WrestleMania Reflections: WrestleMania VIII (Patreon)

WrestleMania VIII

Hoosier Dome

Indianapolis, Indiana

April 5, 1992

Official Attendance: 62,167

By: Bruce Mitchell 

WrestleMania VIII began with Vince McMahon in all his gravel-voiced glory declaring that this WM was so big, it had not one, but TWO main events.

Not only that, but some future on-the-rise WrestleMania head-liners were featured. A newly heel Shawn Michaels, already one of the best in-ring workers in the WWF, won his opener over The Matador, Tito Santana. As good as he was then, he was still just developing all the facets of what became one of the greatest working styles of its day.

The Undertaker, lacking the advantage of age in playing the character, was just beginning to perfect his horror movie style sit-up. He beat Jake The Snake Roberts by pinball, not DQ, but no one could have imagined this match would end up part of the most marketable record in professional wrestling: The Undertaker’s Unbeaten Streak at WrestleMania. Title-winning inflation took much of the steam out of the value of multiple world championship reigns.

There wasn’t just a future being built in the undercard that day, including a promo from The World Bodybuilding Federation’s swole as never before, Total Package Lex Luger. 

Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby The Brain Heenan were comfortable doing their friendly good guy/bad guy “Would You Stop!” shtick. Monsoon was a plethora of catch-phrases back then, and sometimes they weren’t exaggerated.

“History was made, right here in The Hoosier Dome!” Monsoon exclaimed, and it wasn’t just that the Hitman Bret Hart regained the Intercontinental Championship from Roddy Piper to continue his career-making IC title run the moment before either.

Piper had been the Rowdy Yin to the Hulkamaniacal Yang of Hulk Hogan when Vince McMahon had taken “New York” across the country and in the decade or so since then he hadn’t done a job, been pinned or (God forbid) submitted by anyone at all, including Hulk Hogan. Shoot and work, and no one blended the two quite like Roddy Piper, as he said more than once, he “never took a dive.”

Piper had left the WWF for the movies, most notably John Carpenter’s They Live, only to return and then he left again. Whatever he did, he remained one of the most famous wrestlers in the business.

Piper was close to his fellow Canadian Bret Hart, and wanted to boost Hart’s elevation to the top of the Federation. He came back focused on that goal, and ready to break some of his own self-imposed rules.

The first was that Piper, like most wrestlers of his generation and generations before, prided himself on his ability to draw and make money, whether or not he held a particular championship.

Roddy Piper saw himself, and he wasn’t wrong, as every bit the star Hulk Hogan was at the height of Hulkamania. Piper understood his ability to talk, to hold fans’ attention and take them on an intense verbal ride, careening an ill-chosen word or two from getting yanked off the air, was more valuable to him than any prop.

Piper knew, after all those years in the WWF, suddenly winning a championship there would carry a lot of extra value. He beat another Canadian, The Mountie, for the Intercontinental Championship.

He also knew he was at the point in his career where, while he could play Bad Guy, after a decade in the WWF he could never escape his earned status of being Our Bad Guy (the reason why none of the heel runs Ric Flair made the last twenty years haven’t really worked).

He also knew that Hart needed to stay babyface at this point in his career, so he could continue his rise to become the top babyface in a company that fed the top babyface first.

So Piper embraced his new role as Intercontinental Champion, while Bret Hart played the role he was built for, Championship Wrestler. The Hitman character may have prided himself on doing things the right way, and may have thought of Roddy Piper as a family friend, but he wanted his championship belt back.

Piper carried the pre-match promo, reminiscing slightly embarrassingly about watching Bret grow up, including Bret’s supposed difficulty in learning to tie his shoes (which nicely played into a spot later in the match when Piper paused to let Bret tie his bootlaces, only to suddenly kick him in the side.) By the end of the skit, both almost, but not quite, had had enough of the other, letting fans know the match was inevitably going to degenerate into a fight.

In the ring, it was clear, Piper came to work. “I knew it would be good, but I didn’t think it would be this good. This is a hell of a match!” - Bobby The Brain Heenan

Roddy Piper only ever held one title in the WWF, The Intercontinental Championship, and he only ever lost one match, to The Hitman Bret Hart.

It was the second best match of the show.

The best match, and the best WrestleMania match in the nine years, was Ric Flair defending the WWF Championship against Randy Savage. It, like Piper vs Hart, was in the middle of the show and despite what Vince McMahon declared at the beginning of the show, Ric Flair is on record as regretting never being a big enough star to main event a WrestleMania.

Flair vs Savage was based more on a personal grudge than the WWF title, though. In what seemed like a natural character-driven angle, The Nature Boy claimed to have “known” the innocent Miss Elizabeth before The Macho Man did. He even said he had the photos to prove it.

Savage, tightly wound and controlling of Miss Elizabeth in real life, wouldn’t allow the angle to get very salacious, particularly as compared to the last twenty years. He even made sure the pictures Flair and Elizabeth took for the angle were chaste in their imagery.

A few years later in WCW, Macho and Liz were no longer together, Miss Elizabeth turned on Savage and joined Flair. (The Nature Boy was even seconded by both Liz and Woman for a while.)

Miss Elizabeth came down to ringside late in the match to take the heat up yet another gear. It apparently took agents Dave Hebner, Rene Goulet, Jay Strongbow, Tony Garea, Jim Barnett and a very young Shane McMahon, making his WrestleMania debut, to keep her out of the ring.

After the match, The Nature Boy forced a kiss on Elizabeth, something that today’s WWE wouldn’t do, and Liz slapped him.

Miss Elizabeth divorced Randy Savage on September 8, 1992.

As for the match itself, it too was “a hell of match.” Flair and Savage were at their working peak, two of the very best wrestlers in the world, and working their ass off in front of over 60,000 live fans.

Flair decided to add a little something special to the match. Back in his major league money-drawing Jim Crockett Promotions days, you knew it was a big-time main event when Flair, heel or face, promoed that he was going to “bleed, sweat, and pay the price of wrestling lifetime!” He meant it too, particularly the first part.

The Nature Boy got off on the contrast between peroxide blonde and red, as did wrestling fans - the visceral, instinctual power of blood to incite base emotion. Bret Hart had already been busted open hardway earlier in the show, but Flair had already decided on his own to add blood to this, the ultimate grudge match.

Savage threw Flair into the barricade, Flair gigged his forehead and then, a few seconds later, did it again. It worked, he was a bloody mess and in Moonson’s words there was   “Pandemonium here in the Hoosier Dome”.

After the match ended, backstage a different type of pandemonium ensued. It may have been the best match in the WWF in years, the fans may have been thrilled, but Vince McMahon was pissed. He was playing a larger game, a corporate one, one that in the end he played successfully enough to become a billionaire.

To put it bluntly, mainstream corporate America didn’t want to be associated with bloody self-mutilation and McMahon wanted to be associated with mainstream corporate America.

No blood.

McMahon was and still is legendary for his ability to cuss people out, and he was furious at Ric Flair for cutting his forehead open with a razor blade without his permission on the biggest show of the year.

He blistered Flair for doing exactly what he had done in hundreds of big main events before.

The last match, you know, the main event was Hulk Hogan versus Sid Justice and Hulk Hogan was either going retire or not retire from wrestling after the match was over.

Sid Justice looked like he had been grown in some kind of McMahon pro wrestling laboratory, even before he joined the WWF. I never knew a wrestling fan back then who didn’t love the guy at first sight.

Standing there, he was a major league star.

The problem was, he couldn’t just stand there. Once the match began, Vicious or Justice, heel or face, fan or management, the guy was going to disappoint you.

Hulk Hogan vs Sid Justice wasn’t very good of course, and McMahon hedged his bet here in a different way that Flair had earlier. McMahon ended the match by having Papa Shango (?) attack and join Justice in double-teaming Hogan, leading to the big shock that ended the show…

The returning Ultimate Warrior running down and saving The Hulkster.

I know what you’re thinking, but fans who wanted to see the dream match of Sid Justice vs The Ultimate Warrior had to build the thing on a WWE video game years later.

McMahon knew better than to book the thing.

Oh, and Hulk Hogan? He didn’t retire.