Long-standing rumors surrounding the main event of Wrestlemania II have started to swirl up again this week on social media. The rumor in question? Allegedly, Bruiser Brody NEARLY signed with the World Wrestling Federation in 1986 and was to be programmed against WWF Champion, Hulk Hogan, for a dream showdown of epic proportions at Wrestlemania! Could it have really worked? What was the situation heading into April of 1986? We’ll take a look at all those questions, plus a little more ‘slightly tweaked’ history in this piece.
Timing-wise, I do think things could’ve worked out for Bruiser Brody to make the jump to the WWF… which is important, as I’m not sure any other stretch of time would’ve worked out, schedule-wise. Let me tell you why.
Bruiser Brody, as many fans know, was best known for his work in Japan. Most notably, for Giant Baba who headed up Brody’s ‘home promotion’ overseas, ALL JAPAN PRO WRESTLING (AJPW). Well, by 1985, a lot of money was to be made as a foreign wrestler in Japan and AJPW’s rival promotion was attempting to sign up as many gaijin talent as they could get their hands on. That rival company? Antonio Inoki’s newer, bolder NEW JAPAN PRO WRESTLING (NJPW). Between lucrative offers being made by NJPW and Baba looking to push a different crop of talent in AJPW, Brody found himself at a crossroads.
So, despite having a certain loyalty to Baba for so many years, Brody followed the money and joined up with NJPW by the spring of that year. Baba and Brody’s relationship following this exodus from AJPW would never be the same, as Brody was now in direct competition for pro wrestling supremacy across the country. Brody, while still making regular appearances state-side for companies like the AMERICAN WRESTLING ASSOCIATION (AWA) and WORLD CLASS CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING (WCCW), would wave the flag for NJPW for the calendar year in 1985.
Brody would form a memorable team and have a great run in the IWGP Tag League alongside his partner, Jimmy Snuka. All the while, Bruiser would be consistently booked against top stars. By the end of 1985, Bruiser Brody was quickly tiring of certain booking decisions, not being provided a monetary booking kickback for helping facilitate WCCW talent to tour with NJPW, and most importantly, being continually pressured to lose to Antonio Inoki. Anytime Brody and Inoki met, a disqualification, count out, or some such other non-finish was all but a guarantee. This would lead to Brody being featured across the ring from Inoki in more multi-man tag team matches than singles matches, as fans were growing more and more unhappy with never having a decisive winner between the two titans.
Unfortunately, this kind of overprotection of character was something Bruiser Brody would become notorious for. Though he never directly screwed Inoki, nor ‘shot’ with him, Brody wouldn’t simply accept a clean loss against NJPW’s promoter and most popular star. This was seen as a huge slap in the face to Antonio Inoki, thus the relationship between he and Brody would see a falling out, slating Brody to finish up with NJPW officially in December… with Brody never having to take a clean pinfall loss to Inoki during his run with the company.
So, where was Bruiser Brody off to next? With his two avenues essentially dried up overseas due to creative and professional differences with both Baba and Inoki, Brody was left with little options to make the kind of serious money he had been accustomed to making in Japan for half a decade.
Enter 1986. Enter in Vince McMahon, Jr.
According to Brody’s wife, Barbara, there were talks between them for Brody to retire from his Japanese tours and just stick with being a signed wrestler for Vince McMahon’s WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION. According to Barbara, this is where he’d eventually wind down and ultimately end his in-ring wrestling career, following one last ‘big money’ run against the company’s champion and top babyface, Hulk Hogan.
In a way, this all makes a whole bunch of sense. Wrestlemania 2 in 1986 would’ve made for a perfect pay-per-view debut for the monster to take on Hulkamania. Timing wise, Brody was in search of a replacement for both AJPW and NJPW. Career-wise, he was prepared to have one last big run and wind things down, perhaps being done with the WWF and pro wrestling by 1990.
In the case of King Kong Bundy, he would debut for the WWF on March 16th, 1985… about a year ahead of his ‘Mania match against Hogan. It isn’t hard to imagine Bundy and Brody being almostly cleaning interchanged, with Brody instead coming in and running roughshod on the WWF roster beginning at Saturday Night’s Main Event in January of 1986.
Hence, the cage match stipulation? Maybe, instead of Bundy’s five-count gimmick, Brody’s gimmick would’ve been exactly what Brody was and had always been, wild and uncontainable, with a steel cage being the only way to contain Brody for Hogan to get a fair shot at him following a blindside sneak attack on the champ ahead of Wrestlemania.
It may all be speculation and hearsay now in 2026, but it isn’t hard to imagine what could have been, as all of the pieces fit rather well together looking back.
Now, since we’re already messing with a little bit of history here, who says we can have a little more fun with another featured match on the card?!
(SIDE NOTE: Before we get any further, I am also deciding for this piece that Wrestlemania II will be hosted from JUST Chicago, instead of the three cities gimmick… who wants to watch two thirds of their ‘live’ wrestlemania on big screens that block the ring anyway?)
Anyway, so yeah. I also wanted to change up the boxing match between “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Mr. T because they didn’t want to do it and the fans didn’t really care to see it in the first place. This is WRESTLEmania after all, not BOXmania.
But, how do we go from “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff being a partner of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s at Wrestlemania the prior year, to being on opposite sides of the ring at the following year’s event?
Simple, allow me to explain.
As you may or may not recall, Roddy Piper and “Cowboy” Bob Orton blamed Paul Orndorff for Orndorff and Roddy’s loss to Hulk Hogan and Mr. T in the main event tag team match of the very first Wrestlemania. Within a month following the pay-per-view, Orndorff’s former running mates would turn on him with an attack, turning “Mr. Wonderful” babyface for the remainder of 1985.
Cut to Wrestlemania in 1986 and what a poetic continuation of the story it would be to see “Mr. Wonderful” join up with Mr. T to shut Roddy Piper and Bob Orton up once and for all! I feel there would be more interest in this than a boxing match between Piper and Mr. T. Beyond this bonus booking, I didn’t look at much else to change or mess with for Wrestlemania II. My focus was to tackle the rumor and timeline probability of Brody stepping into the cage with Hogan instead of Bundy.
As we know, the real timeline of events went quite differently. Bruiser Brody would instead be enticed to head to Puerto Rico where, like in Japan, pro wrestling was exploding in the mid-to-late 1980s. Big money matches had hit the island and Brody was looking to again cash in as a special attraction foreigner for Carlos Colón’s WORLD WRESTLING COUNCIL promotion (WWC). Brody would be fatally stabbed inside a WWC locker room and the wrestling world would lose a living legend by 1988.
So, what if it had gone the way rumors had suggested? I’d wager, had Brody been kept happy, that he and Vince would’ve been able to make some decent money all across the country. Brody had been able to work with Vince’s father fairly well, so I’d imagine he and Vince Jr. would’ve been able to put something together. This also would’ve virtually eliminated his chances of being murdered in Puerto Rico in 1988. So, how long would Brody have stuck around in the WWF? Would he have returned to Baba to retire properly in front of Japanese audiences?
What if?
We can only dream…