One Moment WWE Wants You To Forget From Every Year (1985 to 2026)
35. 1992 - The Real Reason EVERYTHING Changed
WWE have always liked the narrative that WrestleMania is the "season finale" of WWE, and with good reason. It generates a universally accepted falsehood that a 52-week-a-year show has an actual end point, adding the most solid (and motivational) of destinations for wrestlers that are ultimately on a road that never ends. It also implies - even if the company have failed to book it accordingly - that all the biggest and best programmes will culminate on the company's 'Grandest Stage', suggesting that the show will also be the most reliable watch of the wrestling year.
Obviously, this has been disproven multiple times during the four decades+ the show has existed, but that speaks to the power of the promotion of the show the wrestling's SuperBowl.
WrestleMania VIII for all the wrong reasons, really was the end.
Up and down the card, prominent figures from the most prominent mainstream period in the industry's history were set to either depart, scale back their presence significantly, or accept new spots lower down the card as the market leader and some of its most notable names sought to dodge deserved bullets that were being fired from every angle.
Hulk Hogan, out-of-nowhere with a month or so to go, announced he was stepping back indefinitely for the company. This resulted in his match with Sid Justice going on last as 'The Hulkster's "farewell match", but Justice was out the door almost as quickly. WWE was facing a raft of accusations of sleaze, with allegations of sexual assault and steroid abuse being the ones the public took particular interest in. Hogan got out, while Sid failed a drug test and was done afterwards. The Ultimate Warrior returned at the show looking so much smaller that schoolkids the world over thought the original had died and been replaced. Roddy Piper did a clean pinfall job for Bret Hart, in what served to be the end of his commitments as a full-timer for WWE. Jake Roberts left until 1996, Miss Elizabeth made her final on-camera WWE appearance in the United States, Tito Santana wrestled the last of his eight WrestleMania bouts and even the gorgeous stadium aesthetic of the Hoosier Dome wasn't to last. It'd take until 1997 before the company ran a building as impressive-looking domestically, relying on SummerSlam '92 and UK enthusiasm to generate one last stadium stand before the doldrum years took hold.