WrestleMania I
WrestlingFeuds documents four storylines that ran through WrestleMania I, held on March 31, 1985. Two of them reached their blow-off here.
Storylines that paid off here
Rowdy Roddy Piper vs. Superfly Jimmy Snuka (Mar 1984 – Mar 1985)
Roddy Piper smashed a coconut over Jimmy Snuka's head on Piper's Pit in 1984, launching the WWF's hottest grudge of the year, making Piper the promotion's top heel, and setting the table for the main event of the first WrestleMania.
Roddy Piper · Jimmy Snuka
Hulk Hogan vs. Rowdy Roddy Piper (Jun 1984 – Mar 1985)
Roddy Piper's contempt for the WWF's new MTV-driven Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection escalated from talk-show insults into an assault on Cyndi Lauper, pulling in champion Hulk Hogan and building to the first WrestleMania, a closed-circuit gamble Vince McMahon nearly went bankrupt staging.
Hulk Hogan · Roddy Piper
Also referenced in
Hulk Hogan vs. The Iron Sheik (Dec 1983 – Jan 1984)
The Iron Sheik held the WWF Championship for less than a month as a transitional flag-waving heel before Hulk Hogan escaped the camel clutch at Madison Square Garden to win the title, launching Hulkamania and, by both men's later account, surviving a $100,000 bribe to break Hogan's leg instead.
Hulk Hogan · The Iron Sheik
Hulk Hogan vs. Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff (Jul 1986 – Mar 1987)
Paul Orndorff spent a year as Hulk Hogan's tag partner and closest friend in the ring, then piledrove him on live television because Hogan was too busy squatting weights to take his phone call. The payoff filled Toronto's Exhibition Stadium with a then-record wrestling crowd and ended, months later, with a steel cage restart so contested it helped invent a corrupt referee angle nobody had planned.
Hulk Hogan · Paul Orndorff · Bobby Heenan · Adrian Adonis · Roddy Piper