WrestleMania 4. It is the famous 14-man Heavyweight Title tournament at the Trump Plaza. There really isn’t another WrestleMania like this one with the vacant WWE Championship on the line.
It certainly had some unique moments and a pretty fun ending to determine the new, deserving Champion. I just wish I didn’t have 16 matches to get through to actually get to that point. With all of this in mind, I present my list of the top five things I Learned From WrestleMania 4:
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#5 The tournament was not booked well
A tournament to pick a new Champion is a pretty fun idea in theory. However, in practice at WrestleMania IV, it really wasn’t booked logically. First, a 14-person tournament is way too many. It led to way too many matches and lots of screwy finishes that wore out the audience in the nearly four-hour show.
Second, the flow of the tournament is way off. Hogan and Andre got a strange first round bye that you will read later was basically a waste of time for all involved. You had a boring 15-minute match with Rick Rude and Jake “The Snake” Roberts that ended in a time limit draw.
It had a lot of rest holds and gave One Man Gang an undeserved bye to the semifinals. We also had Ted DiBiase directly qualifying for the finals because of disqualification finish as well.
The tournament also had some weird match results. Yes, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat versus Greg “The Hammer” Valentine might have been the best match on the card but it has Steamboat losing. Why is that important? Because you missed out on the potential quarterfinal that would have pit him against Randy Savage.
How could you miss out on that rematch from WrestleMania III? It was one of many strange decisions within the eleven match tournament.
#4 The other titles matches are a mess
This WrestleMania had 16 matches throughout its running time. Besides the tournament, the highlights of the show should have been the Intercontinental Title Match and the Tag Title Match. This is really not the case.
Also read: 5 Things I learned from WrestleMania III (1987)
The IC Title had Honky Tonk Man versus Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake. That is already a recipe for disaster as both are not very strong wrestlers. They got over for their charisma but not their strong wrestling abilities.
It had a lot of rest holds and a back-drop. That is about it. It ends with another DQ finish along with Jimmy Hart getting his haircut by Brutus but Honky Tonk Man keeping his title for another day.
The Tag Match had a different problem. Demolition were booked as the heels but were cheered by the crowd. In another unsurprising moment, Demolition used Mr Fiji’s cane to cheat and win the title. This should get them booed right? Nope, the crowd cheered for one of the first times in the match when the bad guys cheated.
That is not the response you are looking for at WrestleMania during a major title change.
#3 Hogan-Andre 2 doesn’t live up to the hype
I am sure all fans who are being honest know that Hogan vs. Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III was not the best match in WrestleMania history. However, it was well put together and the 93,000 fans loved it.
Andre and Hulk told a great story and Andre gave it his all despite his health issues. It certainly was a big match on the biggest stage.
However, this was not the case in their rematch at WrestleMania IV. For some weird reason, this was a quarterfinal match in the tournament. You would think that a normal tournament bracket wouldn’t allow the two big stars of WrestleMania III to face off so early in a Heavyweight Championship tournament. But we had the rematch for ages about an hour into WrestleMania IV.
It wasn’t a good follow-up.
Andre was in pretty bad shape even a year later and it made him quite immobile in the ring. I don’t want to insult a man in failing health but it doesn’t lead to a fun or believable match for the fans. Since Andre can’t really help out a lot, we get the standard for the show, a lot of interference.
The issue is it wasn’t even really good inference. Virgil and DiBiase got involved a lot and tried to throw a chair in the ring. Hogan grabbed it and hit Andre with the chair in front of the ref. Naturally, this caused Hogan to lose by disqualification and Andre to pull the shocking upset. What?
You mean when Andre used a chair the second he too was disqualified causing a double disqualification. When does that ever happen in pro wrestling? A strange ending to a disappointing rematch. However it did have a shocking result, Hulk Hogan would not win the title for the first time in over four years.
I just wish we had a better way to get to that point.
#2 Lazy booking makes for a boring show
I think that there are two major problems with this show. One is there are way too many matches. Having 16 very short matches on a card wore out the audience. The biggest issue is the many, many overbooked finishes.
We had Andre cheating in front of the ref and getting away with it. We had Dino Bravo getting disqualified for pushing a ref in the way. We had Hulk Hogan not being disqualified alone despite using a chair first.
We had Valentine grabbing tights for the win. We had Bam Bam counted out despite the fact he was on the ring apron and being hit by his opponent. We had a megaphone attack on a ref.
We even had back-to-back cane attacks to decide matches as well. If you add in what occurs in the title match, that is nine finishes involved cheating in some way. It is way too much lazy booking for an important show.
#1 Randy Savage winning his first Heavyweight title is a big WrestleMania moment
Yes, I wasn’t really a fan of the booking of the 14-man tournament but the outcome is one of the better moments of WrestleMania IV or any WrestleMania. We have Randy Savage winning his first Heavyweight Title after wrestling in four matches in one night. The sight of him hoisting up an emotional Elizabeth is quite a sight to end a WrestleMania.
You cannot argue Savage didn’t deserve it. He wrestled Butch Reed, Greg Valentine, One Man Gang and Ted DiBiase on one show. He put in nearly twenty-five minutes of in-ring time in a three and a half hour show. That was the most any WrestleMania performer had done up to that point.
The final match was overbooked a bit with Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant getting involved. Heck, Hogan again did the not-so-babyface act and hit The Million Dollar Man with a steel chair. It wasn’t the cleanest way for Savage to win the title but it didn’t make the emotional moment of finally getting there any less important.
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