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ONTARIO - Wrestling gets huge

Broadcast Date: March 17, 1986

Toronto has been a hotspot for wrestling since Nov. 19, 1931, when the first match was held at Maple Leaf Gardens. Now, with the World Wrestling Federation taking North America by storm, interest in the sport and attendance at the Gardens has never been higher, we learn in this CBC Television clip. Promoter Jack Tunney says there are no longer any regional promotions, as such. "We're international now…Everybody's talking wrestling now. It's just hot, hot, hot."

The success of the WWF has boosted total wrestling grosses to $250 million. Attendance is up and top wrestler Hulk Hogan earns more than $1 million per year, much of it from dolls and other paraphernalia. There's even a wrestling music video and a Broadway play. King Kong Bundy, one of the American stars drawing fans to the Gardens, says he's determined to ride out the good times on top.

ONTARIO - Wrestling gets huge

• Although wrestling is closely associated with Maple Leaf Gardens, there were occasional matches by top stars before the arena opened. In 1929, promoter Ivan Mickailoff announced he would start running weekly shows at Toronto's Arena Gardens. After a slow start, the matches started drawing thousands. Soon, though, rival promoter Jack Corcoran of the Queensbury Athletic Club was holding the biggest shows at Maple Leaf Gardens.

• Corcoran was later bought out by brothers Jack and Frank Tunney. Jack's son, also named Jack, who appears in this clip eventually took over the Queensbury Athletic Club with his cousin Eddie. Over the decades, they kept the Gardens busy on nights when there was no hockey game. Canadian, British Empire and world titles were all fought there.

• The Tunneys hosted National Wrestling Alliance and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling matches until 1984, when Jack Tunney signed with the World Wrestling Federation. The WWF's roots go back to Vince McMahon Sr., who ran Capitol Wrestling in the northeast United States and later the World Wide Wrestling Federation. The WWF was created in 1978 by McMahon and his son, Vince Jr., who took over when his father retired in the early 1980s.

• McMahon Jr. took a risk on March 31, 1985 with the first WrestleMania at New York's Madison Square Gardens, broadcast by closed-circuit television to more than 100 other arenas and stadiums. He promoted the event as national entertainment, rejecting efforts to keep wrestling regional and to sell it as a respected sport. The risk paid off and the WWF, along with stars such as Hulk Hogan, Mr. T and Rowdy Roddy Piper, stormed into the pop culture mainstream.

• Two years later, more than 93,000 fans paid to watch WrestleMania III at Detroit's Pontiac Silverdome. It was a world indoor attendance record for a sports or entertainment event. Television shows, pay-per-view events and merchandise helped the company generate huge profits.

• Maple Leaf Gardens remained an important wrestling venue until the fabled building closed its doors in 1999. However, in 1990 the WWF chose the bigger SkyDome for its only WrestleMania outside the United States The event drew more than 67,000 fans; an attendance record for the stadium that was broken in 2002 when 68,237 fans watched The Rock beat Hulk Hogan at another WrestleMania at SkyDome.

• Rocky Johnson, the Nova Scotia-born, Toronto-raised father of The Rock, wrestled many times at Maple Leaf Gardens.
• Frank Tunney helped the WWF gain the upper hand over regional Canadian promoters and was named WWF president. He left the company in 1995 and died Jan. 24, 2004.

ONTARIO - Wrestling gets huge

Medium: Television

Program: Monitor

Broadcast Date: March 17, 1986

Guest(s): King Kong Bundy, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, Jack Tunney

Host: Christina Pochmursky
Reporter: Jonathan Craven

Duration: 5:01

"Land of 1,000 Dances" video: World Wrestling Entertainment.

Last updated:
March 22, 2004