Wrestlemania was Vince McMahon’s bold attempt to truly turn the WWF into a national promotion. With the success of Starcade: A Flair for the Gold, Jim Crockett Promotions had demonstrated that a hot card could generate income beyond one arena   Crockett had broadcast Starcade at several locations on closed circuit television and brought in an impressive gate.  He repeated the feat with Starcade 84.

          Vince McMahon had created a hot feud between Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan.  After building the feud up on MTV with the famous War to Settle the Score match in Madison Square Garden, fans were clamoring to see Hulk Hogan and Mr. T get their revenge on Roddy Piper and Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff. 

        The card was soon loaded up with other hot feuds such as Big John Studd vs. Andre the Giant,  the WWF World Tag Team Champions the US Express (Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo), and the popular Junkyard Dog challenging Greg “The Hammer” Valentine for the Inter-Continental Title.  Despite all this, Wrestlemania featured preliminary bouts including Tito Santana battling the Executioner (Playboy Buddy Rose) and King Kong Bundy debuting against perennial jobber Special Delivery Jones. 

      For the last two years, Vince McMahon had spent considerable amounts of money to take talent from his competitiors.  The cost of promoting Wrestlemania and getting closed circuit clearance stretched McMahon’s finances to their limit.  There is no question that everything was riding on the success of Wrestlemania.

     With that in mind, Vince McMahon must have lost a lot of sleep before Wrestlemania because the show seemed like it was going to be a flop with low ticket sales at the closed circuit arenas.  However Vince cannily promoted the card to the mainstream media (boosted by Mr. T and Hulk Hogan guest hosting on Saturday Night Live the night before Wrestlemania).  Traditionally, closed circuit events had a large turnout the day of the event and this event proved to be no different.  Wrestlemania would go on to become a tremendous success and it helped the WWF cement its position as the number one promotion in North America.