WWF THE HISTORY
OF WRESTLEMANIA
We've talked about the WWF trading card sets distributed by Classic in 1990 and in 1991. But in between those sets, the company produced a lesser-known set entitled "The History Of WrestleMania."
On one hand... the concept was quite an intriguing one, given the storied history of WrestleMania and the many, many huge moments that could be captured in trading card format.
However, there had only been six WrestleManias on the books by the time this series came out in 1990, giving us a lot of less-than-famous WrestleMania moments to fill out the collection. It also gave us multiple cards of certain matchups and none of others through the years.
In addition, Ricky Steamboat was working for the competition by 1990 and Big John Studd was on the outs with the company. Thus, we didn't get a card for Steamboat's classic WrestleMania III match with Andre The Giant. And while Studd was in the WrestleMania II battle royal, his inaugural Mania match with Andre The Giant wasn't highlighted at all.
Speaking of battle royals... this series had quite a few cards dedicated to the WrestleMania II and WrestleMania IV matches - four and five cards, respectively. Not taking away anything from these matches, but imagine if the annual Andre The Giant or Womens battle royals received this much proportionate attention today? It's hard to think about...
Given The History of WrestleMania cards only had six shows to select from, a lot of the cards were dedicated to midcard nonsense that hardly feels WrestleMania quality in today's day and age, such as The Ultimate Warrior vs. Hercules, Ronnie Garvin vs. Dino Bravo, Tito Santana vs. The Executioner and Koko B. Ware vs. Rick Martel. It's hard to blame Classic for that, though - they could only create cards based on the material they had to work with.
The back of each History of WrestleMania card was short and sweet, detailing the WrestleMania where the event happened, and a fairly brief description. These were hardly the Topps or O-Pee-Chee WWF cards in the statistics department.
Still, this set has a certain limited charm to it. The pictures are decent and most of the high-profile matches from WrestleManias one through six are profiled. Nothing to really complain about here.