House show

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about a professional wrestling event. For a musical performance at a private residence, see House concert. For the TV show, see House (TV series).

A house show is a

dark matches
, though that term is usually reserved for non-televised matches at otherwise televised events.

House shows are also often scripted to make the face wrestlers win most matches, largely to send the crowd home happy. If a heel defends a title, the face may win by disqualification, preventing the title from changing hands.

Until the 1990s, most televised professional wrestling programs were taped weeks in advance in small studios and featured primarily matches with lesser-known wrestlers while interviews revolved around feuds between upper level talent that were to be settled at an upcoming major show at the promotion's flagship venues. Prior to the 1980s, these were house shows, though with the advent of closed-circuit television, and later pay-per-view, these became televised events as well. Later on in the 1990s, the advent of weekly shows such as WWF's Monday Night Raw and WCW Monday Nitro, where competitive matches between upper level talent and storylines play out as they happen in front of a live audience, and with the increase in number of pay-per-view events held by promotions, angles are now typically developed during weekly shows, and resolved during the next pay-per-view (or, on occasion, a special episode of the series), rendering house shows to be mostly minor events with no long-term story significance.

Production

WWE Women's Championship match at a WWE Live Event on September 30, 2023. House shows utilize a more scaled-down production than a televised show.

Since house shows are not televised, promotions do not usually deploy the same setup for staging or

LED-lit entrance stages (one each for Raw and SmackDown, and one backup)[2] featuring a ramp and video display, and leveraging venues' existing AV equipment for multimedia such as entrances.[1] As of 2021, a new stage was introduced that closer-resembles the stages used by televised events at the time. [3]

During the first brand extension, each WWE tour was exclusive to either the Raw or SmackDown brand. This remained the case through 2012, even after the first brand extension ended in 2011 on televised programming.[4] In 2013, the shows were rebranded as "WWE Live", with NXT house shows subsequently branded as "NXT Live".[1] After WrestleMania 38 in April 2022, WWE began to brand house shows held on weekends as "Saturday Night's Main Event" (reviving the branding of a former WWE television series) and "Sunday Night Stunner".[5]

Because house shows are not televised, sometimes controversial things occur during them (although this is rare) which might not happen on a televised show. For example, on May 19, 1996, the

The Godwinns.[6]

With the advent of WWE Network, WWE has televised portions of what are otherwise house shows as hour-long specials on the service, such as Starrcade—an event that shares the name with the flagship pay-per-view of the now-defunct WCW (whose assets were acquired by WWE), and The Shield's Final Chapter—a special which featured Dean Ambrose's final WWE appearance with his stable The Shield before his departure from the promotion.[7][8]

Starting in March 2023, All Elite Wrestling launched a series of house shows under the "House Rules" brand.[9]

Title changes

Jeff Hardy and Triple H pose amongst the pyrotechnics at a Raw house show in Australia

Most major promotions try to develop their

book a major development (such as a title change) for house shows. House show title changes can occur both to gauge how fans would react to a certain outcome, and allow for outcomes that would appeal to local fans—such as Edge winning his first WWF Intercontinental Championship over Jeff Jarrett at a 1999 house show in Toronto.[10][11]

If there is a title change, the title usually changes back during the same show or at another show on the loop before another televised event, like several titles changes of the WWE Hardcore Championship or when Booker T and Chris Benoit traded the WCW World Television Championship back-and-forth on several house shows, with Booker (the official champion) always having the title back in time for Nitro. Edge similarly lost the aforementioned Intercontinental Championship back to Jarrett at Fully Loaded the next evening in Buffalo.[12]

Even rarer is the top title of a promotion changing hands. This has occurred relatively few times, notable occurrences include Bret Hart winning the then-WWF Championship from Ric Flair in 1992 at a live event in Saskatchewan and Diesel winning the WWF Championship from Bob Backlund in 1994 at a live event in Madison Square Garden.

There have also occasions when title changes occur but are not recognized by the promotion. Some notable house show title changes include an August 10, 1987 match where

The Rougeau Brothers (Raymond and Jacques) won over the champion Hart Foundation (Bret Hart and Jim Neidhart) to take the WWF Tag Team championship in the Rougeau's home town of Montreal. This change (and the eventual "decision reversal") was only ever mentioned during segments taped specifically for and shown in the Montreal market. [10]

A

GLAAD.[13]

As a metaphor

The phrase has been used to pejoratively describe WWE pay-per-views intended primarily for specific markets, including UK-only pay-per-views such as

The Brothers of Destruction) despite his retirement, describing the event as being a "glorified house show" that was not as important as WrestleMania or "coming back as the Heartbreak Kid".[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Bishop, Matt. "House show upgrade helps WWE show in East Lansing". Slam! Sports. Canoe.ca. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
  2. ^ Styles, Joey; Patts, James. "WWE debuts set for live events". WWE.com. WWE. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
  3. ^ Mientus, Joe (2021-07-25). "WWE DEBUTS A NEW SET AND MORE NOTES FROM THEIR PITTSBURGH, PA SUPER SHOW". Retrieved 2023-10-05.
  4. ^ Atkinson, Bill. "WWE Reportedly Wants to End House Show Branding, Give the Tour a New Name". Bleacher Report. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
  5. ^ "WWE REBRANDING MORE LIVE EVENTS | PWInsider.com". www.pwinsider.com. Retrieved 2022-09-04.
  6. World Wrestling Entertainment. Archived from the original
    on 2007-07-03. Retrieved 2007-06-20.
  7. ^ "The Shield's Final Chapter live results: Ambrose's farewell match". F4W. 2019-04-21. Retrieved 2019-12-02.
  8. ^ "WWE moves Starrcade to YouTube amid WWE Network outages". Awful Announcing. 2019-12-01. Retrieved 2019-12-02.
  9. ^ "AEW Announces Launch of Live Events Series: "AEW House Rules"".
  10. ^ a b TJ Madigan (August 16, 2003). "Final chapter for Booker T?". SLAM! Wrestling. Archived from the original on August 1, 2012. Retrieved 2008-04-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  11. ISBN 978-1-4165-0523-5
    .
  12. ISBN 978-1-4165-0523-5
    .
  13. ^ "Lenny Lane profile". OWOW. Retrieved 2009-08-14.
  14. ^ Furious, Arnold. "The Furious Flashbacks – WWF Rebellion 2000". 411Mania. Retrieved 2019-12-12.
  15. ^ "Piledriver: Bad reviews for 'Greatest Royal Rumble'". The Montgomery Advertiser. Retrieved 2019-10-29.
  16. ^ Beaston, Erik. "WWE Raw Preview: Money in the Bank Fallout and More for May 20 Episode". Bleacher Report. Retrieved 2019-10-29.
  17. ^ Rueter, Sean (2019-06-24). "Shawn Michaels still says his comeback at 'glorified house show' Crown Jewel doesn't count". Cageside Seats. Retrieved 2019-10-29.
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