At Their Peak, Who Was Hottest/Most Popular?

[Seymour Scagnetti]

Quote: Originally Posted by Dayman

Just to play devil's advocate, since I agree that it's Hogan... Has anybody else ever had the opportunity to get 93,000 people to show up to see them? If they had bothered to put Wrestlemania at a building that size during Austin's heyday as the top draw, I would bet they probably would have gotten that amount of people to go to it. I mean, Rock (and Cena, but probably more Rock) just put 79,000 people in Sun Life Stadium, but for all we know it might have been 100,000 if the building had allowed it. And I'm sure that they're going to get at least 100,000 for Mania next year. It's a great accomplishment, no doubt, but I just wonder if it's unprecedented simply because nobody else has had the chance to do it.

Last year was different because the Rock was coming back from years of acting so the interest was there for nostalgic reasons and I don't know how expensive the cheapest seats were last year but I saw WM6 in the Toronto Skydome when Hulk fought the Ultimate Warrior and there was 65 000 people and I had bleacher seats and paid a lot for them and had to wait in line for hours to get them. I remember the whole stadium being sold out within a couple of days. I doubt that was the case for the most recent WM where a lot of the cheap seats were probably papered to fill out the stadium.

Hogan could generate insane interest just fighting guys on the WWE roster. When Austin was at his peak, he fought guys like the Rock and Michaels (and needed Tyson as referee to generate interest) in smaller arenas because the WWE knew they couldn't fill a 70000 seat stadium at that time.

And when WM was in Toronto about 10 years ago, it was sold out but the crowd was there to see Hogan against the Rock and the crowd popping for that match easily confirmed that. I think Austin fought Scott Hall or Kevin Nash back then and you could barely hear the crowd for that match. The Hogan match stole the show and Hogan was supposed to be the heel. If you saw it then you saw that Rock became the heel in the middle of the match because he was being booed so much and Hogan was being insanely cheered. It was pretty funny to watch because even Rock couldn't figure out what was going on and he knew he had to adlib heel behaviour midstream because he didn't want to look stupid acting like a face while being booed and the Rock was normally very popular in Toronto. At least 90% of the crowd was cheering for Hogan.

That match pretty much confirmed Hogan was king. In fact from memory I think one of the rumours back then was Austin didn't want to fight Hogan at that WM because he was afraid what happened to the Rock with the crowd would happen to him even though Hogan was willing to do the job like he did for the Rock which the crowd did not like and gave Hogan a standing ovation afterwards.

[55]

Also, there was no prime time TV for the WWF back in 1987 and it was much tougher to promote than it is now.

Drawing 93k to a city like Detroit to see a pro wrestling match in 1987 would be like drawing 150k now.

[kingkilla56]

This reminds me of guys in the sports forums arguing who was better between eras without accounting for the changes in our culture over those periods of time.

I missed out on Hulkamania so yeah. Excluding him Ive never seen anybody get as much love from my base like the Rock and Austin, but Id give it to the Rock for his, what 3 year run? He was something else.

[Seymour Scagnetti]

Quote: Originally Posted by 55

Also, there was no prime time TV for the WWF back in 1987 and it was much tougher to promote than it is now. Drawing 93k to a city like Detroit to see a pro wrestling match in 1987 would be like drawing 150k now.

And back then WM main events were set up less than 6 weeks in advance. The Rock/Cena match was set up a year in advance. I remember Hogan being on Piper's Pit on one of those saturday afternoon taped shows and Andre walked on with Heenen showing that he turned heel and grabbed Hogan by the scruff of his neck and the match was set for 6 or 7 weeks later. None of those 6 months worth of promos hyping the match.

[Seymour Scagnetti]

Quote: Originally Posted by kingkilla56

This reminds me of guys in the sports forums arguing who was better between eras without accounting for the changes in our culture over those periods of time. I missed out on Hulkamania so yeah. Excluding him Ive never seen anybody get as much love from my base like the Rock and Austin, but Id give it to the Rock for his, what 3 year run? He was something else.

While I envy your young age (at least a lot younger than me) nothing beat pro wrestling in the 80's and start of the 90's and I watched alot of wrestling in the attitude era. It was so much fun back then and you didn't have the internet to announce every new wrestler coming in. So when a guy like Macho Man or Undertaker arrived, you knew virtually nothing about him so it kept everything fresh for new guys coming in.

[dochalladay32]

Quote: Originally Posted by Seymour Scagnetti

Last year was different because the Rock was coming back from years of acting so the interest was there for nostalgic reasons and I don't know how expensive the cheapest seats were last year but I saw WM6 in the Toronto Skydome when Hulk fought the Ultimate Warrior and there was 65 000 people and I had bleacher seats and paid a lot for them and had to wait in line for hours to get them. I remember the whole stadium being sold out within a couple of days. I doubt that was the case for the most recent WM where a lot of the cheap seats were probably papered to fill out the stadium.

They seem to mention every year that Wrestlemania tickets sell out within hours on the Monday after they go on sale. Now maybe they have multiple releases now so that isn't entirely true, just that they sell out the first release.

[Amoo316]

93,173...Hogan.

[King_B_Mack]

I think guys are getting a little too out of hand with the Hogan love at this point. If you're going to lay things out on the table, lay all the chips out there. For one thing, Hogan had the benefit of the majority of the world still not privy to the fact that pro wrestling was staged at the time in the 80's, at least, the WWF didn't actually acknowledge what they were then so it was a lot easier to get people in as simple marks back then.

There's also the amount of business that was lost for Vince and wrestling as a whole with the whole steroid scandal that put him and Hogan on bad terms back in the early 90's that knocked the business down. Austin, Rock and Shawn brought the company back from that and yeah, during the begining of the Era Vince didn't take the chance to take Wrestlemania into any big buildings but Austin/Rock did put about 68,000 in Reliant stadium when they finally got a chance at a big venue on the tail end of the Attitude era. No doubt if they had given them the chance with 14-16 with a big venue during the height of the Attitude Era, they could've done bigger numbers than that.

At the height of the their popularity Austin and Rock were household names as well. They're mannerism and catchprhases were EVERYWHERE. I'm gonna say Hogan wins out, but it's not nearly as big a gap as it's being portrayed.