BY MIKEY MIGO
Wrestlemania weekend has become somewhat of a holiday. For one weekend a year you can let your mark flag fly and be a kid again. We get the Hall of Fame special, the big event that is Wrestlemania, and then the next nights RAW is typically a good one. I root for baseball. I enjoy football. I really like basketball. I love professional wrestling. There are time periods where that love needs a break, but wrestling always finds its way back into my life. No matter how lame the show, how silly the stories, or how busy I become I’m always going to be a wrestling fan. And for any true wrestling fan, Wrestlemania is our Superbowl.
“The True Story of Wrestlemania” is a three disc set that the WWE recently released. They put these types of special productions out like every month. It’s a documentary for one part and then the other discs are typically filled up of random matches related to the topic at hand. I sat down with the documentary portion of this and had a great time. Obviously, it covers the entire span of Wrestlemania. I knew things were going to be skewed in the WWE favored direction. So the production side was what really interested me. A slight peek behind the curtain so to speak. It goes back to March of 85 when they did “closed circuit” pay per views. This was basically people going to the movies or somewhere with big screens to watch it via satellite. It covers pretty much all of it. We get the huge risk being taken at the start to breaking attendance records to selling millions of pay per views to all the awesomeness that has gone down. There are some interesting bits about the production of the shows. That’s what I cared about. The best non-interview segment of the entire documentary was the backstage footage. To make it even more specific, the shot of a 1993 Vince McMahon telling a mid card Shawn Michaels the difference between the roar of a crowd in a arena versus the open air of the Caesars Palace. It was only like a twenty second clip, but for me it was the most surreal moment of the entire thing. Of course they’re going to hype up the back story, the big matches, the emotions, and all of that but I loved the little things. This moment is crazy. Shawn Michaels would go on to become “Mister Wrestlemania” and even face Vince himself years after. I don’t know why, but this clip stood out to me the most. The actual stories about the matches and performers were surprisingly somewhat complete. They did skip over the Benoit stuff, but who blames them. The man killed a woman and a child. I don’t care if he was the best wrestler ever, which he wasn’t… not even close, but that doesn’t change things. Murder overshadows good wrestling matches. If you disagree you’re a disgusting human being. On the flip side, my biggest gripe about this whole production was the lack of Eddie Guerrero love. For a good half dozen years his matches were close to, if not the best matches of the card. Still, I suppose I understand why with his connection to Benoit. They missed out on Eddie stuff though. They covered Hogan with way more respect than I imagined they would, which was surprising. They did Warrior, they gave Savage love, Andre, Bret, Shawn, Austin, Michaels, Rock, Cena, and all the expected. There wasn’t too much that was surprising here. If you’re a diehard wrestling fan then you know most of this stuff already. It’s a good package though. It slightly grazes over the near 30 year history of this huge event and hits most of the key components.
All in all, this was another quality WWE documentary release. They do open up more here about the business side of things more than most docs I’ve seen, but it’s still a WWE product. They’re not going to make themselves look bad in any light. If you could rewrite history in your own favor you surely would too. I enjoyed this documentary. I don’t watch nearly enough of these special productions as I should. Over the years I loved me the Vince McMahon one, the Rise and Fall of ECW, and some of the others. I’ve just never went too far out of my way to watch them. Wrestlemania is just that important. If you’ve ever cared about professional wrestling in your life you’re going to have some interest or knowledge of the annual event you should see this. It’s just that important. A
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