WrestleMania 7

WrestleMania VII was the seventh annual WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by the World Wrestling Federation. It took place on March 24, 1991, at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles, California. 

Date: 24 March 1991

Location: Los Angeles, California, United States

Venue: Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena

Promotion: WWE

Attendance: 16,158

10. Slow Ticket Sales, Not A Bomb Threat, Caused WrestleMania 7 To Be Moved

Original advertising for WM7 at Los Angeles Coliseum.

WWE has their own spin on history, and what a spin this has been over the years. Originally, WrestleMania 7 was to be held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a venue capable of holding 100,000 fans when seating was added to field level. The NFL's Rams and Raiders struggled to sell out the venue at the time, and WWE was having its problems too.

To hear WWE tell it, Sgt. Slaughter was receiving death threats from pro-Americana marks for his kayfabed allegiance to Iraq, and thus they had to move the show to a safer indoor venue. Slaughter may have been fielding threats, but the real reason for the move is that WWE had barely sold 16,000 seats for WrestleMania 7 by February 1991.

Rather than perform in front of a mostly-empty stadium, the show was moved to the Los Angeles Sports Arena, home of one-third of WrestleMania 2.

would hope for sunshine with a warm, gentle breeze. When a wrestling promotion holds an outdoor event, they're at the mercy of Mother Nature to cooperate. Los Angeles in the spring seemed like a fairly safe bet for staging mayhem beneath natural night.

Moving the show indoors because of ticket sales thwarted that opportunity, but said opportunity didn't exist in the first place. A little research into historical weather shows that it was a somewhat-chilly day in Los Angeles on March 24, 1991, hovering around 55F/13C at showtime. In addition, the sunny skies of Tinseltown were replaced by overcast gloom in the form of gray clouds. There apparently was no rain, but the threat of it loomed large with those conditions.

would hope for sunshine with a warm, gentle breeze. When a wrestling promotion holds an outdoor event, they're at the mercy of Mother Nature to cooperate. Los Angeles in the spring seemed like a fairly safe bet for staging mayhem beneath natural night.

Moving the show indoors because of ticket sales thwarted that opportunity, but said opportunity didn't exist in the first place. A little research into historical weather shows that it was a somewhat-chilly day in Los Angeles on March 24, 1991, hovering around 55F/13C at showtime. In addition, the sunny skies of Tinseltown were replaced by overcast gloom in the form of gray clouds. There apparently was no rain, but the threat of it loomed large with those conditions.

9. Los Angeles Actually Experienced Miserable Weather That Day

Early spring in Los Angeles. Ideally, one would hope for sunshine with a warm, gentle breeze. When a wrestling promotion holds an outdoor event, they're at the mercy of Mother Nature to cooperate. Los Angeles in the spring seemed like a fairly safe bet for staging mayhem beneath natural night.

Moving the show indoors because of ticket sales thwarted that opportunity, but said opportunity didn't exist in the first place. A little research into historical weather shows that it was a somewhat-chilly day in Los Angeles on March 24, 1991, hovering around 55F/13C at showtime. In addition, the sunny skies of Tinseltown were replaced by overcast gloom in the form of gray clouds. There apparently was no rain, but the threat of it loomed large with those conditions.

8. Bob Costas Pulled Out Of Show Due To Iraqi War Portrayal

If you watched the recent ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the XFL (and if you haven't, you need to), you know that longtime NBC presenter Bob Costas wanted nothing to do with what he perceived to be a low-brow, tawdry attempt at a sports enterprise. Ten years earlier, Costas washed his hands of another Vince McMahon showcase, this one being WrestleMania 7.

Costas was set to take part in a light-hearted skit with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, debating the need for instant replay in professional wrestling. Instead, Costas backed out, due to increasing discomfort over WWE's invocation of a very real war into a cartoony storyline. Comedienne Roseanne was also slated for an appearance, and apparently pulled out of the show for the same reason. For the pre-taped bit with Steinbrenner, Costas was replaced by jovial ESPN broadcaster and former football player Paul Maguire.

7. Show Marked The Final WrestleMania Matches For Marty Jannetty & Jim Neidhart

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While the "last show for..." factoid could be used a ton of times over the course of these lists, the fact that 1991 was the dual Mania swan-song for Jannetty and Neidhart is a bit surprising.

Jannetty would've faced former partner Shawn Michaels a year later, but an incident with police led to him being placed under lengthy house arrest. Jannetty had plenty of chances between 1993 and 1996 to take part in another WrestleMania, but was left off of those events due to further personal issues (leading to brief firings), or otherwise.

Neidhart's career petered out after he and Bret Hart dropped the Tag Team gold to the Nasty Boys at WrestleMania 7. A possible match pitting Neidhart and Owen Hart against The Beverly Brothers was dashed for WrestleMania 8 when "The Anvil" was fired for refusing to take a drug test. Neidhart could have potentially teamed with Owen at WrestleMania 11 in 1995, but he'd missed a number of shows and was cast out around the start of the year.

6. British Bulldog And Warlord Faced Off On All 5 PPVs In 1991

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This is one of my favorite random facts. WWE held five pay-per-views in 1991 (the big four plus This Tuesday in Texas), and only two men faced each other on all five: Davey Boy Smith and The Warlord.

In addition to their WrestleMania 7 match, won by Smith, the two collided briefly in the Royal Rumble 30-man match. Later in the year, they were on opposite sides of the opening six-man tag at SummerSlam. Then they were on opposite sides of the opening elimination match at Survivor Series. Finally, they had another singles bout at This Tuesday in Texas, making them the Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn of 1991. In a matter of speaking.

As an addendum, Ted Dibiase and Virgil (who also faced off at WrestleMania 7) took part in the same matches with each other at all five events as well, but at Royal Rumble, they were tag team partners.

5. With One Exception, This Was Randy Savage's First Match Back After Major Surgery

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Savage and The Ultimate Warrior collided in what is easily the most memorable match of a fairly underrated WrestleMania. At age 38, millions of aches, dollars, and miles later, Savage was legitimately preparing to ride off into the sunset and call it a career. Speaking of those aches, Savage missed much time prior to the match, recovering on the mend.

In late-January 1991, Savage was taken off the road to have surgery to repair a broken wrist. Prior to WrestleMania 7, the only match that the then-"Macho King" worked was nine days before the pay-per-view, defeating Warrior in a steel cage match in Milwaukee. Aside from that, Savage had plenty of time away to design what could have easily been his in-ring curtain call.

4. Randy Savage Was Legitimately Retiring, With No Intention Of Wrestling Again

WWE.com

You know what they say about retirements and wrestling. In Savage's case, dropping a retirement bout to Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania 7 was indeed supposed to be the end of his career as a wrestler. Other than taking on lighter work as a weekend commentator, Savage was itching to finally have a normal home life with wife Elizabeth.

By the end of the summer of 1991, McMahon started making aggressive overtures to "The Macho Man". With Warrior fired and Hogan's name being dragged through the mud, the babyface side of the roster was weaker than ever. Savage initially balked at the offers, but did take a few house show bookings under a mask as "Mr. Madness" (since Savage wasn't allowed to wrestle, per the retirement stip), doing so when Sid Justice was sidelined with injury. Ultimately, that fall, Savage agreed to come back as a wrestler once more.

3. It Marked Demolition's Final Televised Match

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Demolition Ax was long gone from the company, and the Demolition name lived on with Smash and 26-year-old powerhouse Brian Adams as Crush. With the Legion of Doom on board, the writing was on the wall for the newer Demolition, who faded away quickly enough.

While it would've made sense to have Animal and Hawk polish off their natural enemies at Mania, Smash and Crush were instead fed to Genichiro Tenryu and Koji Kitao, representing WWE's new Japanese affiliate Super World Sports (SWS), in a match more notable for Bobby Heenan's jokes than anything else.

From there, Demolition participated in tours of Japan and the UK, but were never again seen on WWE TV as a tandem. Crush would vanish for a year, while Smash soldiered on as a singles wrestler deep into the summer of 1991 before being repackaged as Repo Man.

2. Paul Roma Was Legit Spooked By Taking The Doomsday Device

WWE.com

Instead of Demolition, The Legion of Doom were paired with Power and Glory, the tandem of Hercules and Paul Roma. The match ended up being a minute-long squash, ending with Roma getting floored by LOD's devastating finish, The Doomsday Device.

Later in 1991, at a show in London's Royal Albert Hall, LOD and Power and Glory were set to work together once more. Before the match, Roma confided to Animal that taking the Device at WrestleMania caused him to land awkwardly, and it put a scare in him. Animal, per his recollection, said he understood, and they agreed that Roma would take the fall after being caught in a powerslam.

Animal has further noted that if you see him and Hawk win a match without using the Doomsday Device, in the majority of instances, it's because somebody was (understandably) afraid to take the move.

1. Tugboat Was Once Considered For The Role Of Hogan's Iraqi Nemesis

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You may wanna sit down for this one.

Unless Bruce Prichard is just pulling our leg for his own amusement, he claimed, in a February 2016 podcast with Ric Flair, that Fred "Tugboat" Ottman was originally considered to be the turncoat that would align with Iraq, vanquish Warrior for the WWE Championship at the Royal Rumble, and fall to the patriotic hands of Hulk Hogan come WrestleMania 7.

Prichard notes that Ottman is a "sweetheart of a guy", but laughed as he told the story of how he would have been redubbed, I kid you not, "Sheik Tugboat". Prichard adds that it was virtually a godsend that McMahon crossed paths with Sgt. Slaughter and went with him as the villain in the story.

Not that it was a great story, but it was probably better than it would've been had Tugboat been cast as the next great foreign menace.

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