House Show/TV tapings random happenings

[air_raid]

As if it wasn’t obvious I’m far more interested in the past than present of wrestling….

I’d like to talk about house shows, and their step-sister, dark matches from TV tapings. I’ve a weird obsession with stuff that happens for consumption by a live crowd not intended for TV which is out of the ordinary for one reason or another. I’m talking about matches that never happened on TV, surprising results, finishes which are different from what you’d get on TV, that kind of thing.

I’m going to pretend it’s topical because the other night Sasha Banks pinned Becky Lynch to win a dark match four way and hardly anyone pins The Boss on TV but… fuck it, you know me, I’m really here for the Hulkamania era, Coliseum Video tapings and the dawn of Attitude, right before the amount of content went crazy and everyone ended up wrestling everyone. I won’t lie, I’ve got a good few examples lined up that I want to share that I’ve found fascinating over the years but it would be TL:DR to do in one go. Hopefully it will be clear why each is noteworthy. Not every example I’ve read up on has been made available online but where it has, I’ll share.

Here’s the first example of what I mean.

There was a house show at the Meadowlands in 1995 right before Survivor Series where a heel Davey Boy pins Bret clean. That being a heel pinning a face cleanly right before the face wins the WWF title. Bret didn’t do many clean jobs in his time as a main eventer and most of those were against other babyfaces, Bulldog of course was being kept strong on TV from his turn, pinning Diesel (as WWF Champion) in a six man, not getting beat when they wrestled at In Your House in Winnipeg, pinning Razor who was Intercontinental champ at Survivor Series, all leading to his shot at (new WWF Champion) Bret for the belt at the December In Your House. They make reference to this result in the build for the title match on TV and refer to Bulldog beating Bret “every time” they’ve wrestled including “most recently at the Meadowlands.” It’s pretty good as a means to building Smithers as a formidable challenge and promoting that big things still happen untelevised so you should still go to your nearest house show. The finish is pretty typical of the kind of thing they loved to do in their matches with each other and with Owen - Bulldog goes for a reverse monkey flip, Hitman kneels down and tries to pin him, Davey rolls over and gets Brets legs under his armpits for a nice snug 3.

People think 1995 was rubbish but looking back at the live experience at bigger towns now with 2022 eyes, it was still the bollocks. Everyone’s over, Finks announcing, the crowd get told come back next time because Undertakers going for the belt…. brilliant fun.

Feel free to add thoughts or your own examples. I’d love to learn something I didn’t know. If LOD did a job for the Beverly Brothers on an unused Coliseum match or Barry Horowitz kicked out of the Perfect-Plex on a B show in Wichita, I’d love to hear about here. Maybe Stone Cold did a clean job for Jeff Jarrett we never heard about? Whatever you find interesting about house shows and unaired matches from TVs, stick it in here. Might die a death but at least I’ve got somewhere to dump my findings!

EDIT - it’s been taken down now. So here’s their seldom-seen match from Kuwait instead.

 

 

Edited March 11 by air_raid

[Chili]

On one of Piper's newer WWE DVD's they had a dark match from late 1990 against Mr. Perfect. He clean jobs to Perfect in the ring via perfect plex, Piper offers his handshake after and they awkwardly shake and Piper leaves. Never mentioned on TV, never played up. No reason. Weird. 

[Jazzy G]

The only interesting stuff I can remember from a house show is Albert's pyro setting the fire alarm off as he's coming to the ring for the opener in the MEN, and Kurt Angle getting his arse out for the Undertaker after the main event. 

I remember a friend and I trying to convince another friend that the main event of a show was American Badass Undertaker teaming with 2 Cool & Rikishi, and that he danced with them afterwards. 

We went to a Raw house show once and saw Shawn & Tripper phone it in right before the interval. 

Oh, and Hulk Hogan's last ever match. 

[garynysmon]

8 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Oh, and Hulk Hogan's last ever match. 

Hulk in his red kecks is the correct answer.

 

[Jazzy G]

I remember the massive pops Bubba Doodley was getting for slagging off United in his Liverpool shirt. A great heel idea on paper, but this was in Manchester. 

[Loki]

20 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Oh, and Hulk Hogan's last ever match. 

Wasn't Bret Hart's last match also on a WWE house show?  After his match with Vince at WM I think.  

[Fatty Facesitter]

For years I've been looking for photos/footage of the house show rematch that took place between The Rock and Brock Lesnar in 2003. This is obviously between Rock dropping the title to him at Summerslam, post-rematch with Hogan and just before the Austin match at Wrestlemania. I remember seeing it advertised as a cage match on wwe.com, but never heard or saw anything about it after that. That is until this thread piqued my interest and it's logged as taking place here: https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=960&page=4. Brock returned the favour it seems. 

On an unrelated note - John Cena's birthday was on the same night as one of the Nottingham UK tour house shows back in the day. Lots of cake-related banter ensued and I think Cody Rhodes/Sandow got a face full of sponge. I also recall Daniel Bryan wearing a bright yellow top with Simon Cowell-esque trousers. Good craic. 

Edit - Cena birthday footage: 

 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Fatty Facesitter

[Keith Houchen]

Ric Flair vs HBK with Flair having his arse out for half the match. 

[The Dart]

1 hour ago, Loki said:

Wasn't Bret Hart's last match also on a WWE house show?  After his match with Vince at WM I think.  

He did house shows after the Mania match, but his last match was on Raw.

[air_raid]

On 1/8/2022 at 7:33 PM, scratchdj said:

Tito Santana pinning Undertaker after 3 rubbish piledrivers and a whack over the head with the urn. This may have been televised though.

 

It was, in Spain.

On 1/8/2022 at 12:45 PM, Chili said:

On one of Piper's newer WWE DVD's they had a dark match from late 1990 against Mr. Perfect. He clean jobs to Perfect in the ring via perfect plex, Piper offers his handshake after and they awkwardly shake and Piper leaves. Never mentioned on TV, never played up. No reason. Weird. 

There’s a few matches that could have been Coliseum matches but weren’t that had interesting potential for storyline implications that I’ll come back to in later posts. This one I’ve seen the finish of on Twitter, it’s from a Challenge taping on 20/11. Technically Perfect is Intercontinental champ here having won it on a Superstars taping the night before but doesn’t have the belt with him because it hasn’t happened on TV yet. This is two nights before Survivor Series where Tornado comes out wearing the belt still, to my knowledge the only time the WWF had someone wearing a title on TV they’d already lost. This match was from a Piper “Unreleased” DVD.

A similar DVD release featured another match I wanted to share the story of ; on the June 30th 1992 Challenge taping, Bret and Bulldog did a “dry run” match designed to show Vince what they could do in the hopes of going on last at SummerSlam. It’s got a few spots in common with the Wembley match without some of the intensity and with an obviously different finish. It’s the first singles match they had since the Harts vs Bulldogs run of the mid 80s.

It’s three weeks exactly before the Challenge taping (21st July) where Bret and Shawn did their ladder match which ended up on Smack Em Whack Em on Coliseum. Bret was disappointed that Vince missed it but he seems to think (according to his book) that it was his attempt to persuade them to let him and Shawn do the ladder match if SummerSlam ended up in DC, he’s clearly got mixed up though as the match happens within a few days of TVs airing that announce him and Davey Boy.

You can see Bret v Bulldog here ;

https://youtu.be/qNwmBVTEg8I

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by air_raid

[King Coconut]

I was there on that magical night in Berlin in 2005 when Batista forgot his extra pair of socks.

[air_raid]

17 hours ago, The Dart said:

He did house shows after the Mania match, but his last match was on Raw.

Yeah, a match that totally passed me by at the time but that I recently saw, Bret & Cena vs Del Rio & Ricardo. Of course, the finish was Sharpshooter on Ricardo.

Appropos to this thread, I’d known about the MSG shows but had no idea that Bret had tagged along on a few European dates in November 2010, usually tagging with the Hart Dynasty against three of Slater, Gabriel, Otunga and Husky Harris. If he’d come to Britain on that tour 100% I’d have gone. Interestingly his final house show match was in Istanbul tagged with Edge and Rey against Del Rio, Cody and Drew. Some footage is on YouTube, including the finish ;

 

[wandshogun09]

First things that spring to mind for me, and both are well known but still worth a mention;

The Owen Hart vs Chris Benoit dark match from WWF in 1995. This would’ve been one of Benoit’s tryout matches before he ended up signing with WCW. He also wrestled Bob Holly and Adam Bomb. And oddly, there’s a picture of him walking out with Ted Dibiase from this time.

Maybe he’d have ended up being ‘The Ringmaster’ if he’d came in and Steve Austin would’ve made his debut as Fang McFrost or Chilly McFreeze after all. 

Also, the Owen Hart vs Kurt Angle dark match from 1999 which is my new ‘holy grail’ that I want to see now, since the elusive Bret Hart vs Tom Magee match finally surfaced. I realise it was probably a bit of a nothing match, Kurt wasn’t even on TV yet, but just for historical purposes and the novelty of it, I’d love to see it.

Judging by this picture I’m guessing it was before Raw so they probably have it filmed. Would’ve been one of Owen’s last matches as well. The date was the 10th May so less than 2 weeks before he died.

Here’s another one, Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker in 1995.

I always thought their Ground Zero match in 97 was their first singles match but apparently not. 

[The Dart]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

Yeah, a match that totally passed me by at the time but that I recently saw, Bret & Cena vs Del Rio & Ricardo. Of course, the finish was Sharpshooter on Ricardo.

Appropos to this thread, I’d known about the MSG shows but had no idea that Bret had tagged along on a few European dates in November 2010, usually tagging with the Hart Dynasty against three of Slater, Gabriel, Otunga and Husky Harris. If he’d come to Britain on that tour 100% I’d have gone. Interestingly his final house show match was in Istanbul tagged with Edge and Rey against Del Rio, Cody and Drew. Some footage is on YouTube, including the finish ;

 

Indeed same here, as I never saw him wrestle live, although I had seen him appear on shows before.   But if he had a match on a show in the UK on that European tour I might have gone, though he did appear as GM, and I think guest referee a match on a show I went to in 2010.

On the same subject, Ricky Steamboat having matches on a handful of house shows against Sheamus and Drew McIntyre in addition to more matches against Chris Jericho in 2009 after their PPV match is a bit of a "house show random".

[Jazzy G]

Bloody hell, Angle Vs Owen could have been a heck of a match. Likewise Owen Vs Benoit. 

Would Bob Holly have been in a position to be trying to take liberty with the new guys back in 95? I dread to think what would have happened if he tried that with Benoit. He'd have been an interesting choice as Million Dollar Champion. They could have teamed him with Kama to make a tag team of a great technician and the supreme fighting machine.