[tony_soprano_89]

well I recently watched the new wrestlemania dvd.. "the true story of wrestlemania". you can watch it all on youtube if you haven't already seen it, and from what I can gather from that, Vince basically wanted to create an original, once in a lifetime experience for the viewer. it was all essentially showing off, and trying to make it a big deal, and he thought with this idea it would get people interested and he also wanted to prove that he could pull it off, practicality wise. A lot of people weren't that keen on it and I think that's why nothing like that has been done since... One of the major flaws I think is that the people in each arena had to watch 2 hours of the show on big screens, and only an hour of live action. no one wants to pay for that.

 

[the modern myth]

I'm assuming that it was to capitalise on ticket sales. Three venues = 3x ticket sales. As said before, I bet the people at each show were a little frustrated that they had to watch most of the show on big screens. Not a great idea.

 

[bboy]

As people have explained it was basically Vince saying Wrestlemania 1 was the test and it was successful. Now we can do something completely different and bring Wrestlemania to 3 different cities and prove how successful it can be again.

The next year they went for the biggest arena for a wrestling event - Pontiac Silverdome. At that time Vince was trying new things and experimenting and trying to get WWF to seem like a big deal.

 

[777]

You gotta remember that this was back in the mid eighties. Satellite was a new technology and PPVs were just taking off. Also, at this time Vince had just raided the other territories' talent, in order to build his 'national' brand. Prior to Vince taking over ownership WWWF was a predominately Northeastern promotion. This move to run in the three largest centers across the country through the course of one event really established the company as a major national player.

 

[jizzyb]

I don't know how WWF got away with doing that. I'd seriously feel ripped off as a fan. I'm sure ticket prices weren't any lower than they would've been had it been a regular show either.

 

[Gunner14]

Every event had four matches and each one had one of the main events. Main problem was each venue had 4 matches

NY - had 25 minutes of ring action
Chicago has 24 minutes
LA had 30 minutes.

So you wasnt getting much for your money.

 

[TN Punk]

I didn't know they did this until I watched the DVD. I thought it was pretty cool.

 

[radiatedrich]

Basically what everyone else has already said. Wrestling was just beginning to go national and Vince wanted to show off his empire, plus he was experimenting around trying to figure out what would and wouldn't work for the PPV business.

 

[Algernon]

Vince was just experimenting. A recent example of an experiment gone wrong : the scramble match a few years ago. One could argue the 40 man rumble was failed experiment critically but buys were up from last year so we may see the 40 man rumble stick.

 

[dxbender]

^Scramble match wasn't a failed experiment, it was actually good and entertaining but WWE just got rid of it for no reason. They replaced the unforgiven scramble match with the breaking point submissions ppv and then replaced that with the bragging rights ppv which I think is a failed experiment.

 

[Hotdiggity11]

The DVD talks about it quite a bit.


It was also symbolic of the fact that WWE was now a national organization, by having 3 different venues across the country for one event by one wrestling company.

 

[tony_soprano_89]

Vince was just experimenting. A recent example of an experiment gone wrong : the scramble match a few years ago. One could argue the 40 man rumble was failed experiment critically but buys were up from last year so we may see the 40 man rumble stick.

I'd be one of those that argues the 40 man rumble was a failed experiment. Only joined this forum in the last few weeks so not sure what people here think of it, but I wasn't a fan. obviously the rumble is gonna be chaotic because of all the numbers but I just felt that with the extra 10 guys this was tipped over the edge, just too much going on I thought.

 

[PushShelton]

Vince wanted to show NWA, AWA and any other wrestling promotions that he had was on top of the food chain.

 

[Stekeo1990]

most has been answered but i think it was also because they couldnt air it nation wide in one place i think so this was a way to get more people to watch it