Wrestlemania through the years

On April 3 2011, WWE’s Wrestlemania 27 will take place in the 70,000 seat Georgia Dome in Atlanta, continuing the longest-running annual event in professional wrestling. Ever since the first Wrestlemania way back in 1985, the event has been something that wrestling fans look forward to with bated breath ever year, as they witness the biggest matches of the year take place, either in person or watching at home on pay-per-view television.





This year’s event is already a dead-cert to bring a huge crowd to Atlanta, and will certainly garner millions of pay-per-view buys across the globe. However, it wasn’t necessarily always that way. In 1985, Vince McMahon, chairman of the WWE (then known as the WWF) took the biggest gamble of his life when he announced plans for the first Wrestlemania, an event he hoped would garner mainstream attention for his company by combining wrestling action with hugely popular celebrities of the day. Wrestlemania I was main-evented by a tag team match, in which WWF Champion Hulk Hogan and hugely popular star of the A-Team, Mr T, collided with "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and "Mr Wonderful" Paul Orndorff, and featured appearances from celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Cyndi Lauper and Liberace. It’s often been said that McMahon ploughed such a large amount of time and money into the event, that if it hadn’t been a success then there was a good chance that the WWF may have went out of business. However, the event drew over 19,000

fans to New York’s Madison Square Garden, and an audience of over 1 million people watched it through "closed-circuit television", making it the largest ever showing of an event in this manner in America at the time.





The success of this event led to the commissioning of Wrestlemania 2, which took place the following year, and the event has taken place every year thereafter. Typically, it will feature the culmination of wrestling feuds which have built throughout the year, and the event usually features the biggest matches of the year in the WWE.





Wrestlemania has certainly provided grappling fans with plenty of memorable moments throughout the years. Many fans believe that Wrestlemania 3 was the best of all time. That year, over 93,000 spectators packed the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan, to see Hulk Hogan battle Andre the Giant. And in a particularly memorable moment, the crowd came unglued when Hogan slammed the 525 pound Andre to the ground for the victory. That said, every year since its inception Wrestlemania has continued to enthral and surprise wrestling fans, and many of them cite Wrestlemania 17 (featuring a main event between "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and WWF Champion The Rock) as the greatest of all time.





And the two most recent Wrestlemanias, highlighted by classic bouts between Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker, have both been extremely popular with fans too.





While the matches haven’t yet been set for Wrestlemania 27, the event is sure to be an instant classic for grappling fans. Follow the events in the lead up to it on Sky TV to see who is going to be facing who, and to gain a better insight into who to root for and who to boo when the event takes place in April.