Hulkamania is real
Pro Wrestling in 1985
WELCOME
Welcome to The Pro Wrestling Exuberant. My name is Russell Franklin, and I will be writing here about a wide range of topics from both the current scene of pro wrestling and the past, including wrestling shows on TV, different promotions, both big and small, and in between, and the wrestler themselves. I also will be showcasing assorted wrestling merchandise from my personal collection, including books, figures, and DVDs, as well as writing about anything pro wrestling related that grabs my attention.
ABOUT MYSELF
I have been watching wrestling and collecting wrestling merchandise since the mid-1980s. In the 1990s I wrote for newsstand wrestling magazines in an era where there were a large amount of them being published every month. Writing for wrestling magazines gave me the opportunity to interview a lot of different wrestlers, including both legends and rising stars. My favorite type of article to write was a profile based on an interview. I will be including recollections here of many of these interviews. At the time of the interviews, some of the wrestlers were already legends; others would go on to find great success in the years to follow; others would fade from the scene without finding success in the big leagues of that era. In the 1990s I worked as a pro wrestling referee; this was an amazing experience, and I have many great memories from this and many stories to share.
2024 GOLDEN ERA OF PRO WRESTLING
It’s a great time to be a pro wrestling fan. There are so some many diverse and high-quality viewing options right now, and wrestling from all over the world is easy to access due to streaming. WWE and AEW both have several hours of new programming each week, and for many fans that may be all they have time for, or they might not yet be aware of the other promotions out there with high quality wrestling. As a fan, I currently enjoy watching a large number of wrestling promotions and will be writing about them here as well. In addition to watching WWE and AEW, I also watch TNA, NWA, MLW, RING OF HONOR, GCW, and an assortment of US based independent promotions. Internationally, I watch Revolution Pro Wrestling (RevPro) out of the UK; New Japan Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Noah, and Stardom out of Japan; AAA out of Mexico; and assorted Australian based promotions.
This really is a new golden age of wrestling many ways in my opinion in terms of the overall quality of pro wrestling being presented, combined with volume of it that is available.
PRO WRESTLING IN 1985
I first started watching pro wrestling in September 1985, and I started watching it all because of a cartoon.
At the time, pro wrestling’s popularity was growing fast. The first WrestleMania had just occurred in March at Madison Square Garden in front of approximately 19,000 people; over one million people viewed the event through closed-circuit television in arenas and movie theatres across the country. The event included popular TV actor Mr. T in the main event teaming with Hulk Hogan against “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and ”Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorf. Celebrity guest involvement of Cyndi Lauper, Muhammad Ali, and Liberace helped attract additional mainstream attention.
Hulk Hogan, who had become WWF champion in January 1984, shortly after his arrival in the promotion, by defeating The Iron Sheik, was immensely popular and had rapidly growing mainstream name recognition. He had been on the cover of Sports Illustrated the prior April, and WWF itself with Hogan as the centerpiece was bringing in lots of new fans as they ran live shows across the country, packing arenas, and marketed the WWF and its superstars heavily into the mainstream consciousness of the time.
The multi decade long era of pro wrestling promotions as regional territories was heading towards a rapid end in 1985. WWF was in the midst of its aggressive expansion into a national promotion and international product, with both syndicated and cable tv programing that coincided with regional promotions losing its top name talent to WWF as the promotion began running shows in the same areas the regional promotion were based out of and airing programming locally in competition as well. The regional promotions saw business fall off and were disappearing in rapid succession. WWF’s competitors on the national seen were the NWA based out Charlotte, North Carolina, airing in syndication and on cable, run by Jim Crockett JR., and mostly running shows in the Southern US with an eye to expanding further north in the eastern US and spreading out all over the country, and the AWA, based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, run by Verne Gagne, and holding shows primarily in the mid-West. AWA aired on ESPN five days a week.
To combat the WWF’s rapid expansion, the AWA formed an alliance the year prior with the NWA and several of the surviving regional promotion to run shows with all the top names from each promotion. There was success, including drawing approximately 21,000 people to Comiskey Park in Chicago on September 28, 1985 for SuperClash featuring Ric Flair vs. Magnum T. A. for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and Rick Martel vs. Stan Hansen for the AWA World Heavyweight Championship. The alliance was called Pro Wrestling USA, and had great promise, but it did not last long.
One Saturday morning in the September 1985 I put on the TV and a show called “Hulk Hogan’s Rock-N-Wrestling” was on as part of a Saturday morning cartoon line-up. Saturday morning cartoon blocks were popular in the early 80s in the days prior to widespread cable access. The show featured animated versions of Hulk Hogan, The Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volcoff, Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant, and several other top stars of the time. The wrestlers did not do their own voices for the cartoon, and the storylines on the show did not have to do with wrestling itself either, but the show nevertheless captured my attention enough to get me curious about professional wrestling. After a few weeks of watching the cartoon, I wondered what actual professional wrestling was like.
At the time, a program called WWF Superstars of Wrestling aired late Saturday morning on a local television station. It was a syndicated program, meaning the show aired in local television markets across the country. The matches consisted of a name star against a “jobber”. A “jobber” is a dated term referencing a wrestler who appeared on tv every week and never won, often getting in very little offense in quick matches. Some of these wrestlers also worked the opening matches against each on the WWF house show circuit, which was the live event non-televised shows that ran nearly every night of the week year-round as WWF toured all of the country.
The first thing I saw when I turned on WWF Superstars of Wrestling for the first time in the fall of 1985 was Don Muraco, with his manager Mr. Fuji at his side, hanging Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat by his own karate belt over the top rope, making Steamboat dangle around and clutch at the belt to free himself. I was immediately drawn into the action and started watching the show every week, becoming increasingly familiar with all the stars and different feuds taking places pitting the good guys, who abided by the rules against bad guys, who did not care about the rules and often had a colorful, loud-mouthed manager at their side to help them cheat during matches. Like many new fans during that period, I was drawn to Hulk Hogan, and he quickly became my favorite.
Action movies were wildly popular in this era as movie theatre releases, and Hulk Hogan with his blonde hair, huge muscles, deep tan, wild-eyed enthusiasm, and charismatic speaking ability stood out and looked like an action movie star who had crossed over to wrestling to vanquish all the villains in the world of wrestling. As I believe history shows, Hulk Hogan was the right person at the right time to take pro wrestling to new heights of popularity in the 1980s and set things in motion for pro wrestling to become even more popular in the decades to follow the height of his wrestling fame.
Over the next few months I began to watch other WWF shows like the syndicated Wrestling Challenge, which aired on Saturday afternoon on a local television station, and Prime Time Wrestling, which aired on Monday night on cable. Prime Time’s format involved Bobby “The Brain” Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon in a studio introducing different matches taped at some of the more well-known arenas for wrestling of the time like Boston Garden, Philadelphia Spectrum, and Madison Square Garden.
I learned a lot of clichés from Monsoon, like “you can cut the electricity in here with a knife” whenever there was a particularly exciting match; “their hanging from the rafters” for a sold out show; and “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades” whenever it was very close to a three count on a cover.
In between the matches on the syndicated shows, there would be interviews inserted for each local tv market with an announcer, usually “Mean” Gene Okerlund, and a wrestler hyping their match at upcoming show at the local arena later that month. During one of these interviews, Randy “Macho Man” Savage informed the viewing audience, with Miss Elizabeth at his side, he would be challenging, and defeating, Hulk Hogan for the WWF championship in December at my local arena in the main event.
I wanted to see WWF live, and this would be my first show. It was sold out that night, and I only remember two things about the actual wrestling matches. I remember the opening match clearly, which featured SD “Special Delivery” Jones defeating “Iron” Mike Sharpe. The other thing I remember is the high-volume cheers for Hulk Hogan as he did his post-match celebration after defeating Savage in the main event. Hulk strutted to each side of the ring, winding his right hand up in dramatically slow fashion before cupping the hand against the outside of his ear, his call for the crowd on that side of the ring to cheer louder if they wanted his signature most muscular pose aimed in their direction. The crowd gave Hulk a roar in return. Then he nodded his head in approval, and flexed his tan muscles in assorted poses. While this was going on, fans were throwing their rubber LJN Hulk Hogan figures into the ring in startlingly increasing numbers, in a wild celebration that was all part of the phenomena known as “Hulkamania” that as Hulk Hogan wrestled at sold out arenas across the country.
I remember being quite surprised that fans were willingly giving away their Hulk Hogan figures, by throwing it into the ring that night, but that was passionate fandom Hulk inspired among people. I still, by the way, have my LJN Hulk Hogan figure, the very first wrestling figure I ever bought. It’s sitting on a shelve just a few steps away as I write this, as is my Hulk Hogan yellow foam giant finger I purchased that night. The giant index finger points up to symbolize Hulk is number one, and words Hulk Hogan WWF World Heavyweight Champion emblazed across the center of the hand in red.
At the time, a large number of wrestling magazines were available each month at the newsstand, and I use to purchase all of them on a monthly basis and read them in its entirety. It was through these magazines that I learned there were other wrestling promotions besides WWF. I sought all the ones out that were available on TV in my area and began watching them, as 1985 came to a close.
To be continued.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can subscribe for free to receive all my new posts. If you like my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscriber to get exclusive content, like posts about and pictures of wrestling memorabilia from the ‘80s to present from my personal collection.
Listen to The Pro Wrestling Exuberant Podcast for free at https://theprowrestlingexuberant.buzzsprout.com and follow me on twitter/X at https://x.com/tpwexuberant for more original content.
Great post! Ricky The Dragon Steamboat was one of my favorite wrestlers to watch. He does not get enough credit!