The Disturbing Truth Behind The WWE WrestleMania Main Event

The main event of WWE WrestleMania is the absolute pinnacle of professional wrestling. That's as obvious an opening gambit as you'll ever read.

The main event is so alluring that wrestlers will sacrifice their carefully curated public image to get it. They will reveal themselves to be hypocrites, when their entire persona is built around integrity and speaking truth to power, just to headline the first, lesser night. The main event of WrestleMania is so important that WWE itself will employ subterfuge - at the expense of the most universally popular top star it has promoted in decades - if that means the company is able to promote the biggest match of the era. Emotion surrounding the main event is so fervent that WWE will delay that match, and pivot, if it can't proceed with the right fan sentiment. If the Rock was received as a huge babyface and there was nothing in the way of pro-Cody backlash, does WWE, as seems clear now, book Rock Vs. Roman for WrestleMania 41 following a fall-out at WrestleMania XL?

The main event of WrestleMania is sacred - so much so that fans will turn on the most charismatic wrestler of all-time, if they feel as if he has not earned it - but how worthy is it, historically?

The following is a qualitative deep dive that seeks to answer that question.

The loose criteria is an amalgamation of match quality, as denoted by critics and general fan sentiment/consensus, and box office performance. This can get blurry, though. Sometimes, a terrible match is iconic and a major success. On other occasions, a relatively accomplished match isn't good enough for the stage nor great enough to rescue a bad night at the box office.

The main event of WrestleMania I was a huge, transformative financial success. Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeated Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff in a match that wasn't remotely great or even good, but the spectacle was so loud and the novelty so big that WWE was able to monopolise North America on the strength of its box office power. Conversely, each WrestleMania II main event was poor. The NFL-infested Chicago Battle Royal was a battle royal with a bit more novelty attached, Hulk Hogan went over King Kong Bundy in LA in a 10 minute cage match that was both too succinct and boring at the same time, and in New York, Mr T and Roddy Piper produced one of the worst exhibitions ever associated with the medium. A worked boxing match is invariably horrific, and T and Piper were not on great terms. The fundamental idea of struggle has never developed such awful, omni-layered irony.

At WrestleMania III, Hulk Hogan slammed André the Giant "for the first time" in a match so literally mythological that something like it can never happen again. It was sold on a lie, and the world knows too much now - but Hogan and André extracted everything possible from the bullsh*t in a match that was as much artistically bad as it was commercially successful - and the action was staggeringly bad. But who cares: it was the core magic of wrestling, preserved in nostalgic amber. While Randy Savage went on to soar as WWF Champion in both the babyface and heel roles, his main event title win over Ted DiBiase was as basic and heatless as everything else on a dismal WrestleMania IV card - and while the show generated more buys than III, owing to the increased availability of pay-per-view, the rate plunged from 0.8 to 0.65.

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