Duggan was signed to the WWE in January 1987, making his first major appearance with the WWE at WrestleMania III, where he also made his pay-per-view debut. In the weeks preceding WrestleMania, Duggan began his first WWE feud with Nikolai Volkoff. At the event, he ran to ringside prior to a match between The Killer Bees and The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff and interrupted Volkoff's pre-match singing of the Russian national anthem. Duggan had previously done this on TV matches leading up to the event.