Wrestling's most shameless, most glorious exaggerations

[MFoy]

 

The attendance figure of 93,000 for WMIII. And how they keep saying they are going to break that record this year. Suposedly WMIII was closer to 78,000, but that wouldn't have been the all time attendance figure at the Silverdome.

The real number is closer to 93,000 than 78,000.

I know that this a longstanding debate, but you seem to say that with a lot of certainty so I'm curious to know if there's any evidence that I missed that proves this.

[Jingus]

The short version is, the building's normal capacity as a football stadium has about 80,000 seats in the stands. "How many people were sitting in chairs on the floor?" is the magic question that nobody seems to know the exact answer to.

 

 

While there's certainly a hell of a lot of people down there, it's never looked to me like they could possibly squeeze 13,000 extra fans into the floor section. Maybe half that, at best.

[C.S.]

To be fair to Hogan, he did admit at some point that he's not good with dates and locations.

[Loss]

Or facts.

[clintthecrippler]

I'm pretty sure Black Bart said Hollywood came calling after the Desperados skits.

 

Bart's story is that the FOX Network had reached out to WCW about turning them into a bona fide prime-time sitcom but Ric Flair killed it because he was worried about being upstaged by the Desperados.

 

This was during the same interview where he claimed that the Undertaker gimmick was originally meant for him, and that he was in Japan on the tour where David Von Erich died, and his body rotted in the hotel room with no ventilation for two weeks before it was taken back to Dallas. His shoot interview is legendary for being the king of bullshit shoot interviews.

 

And on the topic of Hogan-Andre, I've always gotten a kick out of how we give Hogan shit for his exaggerations, but Andre's billed height of 7-foot-5, 525 pounds always gets a free pass. Not to mention Vince's positioning of the Wrestlemania III match as the first time Andre had ever been beaten, the first time Hogan and Andre ever met, and the first time Andre had been bodyslammed.

[...TG]

And on the topic of Hogan-Andre, I've always gotten a kick out of how we give Hogan shit for his exaggerations, but Andre's billed height of 7-foot-5, 525 pounds always gets a free pass. Not to mention Vince's positioning of the Wrestlemania III match as the first time Andre had ever been beaten, the first time Hogan and Andre ever met, and the first time Andre had been bodyslammed.

 

 

Interestingly, the @WWEArchivist twitter account posted a photo of Harley Race bodyslamming Andre a few months ago. For a WWE employee to post something like that is a breach of the few kayfabe lines they have left.

[Death From Above]

I have never seen a shoot interview with an old school wrestler (meaning guys that worked before, say Wrestlemania 1 or the initial Starrcade) that didn't have a story about a riot that magically didn't make tape.

[Death From Above]

 

And on the topic of Hogan-Andre, I've always gotten a kick out of how we give Hogan shit for his exaggerations, but Andre's billed height of 7-foot-5, 525 pounds always gets a free pass. Not to mention Vince's positioning of the Wrestlemania III match as the first time Andre had ever been beaten, the first time Hogan and Andre ever met, and the first time Andre had been bodyslammed.

 

 

Interestingly, the @WWEArchivist twitter account posted a photo of Harley Race bodyslamming Andre a few months ago. For a WWE employee to post something like that is a breach of the few kayfabe lines they have left.

 

 

When they put out the Hulk Still Rules DVD many years ago now, there's also a Hogan vs. Andre match from Shea Stadium on there so they've long since abandoned some of the lies built around Wrestlemania III being their first meeting or the first bodyslam etc.

[goc]

I have never seen a shoot interview with an old school wrestler (meaning guys that worked before, say Wrestlemania 1 or the initial Starrcade) that didn't have a story about a riot that magically didn't make tape.

But there is at least 1 riot that DID make tape:

[GOTNW]

There's also the riot in the Sumo Hall after Vader beat Inoki.

[Hawkeye12]

I've never heard Hogan change his WM3 story to be honest, but other folks sure seem to make that a running joke. He always tells it with the similar attendance and weight. And the Metallica and Fujinami stories were explained in much more detail on Jericho's podcast if you are interested. He goes into pretty good detail on both. I always knew something had to be true about it when they brought in Danny Hodge of all people to referee between them, and sure enough he explained it and brought it up with Jericho.

 

That said, the Undertaker quote on Hogan Knows Best was clearly hyperbole, he was making an old guy joke about being old. Incidentally he's told the full story of the Tombstone at Survivor Series before also, and obviously noted he never made actual contact with the chair, but his head got jammed on Taker's thighs which made it worse because the impact wasn't what you prepare yourself for, caused a stinger. Taker doing it on the chair probably made him overcompensate to protect Hogan, and unfortunately that can happen.

 

Meltzer's denial that Andre was ever 7 foot has to be up there. Andre was taller than the Giant Warrior and Tyler Mane even when he was broken down in All Japan 1990. Both of those are legit 7" or close, certainly bigger than 6'10". That and 78K being the "real number" when it so obviously doesn't mesh with the Lion's attendance at games that's already been mentioned.

 

Bret's claim that he never injured another wrestler, despite guys like Bad News vehemently disagreeing.

 

Iron Sheik's claims of being in the Olympics.

[MFoy]

The short version is, the building's normal capacity as a football stadium has about 80,000 seats in the stands. "How many people were sitting in chairs on the floor?" is the magic question that nobody seems to know the exact answer to.

 

 

While there's certainly a hell of a lot of people down there, it's never looked to me like they could possibly squeeze 13,000 extra fans into the floor section. Maybe half that, at best.

 

Is it possible that the Detroit Lions also exaggerated the seating capacity of the building? I know Meltzer said that he got the 78K figure from actual documentation from the show provided to him by Zane Bresloff.

[sek69]

Funny how people always use the same fish-eye lens photo to doubt the 78k figure when the whole point of that pic was to make the crowd look larger and the ring look smaller.

[Hawkeye12]

 

The short version is, the building's normal capacity as a football stadium has about 80,000 seats in the stands. "How many people were sitting in chairs on the floor?" is the magic question that nobody seems to know the exact answer to.

 

 

While there's certainly a hell of a lot of people down there, it's never looked to me like they could possibly squeeze 13,000 extra fans into the floor section. Maybe half that, at best.

 

Is it possible that the Detroit Lions also exaggerated the seating capacity of the building? I know Meltzer said that he got the 78K figure from actual documentation from the show provided to him by Zane Bresloff.

 

To some extent they may have exaggerated, but probably not by more than a 1000 here or there based on what counted as capacity. They built the place to be the largest stadium in the country in 1975, they wouldn't have had any reason to lie when they could've just made it even bigger if necessary to be number one.

 

To my eye on the floor, those individual sections have to be roughly 15x30 people average (a few are shaped differently), so 450 per section. Looks like at least 20 sections, so at least 9000 people on the floor. That's probably low. In fact it may be 20 sections not counting the actual ringside sections, hard to tell where some end and some begin.

[Jingus]

To my eye on the floor, those individual sections have to be at least 25x25 people, so 625 per section.

How do those rectangular, obviously-not-square sections register as being anything close to "25x25"?

[Loss]

I choose to believe the smaller Wrestlemania number solely because I smile when that company is humbled, even in a tiny, tiny way.

[SteveJRogers]

 

 

And on the topic of Hogan-Andre, I've always gotten a kick out of how we give Hogan shit for his exaggerations, but Andre's billed height of 7-foot-5, 525 pounds always gets a free pass. Not to mention Vince's positioning of the Wrestlemania III match as the first time Andre had ever been beaten, the first time Hogan and Andre ever met, and the first time Andre had been bodyslammed.

 

Interestingly, the @WWEArchivist twitter account posted a photo of Harley Race bodyslamming Andre a few months ago. For a WWE employee to post something like that is a breach of the few kayfabe lines they have left.

On a 5 Things they showed Hogan slamming Andre from the Shea match.

[Hawkeye12]

 

To my eye on the floor, those individual sections have to be at least 25x25 people, so 625 per section.

How do those rectangular, obviously-not-square sections register as being anything close to "25x25"?

 

Yeah I switched it to 15x30 after I first posted. The 25x25 was more to average it out altogether as the ringside sections are shaped differently than the rectangles, then I decided to just look at those by themselves. But if you take the 20 rectangle sections themselves and get about 9,000, the ringside sections could certainly be close to 4,000 more. The seats immediately around the ring are about 500 people each plus another few sections up against the sidelines but they kind of run together in that photo.

[joeg]

 

 

And on the topic of Hogan-Andre, I've always gotten a kick out of how we give Hogan shit for his exaggerations, but Andre's billed height of 7-foot-5, 525 pounds always gets a free pass. Not to mention Vince's positioning of the Wrestlemania III match as the first time Andre had ever been beaten, the first time Hogan and Andre ever met, and the first time Andre had been bodyslammed.

 

Interestingly, the @WWEArchivist twitter account posted a photo of Harley Race bodyslamming Andre a few months ago. For a WWE employee to post something like that is a breach of the few kayfabe lines they have left.

On a 5 Things they showed Hogan slamming Andre from the Shea match.

 

Whats the full list of guys who slammed Andre? Hansen, Hogan (several times), Canek, Inoki (several times), Race, Choshu, Warrior, Kamala, who else?

[Ricky Jackson]

Strong Kobayashi and Maurice Vachon are another two

[Hawkeye12]

Strong Kobayashi and Maurice Vachon are another two

It was actually Butcher Vachon that slammed him, not Mad Dog (unless he did it another time). Butcher did it in the handicap match where he teamed with Larry Hennig against Andre at Soldier Field in 1972 that's available on tape.

[Ricky Jackson]

You are correct. I just saw a list that also included Blackjack Mulligan, Masked Superstar, Sgt. Slaughter, Don Leo Johnathan, Peter Maivia, Otto Wanz and Mil Mascaras

[funkdoc]

Ronnie Garvin was another one who did, right? thought i heard that somewhere...

[MoS]

One of the more bizarre ones for me is when Ambrose and Rollins started on top of te cell in their HitC match, Lawler said something like "Has anyone ever started a match on top of the cell before? Unprecedented!" It's Lawler, and not necessarily WWE, but given the fact that attitude's most famous match started that way, it was head-scratching.

[pol]

There's also the riot in the Sumo Hall after Vader beat Inoki.

 

I'd be interested to know if any other riots portrayed as the fans being worked into a frenzy were actually people being pissed off with the booking like that one was.