WrestleMania, one of Vince McMahon's greatest ideas, represented a real revolution in the World Wrestling Federation and in wrestling in general. McMahon's project was to create a pay-per-view event that could become, over the years, a sort of professional wrestling Super Bowl.

The idea of an event like this wasn't new in North America: the National Wrestling Alliance had in fact been organizing Starrcade for a few years. However, McMahon wanted to increase the WWF's audience ever more: with the first edition of WrestleMania, the WWF struck an agreement with MTV both for television coverage and for WWF programming, giving life to what was called the Rock'n Wrestling Connection.

McMahon also invited celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper to his promotion to raise publicity for WrestleMania, attracting media attention across the United States. In the first main event in WrestleMania history, dated March 31, 1985, Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeated Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff. The new formula of what McMahon thought of as Sports Entertainment coincided with a resounding financial success of the first edition of WrestleMania.

The event is often called the Grandest Stage of Them All or Showcase of the Immortals to underline its prestige: it is in fact the wrestling event par excellence and has the same value as the Super Bowl for American football and the NBA Finals for basketball.

Real dream matches often take place at WrestleMania and, on some occasions, the great legends of the past return to fight for just one night; according to journalists and insiders, participating in the WrestleMania main event represents the highest point in a wrestler's career.