1980s professional wrestling boom
Meanwhile, the NWA's affiliate in Memphis, Tennessee, the Continental Wrestling Association (CWA), had Jerry Lawler, who rose to national prominence thanks to his "feud" with Andy Kaufman.
[1] At the beginning of the 1980s, the AWA had the largest television presence, with distribution of their weekly broadcast in Chicago, Denver, Green Bay, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Winnipeg.
Hulk Hogan became the top babyface after Verne Gagne retired from full-time wrestling in 1981 and Nick Bockwinkel became the AWA World Heavyweight Champion.
In 1982, Continental Productions, a subsidiary of Dallas independent station KXTX, began syndicating a one-hour show internationally from the Sportatorium of former NWA affiliate World Class Championship Wrestling (WCCW) run by Fritz Von Erich.
The KXTX broadcast was innovative because it more closely resembled a professional sportscast, with former football broadcaster Bill Mercer as host, mobile cameras at ringside with multiple shotgun microphones to capture and enhance the sound of impacts and crowd noise for boxing pay-per-views, and vignettes and interviews inspired by the Rocky movies to accentuate the heel or babyface of a wrestler outside the ring.
The KXTX program earned extremely high ratings–higher than Saturday Night Live and many wrestling promotions in the U.S., including the AWA and the WWF.
However, the family would become marred by death of nearly every wrestler associated with WCCW in the ensuing years, attributed to abuse of steroids, opiates and cocaine.
On December 23, 1983, the younger McMahon signed AWA superstar Hulk Hogan, who previously wrestled with the WWF from 1979 to 1981, to return to the company in 1984.
To play Hogan's nemesis, he signed talents including Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) babyface "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, turning him heel, and AWA manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.
The AWA signed a television contract with ESPN, but the revenue was insignificant compared to the WWF's pay-per-view business, which was based on annual March/April events featuring Hogan in a landmark championship match each year from 1986 to 1991.
McMahon would use the additional income generated by advertising, television deals and video sales and rentals to further his ambition to tour nationally.
In May 1984, in a failed attempt to garner a greater appeal in the Southeast, McMahon bought a controlling interest in GCW, an NWA member which held the lucrative Saturday timeslot on Atlanta-based independent station WTBS—known outside Atlanta as Superstation TBS.
[3] In the WWE documentary The Rise and Fall of WCW, Crockett explained that his purchase of the timeslot basically paid for McMahon's first WrestleMania.
[6] The success was in part precipitated by the "Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection", a period of cooperation and cross-promotion between the WWF and elements of the music industry.
[6] The idea was formed by WWF manager Lou Albano, who met singer Cyndi Lauper on a trip to Puerto Rico.
[10] In 1985, to counter the AWA's Super Sunday, the NWA's Starrcade and WCCW's Star Wars, the WWF created its own flagship show, WrestleMania, held at Madison Square Garden and broadcast on 135 closed-circuit networks.
The concept of a wrestling supercard was nothing new in North America; the NWA had been running Starrcade a few years prior to WrestleMania, and even the elder McMahon had marketed large Shea Stadium cards viewable in closed-circuit locations.
MTV's popularity and coverage of the women's wrestling feud generated a great deal of interest in WWF programming at this time.
A similar situation arose in January 1988, when Crockett's Bunkhouse Stampede pay-per-view was counter-programmed by the inaugural Royal Rumble, which aired for free on the USA Network.
After years of financial turmoil and the constant changing of bookers, WCW would resume competition with McMahon's WWF when former AWA commentator Eric Bischoff was appointed as the promotion's Executive Vice President.
It achieved the largest recorded attendance for a live indoor sporting event in North America with a claimed figure of 93,173 attendees.
[12] The main event, during which Hogan scoop-slammed (later dubbed "the body slam heard around the world") and defeated André the Giant, helped the show go down in wrestling history as one of the greatest ever produced and made the WWF's popularity soar.
WrestleMania VI, on April 1, 1990, saw one of the last WWF appearances of André the Giant (as a member of the Colossal Connection), who had become barely mobile in the ring due to real life health issues, and his parting with long-time manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan.
After WrestleMania VI, Hogan started appearing with less frequency in WWF events, with Warrior taking most of the main-event spots for the rest of 1990 and up until the 1991 Royal Rumble.
Fans who were kids in the mid-late 1980s were teens by the 1990s, and many grew bored with the comic book style of wrestling of the 1980s, turning their attention away from their childhood favorites such as Hogan, Junkyard Dog, and "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka, in favor of newer and grittier wrestlers like The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Diesel, and Bret "Hitman" Hart in the New Generation Era; then in the Attitude Era in favor of Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, Mick Foley (whether competing as Cactus Jack, Dude Love, or Mankind), and The New Age Outlaws.
