WrestleMania III was the third annual
WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by the
World Wrestling Federation
(WWF).
The
event was held on March 29, 1987 at the Pontiac
Silverdome
in Pontiac, Michigan
.
The event is particularly notable for the reported attendance of
93,173, the largest recorded attendance for a live indoor sporting
event in North America. Though the attendance number is subject to
dispute, the event is considered to be the pinnacle of the
1980s wrestling boom. Almost one
million fans watched the event at 160 closed circuit locations in
North America. The number of people watching via pay-per-view was
estimated at several million, and pay-per-view revenues were
estimated at $10 million.
Background
Like all other
WrestleMania events,
WrestleMania III was hyped for several months in advance. The main
feud stemmed from
André the Giant's
kayfabe turn and betrayal of his ally, the
WWF Champion Hulk
Hogan, which began when Hogan was presented a trophy for being
the WWF Champion for three years, and André, his good friend, came
out to congratulate him. Shortly afterwards, André was presented a
slightly smaller trophy for being "undefeated in the WWF for 15
years" and Hogan came out to congratulate André, but ended up being
the focal point of the interview. Annoyed by this, André walked out
during Hogan's congratulation speech and not long after that, on an
edition of the interview segment
Piper's
Pit,
Bobby Heenan, a long-time
Hogan adversary, announced himself to be André's new
manager. André then
challenged Hogan to a title match at WrestleMania III and attacked
Hogan, ripping off Hogan's T-shirt and crucifix necklace.
Another main feud leading up to the event was between
Ricky Steamboat and the
Intercontinental Champion
Randy Savage. The feud began during a
title match between the two when Savage attacked Steamboat as he
greeted fans at ringside. Savage then pushed Steamboat over the
security rail and delivered an elbow shot that thrust Steamboat's
throat into the rail and dropped the ring bell onto his throat from
the top rope, injuring his
larynx and sending
him to the hospital. This resulted a long, bitter feud that lasted
for six months, included several bloody match-ups and finally
culminated at WrestleMania.
George "The
Animal" Steele was in Steamboat's corner, having developed a
crush on Savage's
valet,
Miss Elizabeth.
Billy Jack Haynes and
Hercules Hernandez' feud started when Bobby
Heenan continuously taunted Haynes, telling him that Hercules was
the real master of the
full nelson; which
came to a boiling point when Hercules attacked Haynes on an edition
of
Superstars of
Wrestling, which led to their match at WrestleMania. This
battle was advertised as the "Full Nelson Challenge."
Another heated feud leading up to this event was between
Harley Race and the
Junkyard Dog. When
The WWF Wrestling
Classic became the
King of the
Ring tournament, Harley Race went on to win the tournament and
began referring to himself as "King" Harley Race, and coming to the
ring in a royal crown and cape to the ceremonial accompaniment of
the classical music piece "Great Gates of Kiev" by
Modest Mussorgsky. After each of his
victories, Race forced his defeated opponent to "bow and kneel"
before him. Usually, Race's manager, Bobby Heenan, forced the
defeated opponent to "bow and kneel" by grabbing his hair. Junkyard
Dog protested Race's self-proclaimed monarchy in the WWF and stated
there would never be a complete ruler in the WWF, which led to a
match on
Saturday Night's Main Event, in which the King and his
manager both tried to make Junkyard Dog bow for them. This set the
stage for the WrestleMania match, which included the stipulation
that the loser had to bow to the winner.
On January 26, 1987, the
British
Bulldogs lost the
WWF Tag Team Championship
to
The Hart Foundation in a
match that saw the
Dynamite Kid so
debilitated that he was carried to the ring by
Davey Boy Smith and did not see much
physical action.
Danny Davis was the
referee and allowed
The Hart Foundation to use illegal double-team maneuvers. After
being given some time off to recuperate, the Bulldogs continued
their rivalry with The Hart Foundation when they teamed up with
Tito Santana against the Foundation and
the referee-turned-wrestler Danny Davis in a six-man tag team match
at WrestleMania III.
Rock singer
Alice
Cooper was in
Jake "The Snake"
Roberts' corner during his match with
The Honky Tonk Man. The Honky Tonk Man
had attacked Roberts with a guitar on Roberts' interview segment
The Snake Pit, which
legitimately injured Roberts'
neck. This event began Roberts'
turn into a babyface
as well as the feud between the wrestlers, which culminated in
their WrestleMania match.
The feud between
Adrian Adonis and
Roddy Piper began when, following a
leave of absence from the WWF, Piper returned to find his
Piper's Pit segment replaced by
The Flower Shop,
a segment hosted by then-effeminate wrestler Adrian Adonis. Piper,
who returned as a
face, spent weeks crashing
Adonis' show and trading insults, leading to a "showdown" between
the two segments that ended with Piper being assaulted and
humiliated by Adonis, Piper's former bodyguard
"Cowboy" Bob Orton, and
Don Muraco. The trio left Piper with his face
covered in red lipstick, lying in the middle of the remnants of the
destroyed Piper's Pit set. In response, Piper stormed the set of
Adonis' show and destroyed it with a baseball bat. This led to
their
Hair vs.
Hair match at WrestleMania III, which was billed as Piper's
retirement match from wrestling before becoming a full-time
actor.
Event
Vince McMahon claims that as he was
about to announce "Welcome to WrestleMania III," he felt the spirit
of his father
Vincent J. McMahon, who had died three years
earlier. After he made that announcement he introduced
Aretha Franklin, who opened the show singing
a rendition of "
America the
Beautiful."
The first match of the night was
The
Can-Am Connection versus
Bob Orton and
The Magnificent Muraco. This match ended
when
Rick Martel gave Don Muraco a
high
cross-body to get the win for his team.
The next match that aired was
Hercules
(with
Bobby Heenan in his corner)
against
Billy Jack Haynes in the
"Full Nelson Challenge." The match ended when Haynes locked
Hercules in the
full nelson outside
the ring and both were counted out. After the match, Bobby Heenan
assaulted Haynes, and Haynes chased Heenan into the ring, where
Hercules then assaulted Haynes with his chain before locking him in
a full nelson of his own.
The
Mixed Tag Team Match between
King
Kong Bundy and his
midget team of
Lord Littlebrook and
Little Tokyo against
Hillbilly Jim and his own midget team of
The Haiti Kid and
Little Beaver was next. King Kong Bundy's team
was disqualified when Bundy attacked Little Beaver, because Bundy
was not supposed to be in the ring with the midgets.
The "Loser Must Bow" match between
Junkyard
Dog and King
Harley Race followed.
"Mean"
Gene Okerlund was with Bobby
Heenan, Harley Race, and
The
Fabulous Moolah in the ring, where Moolah predicted that
Junkyard Dog would have to bow to the King as he is supposed to do.
Bobby gave Moolah the crown and told her to put it on the King's
head after the match. Junkyard Dog came out to the ring to a big
ovation in the Silverdome. During the match, the two battled back
and forth, and Harley Race gave the Junkyard Dog a
belly to belly suplex when he
was distracted by Bobby Heenan to get the win. Due to the
stipulation, He did a little bow (as he is supposed to, due to the
pre-match stipulation) and then hit Harley Race with a steel chair.
After attacking Race, Junkyard Dog took the King's royal robe and
left the ring with it in hand.
The next match that aired was
The Dream Team
against
The Fabulous Rougeaus.
Raymond Rougeau started off the
match by locking up with
Brutus
Beefcake. The two men later tagged out, and
Greg "The Hammer" Valentine brawled with
Jacques Rougeau as
Dino Bravo looked on from the outside of the
ring. Raymond performed a
sleeper
hold on Valentine and was followed by Beefcake jumping off the
ropes and accidentally hitting the Hammer with a
double axe
handle. The Rougeau Brothers gave Valentine a double team move,
but the referee was arguing with Beefcake. The match ended when
Dino Bravo jumped off the top rope and hit Raymond while he was
pinning Valentine, where Valentine pinned him for the win. The
Dream Team argued for most of the match, which led to Greg
Valentine and Dino Bravo departing together, without
Beefcake.
Footage of an interview with
Roddy Piper
was aired as Piper made his way to the ring to face
Adrian Adonis, who was accompanied by
Jimmy Hart, in Piper's retirement match. Piper
and Adonis began the match by attacking each other with a belt.
Adonis put a sleeper hold on Piper in the middle of the ring and
released the hold thinking that he won the match. When Jimmy Hart
got in the ring to celebrate with Adonis, Brutus Beefcake came to
the ring to help Piper recover, and Piper attacked Adonis and
performed a sleeper hold of his own. Piper got the victory, and
after the match was over, Brutus got in the ring and cut Adrian
Adonis' hair as Piper held Jimmy Hart down. Adonis then ran from
the ring in embarrassment.
Up next was a six-man
tag team match
featuring
Danny Davis and
The Hart Foundation against
The British Bulldogs and
Tito Santana, where the Bulldogs had many
near-falls, yet
Jim Neidhart broke up
most of them. When all six wrestlers got in the ring, Danny Davis
hit
Davey Boy Smith with Jimmy
Hart's
megaphone and pinned him for the
win.
Butch Reed's pay-per-view debut against
"The Bird Man" Koko B. Ware, was the following match. Reed won the
match with a rollup after a high cross-body from Koko. After the
contest, Reed's manager
Slick
got in the ring and attacked Koko B. Ware, but Tito Santana quickly
rushed to the ring and stopped Slick, ripped some of his clothes
off, and retreated as Reed got back in the ring, only to get a
double drop kick from Koko and
Santana.
The next contest was a title match involving
WWF Intercontinental
Champion Randy Savage and
Ricky Steamboat. The match itself lasted for
nearly fifteen minutes At one point, Savage was about to use the
ring bell as a weapon but was stopped by
George Steele, who knocked him off of the top
rope. When Savage attempted to give Steamboat a
scoop slam,
Steamboat reversed it into a
small package to
get the win and become the new WWF Intercontinental Champion,
marking the first time in WrestleMania history that the
Intercontinental Championship changed hands. This match is
considered by many to be one of the greatest matches in
World Wrestling Entertainment
history.
The tenth match of the night was between
The Honky Tonk Man and
Jake Roberts, who had
Alice Cooper in his corner. When Jake went for
the
DDT, Honky Tonk
Man's manager Jimmy Hart pulled Roberts' legs, and the Honky Tonk
Man rolled up Roberts from behind, held on to the ropes, and pinned
him for the win. After the match, Alice Cooper got in the ring and
used Roberts' python Damien to attack Hart.
The
Iron Sheik and
Nikolai Volkoff were in action next, against
The Killer
Bees. Slick asked all of the fans to rise to respect Nikolai
Volkoff's singing of the
Soviet National Anthem,
and when Volkoff began singing,
Jim
Duggan came to the ring with his
two-by-four, which had an American flag attached to
it, got on the microphone and said that Volkoff was not going to
sing because America is the land of the free and the home of the
brave. While the match ensued, Duggan stayed at ringside. When The
Iron Sheik locked a
camel clutch on
one of the Killer Bees, Jim Duggan hit him with his two by four,
resulting in a The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff winning the bout
by
disqualification.
In what was billed as the "biggest main event in sports
entertainment," the match pitted
WWF
Champion Hulk Hogan defending the
title against
André the Giant.
Howard Finkel introduced the guest
ring announcer,
Bob Uecker, and the time
keeper,
Mary Hart. Bobby
Heenan was in André the Giant's corner as he came to the ring. The
fans booed André heavily, yet Hogan came to the ring to a huge
ovation. Approximately two minutes into the match, Hogan attempted
to bodyslam André, but he was unable to lift the giant and nearly
lost the match when Andre fell on him and apparently pinned him.
Later on, André gave Hogan an Irish whip to the far side of the
ring and attempted a
big boot on Hogan,
but Hogan gave André a
clothesline to
take him down. Hogan then
scoop slammed the
525-pound André and executed a
leg drop to
get the win and retain the championship.
Aftermath
Because of the success of WrestleMania III and to capitalize on the
feud between Hogan and André, the
Survivor Series event was created.
Roddy Piper went on to film
Hell Comes to Frogtown and
They Live and made sporadic
appearances on television before finally returning to host a
Piper's Pit segment at
WrestleMania V. Piper continued to be active
in professional wrestling at various points for more than two
decades. The first televised match between André and Hulk Hogan
after WrestleMania III was on
The Main Event on
NBC on February 5, 1988, drawing a record 33
million viewers, making it the most watched match in North American
professional wrestling history. The
angle surrounding
this match was that after winning the match, André ended Hogan's
four-year reign as WWF champion with the help of a
screwjob finish
involving twin referees
Earl and
Dave Hebner. Their feud culminated in a
rematch at
WrestleMania IV as part
of a tournament to crown a new champion.
Randy Savage continued to challenge Ricky Steamboat for the
Intercontinental title in rematches at house shows across the
country. Steamboat eventually lost the title to The Honky Tonk Man,
and not long after, Savage became a babyface and feuded with Honky
Tonk over the title.
Twenty years later,
WrestleMania 23
celebrated WrestleMania III by returning to the
Detroit metropolitan area, showing footage
from WrestleMania III, having
Aretha
Franklin sing "
America the
Beautiful," and having
Kane
scoop slam
The Great Khali.
Also in 2007, WrestleMania III was re-released on
DVD. The DVD included pre-WrestleMania interviews and
matches, including the battle royal from
Saturday Night's Main Event that Hercules won, and
optional pop-up trivia facts about the event.
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