Mr. T or Cyndi Lauper: Who Had The Bigger Impact?
The whole package was put together very deliberately because Wrestlemania I was as much about Closed Circuit as Pay Per View... If people weren't gonna watch at home it was seats in a theatre or stadium...and those needed to be filled by a wide range of people.
Vince was going for EVERYONE as a demographic at that time. Hogan had the kid appeal but he also wanted to hook teenagers into the mix... He also had those "old school" fans, generally blue collar guys who would go to the matches and get ripped on beer so someone had to cater for them...
If you look at that period, there were more than 2 celebs involved but Lauper and T are the ones most remembered... but every celeb, even down to the John Stossell incident or Richard Belzer being choked out by Hogan served a purpose.
Lauper was someone to hook the teens and the girls into the product, they had Wendi Richter and Moolah who was considerably older... so bringing Cyndi in to back Wendi up was smart as it made Richter "appear" younger and thus give some "Youth vs Age", "Rock v Establishment" to that feud and to the shows...
T was there to cater to the others, the boys, teenage or good Ol' who probably sat down with the kids to watch The A-Team or loved Rocky where T would batter Stallone... It's wrong to say Cyndi was bigger than T because there was no bigger show on TV at the time than the A-Team, it was popular with parents, kids and everyone in between. So bringing T in alongside Lauper caught all those demographics... those more interested in Music were covered, those who watched TV were also covered...
Liberace was there for the moms (few ever dreamt he was gay at the time) and then for those old school/sports fans there was Ali... universally respected as a great sportsman and personality. Schultz slapping Stossell, even if Vince threw him under the bus or Hulk dropping Belzer may have cost some dough... but the mainstream exposure was priceless from them too... overall the impact was the number and calibre of celebs in one place at one time taking part in Wrestling, not just showing up in the crowd or the D listers of Wrestlemania X for example (Burt excluded) but proper pop culture icons of the time, they managed it till 3 and then it got a bit "low rent" for many and the calibre of celebs dropped.
