Matches That Didn't Really Happen

[The Brain]

The outcome of pro wrestling matches are predetermined. I'm sorry if that surprises some of you. Maybe I should have put spoiler tags around that. Now that the cat is out of the bag on that one I have an even bigger shocker. I can't think of too many examples but sometimes the matches they tell us happened didn't even happen at all.

The tournament to crown the first ever IC champion in Rio de Janeiro has been a running joke for years. Pat Patterson "won" the tournament but really no tournament ever took place. Maybe the fictitious IC tournament was an inside joke because Buddy Rogers supposedly won a tournament in the same place 16 years earlier to become the first ever WWWF World Champion. Pretty strange when you think about it. You would think tournaments to crown champions would have been good draws. Why just ignore that to put a belt on someone with no money being made?

In 1992 Money Inc. won the tag team titles from the Legion of Doom at a house show. Only a match never took place. LOD were champs and Hawk was going to serve a drug suspension. The WWF simply took the belts of LOD and gave them to Money Inc. claiming the match took place at a non televised event.

Two questions. First, can you think of any other matches that we were told took place but actually didn't? Second, does this bother you as a fan? If, for example, Alberto Del Rio came out as US champ on Monday and they told us he beat Kalisto in Mexico over the weekend would you be bothered if you learned the match never actually took place and the just needed to get the belt off Kalisto in a hurry?

 

[Lee]

Pattersons makes sense as it was essentially renaming the North American championship.

 

[BaconBits]

It'd be extremely hard and very stupid to try to pull the whole belt won at a house show thing off in 2016. I mean, the internet has even results for every house show if you look in the right places.

Everybody would know it's bullshit, and the reason why the belt switch even happened, be it suspension/injury/firing.

 

[Mr. Artistic guy]

Surely we can include the majority of the streak of Sid Vicious' in late WCW. He was something like 175-0 except I believe the majority of matches didn't actually happen.

 

[Slash-LN]

Not the exact thing at all but when Jericho beat Triple H for the title on RAW and then Triple H bullied the ref and they just said Jericho never won. Kind of a reverse thing of what you're talking about. I think Hunter even said on the microphone that the match never happened. It was a silly story line.

Anyway I wouldn't really care if they said a title changed hands at a live event but the match never took place.

 

[enviousdominous]

Surely we can include the majority of the streak of Sid Vicious' in late WCW. He was something like 175-0 except I believe the majority of matches didn't actually happen.

I thought that was Goldberg. He was racking up a crazy high win count at a rate that would have had him wrestling a match every day in between episodes of Nitro. Plus; Goldberg would come out after already proving that he's crazy dominant and wrestle a guy like Vincent (Virgil), who would put up absolutely no offense in that match.

Wins are awesome, but Goldberg was being put up against every single jobber they had. I also wouldn't doubt that WCW's math was flaws in updating his win-count every week.

 

[enviousdominous]

Not the exact thing at all but when Jericho beat Triple H for the title on RAW and then Triple H bullied the ref and they just said Jericho never won. Kind of a reverse thing of what you're talking about. I think Hunter even said on the microphone that the match never happened. It was a silly story line.

Anyway I wouldn't really care if they said a title changed hands at a live event but the match never took place.

On that note, there was that time that Sid and Arn Anderson had gotten into a fight involving a pair of scissors. Sid got fired, mainly because he was talking smack about Ric Flair which led to the fight.

WCW had already taped a month of matches, leading up to Sid winning their world title. All that had to be scrapped, so it was another example of matches that did happen being discarded as though they never occurred.

 

[Fire Marshall Bill]

I was waiting for a Benoit reference already, because he never wrestled for WWE.

If you want to get more kayfabe in there then Miz went 5-0 against Cena and never once had a match with him.

Otherwise this:

It'd be extremely hard and very stupid to try to pull the whole belt won at a house show thing off in 2016. I mean, the internet has even results for every house show if you look in the right places.

Everybody would know it's bullshit, and the reason why the belt switch even happened, be it suspension/injury/firing.

Anything that actually happened like the OP mentioned that far in the past, I don't really care. Makes no difference now.

 

[Poop Master Flex]

Outside of Goldberg's streak, Sid's streak and the 3 matches mentioned in the OP I can't really think of any matches that never happened.

Personally things like this don't really bother me at all, it's pretty hard to get away with it in this day and age since fans know when/where all live events are so it's next to impossible to get away with it (especially since fans these days will bitch about things like this to no end). When it comes down to it though as long as the title switch makes sense it doesn't matter to me if they do these phantom switches. Apart of me kind of misses things like "new champs were crowned at a house show in Des Moine, Iowa", it makes things feel more spontaneous and real and it gives you a glimmer of hope that when you go see a title match at a house show in your town something might actually happen.

 

[ServantofTwilight]

On November 28th, 1985( at Starcade ) Buddy Landell won the National Hwt Championship from Terry Taylor. This was the start of a big push for Landell. Some say he was being primed for a run at Ric Flair and possibly a World title run.

Sadly Landell's drug problems caused that to be scrapped and he was soon gone from JCP. Since he was still National Champ they had a phantom change, putting the belt on Dusty Rhodes.

 

[Bernkastel]

The heavily promoted NWA world title bout between Dory Funk Jr and Jack Brisco in 1973 never took place due to Dory being injured before the match. Funk would drop the title to Race, who would act as a transitional champion before dropping the belt to Brisco. There was a lot of politics behind Dory vs Brisco. Mainly Dory's father not wanting his son to lose the belt to Brisco.