WrestleMania Reflections: WrestleMania XI (Patreon)

WrestleMania XI

Hartford Civic Center - Hartford, Connecticut

April 2, 1995

Official Attendance: 16,305

Bam Bam Bigelow vs Lawrence Taylor (Special Referee, Pat Patterson)

By: Bruce Mitchell

NFL Hall of Fame Lawrence Taylor stands a quarter-century later as the only major league sports celebrity to wrestle an entire WrestleMania main event. It was the only professional wrestling match of LT’s career. Thanks to his opponent Bam Bam Bigelow and special referee Pat Patterson running inference, his match lived up to that era’s WrestleMania expectations, and then some.

It’s easier to forget what a big deal NFL star Taylor was because in recent years he’s kept a low-profile partly due to an arrest for statutory rape, but LT is hands-down the most famous defensive player in NFL history. He was one of only two defensive players to be named MVP, a three-time NFL Defensive Player of The Year , and a two-time Super Bowl Champion. He played his entire career, all 12 twelve years, for The New York Giants. He was the biggest sports star in the biggest sport in the biggest media market and population center in the world.

It wasn’t just that LT was an NFL star, it wasn’t just that he played for the Super Bowl Champion New York Giants, it was how he played the game and how he lived his life. He was a linebacker who used his strength, speed and knowledge of the game to physically dominate his side of the field.

He had to be one of the toughest guys in the world, right? You couldn’t help but wonder how he’d do in a fight, or in the ring. The Monday Night Football game he legally broke the leg of the Washington Redskins’ famed quarterback Joe Theismann, the one you could hear the leg snap loud as day cemented that reputation. He became the football player you most wanted to see kick ass - on or off the football field.

An important part of the reason the NFL and college football became the biggest sports in the country was the toughness of the players. Professional wrestling, the least credible of the mainstream sports in mainstream eyes, looked to “borrow” some of that credibility to hype what it was selling.

Early on, the NFL’s own Bronko Nagurski, the league’s biggest star, left the Green Bay Packers for the better-paying job of touring National Wrestling Association champion, (a predecessor to the NWA), even beating the tipster of the time Lou Thesz for that championship.

Wrestling promoters looked more to football for prospective pro wrestling stars than even amateur wrestling, because football was seen as more of a brawl. Ernie Ladd, Terry Funk, Blackjack Mulligan, Bruiser Brody, Cowboy Bill Watts and many more famed wrestlers let TV fans know they played so dirty they even set records for getting kicked out of football games, whether it happened or not (and it wasn’t like it was easy to check back then.)

New York Jets’ star Wahoo McDaniel made more money in pro wrestling too, just not in New York City after he turned a table over on WWF promoter Phil Zacko in a pay dispute.

Years later, Vince McMahon didn’t much care for his announcers putting over football achievements as proof of wrestling stardom, particular after Cowboy Bill Watts’ protégé from Oklahoma, Jim Ross, joined his crew and annoyed him with all that football schtick. It was always said that McMahon was an NFL fan but if he’s a fan of a particular team, well, I never heard…

McMahon did outdo his fellow super-rich football fan types by not just buying a NFL team, but by starting his own professional football league, the XFL.

Anyway, if any NFL star fit the template of someone who could sell wrestling tickets it was the badass Lawrence Taylor. It didn’t hurt that, like most pro wrestlers through the years, LT ran the streets with the best of them. That too added to his infamy.

It also didn’t hurt that he was the best college football player in UNC Tar Heel history, known to be a fan while living in the heart of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. I used to see him in his leather overcoat, drinking beer and watching coeds from the balcony at He’s Not Here on Franklin Street.

Taylor only had the one wrestling match at WrestleMania, but back in 1991, Paul Heyman had recruited him for WCW for an important WCW show at the Meadowlands Arena in New York City. Taylor seconded Lex Luger on the undercard of NWA Champion Sting vs Ric Flair, where Flair regained the title. A snowstorm hindered the attendance, well, hindered the attendance even further, but Taylor had the whole troupe over to LT’s, the bar he owned at the time, and had a ball hanging with the wrestlers up in the VIP. I know I’m still laughing, at least.

A couple of years after his NFL career ended, it wasn’t hard for his larger-than-life NFL persona to slide right into the WWF. He knocks Bam Bam Bigelow on his ass outside the ring at the Royal Rumble that year and, simple as that, a WrestleMania main event was made.

LT didn’t even have to point at a sign.

He didn’t figure to train to be a wrestler just to work opening match comedy like Rob Gronkowski, another Super Bowl champion, did decades later. It was the main event of WrestleMania or nothing.

It certainly helped that his opponent Bam Bam Bigelow was one of the most talented, best-moving big men of his day. Bigelow was the most famous and successful graduate of Larry Sharpe’s New Jersey Monster Factory. Bigelow, like Taylor, made his wrestling business debut in New York City, only at a show promoted by a young Paul Heyman at the famed Studio 54.

Whether it was the flames tattooed on his head, or his habit of doing big-ass cartwheels in the ring, at least until Ole Anderson asked him if he ever saw a bar fight where one guy paused in the middle to do a cartwheel, Bigelow had the star-thing from the start. Bigelow was a natural, and it wasn’t long before he debuted the top of the WWF, the target of a recruiting war between all the managers in the WWF, oddly won by an also-debuting babyface, Sir Oliver Humperdinck.

Pat Patterson, who had successfully gotten a solid WrestleMania match out of the less-than-solid Ultimate Warrior five years before, used the same booking-agent formula to put together a good match for Bam Bam and LT. Bigelow moved and Taylor followed him.

Taylor only did the things he could do well, the match flowed and there were no over-reaches or botched spots. LT lived the dream, the WWF got a lot of major leaguer press, and everybody made money. The biggest take out of the ‘Mania main event, though, was the opportunity-taking performance from Bam Bam Bigelow. He seemed to be poised to be the WWF’s next big babyface.

The fans  weren’t the only ones who noticed how well Bigelow did. Shawn Michaels, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash saw, and they weren’t too happy about it. They didn’t much care for Scott Bigelow. The Kliq had a tight grip on the locker room and management didn’t have a tight grip on them.

It ended up that both Lawrence Taylor and Bam Bam Bigelow had wrestled in their last WrestleMania.