The History of WWE

The history of the WWE dates back to the early 1950s, and today, as the world's largest professional wrestling promotion, it is one that contains the most significant parts of professional wrestling history itself.

World Wide Wrestling Federation

The NWA recognized an undisputed NWA World Heavyweight Champion that went to several different wrestling companies in the alliance and defended the belt around the world. The NWA generally promoted strong shooters as champions, to give their worked sport credibility and guard against double-crosses. While doing strong business in the Midwest (the Alliance's core region), these wrestlers attracted little interest in the Capitol territory. In 1961, the NWA board decided instead to put the belt on bleach blonde showman "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers, a much more effective drawing card in the region.^[1] The rest of the NWA was unhappy with Mondt because he rarely allowed Rogers to wrestle outside of the Northeast. Mondt and McMahon wanted Rogers to keep the NWA World Championship, but Rogers was unwilling to sacrifice his $25,000 deposit on the belt (title holders at the time had to pay a deposit to insure they honored their commitments as champion). Rogers lost the NWA World Championship to Lou Thesz in a one-fall match in Toronto, Ontario on January 24, 1963, which led to Mondt, McMahon, and the CWC leaving the NWA in protest, creating the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in the process.

In April of that year, Rogers was awarded the new WWWF World Championship following an apocryphal tournament in Rio de Janeiro. He lost the title to Bruno Sammartino a month later on May 17, 1963, after suffering a heart attack shortly before the match. To accommodate Rogers' condition, the match was booked to last under a minute.

A month after Rogers lost the title to Bruno Sammartino in a New York City match that lasted 48 seconds, Sammartino would retain the title for seven years, eight months, and one day, making his the longest continuous world title reign in men's wrestling history. At this time, and for most of this era, Sammartino was the face of the company, but some of fellow wrestlers such as Superstar Billy Graham and Bob Backlund were also popular.

The WWWF gained notoriety in the 1970s by holding their biggest shows at Shea Stadium orMadison Square Garden and doing strong business across the entire Northeast megalopolis. They leveraged former, but still popular, wrestlers such as Captain Lou Albano, Ernie Rothand "Classy" Freddie Blassie to act as managers for Sammartino's heel opponents. At this time, only babyface wrestlers were allowed to have long title reigns, such as Bruno Sammartino, Pedro Morales and Bob Backlund, who all retained for more than one year each. The heel champions, such as Ivan Koloff and Stan Stasiak were used to transition the title from one wrestler to another, and they generally kept the title for no more a single month-long program before dropping it to the next babyface. Graham was the only heel character to keep his title for longer than one month, as the company felt it needed time to build Backlund up as championship material.

The WWWF was relatively conservative for territories of its day; running its major arenas monthly rather than weekly or bi-weekly. Programs generally involved a babyface champion facing a heel challenger for one to three meetings in each programmed town; for longer programs the heel would often win the first match in a non-decisive manner such as a count-out or via blood loss, and the champion would then retain in a brawling-type blow-off match such as a steel cage match or Texas Death Match. Unlike most territories, the main event would occur in the middle of the arena show cards, allowing the company to build upon the match's finish in order to sell tickets to the next event; reliable, popular workers such as Chief Jay Strongbow would then wrestle at the end of the show to send the crowd home happy.

 The company also featured popular wrestlers based out of non-WWWF territories such as Dusty Rhodes, and retained the services of (at the time) the most popular and highly paid wrestler in the world, André the Giant, in between his territorial and international obligations.

Toots Mondt left the WWWF in the late sixties, and Vincent J. McMahon rejoined the organization in 1971. Later that year, The Mongols created controversy after they left the WWWF with the WWWF International Tag Team Championship. The titles would be considered inactive as a result until Luke Graham and Tarzan Tylerwon a tournament to claim the titles. They then defeated the Mongols in November 1971, voiding any claim the Mongols had to the titles. In March 1979, for marketing purposes, the World Wide Wrestling Federation was renamed the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).

World Wrestling Federation

1984–1992: The Golden Era & Rise of Hulkamania

In 1980, Vincent K. McMahon, the son of Vincent J. McMahon, founded Titan Sports, Inc. and applied for the initials WWF. In 1982, WWF purchased Capitol Sports from his father and associates Gorilla Monsoon and Arnold Skaaland. Capitol Sports already controlled most of the northeastern territory, but the younger McMahon wanted WWF to be a national wrestling promotion; something the NWA did not approve of. He shortly defected his promotion from the NWA, much like the American Wrestling Association, which controlled the U.S. Northern Midwest. To become a national promotion, WWF would have to become bigger than any promotion under the AWA or the NWA.

McMahon's vision for his promotion was starting to become possible when he hired AWA talent Hulk Hogan, who had achieved popularity outside of wrestling – notably for his appearance in Rocky III as Thunderlips, which he did against his father's wishes. McMahon signed Rowdy Roddy Piper as Hogan's rival, and shortly afterward signed Jesse "The Body" Ventura. Other wrestlers took part of the roster, such as André the Giant, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, The Magnificent Muraco, Junkyard Dog, "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff,Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik.

In 1984, Hogan was pushed to main-event status when he was announced as the number one contender for the Iron Sheik's WWF Championship. He defeated the Iron Sheik at Madison Square Garden on January 23, 1984 and thus evolved into one of the most recognisable and popular faces in sports-entertainment.

With reasonable revenue being made, McMahon was able to secure television deals, and WWF was being shown across the United States. McMahon also began sellingvideotapes of WWF events outside the Northeast through his Coliseum Video distribution company. This angered other promoters and disrupted the well-established 'boundaries' of the different wrestling promotions. The syndication of WWF programming forced promotions to come into direct competition with WWF.The increased revenue allowed McMahon to sign more talent, such as Randy "Macho Man" Savage, Brutus Beefcake, Tito Santana, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, The Honky Tonk Man, the British Bulldogs and The Hart Foundation.

For McMahon to truly turn WWF into a national promotion, he would need to have WWF touring the United States. Such a venture was impossible with the revenue WWF currently had, and McMahon envisioned a way to obtain the necessary capital through a risky all-or-nothing gamble on a 'sports entertainment' concept, WrestleMania, in 1985. WrestleMania would be a pay-per-view extravaganza, viewable on closed-circuit television and marketed as the Super Bowl of professional wrestling. WrestleMania was not the first 'supercard' seen in professional wrestling, as the NWA had previously run Starrcade. However, McMahon's vision was to make WWF and the industry itself mainstream, targeting more of the general television audience by exploiting the entertainment side of the industry. With the inaugural WrestleMania, WWF initiated a joint-promotional campaign with MTV, which featured a great deal of WWF coverage and programming, in what was termed the Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection. The mainstream media attention brought on by celebrities including Muhammad Ali, Mr. T, and Cyndi Lauper at the event helped propel WrestleMania to become a staple in popular culture, and the use of celebrities has been a staple of the company to the present day.

With the success of WrestleMania, other promotions which tried hard to keep the regional territory system alive started to merge under Jim Crockett Promotions(JCP). Starrcade and The Great American Bash were the JCP versions of WrestleMania, but even when operating outside of its territory, JCP had trouble matching the success of WWF. After Ted Turner purchased majority of JCP's assets, the promotion would eventually become World Championship Wrestling (WCW), providing WWF with a competitor until 2001, when WCW and its trademarks were legitimately purchased by WWF. WrestleMania would become an annual pay-per-view phenomenon, being broadcast in nearly 150 countries and in almost 20 different languages.

McMahon's focus on entertainment rather than sports, a policy that became the concept of sports entertainment, led to great financial success for WWF.^{[citation needed]} During the 1980s, Hogan would cross into mainstream as an all-American hero. Hogan and McMahon carried professional wrestling into success that was truly considered a sport.Hogan's time as face of WWF would last until he left in 1993.Hogan was not the sole reason for success of WWF, but rather the company's biggest draw. Other stars such as Piper, Savage, the Ultimate Warrior, Steamboat, Roberts, Orndorff, Volkoff and the Iron Sheik all helped make WWF a financial success.While these talents where recognisable as individuals, some talent became known for their teamwork as tag teams. Stables or groups such asDemolition, Strike Force, The Hart Foundation, the British Bulldogs, The Rockers and The Fabulous Rougeaus helped create a strong tag-team division for WWF over its competitors; which by now where few.

The 1980s 'Wrestling Boom' peaked with WrestleMania III at the Pontiac Silverdome, which set an attendance record of 93,173. McMahon used the success of WrestleMania to create more pay-per-views, and traditions such as SummerSlam, Survivor Series and Royal Rumble were created, each with its unique stipulation match.