on Richard Belzer's Hot Properties talk show, Hulk Hogan was asked to demonstrate a wrestling hold on the host. He put Belzer in a front face lock, and when he released it, Belzer collapsed, hitting his head on the floor and briefly losing consciousness. Blood visibly trickled from his head, and the incident became a minor scandal in the days the followed. Belzer sued, and while the lawsuit was eventually settled, it added another layer of unpredictability and uncertainty to WrestleMania’s promotional tour.
There was a stroke of good luck too. In the final days leading up to WrestleMania, Vince caught an unexpected break when Hulk Hogan and Mr. T were drafted in as last minute hosts of NBC’s Saturday Night Live the night before WrestleMania. An enormous publicity boost, the slot put Hogan and T in front of millions of viewers in the ideal market at the perfect time. It was an unplanned but incredibly fortuitous situation that helped push the show's rising visibility into the stratosphere.
Though rocky, risky and not without controversy, the long journey had reached its destination as all the clichés were becoming truisms - the time for talk was over, and WrestleMania now had to deliver on everything Vince McMahon had promoted and promised.
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