If you would have asked me a decade ago what I’d be doing on a typical Monday Night in ten years, I probably would tell you I’d be flipping back and forth between WWF Monday Night RAW and WCW Monday Nitro. Then I’d be looking forward to WCW Thunder on Wednesday and WWF SmackDown on Thursday, then ECW on TNN Friday night.
Fast forward.
I feel like I’m a commentator on an episode of WCW Monday Nitro, because I’ve just been handed a note. It reads:
Wednesday Night Delight
No wrestling on TV got you down? Come to BWF each and every Wednesday starting next week, and let me provide your wrestling fix.
Meanwhile, here’s a picture of Stone Cold Steve Austin showing off the finger he used on Debra.
Who this note came from, I have no idea, but apparently they’ll be here next week!
Note: I was planning on writing about all of the Pay Per View events on the WWE Calendar outside of the “Big Four,” but it would have been way too long. As such, I’m splitting it up in parts, which will be published every Sunday at noon (except for part three, which will be up next Wednesday) here on BoredWrestlingFan.com!
I’ve been a wrestling fan for as long as I can remember. The first promo I ever remember seeing was “Mean Gene” Okerlund interviewing Hulk Hogan about his upcoming steel cage match with King Kong Bundy a few weeks before WrestleMania 2. The period where I started watching the shows religiously was sometime after WrestleMania IV. I know this, because I remember all the hype about SummerSlam ’88 on Pay Per View. Back in 1988, the WWF, as it was known at the time, only held three Pay Per View events – WrestleMania IV, SummerSlam ’88, and the second annual Survivor Series. The following year, they added the Royal Rumble as a Pay Per View event (the first Royal Rumble event, featuring 20 competitors instead of 30, aired on the USA Network in January of 1998.), and we had “The Big Four” WWF Pay Per Views. Save for the “Tuesday in Texas” event in 1991, these remained the only PPV events the WWF held until the addition of “King of the Ring” in 1993.
In 1995, when the competition from WCW started to heat up following the advent of WCW Monday Nitro, both companies started to air several more Pay Per View events. Unlike WCW, who had full blown – and individually named – Pay Per Views every month, the WWF put on two hour events at a discounted price in the months outside of the five main PPVs, called “In Your House.” The “In Your House” PPVs eventually grew into three hour, full priced shows before finally evolving into the monthly events we know today.
With WWE’s purchase of WCW and ECW in 2001, they’ve experimented with holding up to two Pay Per View events per month, which didn’t work out too well, as we’re down now to 14 such events each year, the only two-PPV months being June with the newly re-branded Extreme Rules (Formerly One Night Stand) and Night of Champions, and November with Cyber Sunday and Survivor Series. Still, I feel as though I’m already paying too much for cable without adding an extra $40 every month for Pay Per View events.
In this series, I intend to convey my reasons why WWE – and by proxy, TNA – needs to cut back on the number of Pay Per Views a year, and do so on a per-event basis. Safe from cuts will be the “Big Four” events – Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series.
I present my arguments against No Way Out, after the jump! (more…)