It’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted any of these and I am truly sorry about that. In a world of shiny objects, I have to focus on projects like this even harder. But we have four new events to review that were one-off shows from the 1990’s and there are a few classics hidden among the chaff.
This Tuesday in Texas – December 3, 1991
Our first random show from the 90s was an experiment by the WWF, looking to see if Tuesday would work as a good secondary pay-per-view night. There’s a reason that they didn’t run another Tuesday PPV until 2004. The reason given on TV for the show was the controversial title change at Survivor Series the week before with The Undertaker dethroning Hulk Hogan with the help of Ric Flair.
Your pay-per-view opener is Bret Hart putting the Intercontinental title on the line against Skinner; yet another example from the 90s of the WWF saddling a good worker with a crap gimmick. You see, Skinner was from the Florida Everglades, carried an alligator claw to the ring with him and often had crew juice running out of his mouth during his squash matches. Steve Keirn really deserved better. Hitman gets the best of a decent wrestling match early before Skinner plants his shoulder in the post and then spends most of the rest of the contest working the shoulder. He actually hit Bret with his finisher, a reverse DDT, but Bret kicked out and turned the tide until locking in the Sharpshooter. A solid opener for the show, but likely a house show co-main event.
Up next is the other selling point for the show, the first one-on-one showdown between Randy Savage and Jake Roberts after the snake man pushed Macho to the point where he demanded to be reinstated by slapping Elizabeth. This was also like 2 weeks after the angle on Superstars where Jake’s cobra chewed on Randy’s arm. Yes, you read that correctly. That arm eventually becomes a focal point for Jake’s attack after Savage spends several minutes beating Jake from pillar to post. The finish to this kinda short match also comes out of nowhere. While they tell a good story, the match itself was secondary to the post-match action.
Just in case you thought the concept of two big meaty men slapping meat is a recent concept, up next is The Warlord against The British Bulldog. They have a decent match, both guys showing off surprising agility for their size. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a longer full nelson spot, which probably isn’t the best choice for the Warlord because that was his finisher at the time. Bulldog takes it with a slow to develop crucifix.
Our penultimate event is a tag team match that mixes a pair of angles as Virgil teams up against El Matador Tito Santana to take on Ted Dibiase and the Repo Man. Yes the gimmick was goofy as hell but to Barry Darsow’s credit, he went all in with it to get it over. If there’s one thing the crowd is hot for in this match, it’s Dibiase vs. Virgil and Ted is bumping his ass off for Virgil out of the gate before settling in for a good old fashioned heat session on the babyface. Just as it looks like Sherri was going to get hers, the sneaky heels do sneaky heel things to take the win. It’s a solid tag match, all the things are in the right places. The crowd was a little quiet, though I think that has a lot to do with a crowd that was here for two matches and already sat through a TV taping before the PPV.
And your main event is the rematch for the WWF Championship as the Undertaker defends against Hulk Hogan. After all the shenanigans at Survivor Series, the rematch was made. Can WWF President Jack Tunney keep this match down the line or will there be more fuckery? Hogan beats on Taker for a bit while zombie Taker walks right through most of it. They take it to the outside and Taker gets the advantage then does a lot of choking. Like a lot of choking Hogan. Flair eventually makes his way to the ring and gets into it with Tunney before Hogan makes for the floor and hits Flair with a chair who falls onto Tunney. Flair’s interference eventually backfires and San Antonio gets to go home happy, thinking they’ve seen a huge title change. The chicanery around this one is why the title ends up being vacated and put on the line in the ‘92 Rumble. Hogan wins via roll up after blinding The Undertaker with ashes from his own urn.
I could see someone wanting to check this out for its place in WWF Championship history, but this really isn’t a good match. There are some clear miscommunications, things get a little sloppy and honestly, a young Undertaker has a few issues in the ring. Neither guy looks great and the ring looks ready to fall apart by the end of the match. Like the ropes look ready to fly off by the time we got to the finish. I don’t know if that affected the quality but either way, you can give this one a pass.
FINAL GRADE: C-
If you’re a fan of early 90’s WWF, then this is a show to check out for a multiple reasons. But most wrestling fans can feel alright about giving it a miss. Sure, there is a WWF title change on the card, but the match itself is nothing to write home about. The rest of the action is good to serviceable but you would have seen that type of action in the weekly main event match on Superstars. The Savage/Roberts match may be worth your time, but only for the post-match story. You can say this for the Tuesday PPV experiment; they tried.
Breakdown – September 27, 1998
We come to the Attitude Era with an event that is technically in the In Your House series. So why didn’t I make it part of the initial run of IYH reviews? Well, I stopped when the In Your House brand became secondary to the new names of the shows and this one happened to not become a continued brand, much like the next two shows in this article. I will admit that I really only remember this show for two matches: the main event for the WWF title and the three-way cage match. But before I poison the well, let’s head back to the Copps Coliseum up in Hamilton.
Our opening contest is a little mind blowing that it even happened. A very baby-faced Edge goes one-on-one with Owen Hart, who is way over in Canada of course. It was a well-paced, high-impact match, even seeing Owen powerslam Edge off the apron to the floor. A lot of near-falls in this one. There’s an historic component to the finish as well, as a debuting Christian would distract Edge to allow Owen to finish off Edge with a devastating roll up. A good opener, but Owen was kinda just the guy in the middle of the beginning of the E&C story.
We move to tag team action as Too Much, Brian Christopher and Scott Taylor, take on Al Snow and Scorpio in a pre-Job Squad team-up. The whole middle of the match was mayhem as guys were in and out of the ring, a random chair gets introduced, there’s a bit of a Sabu-style botch, all before settling back down into a traditional tag match. Snow and Scorpio show a lot of chemistry as a team and of course Too Much fly around the ring on both offense and defense. A Snow Plow eventually gets the win for Scorpio and Snow in a match much like the first one was solid if not a little short.
Up next in another match that seemingly had no heat going into it, Marc Mero squares off with Droz. A quick and kinda dirty match, Mero gets the win with a shooting star following some interference from Jacqueline. Like I said, simple and quick.
The potential in our next match is vast for big men slapping meat, it’s Bradshaw vs. Vader in a falls count anywhere brawl. And that’s what we get. Bradshaw even kicked out of the Vader Bomb en route to the impactful. Vader was routinely getting done dirty at this point in his tenure with the company and while it took two clotheslines from hell and a big neckbreaker to keep him down, that’s kinda what happened here.
Up next on Random In Your House, Gangrel meets Nation member D-Lo Brown. D-Lo actually lost the European title to X-Pac the Monday before this show, which is why he’s naturally facing Gangrel on pay-per-view. His gear even still says European Champion. A back and forth contest, D-Lo took control after a powerbomb with some extra stank on it before the outside interference train comes rolling though in the form of Mark Henry. One Sky High and D-Lo gets the win. I think I feel the same way about this one as I do about the first four matches on the card. They’re solid but nothing to write home about. This has been a great episode of Heat so far.
I’ve been looking forward to this one the whole card, a triple threat cage match with the winner getting a shot at the WWF Championship. This has to be one of the last cage matches with the big heavy bars. I don’t think it was much longer before they moved to the current fence design.
Our next contest is an actually emotionally charged mid-card match between Dustin Runnels and Val Venis. A feud over Val sleeping with Dustin’s wife, which should be a huge angle. But the crowd just wasn’t into this one and a huge botch where Val didn’t kick out did not do this match any favors.
The X-Pac-Jeff Jarrett program continues after their hair vs. hair match at Summerslam. Tonight, they’ve included the New Age Outlaws and Southern Justice for a six-man tag team showdown. It turns out to be a relatively standard six-man tag, of course X-Pac took all of the heat.
Finally, the main event, a triple threat match for the WWF Championship. Let me see if I can get all of the stips in for this one. Kane cannot pin The Undertaker. The Undertaker cannot pin Kane. No one can interfere on Steve Austin’s behalf or he will be immediately stripped of the title. That’s a lot to work with and all three do a pretty good job of it. It’s a brawl emblematic of Attitude Era title matches. There was a decent story told, the match ran through several phases, Vince McMahon ended the night on camera, typical Attitude Era. A case could be made that this is worth a watch, but there’s better matches between all three of these guys to go in search of. Hell, the Summerslam main event the month before between Austin and Taker was probably a better match.
MUST-SEE MATCH
Triple Threat Cage Match for #1 Contendership to the WWF Championship: The Rock vs. Mankind vs. Ken Shamrock
This is just one of the most well-constructed triple threat matches you will ever see, cage or no. The cage isn’t really even necessary, but I get why they locked them in from a storyline. Everybody looked good, everybody looked close to winning multiple times each, there were big spots, there was a double People’s Elbow; what more could you ask for in a match?
FINAL GRADE: C
A solid show that runs right down the middle. Some good, some bad and a decent amount of meh. Which is an unfortunate result of the Monday Night Wars that also saw the expansion of the pay-per-view calendar. There were a number of these secondary shows that were all right, with just enough good that you were rarely annoyed that you paid between 30 and 50 dollars to watch a glorified Raw with a big main event match.
Rock Bottom – December 13, 1998
Hmm, another one-off pay-per-view in Canada. This time, we head out to Vancouver with quite the staging. The Rock was in the middle of being the centerpiece of The Corporation, which is why we get some huge Rock portraits forming the entrance. Something else happening here that I do miss is a story being told in the pre-show. During Sunday Night Heat, Mankind attacked Rock, injuring his ribs but later revealing that in his contract for the title shot was a clause that he would win the title by forfeit if it was not defended. Vince then spent a good chunk of the pay per view trying to get him to relinquish said contract. But they were still building the match just an hour before the PPV went live and I still kinda miss that. Instead of a talking heads debate panel, I want a pre-show where things actually happen.
Your opening contest is a cluster of storylines coming together as former Nation members D-Lo Brown and Mark Henry team up to take on the way-too-obvious combination of The Godfather and Val Venis. Vancouver was pretty into this short, basic match that ended when Jacqueline, who along with Terri Runnels accompanied D-Lo and Mark to the ring, jump in and pantsed Val Venis. The distraction was enough to let Henry hit a big clothesline and splash for the win.
More tag action up next as the Headbangers take on the Oddities, who are played to the ring by an odd replacement for their ICP theme. Kurrgan definitely took too much of the heat with Golga getting outsmarted by the old wrong legal man trick as the Headbangers get the win. The most eventful thing happening during this one was a ringsider getting tossed for trying to shove Mosh post-match.
Up next, the biggest pop of the night as Owen Hart takes on The Lethal Weapon Steve Blackman. I kind of remember this feud and I think if you’re an Owen Hart fan, check this one out. Its a low-key good one with plenty of action, even if Owen took a lot of the heat. The finish of Owen just up and leaving the ring to get counted out after getting put in the Sharpshooter didn’t make a ton of sense but it was still a solid ten minutes.
A six-man tag up next as the Brood faces off with the Job Squad. Unfortunately, the stage didn’t really allow for the coolest entrance of the era, so the Brood just came through the curtain like everybody else. They gave us a pretty good match that’s worth checking out if you want to see a babyfaced Edge and Christian. The whole thing wrapped up in some perfectly controlled chaos that lead to Christian hitting what became the Killswitch on Scorpio for the win. Scorpio was also as solid as ever, the Tumbleweed is, was and always will be a thing of beauty.
Your reminder that this is the Attitude Era up now as Jeff Jarrett takes on Goldust in the striptease match. If Dust wins, Jarrett’s valet Debra will have to strip in the middle of the ring. If Jeff wins, Goldust will do the stripping but we all know which way this is going. We all know that the match doesn’t matter here and that’s fine because it’s an average match. It’s here to force Debra to strip in front of 17,000 people, which is why commissioner Shawn Michaels came out to reverse the original decision of a Jarrett victory after Debra waffled Goldust with a guitar.
The tag team titles are on the line next as the New Age Outlaws defend against Corporation members Ken Shamrock and Big Bossman. The Outlaws are coming off a Sunday Night Heat match against the Acolytes that they were forced to compete in by corporate commissioner Shawn Michaels. They couldn’t figure out if was supposed to be a heel or not really. He actually accompanies the challengers to the ring to get booed, right after handing Vancouver some horny fan service. If you’ve seen an Outlaws title defense, you know how this one is going to go. Road Dogg is going to take the asskicking, Billy Gunn will take the hot tag and boom, titles retained. Just add in some interference from the commissioner and then a quick reversal and you’ve got this one. Dogg and Ass retain and those 17 minutes were pretty meh.
We have a huge bunch of promo time before the WWF Championship match, where Mankind demands that Vince McMahon didn’t hear him give up a month ago at the Survivor Series. Nothing changed around this match so that really just burned like 7 minutes of pay per view time. By once the match started, The Rock and Mankind did what The Rock and Mankind did: put on physical, hard-hitting and compelling matches and usually with the world title hanging in the balance. So why can’t I put this one on the must-see list? Because overbooked doesn’t even begin to describe this match and finish. Vince plays a little Calvinball during the match. The Rock goes to sleep from the Mandible Claw and wins, but Vince cuts the celebration short saying that the Rock just passed out and didn’t submit so the title can’t change hands unless there’s a pinfall or submission. I understand this is a step on the road to a bigger story, which I think they rushed anywho, but it went over the top with there being no basis for the Dusty finish.
But we are not done yet, as your main event is a Buried Alive match between Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Undertaker which Austin must win to qualify for the Royal Rumble. To be honest, if you’ve never seen the novelty that is a buried alive match, give this a watch. At it’s core, it’s an Attitude Era Steve Austin main event match: a big sloppy brawl with plenty of big spots and it will go all over the arena. Bonus points if Austin can introduce a vehicle into the proceedings some how and that’s what we got here. Big 15-minute brawl, Austin stuns Taker into the grave then heads backstage. Taker crawls out and lies in wait with a shovel to ambush Austin but pyro comes out the grave then Kane comes out the grave and as he tombstones the Undertaker at graveside, Austin enters the arena with a backhoe and proceeds to bury The Undertaker. Many beers were had. Scene.
FINAL GRADE: D
It’s kind of confusing how a show with this much talent can be this uninteresting. There’s nothing really memorable here, aside from the main event and that’s more for the spectacle. The Rock and Mankind could be the best match of the night, but there was so much gaga involved that they ended up hampered. Thankfully, they’d have nearly three more months of great work ahead of them. Owen and Blackman had a pretty good one going but man did the finish kill it as well. Outside of that, this was a house show that we paid thirty bucks to be at. Shows like this are why I’ve long advocated for shrinking the PPV calendar. This is an Attitude Era dud that you can give a miss.
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre – February 14, 1999
We will end this little miscellaneous journey with the final pay-per-view to carry the In Your House tagline (albeit as a secondary title) until 2020 when it was picked up by NXT. This turned out to be a rather historic show in a couple of ways as we got to see a major debut, an…interesting title change and an old man crack his spine. So wins all the way around. Tonight’s show comes to us from the banks of the Mississippi River, the Pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee back when it was an area and not the world’s gaudiest bait shop. Complete sidebar: the opening video package, set to the standard “You’re Driving Me Crazy”, is quite possibly one of the best they’ve ever put together.
Your opening contest is just…bizarre as Bluedust takes on Mommy, er Goldust. Look, the Attitude Era contains way too many angles that I look back at 20+ years and still don’t understand what the hell is going on in it. So the Blue Meanie came in to feud with Goldust and then team with him. Then Ryan Shamrock gets involved, yeah I know. That bit is a little further down the line. As for this match, it would be over before I finished explaining the story. Memphis was all in for the Meanie getting kicked in the plums post-match, tho that might be the best part of this oddity.
We go to weird in a different way as Al Snow and Bob (not quite yet Hardcore) Holly do battle for the vacant Hardcore title.
Following that is an old fashioned hoss match, as the Corporation’s head of security Big Boss Man goes one on one with the Ministry’s Mideon. It was a six-minute match that happened before Boss Man gets the win with the Boss Man Slam and the ring is immediately surrounded by the Ministry. After the appearance of The Undertaker, Boss Man is incapacitated and carried to the back by the Ministry. This starts the road to that Hell in a Cell match at Wrestlemania. You know, the hanging one.
The Tag Team titles are on the line next as D’Lo Brown and Mark Henry challenge Owen Hart and D’Lo Brown. The challengers are accompanied by Mark Henry’s newest squeeze Ivory to act as the solution to the Debra problem. A team of great workers against a team of some of the most underrated workers of the era. They have themselves a solid, if not basic tag match until the finish where the women become the story. D’Lo gets distracted by a confrontation between them, Owen whacks Mark Henry with a guitar in his braced knee and Jarrett slaps on the figure four. The annoying nit-pick for me is that the shattered remnants of the guitar are clearly in the referee’s view but he just takes the tapout. It definitely drags the match down for me.
If you like your wrestling angles surrounding romances, then the Intercontinental title match is for you as Ken Shamrock defends against Val Venis, whose been taking up with his little sister. Billy Gunn is your special referee because apparently the normal refs were tired of getting bear up by a crazy Shamrock. Oh, and he wants the title too. That was a physical match that felt pretty slow. This is also the infamous match where Shamrock told Ryan to slap him in front of God and everybody right on camera, making for an all-tim Botchamania clip. Val wins the title after Billy Gunn fast counts Shamrock after Ken pushed him. We were here to set up the multiple-man feud over the title which culminated in the four-way match at Wrestlemania. But tonight, meh.
Tag action next as Triple H and X-Pac take on Chyna and Kane of the Corporation, the culmination of a devastating DX breakup angle that will become moot in like 3 weeks when Triple H will turn Corporate and reunite with Chyna and eventually toss Kane by the wayside. It was a very confusing story. I think the most interesting part of this match is seeing how they worked around Chyna’s lack of in-ring experience and I think they did that pretty well. She got in all of her strengths and for the most part, they hid any weaknesses. Shane McMahon coming out to scream on commentary hurt this one for me. After he’d get involved, Chyna would pin Triple H for the win. After a chokeslam from Kane.
The WWF Championship is on the line next in a last man standing match between The Rock and Mankind. They battled several times over the last few months, often with questionable outcomes but tonight will be different. This one goes until someone cannot answer the ten count. It is so cool to see Mick Foley make his way to the ring with the WWF title. While Mankind was a 3-time champion, he really didn’t get much time as champion. 47 days all together as a matter of fact. Once again, something that happened on Heat affects what’s going on during the show. The Rock had attacked Mankind’s leg, using the logical thought process that if the man can’t stand, he can’t answer the ten count and that is what he starts working on at the opening bell. But it doesn’t take long for this one to head to the floor and up the aisle and all over the tech area/entrance set. Which naturally involves Mick’s head bouncing off the steel trusses on the set and him DDT’ing The Rock through a table. Back in the ring, you have to love Mankind going for the People’s Elbow and missing. Cole called it Mr. Elbow and that’s good, even though I don’t want to give Cole that kind of credit. The Rock hits three suplexes on the floor before we get our first count, and the Rock immediately goes to commentary and rips the headset off of Cole. We all know that Mankind is going to cut him off mid-soliloquy, but it’s still a great spot. Mick lands some forearms, drapes Rock over the table and hits an elbow from the apron. Another great looking spot. Returning to the ring, the Rock wears out Mick’s knee with a steel chair before he was hoisted with his own petard, missing a head shot and the chair bounced off the top rope and back into his face. I’ve only really seen him and Kurt Angle able to make that spot look good. This fight is all over as we’re back to the announce table and here’s where Mick takes two awful looking bumps. First, Rock counters a piledriver on the table and drops Mankind to the floor with his legs clipping the timekeeper’s table. Then, Rock grabs the steel steps that were introduced into the ring and just threw them on top of a prone Mankind on the floor. A pair of just brutal looking spots. The Rock then debuts one of his greatest hits, taking to the mic to regale Memphis with his take on Elvis, “Smackdown Hotel”. The mandible claw cuts off the chorus but also yeets Earl Hebner from the ring in the process, so there’s no count when Mick needs it. Unfortunately, we come to the part of the match that dings it: the finish. Mankind and Rock manage to pull off a double chair shot, neither can get up and we have a draw with Mankind retaining. Memphis is not happy, and the Fink’s announcement gets a bullshit chant. Worse, this was really their last featured singles matchup on PPV. The Rock would beat Mankind the next night on Raw in a ladder match to set up the showdown with Steve Austin at Wrestlemania. A great brawl kinda ruined by the finish and post-match hullabaloo where both men were stretchered out.
And now, we must kill some time while the cage is constructed for our main event. Let’s see if I can summarize the story. Vince McMahon won the 1999 Royal Rumble, eliminating Stone Cold Steve Austin last, with The Rock’s help. He then forfeited his rights to the #1 contender slot, which commissioner Shawn Michaels reminded him would then go to the runner-up: Austin. Stone Cold immediately challenged McMahon to this match with his title shot at Wrestlemania on the line. Then at Raw the night before this show (ah, the Westminster Dog Show preemptions), Austin was forced to run the Corporate gauntlet and face every member. Of course, he beat everyone until the Big Bossman wore him out with his nightstick, allowing Vince to get the pin. I think that catches us up to this point.
MUST SEE MATCHES:
Hardcore match for the vacant WWF Hardcore Championship: Bob Holly vs. Al Snow
Is this a mat classic? No, not at all. But is this one of the wildest, most memorable matches in the short but impactful life of the Hardcore title? Yes, yes it is. I mean, they literally fought in the Mississippi River. In February. Bob Holly almost killed a camera guy before wrapping Al in a length of chain-link fence to pin him and complete his transformation into Hardcore Holly. An early yet peak example of the mayhem of the Hardcore division.
Steel Cage Match for Austin’s WWE Championship match at Wrestlemania: Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon
In a theme for the must-see matches on this show, a mat classic this is not. However, it is a major historical moment in the epic rivalry between the boss and his top star. We get a good amount of walk and talk to start, with Austin in the cage and McMahon taking his time to get in. Austin eventually goes out to get him, McMahon runs around the cage and guards the door to keep Stone Cold out. Austin would try to climb the opposite side with McMahon trying to fend him off before falling off the side and feigning a knee injury. Which of course was a ruse to get a confident Vince over to him and the beating can begin. We go all over the announcer’s area, around the cage, through the crowd and up into the bleachers, back down, up the entrance way, back down the entrance way, back around to the far side of the cage and then Vince takes probably the worst bump of his career, off the top of the cage down to the Spanish announce table. But the damn thing doesn’t collapse like it’s built to do. No, he lands spine first on the edge of the table, bounced and then the fucker broke. A stretcher comes down to pick up Vince, which is legit. The Fink gets in to announce Austin as the winner, but Austin cuts him off, calling that bullshit and reminding everyone that the bell never rang, so the match never started and he’s going to pull Vince off that stretcher to throw him into the ring. Which he does. Austin does some good old fashioned mud hole stomping and starts to leave the cage, but Vince flips him off and Stone Cold cannot let that stand. Vince somehow gets some separation and tried to climb out before being drug back in and dumped to the canvas. Of course Austin fulfills his promise to make Vince bleed but once again, Vince throws up the double deuces to stop Austin before he gets to the floor. Which lets him get off a stunner, but also brings Paul Wight up through the ring with the former WCW world champion making his debut. The future Big Show launches Austin literally through the cage and Austin gets the win, confirming the Mania main event with the Rock and thwarting another McMahon master plan. Another huge moment in one of the biggest rivalries in the history of the company and worth the 20+ minutes.
FINAL GRADE: C+
This was a greatly back-loaded card with a slow first half, sans the Hardcore title match, and all of the power in the final three matches. Which was kind of typical for these off-month PPVs at the time. There’s a ton of history in the final two matches and I’d put the WWE title match as an honorable mention, but the finish really put me off. Especially knowing what they put themselves through at the Royal Rumble and Halftime Heat in the weeks before this one. Unfortunately, this was the last PPV to fall on Valentine’s Day, though the 14th will once again be a Sunday in 2027, so there’s a chance to bring that name back. Interesting factoid as well, on that same day in 1999, New Japan also held an event at the Budokan called St. Valentine’s Day Massacre which was headlined by Keiji Muto defending the IWGP Heavyweight title against Kensuke Sasaki. That also had to be a barnburner.
| Event | Participant | Participant | Stipulations |
| Breakdown | The Rock | Mankind & Ken Shamrock | Triple Threat Cage Match for #1 Contendership for WWF Title |
| St. Valentines Day Massacre | Bob Holly | Al Snow | Hardcore match for vacant WWF Hardcore title |
| Steve Austin | Mr. McMahon | Steel cage match for Austin’s Wrestlemania WWF Title shot |
The Finisher 
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