4. WrestleMania III
It speaks to the legacy of the event that WrestleMania III still manages to find itself - on as objectively subjective a list as there can be in the top 5. It still remains the WrestleMania with the biggest attendance figure and it still has the untouchable mark of a 10.2 buyrate. In the early days of PPV, the buyrate was much more important than the number of buys. Today, it's the opposite (at least when making historical comparisons from then to now). A 10.2 buyrate meant that 10% of all the people with access to PPV in its infancy ordered the show. That equated to an estimate that ranges between the upper 600s and lower 800 thousands in terms of total orders (according to numerous sources). That is utterly incredible. That still makes it the overall #1 fiscal juggernaut of Mania lore. Give a big pat on the back to Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant for the financial success. They packed the house and provided Ricky Steamboat and Randy Savage a chance to earn their accolades with the WWE Match of the Decade in front of the largest WrestleMania audience in history. Critically, Steamboat vs. Savage for the Intercontinental Championship remains one of the most heralded bouts of all-time, praised to this day and featured at or near the top of the "best of" lists ahead of more epic matches. They changed the game. For years, wrestling had celebrated the workers who could have 5-star (or whatever the term was for such a thing back before Jim Cornette developed the movie critic-like scale in the 1980s) matches over the course of an hour. Savage, with his frenetic style, pushed the envelope and found a way to maximize drama in a length about one quarter of the former standard. Less than 15-minutes is all that it took produce a match with a dozen legitimate false finishes that wowed the fanbase and dictated that an all-time classic could, from then on, be wrestled in a shorter timeframe. Steamboat was more than capable of wrestling for an hour, but looked right at home with the match in figurative fast forward. Credit WrestleMania III for providing the blueprint for what WrestleMania should be a night where the wrestling calendar culminates and the majority of the focus is on the grapplers, themselves, with celebrities in the background there only to enhance pro wrestling.