WrestleMania 4: The birth of the WWF Championship Tournament

Rich in star powerThere is this concept of a hat-trick in sports and the definition for the same goes like this -- any three successive similar outcomes make a hat-trick. The same concept goes with success as well. With the first three editions of WrestleMania turning out to be blockbusters, the WWE team was extremely elated at the happenings and decided to continue with it.Once again the crowd count reached close to 20,000 and such an attendance for live events before the 90s was just incredible. Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant were quite famous by then and had created a unique name for themselves among WWE circles.This time around, WWE is aiming for a record attendance in Texas for this WrestleMania 32 and we surely got to watch out for it. With all that being said, we will quickly recap some of the interesting things that went down at WrestleMania 4-

#3 Date, Place, Venue and Match Card

Atlanta city hosted WrestleMania 4

The fourth edition of WrestleMania was yet another visual treat and the WWE fans savoured it well. WrestleMania 4 took place on 27th March 1988 at the Historic Atlantic City Convention Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. As mentioned earlier, the attendance for the show was 19199, to be specific. This particular WrestleMania event was the fourth under the WWF banner.

Let us quickly glance through the match card of WrestleMania 4 which contained 16 matches – 13 singles, 2 tag matches and a battle royal. The event witnessed a 14-man tournament on a round robin basis to determine the WWF Champion.

Singles Action

Bad News Brown eliminated Bret Hart for the win (20-man Battle Royal)

The Ultimate Warrior vs. Hercules

Brutus Beefcake vs. The Honky Tonk Man (c) (WWF Intercontinental Championship match)

WWF Championship Tournament:

Round-1

Ted DiBiase vs. Jim Duggan

Don Muraco vs. Dino Bravo

Greg Valentine vs. Ricky Steamboat

Randy Savage vs. Butch Reed

One Man Gang vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

Rick Rude vs. Jake Roberts

Quarters

Hulk Hogan vs. André the Giant (DDQ)

Ted DiBiase vs. Don Muraco

Randy Savage vs. Greg Valentine

One Man Gang reached the Semis

Semis

Randy Savage vs. One Man Gang (with Slick) by disqualification

Ted DiBiase was the other semi-finalist

Final

Randy Savage vs. Ted DiBiase (WWF Championship Match)

Tag Team Action

The Islanders and Bobby Heenan vs. The British Bulldogs and Koko B. Ware

Demolition vs. Strike Force (c) (WWF Tag Team Championship Match)

#2 Title Changes and Highlights from the Show

The tournament was conducted in a round robin fashion

This show had three title matches in all – Intercontinental Championship match, Tag team Championship match and a tournament for the vacant WWF Championship.

The first title match of the night was between Brutus Beefcake and The Honky Tonk Man for the Intercontinental Championship in which Tonk Man defended his IC title against Brutus. Beefcake won the match by disqualification and eventually there was no title change.

The second title match of the night featured Demolition and Strike Force for the WWF Tag Team Championship. Strike Force defended their titles against Demolition and by the end of the night, Demolition were crowned the new tag champs.

Yet another interesting match from the show was the 20-man Battle Royal in which Bad News Brown remained the last man inside the ring eliminating Bret Hart. This was the second battle royal in WrestleMania after the first one at WM-2.

Something that caught the eye of everyone that night was the 14 man tournament for the vacant WWF Championship. This match was rich with the star power of Hogan, Andre, Randy Savage, and DiBiase to name a few. Savage emerged as the new WWF Champion by the end of the night.

#1 The Main Event

The finalists made this match special

Ted DiBiase and Randy Savage were the finalists of the tournament. Savage was tired due to his hard-fought semi-final match with One Man Gang but DiBiase had an easy go and got a bye straight to the finals.

DiBiase was dominant throughout the match but Savage countered in the end and made a failed attempt of a ‘Savage Elbow’. DiBiase applied the ‘Million Dollar Dream’ on DiBiase and covered him for the victory before the referee got distracted by the ringside presence of Andre and Hogan.

Hogan, meanwhile attacked DiBiase with a steel chair and Savage capitalized with a ‘Savage Elbow’ from the top rope and covered DiBiase for the victory and won the WWF Championship.