Every generation of wrestling fans will have their distinct eras that they deem to be the best. The “Attitude Era” will obviously be in the conversation of the best era just because of how successful it was, but also for how accessible it was, making wrestling a mainstream talking point amongst normal, non-wrestling fans in the 1990s and 2000s. Some fans might even point to recently where WWE is making more money than it knows what to do with, but the financial success of the past few years will be kind to the modern era when it’s been in the history books for a while.

However, the “Rock and Wrestling Connection Era,” “The Hulkamania Era,” “The 1980s Boom Era,” whatever you want to call it, this for me is the peak of the WWE. The company has never felt so important and so grand as it was at WrestleMania 3. After all, there would be none of the eras mentioned in the first paragraph without the success of an event like this or an era like the one it exists in.

Yes, the 93,173 figure is fluffed up beyond belief to the point where shows like AEW All In London 2023 and WWE WrestleMania 32 have surpassed it from a ticket standpoint, but just look at this show. The idea of any wrestling company in 1987 filling a stadium this big must have been mindboggling. This wasn’t just a wrestling show, you could have found them in territories all over the country in 1987, this was a cultural event that everyone, and I mean everyone knows about. Gorilla Monsoon’s call of “the irresistible force meeting the immovable object,” Andre The Giant’s singlet, Randy Savage vs. Ricky Steamboat, even the little rings the wrestlers arrive on, there are so many things from this show alone that are embedded into both the minds of wrestling fans, and pop culture in general.

When you look at what WrestleMania has become in the past 40-plus years, every event chases what WWE achieved with WrestleMania 3. Hell, the company itself chases the success of this era with every decision it makes to this day it was that big. Nothing in terms of size, figuratively and literally, has ever truly matched the era that many fans still refer to as “The Golden Era,” and this is the pinnacle of it. Is it a show that your friend who only started watching WWE when it moved to Netflix would enjoy? Probably not just because it’s hard to watch a 1987 show through a 2026 set of eyeballs. But is it a show that every wrestling fan needs to watch? Absolutely.