For 40 years, the greats of the WWE — Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, The Rock, John Cena, Cody Rhodes — have wrestled in Fresno. Tito Santana defending the Intercontinental Heavyweight title against “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff headlined the first card on July 3, 1984, at Selland Arena.
San Francisco-based in Fresno during the 1960s and 1970s. He gave way in 1979 to , who booked talent from Los Angeles for a few years. But, in the early 1980s, Fresno became a wrestling ghost town —save for an irregular independent or Lucha Libre show —until the WWF arrived.
The WWE (the name changed from the WWF in 2002) featured eight Hall of Famers on that first card. And, Fresno has been one of the group’s better stops over the last 40 years. The most recent card on Feb.
18 of this year, headlined by Rhodes, drew more than 9,200 fans to the Save Mart Center. The debut got off to a rough start. Three matches advertised in the Fresno Bee didn’t take place — Jimmy Snuka vs.
Paul Orndorff; Tito Santana vs. Big John Studd; and Sgt. Slaughter vs.
Dick Murdoch. Snuka, Slaughter, and Murdoch no-showed, causing a reshuffling of the card. The results, according to : Ventura once claimed that the city named Ventura Street — recently renamed Cesar Chavez Boulevard — after him.
The card can best be described as a “B-Show” because it did not have the WWE’s biggest draw at the time, Hulk Hogan. “Hulkamania” ran wild in Los Angeles and Oakland that week, but not Fresno, Sacrame.
