35 years ago was bigger...better...BADDER!

[James Fabiano]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmnlzN8Xb4M

[smokinvokoun86]

Still love this show. The three biggest things that hold up super well about this show is that it still feels extremely epic, they didn’t have a real stage like they do now, so it just feels like the ring and an incredibly massive amount of people. Savage vs Steamboat totally holds up as it was a fantastic match with probably the two best workers that was that high up on the card in the company. And Hogan vs Andre still feels awe inspiring despite the in ring action not being that great, but it holds up as a spectacle.

[Milkman Norm]

I've been watching the build to this show as well as X & 2000. There's something about Mean Gene schilling that fills me with nostalgia.

The last time I watched it I noticed that the show timed out so there was a big Babyface moment at the top of each hour. The Can Am win the opener, Piper wins his retirement match at around the one hour mark, Steamboat wins the IC at the two hour point and of course Hogan wins at the end. Just a perfectly laid out show.

[thecrusherwi]

I am about five weeks younger than this show, so I obviously didn't see it live. I saw it for the first time in the early-mid 90s after renting the video. I was in awe. The card is fantastic and almost everything delivers. And the way the show transitions from day to night is one of the coolest affects at any WrestleMania. I love the transport carts to and from the ring. I love the commentary and presentation. This show is perfect. It's that Golden Age WWF style at it's pinnacle.

[cornettesracket]

Happy 35th anniversary to wrestle mania III. That opening camera shot of the silver dome is still so good even today. It set the tone for the show. I mean we of course have the savage vs steamboat epic IC title match. The Andre hogan was a bad match but Jesse Ventura giving the tale of the tapes as hogan is coming to the ring and the stare down just has this huge feel to it.

I mean the opening tag match there’s an electricity that you can feel from the crowd.

[GodzillaIsMyMonster]

Not matter how hard WWE has tried, no main event has felt this epic.

It just... feels HUGE. There's been better main event matches, Hogan had a few of them, but nothing compares to this.

And Hogan slamming Andre is THE Wrestlemania moment.

[bob]

Hogan vs Andre still has a big time feel, truly remarkable considering how long ago it took place

Steamboat and Savage is also the first real classic match at Wrestlemania IMO --- this also still holds up

[Milkman Norm]

And it got the idea in fans minds that WrestleMania was this huge extravaganza that needed a stadium to contain it, even though only 3 out of the first 10 & 6 out of the first 20 were stadium shows. The idea became that was what WrestleMania was.

[chronocross]

It's my favorite Wrestlemania of all time, this show was the first one that felt like a major event.

[fw91]

Mar 29, 2022 17:56:18 GMT -5 GodzillaIsMyMonster said:

Not matter how hard WWE has tried, no main event has felt this epic.

It just... feels HUGE. There's been better main event matches, Hogan had a few of them, but nothing compares to this.

And Hogan slamming Andre is THE Wrestlemania moment.

I’d put up an argument for Austin/Rock X-Seven but I see your point.

[DeeBee]

To quote The Lapsed fan: "It used to be better."

[GodzillaIsMyMonster]

Mar 29, 2022 19:08:22 GMT -5 fw91 said:

Mar 29, 2022 17:56:18 GMT -5 GodzillaIsMyMonster said:

Not matter how hard WWE has tried, no main event has felt this epic.

It just... feels HUGE. There's been better main event matches, Hogan had a few of them, but nothing compares to this.

And Hogan slamming Andre is THE Wrestlemania moment.

I’d put up an argument for Austin/Rock X-Seven but I see your point.

A few have come close, Hogan/Warrior, Austin/Rock, Cena/Rock, but there's just something magical about this one. 

[ehead]

Mar 29, 2022 19:08:22 GMT -5 fw91 said:

Mar 29, 2022 17:56:18 GMT -5 GodzillaIsMyMonster said:

Not matter how hard WWE has tried, no main event has felt this epic.

It just... feels HUGE. There's been better main event matches, Hogan had a few of them, but nothing compares to this.

And Hogan slamming Andre is THE Wrestlemania moment.

I’d put up an argument for Austin/Rock X-Seven but I see your point.

Hogan vs Andre just put WWF to another level. Vince literally bet the farm on this match for the company to take the next step. It is true that Austin vs Rock at X-7 is equally enormous but I would probably argue that this is the peak of that era at that time. After that match is when the Alliance thing kicked in and it wasn't exactly the same afterwards.

[A Platypus Rave]

Mania 3 is basically what Cemented the IDEA of Wrestlemania.

Mania 1 was a prototype it got the hype and it was succesful for what it was... Mania 2 I think stumbled a bit... but Hogan/Andre is what made Wrestlemania, THE SHOW.

[jason1980s]

It was a perfect event from top to bottom and the stadium was just as big a star. Now every Wrestlemania HAS to be in a stadium and I think fans go just to be able to say "I went to a Wrestlemania" rather than the product being spectacular. The desire for fans to attend is what makes a stadium show necessary more than anything else. In 1987 fans would have packed in even if it was Hogan/Orndorff for the millionth time.

To those of us from that who grew up with Wrestlemania III, it will always be a part of our lives. Just yesterday I was thinking about if the side to side length of my retail store is the same length as the Wrestlemania III aisle way, where they needed the ring carts.

There have been stadium shows prior to X-7 starting it up, like Summerslam 92 or Wrestlemania VIII and VI which had large crowds but III is the end all and be all. I think VI comes very close but there was just so much star power at III and WWF was probably at its hottest then. At III you really didn't know who would win each match while VI was pretty one sided for the majority of the show.

[cornettesracket]

Agree with everything everyone else has said about WM III but I see none of us mentioned the elephant in the room(or stadium), and that’s the attendance and what the number actually is. Now, I personally don’t believe there were 93,173 paying fans in the silverdome 35 years ago, but neither do I believe that it’s 78,000 or whatever number Dave meltzer said it was.

I don’t believe that number for one reason, and it’s that given the pictures we have of the fixed seating in the stadium and given there’s no set like there is now, there’s no seats blocked off, and the stated capacity of that stadium according to the Detroit lions was just shy of 81,000 I think so given the fixed seating looks full, I don’t see how the 78,000 number makes sense to anyone with eyes.
Also, something I only heard of this week is that WWF and the silver dome put out a press release six days before the event which says they’ve broken the Rolling Stones record of 87,500.

And I don’t think it’s out of the question that they had 88,000 people in the stadium.
What do others think ?

[thecrusherwi]

Mar 30, 2022 3:22:23 GMT -5 cornettesracket said:

Agree with everything everyone else has said about WM III but I see none of us mentioned the elephant in the room(or stadium), and that’s the attendance and what the number actually is. Now, I personally don’t believe there were 93,173 paying fans in the silver dome 35 years ago, but neither do I believe that it’s 78,000 or whatever number Dave meltzer said it was.

I don’t believe that number for one reason, and it’s that given the pictures we have of the fixed seating in the stadium and given there’s no set like there is now, there’s no seats blocked off, and the stated capacity of that stadium according to the Detroit lions was just shy of 81,000 I think so given the fixed seating looks full, I don’t see how the 78,000 number makes sense to anyone with eyes.
Also, something I only heard of this week is that WWF and the silver dome put out a press release six days before the event which says they’ve broken the Rolling Stones record of 87,500.

And I don’t think it’s out of the question that they had 88,000 people in the stadium.
What do others think ?

Dave's insistence that there were only 78,000 people in the building has always been irritating to me. For that number to be true, then almost every event in the history of the Silverdome had to have worked their attendance by a significant margin too. To believe Dave, you have to believe that the WWF, NFL, Led Zepplin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, the Detroit Lions, the NBA, The Pope, and countless other organizations were all lying about their attendance figures too by about 20%. If all of those numbers for their events in the Silverdome are accurate (even if not exact), then it is implausible for there to only have been 78,000 in a packed Silverdome for WrestleMania III. I don't think 93,173 is true, but it's closer to the real number than 78,000 is.

[Milkman Norm]

Some response the thoughts of mine to various posts:

1. WrestleMania was the show Vince came closet to betting it all on. I don't think he pushed all in, but had it bombed it would have significantly delayed his nation expansion. It also could have affected the Monsoon/Skaaland payment deal


2. Wrestling wise WrestleMania was meh. But in terms of getting Hogan as a celebrity on the same level as Mr.T? Success.

3. I don't agree that III took them to the next level. The Orndorff program did that. They were at the level where they could fill a stadium from the success of that, not on the Andre turn.

4. Wasn't 78K the tickets sold? So I could easily see 5K+ worth of papered seats in a stadium that big. I just find it funny that with almost every other WWE attendance number we take it with a grain of salt but questioning 93K is looked at like treason.

[madness50]

I’ve always felt that this event really made Mania a giant event. Also, I have never really believed the Meltzer story of only 78,000 people being in the Silverdome that day. I still don’t think the 93,000 was accurate, but I believe it was likely 84,000.

[cornettesracket]

Mar 30, 2022 12:41:49 GMT -5 Milkman Norm said:

Some response the thoughts of mine to various posts:

1. WrestleMania was the show Vince came closet to betting it all on. I don't think he pushed all in, but had it bombed it would have significantly delayed his nation expansion. It also could have affected the Monsoon/Skaaland payment deal


2. Wrestling wise WrestleMania was meh. But in terms of getting Hogan as a celebrity on the same level as Mr.T? Success.

3. I don't agree that III took them to the next level. The Orndorff program did that. They were at the level where they could fill a stadium from the success of that, not on the Andre turn.

4. Wasn't 78K the tickets sold? So I could easily see 5K+ worth of papered seats in a stadium that big. I just find it funny that with almost every other WWE attendance number we take it with a grain of salt but questioning 93K is looked at like treason.

I said it didn’t and don’t believe the 93,173 number but it’s the fact that meltzer almost swears blind the number is number and that’s it, is ridiculous given the fixed seating capacity is higher than that by nearly three thousand people.