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One of the biggest days on the sports entertainment calendar arrives Sunday, March 28, when Wrestlemania XXVI takes place before a packed University of Phoenix Stadium. It will be watched by millions more on pay-per-view.
And when the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) invades Glendale, Ariz., the biggest feuds of the year will culminate on the grandest stage of them all. Not only is John Cena challenging Batista for the WWE Championship and Chris Jericho is putting his World Championship on the line against Edge, but the Undertaker is betting his legendary Wrestlemania undefeated streak against Shawn Michaels’ career in a rematch of last year’s classic match, and those are just some of the highlights of a star-studded card.
The excitement around this special event doesn’t end with the fan, it extends all the way up to the company’s owner, Greenwich resident Vince McMahon.
“There’s an extra amount of excitement,” Mr. McMahon said. “It’s the culmination to a year of buildup for us. ...Wrestlemania was the first pay-per-view we did on a national basis and to be able to do it, we literally risked everything we owned. So every Wrestlemania is special. To us it’s like the Oscars or the Grammys or the World Series or the Super Bowl.”
The story surrounding the first Wrestlemania, March 31, 1985 at Madison Square Garden, is nearly as legendary as the event itself. At a time when wrestling companies still held fast to the idea of regional territories, the McMahons were pushing their company toward a national presence. It was a risky venture and Mr. McMahon and his wife Linda literally staked ownership of the company on its success.
Ultimately, the marriage of pop culture to professional wrestling changed the industry’s landscape, allowing Wrestlemania to become a globally recognized event. Today you don’t even have to be a sports entertainment fan to know what Wrestlemania is.
“It has grown into everything I ever wanted it to be, but we’re still not there yet,” Mr. McMahon said. “There’s more that can be done, but it’s grown every year into something that people can’t miss.”
WWE has changed in the last few years and embraced a more family-friendly style for its weekly television shows. According to Mr. McMahon, the shift has allowed the company to grow and appeal to a more diverse audience, including women, who he says now make up 40% of the company’s audience, as well as the children who will make up the next generation of fans.
“At heart I think we’ve always been a bit of a family affair,” Mr. McMahon said. “If you look at the audience for our live events you will see fathers and sons and mothers and sons and brothers and sisters. This is something an entire family can go out and enjoy together. It’s a lot like baseball in that respect.”
The wrestling landscape itself has also changed in the last six months. For years WWE battled rival World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in what fans remember as the “Monday Night Wars” because both companies had programs going head to head Monday night. WWE decisively won the war in 2001 with the end of WCW, but this month Total Nonstop Action (TNA) moved its wrestling program to Monday nights directly against WWE’s flagship program RAW.
WWE isn’t sweating it though and the ratings have so far backed that confidence up, with millions more preferring WWE programming. Mr. McMahon even goes as far at to say TNA is “not competition.”
“We’re in different businesses,” Mr. McMahon said. “We’re in the entertainment business and they’re in the ‘pro wrasslin’ business. It’s different markets. When they moved to Monday nights they threw the kitchen sink at us and only did a fraction of our audience. It doesn’t speak well for the type of product they’re trying to present with the tawdry, blood-soaked action. I don’t think that’s what the culture wants these days.”
With the company producing movies, books, DVDs, monthly pay-per-views and hours of weekly television without any reruns, Mr. McMahon said WWE is more comparable to a company like Disney than to TNA.
“We’re woven into the fabric of Americana,” Mr. McMahon said.
But Mr. McMahon’s focus isn’t just on his company’s performance, since at this year’s Wrestlemania, he will be facing off against the legendary Bret “The Hitman” Hart in a match that has been building for nearly 13 years around real personal animosity Hart felt for his former boss. It’s not the first time Mr. McMahon has competed at Wrestlemania, but he is hoping it will be the last.
“It makes things more difficult,” Mr. McMahon admitted. “I really much more prefer working behind the scenes as a director and a producer than being part of the action. I do hope this will be my last time in the ring, but I say that after every match I’m in. I’m 64 years old and while I’m in great physical condition and I never want to say never, I really don’t want to do this again.”
However, he knows how long fans have been waiting to see The Hitman get his hands on the diabolical Mr. McMahon and he said his goal is to give the audience what it wants. Plus as one of his company’s biggest villains, Mr. McMahon loves the reaction he gets from the crowd.
“It’s an exciting feeling,” Mr. McMahon said. “When you get an audience to react to you the way the audience always does to the Mr. McMahon character, it’s one of the greatest feelings you can get as a performer and it’s a real shot of adrenaline. Whether it’s good or bad, you want that reaction. The only thing you don’t want is for the audience to just sit there and do nothing. That’s the death knell.”
Next year’s Wrestlemania is already set for Atlanta and Mr. McMahon admits that as soon as this year’s is over, people will begin looking ahead on the calendar.
“After a Wrestlemania someone always says, ‘Gee, that was great. How can you top it?’” Mr. McMahon said. “And the answer always is, ‘I don’t know how we can. But I do know that we will.’”
