Wrestlemania 3 promotion

Just got done watching the last Saturday Nights Main Event which aired 2 weeks before Wrestlemania 3. I found it odd that there was virtually zero promotion or hype for the event. Hogan and Andre are both in the 20 man battle royal with no mention of their title match in TWO WEEKS. Savage and Steamboat get involved with each other in their respective matches with no mention of their title match and even Jesse Ventura said right at the end about Hogan and Andre that they “would meet again someday”. What the shit? They were meeting at the freaking Silverdome in front of 500,000 people in 15 DAYS! How do you not hype that? Only mention of WM was when Gene Mean was interviewing Roddy Piper and mentioned he was retiring at WM3. I know this was taped earlier than two weeks prior but most of the card had to be set at that point anyway.

Was there something in place with NBC where Vince couldn’t promote his PPV’s over the air on SNME? Seems odd that the biggest event in the history of our sport up to that point barely got any mention on a network broadcast where you would think you could get some extra PPV buys from casual fans who didn’t tune into Prime Time or Superstars.

​Yes, that was NBC’s call. We went over it in the Observers at the time, but there were weirdness about the relationship between the networks and the PPV company, so the WWF basically was unable to use that show as the hype machine they wanted to. Even so, it was REALLY understated, even by the limitations that would have been placed on it.

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