Daniel Bryan thrust his arms in the air, pointed to the top of Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, and chanted in unison with the more than 75,000 fans in attendance:
"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
He'd done it.
After years of wrestling in middle school gyms and tiny venues around the world, the eternal underdog and 5-foot-8-inch fan favorite out of Aberdeen, Wash., finally accomplished his childhood dream of winning the World Wrestling Entertainment championship in the main event of the 2014 WrestleMania. Confetti rained down on the sold-out crowd as fans celebrated their favorite superstar achieving the top spot in the wrestling world. At last, Bryan was standing on the summit of his life's work.
Where would he go from here?
"It was surreal," Bryan says today of his big win, "because just having that kind of moment is something I've been dreaming about ever since I was a little kid. You dream about the confetti and all that kind of stuff, with my mom, sister and little niece there." Bryan gets reflective. "When you're thinking, 'OK, I want to be a wrestler. What do I imagine the highest point being?'" He pauses for punctuation. "That's exactly it."
Promotor Vince McMahon created WrestleMania in 1985, and the event has since become the flagship for the WWE. The pop-culture spectacle consistently draws more than 70,000 people to its host cities along with some $140 million to dump into local economies. On March 29, WrestleMania 31 — and all that money — comes to Levi's Stadium, about an hour south of San Francisco in Santa Clara.
WrestleMania is like the Super Bowl, except that the players have scripted characters, the game is predetermined, and the crowd knows it but couldn't care less.
After Bryan's rise to the pinnacle of wrestling entertainment, he married fellow WWE and Total Divas star Brie Bella. The couple retreated from the public spotlight for a short honeymoon, but upon their return learned of the death of Bryan's father. The wrestler got the news backstage at Monday Night Raw, but decided to go out that night and do what he always does: wrestle. Shortly afterward, an old neck injury made it difficult for Bryan to unlock his car door, much less wrestle.
"I could get the key in the slot, but just couldn't turn it. That's when I knew it was time," Bryan, 33, says of the nagging injury he had put off repairing during his meteoric rise.
The WWE and its story lines quickly moved on without the bearded superstar. Bryan soon took his signature "Yes!" chant to the San Francisco Giants' dugout during the World Series.
Months later, after undergoing physical therapy, Bryan healed enough to return to the ring, but his homecoming was muted, and despite pushback from diehard supporters, WWE turned its attention to a younger, bigger, and healthier prospect, Roman Reigns, who is scheduled to be in the main event at this year's WrestleMania against former Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar. Bryan, meanwhile, has been relegated to an opening ladder match.
"My cousin Yokozuna was in the main event of the 'Mania at Caesar's Palace," Reigns, whose real name is Leati Joseph Anoa'i, says. Another of Reigns' cousins, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, has had his share of WrestleMania moments, too. In fact, Johnson recently came to Reigns' aid at the Royal Rumble when an irate crowd of Bryan fans rejected Reigns as the winner of the match that determined who would get to the main event at this year's WrestleMania.
"It was a little overwhelming," Reigns says of the ordeal. "But it's an experience I've been able to learn from."
Paying the Price
Like many WWE fans, Nick Fountain is disappointed with Bryan's fall from grace, but the 22-year-old bellman at San Francisco's Sir Francis Drake Hotel is psyched about going to this year's WrestleMania. Despite concern from family and friends, Fountain says he gladly plopped down the $2,000 he spent for a fourth-row seat in Santa Clara. "This was on my bucket list," Fountain says. "When is the next chance you're going to get?"
Fountain says fans' disappointment over Bryan has made them inordinately hostile to Reigns. "I think Roman Reigns is good for what he is," Fountain says. "If you told me that guy won the Royal Rumble, I'd believe you. They don't give him a chance."
Court Bauer is more skeptical. A former creative executive at WWE, Bauer blames "creative fatigue" among the WWE writing team — and "micromanagement" by McMahon — which dampened the usually exciting buildup to the wrestling's biggest event of the year.
"The road to WrestleMania is very cold," Bauer says, pointing out that the expected match between Bryan and Lesnar was the more exciting headline. "Roman Reigns will be ready [at some point]," Bauer says, "but in 2015, it's premature and you're doing a disservice to him. He's a freak and will be awesome, but you want to develop that guy and groom him for that."
There's big money in a contender's first title chase, but after that first big push, it's not as special. In Bauer's estimation, WWE might be leaving big money on the table pushing Reigns this hard in 2015. "They are really risking long-term irreparable damage by putting him out there and presenting him this early," Bauer says.
And there's a lot of dollars at stake.
"It's the single biggest payday of the year," Paul Heyman, Lesnar's charismatic advocate says. "So, from a business perspective, there are people who make more money on this one night of the year than they will make the other 364 days of the calendar."
Last year's WrestleMania in New Orleans generated $24.3 million in federal, state, and local taxes, so it's no surprise that Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews has been hard on the WWE campaign trail. In fact, Matthews, 49ers CEO Jed York, and a team of businessmen went to the WWE headquarters in Connecticut to pitch McMahon directly on hosting the event at Levi's Stadium.
"People bring their entire families and stay 8 or 9 days in the host city, renting cars, staying in hotels and eating at restaurants," Matthews says. Besides all the benefits to his city, Matthews admits his personal association with the sport: He grew up watching it with his brothers.
"Wrestling was on TV on Fridays and Saturdays," Matthews remembers, "so we'd get away with it being on for a half hour before my mom would turn it off because we always took what we saw on the tube and quickly translated it to the couch — you know, just doing things that boys do. I was the youngest but I held my own because I was a big boy." He laughs. "Still am."
Historic Stage
When Reigns and Lesnar step in front of the crowd at Levi's Stadium, they will become a part of a rich and colorful history of bigger-than-life personalities. The WrestleMania ring, dubbed "the showcase of the immortals," offers the best chance for a wrestler to cross over into the mainstream and become a part of popular culture.
One of those classic moments, burned into wrestling's collective consciousness, came when Hulk Hogan slammed Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III in front of 93,173 people at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1987. The event, billed as "the biggest main event in sports entertainment," held the attendance record for the largest indoor sporting event in North America until 2010.
"I actually tore both biceps getting him up. I've got holes here and here in each arm," Hogan says, flexing his famous 24-inch pythons and pointing to two divots in his muscle. "Nowadays if you tear a bicep you get it fixed and are walking around in a sling for four or five months, but back then you just kept going."
As is the case with most wrestlers, it's hard to tell when Hogan is giving you honest recollections or decades-old story lines. The performers live in a culture of half-truths and exaggerations that take on lives of their own. Hell, some people still wonder whether or not there were really more than 93,000 at WrestleMania III, but that doesn't stop Hogan from telling you he didn't even plan on slamming Andre that night, because he wasn't sure if the Giant was going to let him win and his only concern was "getting out of there alive."
When asked if Andre was drinking before their big match at WrestleMania, Hogan looks confused. "When wasn't he?" Hogan jokes, shrugging his massive shoulders. "But that was normal. It was like drinking water for him. It was no big deal."
When there's no crowd and the cameras are turned off, the 61-year-old Hogan, who has undergone nine back surgeries, walks with a noticeable limp. He comes from a different era of wrestling, where the good guys and the bad guys maintained their in-ring characters on the street in order to "protect the business."
"This business is predetermined, but it took us a while to get to the point where we'd admit it," Hogan says. "When I started in the wrestling business, the first day, they broke my leg. That was the mentality; if some young kid was interested in becoming a wrestler, you'd just run his ass off."
Nearly three decades after his WrestleMania III moment, Hogan is yet to be "run off." Brought out to Levi's Stadium to promote the on-sale ticket party for WrestleMania 31, Hogan's big personality still draws big crowds.
Diehards, with a Vengeance
Outside Levi's Stadium, the first man waiting in line to purchase tickets collapses from a seizure before the seats go on sale, leaving the line of die-hard fans behind him shocked.
"He was just really excited about everything. He told me he worked all day and came here right after, without eating," one fan who got here early says, as paramedics attend to the fallen man, who is foaming at the mouth.
Ticket-holders who survive the line are treated to a party featuring a Q&A session with Hogan. The Hulkster relies heavily on the handrails as he climbs the steps to the side of the stage. But when the lights hit him and the crowd roars, the wrestling icon still shines.
"One more match! One more match!" the crowd chants.
The Hulkster strikes one of his iconic bodybuilding poses. He's been campaigning for a comeback match against his friend and spiritual successor as the new face of WWE, John Cena, for quite some time.
"The Immortal" Hulk Hogan raises the mic to his famously mustached mouth and shares something he says McMahon always told him, "Never say never, brother!"
The crowd erupts.
For every fan favorite, there needs to be a bad guy for the good guy to pound on. Sgt. Slaughter, the real-life-Marine-sergeant-turned-pro-wrestler, would become just that for Hogan at WrestleMania VII in 1991.
In the story line leading up to the main event match against Hogan that year, Slaughter's character turned heel, betraying his country and becoming an Iraqi sympathizer during the height of the Gulf War. The fans weren't happy about it, to say the least.
"I had to wear a bulletproof vest at the time because of all the death threats and bomb threats," Slaughter, whose real name is Robert Remus, says of his life outside the ring during the feud.
Earning the crowd's ire was merely a sign of Slaughter's success. The turncoat was accomplishing his goal of getting the crowd to despise him by using about every trick in the book. He celebrated Saddam Hussein's birthday, even baked the dictator a cake. Slaughter stomped on the good guys with boots he said Hussein personally mailed him. The wrestler ditched his Marines outfit and dressed head to toe in Iraqi military garb. He asked infuriated crowds to stand at attention for the Iraqi national anthem. There was even a manipulated photograph depicting Slaughter straight chillin' with Hussein himself.
"That showed one time," Slaughter says with a chuckle, "and then Vince came to us and said, 'We're not doing that again!' We almost lost half our sponsors and TV stations."
At one point, the WWE creative team even wanted Slaughter to burn an American flag, but the military veteran couldn't stomach the idea. He suggested a compromise: putting a Hulk Hogan shirt on a pole, telling the crowd it "represented Americana," and burning that instead.
"To tell you the truth, I think it was worse," Slaughter says.
Slaughter didn't just draw heat in the ring and out on the road. He was even chastised backstage by one of America's greatest country singers. "Willie Nelson was singing 'God Bless America' for WrestleMania VII," Slaughter remembers, "so I went into the green room backstage to say hello to him. He just shook his head at me and in this serious voice said, 'Sarge, I can't believe the things you've done to America.' It made me think, 'Man, if I've affected Willie Nelson like that, I can only imagine how all the regular wrestling fans in the crowd feel.'"
Slaughter and the WWE maintain the event was moved to a smaller venue at the last minute because of a bomb threat, although others say it was likely due to low ticket numbers. WrestleMania is usually the end of a yearlong story line feud between two opponents, but sometimes — as is the case with Slaughter and Hogan — it doesn't settle things.
Slaughter recalls the end of the night. "After he had beat me for the title and everybody was happy, we kept the cameras rolling and when he walked through the locker room, I was there — and I threw fire in his face."
This Year's Big Match
On the opening card of Hogan and Slaughter's WrestleMania VII in 1991, the Undertaker made his WrestleMania debut. "The Dead Man" would find victory in his bout that night, and again in his next 20 WrestleMania matches, creating a streak that most people believed was unstoppable.
Last year, at WrestleMania XXX, Taker went up against former UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. Fans were doubtful that Lesnar would be the one chosen to end the streak. Forbes even weighed in, saying there was "no way" Taker would lose. Online sports books (yes, you can bet cold hard cash on WrestleMania matches) had the Undertaker as a -5,000 favorite at one point, meaning you'd have to bet $5,000 to win a measly $100 on a Taker victory. But Lesnar shocked the wrestling world by winning via pinfall after delivering three of his signature F-5s.
Several sources, including the website WWE.com, confirmed the aging Taker suffered a severe concussion during his match with Lesnar and spent the night in a hospital. According to Lesnar's advocate, Paul Heyman, McMahon left WrestleMania and rode with Taker in the ambulance to the hospital.
In the main event in Santa Clara this year, Lesnar is the WWE champion who faces off against Reigns, a retired football player and second-generation WWE superstar.
Rumors had been swirling about whether Lesnar, whose contract with WWE was set to expire the night after WrestleMania, would re-sign with the company or head back to the UFC, where he was the biggest pay-per-view draw the mixed-martial-arts world had ever seen. But Lesnar chose the ring over the octagon, signing a new contract with the WWE on the last Monday before WrestleMania — the same night he was on TV engaged in a highly criticized tug-of-war over the WWE title with Reigns. That ending segment was proof, many fans on social media say, that the WWE has lost its ability to muster up intrigue for the big match.
"If the general public has knowledge of something, you have to address it,"Heyman says of having used the heated contract negotiations to build excitement for the match. "If there's an elephant in a room and you do address it in a fashion that causes even more buzz, then you have exploited the public consciousness for your own benefit, and I would be a fool not to do that."
Heyman has become an integral part of creating hype for the match. He was the creative mind behind Extreme Championship Wrestling, the bloody Philadelphia-based promotion that enjoyed a cult-like following until its demise in 2001. (ECW is sometimes credited with influencing WWE's "attitude era.") Heyman has used his unmatched skills on the microphone to simultaneously flesh out an origin story for Reigns' character, while also emphatically predicting its demise at the hands of Lesnar.
Heyman always has been a big talker. At 14, he was able to improvise with enough charisma to fast-talk his way backstage at Madison Square Garden and photograph wrestlers. At 49, he has the rhetorical skills to make up for the deficit left by the two muscled main eventers.
"There's nothing I say about Brock Lesnar I don't truly believe," Heyman says. "I truly believe he's a beast, and anyone who has seen him in the gym will testify to that. I truly believe he's a conqueror, because look at what he's done with his life. I truly believe he's a once-in-a-lifetime athlete."
Growing up with a personal-injury lawyer as a father meant that Heyman always had to make the case — and he still takes every opportunity to stay in practice. "We are selling a main event that's the Baddest Dude on the Planet, the Beast, the Conqueror, the '1' in 21-1 against a Samoan badass, raised in the industry, standout of 'The Shield' who won the Royal Rumble and beat Daniel Bryan for the right to fight Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania. And either he's the one to conquer the Conqueror, to slay the Beast and be the one to beat the '1' in 21-1, or he's not," Heyman says over the phone at 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday.
Pro wrestling has always been about big, muscular guys facing off in Hell in Cell matches. But it's also about colorful personalities like Heyman, who's quick to answer a question about why he takes press calls in the middle of the night with, "You're making the assumption you're my last call tonight, young man."
Side Shows
Not all the wrestling-related events in the Bay Area are WWE sponsored. The huge influx of fans creates opportunities for the WWE's minuscule competition and companion products to piggyback on the main event.
Ring of Honor, a small independent wrestling promotion where Daniel Bryan (then performing under the name Bryan "The American Dragon" Danielson) rose to underground fame, will be running a show during WrestleMania weekend. Jim Ross, former WWE announcer and voice of many wrestling fans' childhoods, will be doing a one-man show. Even Wale, the Washington, D.C., rapper, will be giving fans a sneak peek of a new album on which he collaborated with Jerry Seinfeld at the aptly titled event WaleMania.
Of all the events, the biggest will be the WWE's Hall of Fame ceremony the night before WrestleMania. Slaughter, who was inducted in 2004, recalls how much that night meant to him.
"It's a time for you to reflect why you got there and who helped get you there. Of course, your family who gave you up — basically — so you could go live your dream. All those holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries you missed, but they still backed you." He removes his ring and turns it over in the palm of his hand. "You get this ring, and your name is engraved in it," he continues. "One of kind. No one else has a Sgt. Slaughter Hall of Fame ring."
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