4 Era-Defining Matches Responsible for Our Readers' Fandom
Last weekend, wrestling social media was abuzz with a simple question: which four matches formed the basis for your wrestling fandom?
An innocuous question, the hashtag had tens of thousands, or more, participants, and dominated discussions in a lot of social media groups.
We posed the question to you, our readers, in a Facebook post earlier in the week and, while your responses were far too varied to narrow down to just four, a theme of four era-defining men, moments, and series emerged, which we've collected here.
Unsurprisingly, a significant number of our readers' fandom-defining matches occurred at The Grandaddy of 'Em All, WrestleMania.
#4 Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant, WrestleMania III
His stock is significantly diminished for many in the modern era, to say the least, but it's no shocker that wrestling fans born before 1990 would cite Hulk Hogan's three biggest WrestleMania main events as their fandom-defining match.
At WrestleMania III, regardless of the legitimacy or lack thereof in the official story WWE has crafted around the match, The Hulkster defined wrestling for an entire generation by slamming Andre the Giant to retain his WWF Championship at the Pontiac Silverdome. Andre may not have been as big as the company and Hogan claim, the Frenchman may not have actually been undefeated, it wasn't the first time the two had locked up, and there may not even have been as close to 100,000 fans present as the company likes to claim.
However, the fact remains that the Slam Heard 'Round the World earned its place in wrestling canon, and inspired fans and superstars alike (while that night's Intercontinental Championship match was much more his speed, a young Rob Van Dam was in the audience and cites this WrestleMania as a defining aspect of his choice to train to wrestle).
Professional wrestling isn't about what's real; if it were, the revelation that it's all staged would have killed off all of our fandoms. Wrestling exists in a realm beyond real, which is why the disputed "facts" of Hogan-Andre take a backseat to the larger narrative that planted in our heads and hearts.
The match itself is a stinker, but the finish, and the swell of applause for the triumphant bodyslam, is six-star pro wrestling magic; it created its own archetypical match story (look to any size mismatch and, the moment the underdog tries his or her first bodyslam and collapses, fans know the finish beat-by-beat) and inspired an entire generation to believe in kayfabe.