The Big Event

The Big Event
The cover of the Coliseum Video release featuring Hulk Hogan
Tagline(s)	The Biggest Event of All Time
Information
Promotion	World Wrestling Federation
Date	August 28, 1986[1]
Attendance	64,000+[1]
Venue	Exhibition Stadium[1]
City	Toronto, Ontario[1]

The Big Event was a professional wrestling event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) on August 28, 1986, at the Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, Ontario.^[2] It drew a crowd of over 64,000 fans, which was an outdoor attendance record at the time.^[3][4][5] This stood as an attendance record for a wrestling show until WrestleMania III drew a reported 93,173 fans just seven months later to the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan.^[6] A VHS tape of the event was released later by Coliseum Home Video,^[7] with commentary by Gorilla Monsoon, Johnny Valiant and Ernie Ladd.^[8] In 2014, WWE Network made the event available on demand in the pay-per-view section (although the event was not originally broadcast via pay-per-view).

Background

The main event heading into the event was between WWF World Heavyweight Champion Hulk Hogan and Paul Orndorff for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. Hogan and Orndorff's friendship became emphasized on the WWF's syndicated television programs throughout the summer, and eventually Adrian Adonis – host of the talk show segment The Flower Shop – began stirring up trouble between the two when he planted a suggestion that Orndorff was living in Hogan's shadow, calling him "Hulk Jr." and that he had gone soft by teaming with Hogan. With a series of seemingly minor incidents involving Hogan irritating Orndorff, the two eventually accepted a challenge match with Big John Studd and King Kong Bundy (who were managed by Orndorff's former manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan), where Orndorff allowed Studd and Bundy to illegally double-team Hogan for an extended period of time before finally clearing them from the ring; Orndorff then helped Hogan to his feet, only to finish off Hogan with a clothesline and his finishing move, a piledriver. Shortly afterward, Orndorff announced he had re-hired former manager Bobby Heenan and demanded a title shot against Hogan.

Results

Aftermath

The Hogan-Orndorff feud continued to rage into the fall of 1986, with Orndorff – as he did at The Big Event – using Hogan's entrance theme "Real American" as his own theme. Eventually, the two settled their differences in a series of steel cage matches. The most highly publicized cage match took place in December 1986, and aired on Saturday Night's Main Event, where at one point Hogan and Orndorff both simultaneously exited the cage and their feet hit the floor (a condition of winning the match); when video replays proved inconclusive, the match was restarted, with Hogan eventually getting a decisive victory. The Hogan-Orndorff feud would be named Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazine's Feud of the Year for 1986, by a vote of the magazine's readers.

The Machines continued to feud with the Studd-Bundy tag team, with Heenan's wrestlers never able to unmask the Giant Machine and prove that he was really André the Giant who was supposed to be under suspension. Eventually, the Machines disappeared and André the Giant's suspension (which had resulted from an earlier "no-show" for a tag team match with Studd and Bundy) was lifted, to the unexplained approval of Heenan. In real life behind the scenes, the storyline for André's eventual heel turn and demand to face Hogan at WrestleMania III for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship was being written, and André was beginning to suffer the effects of acromegaly, a health condition that resulted in his gigantism and eventually led to his death in 1993. The Hogan-André storyline would begin playing out in January 1987, while the other two members of the Machines team – Blackjack Mulligan and Bill Eadie – would adopt new gimmicks. Mulligan reverted to his normal Blackjack gimmick as a face, while Eadie would begin competing successfully as "Ax", one half of a new tag team known as Demolition with "Smash", a Road Warriors-inspired team of power brawlers with Kiss-type face paint. While Mulligan would fade from the WWF in early 1987, as Ax of Demolition Eadie would go on to win the WWF Tag Team Championship on three occasions between 1988 and 1990.

Downplayed at this supercard, but soon getting more and more hyped, was the feud between Hercules Hernandez and Billy Jack Haynes, two wrestlers who had feuded in several other organizations they had competed in at the same time. The feud began heating up in earnest in the late fall of 1986, culminating in a "Full Nelson Challenge" at WrestleMania III.

EX-perience

EX-perience was a live professional wrestling event held by World Wrestling Federation, which took place on August 24, 1996 from the Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, Ontario. It was considered to be the 10th Anniversary of the original The Big Event which took place ten years earlier in the same venue.

References

External links