WWE House Shows

[Fansince1992]

I thought i would get peoples opinions about WWE House Shows.

I see a lot of comments on here, of people complaining about the repetitive nature of thier un-televised house shows.

WWE are currently in England, and so far we have seen Ryback beating CM Punk on all the shows by DQ (according to the results on Wrestlezone) Some are complaining that it's just the same show all the time, and creative are being lazy etc.

My Views - I thinks it's ok if they repeat with the same outcomes, It is showing the same content for different Audiences. It's only like going to the Cinema and watching a Film which is repeated multiple times for different Audiences. I think Monday Night Raw shows (which are Televised Live) have a bit different content than the ordinary house shows, and it is more Storyline driven. Also if Ryback is fighting CM Punk multiple times at House Shows, this in my opinion will pay off in the long run, as the 2 Wrestlers get used to how each other work (in front of a Live Audience) Practice makes Perfect so to speak.



What is your opinion of House Shows, should WWE produce different matches/outcomes or keep them the same?

 

[The Brain]

House shows have been like this for decades. WWE has always presented the same matches with the same outcomes. There are two things that have killed the house show experience. One is the internet. Before the internet there was no way to know the show you just watched in Boston or Philadelphia was the exact same show that happened in Toronto or Baltimore the night before. The show was marketed specifically for your town and the fans thought they were getting something special.

The second thing is WWE has been giving away house show matches on free tv for years now. When tv was full of squash matches people were more willing to pay for a ticket to see the stars face each other at a house show. I remember Sean Mooney running down the card for the upcoming show at the Rosemont Horizon. Ultimate Warrior vs. Hercules sounded awesome because the only guys you saw against Warrior and Hercules were guys like Terry Gibbs and Mario Mancini. The past Friday on Smackdown Randy Orton wrestled Wade Barrett for the third consecutive time of free tv. Why do I want to buy a ticket to watch that match when I know there won’t be any significant storyline advancement since the cameras are not rolling?

It doesn’t matter if WWE puts together a different house show from one night to the next. It’s all stuff they’re giving away every Monday and Friday anyway. If you’re going to a house show go for the experience of seeing it live and don’t worry about the results.

 

[#MrScissorsKick]

i havent been to a house show in a while. I think it was either 2010 or late '09. I used to go to them more often when i lived in detroit. I've been hearing that the house shows have improved a ton since i used to see them more frequently when i was younger. I've heard from peoples stories both from friends and online. I believe they are more entertaining than they used to be from both friends and users on forums such as this one. But honestly I wouldn't mind seeing the same outcomes and the same wrestling wrestling because it's just the experience as fans we get. I haven't been to 1 in years but yeah i'd want to go back and see one if they come near by neck of the woods soon.

 

[Aquaman6686]

I've been to a dozen WWE shows, and have never once been to a house show. They very rarely run them in my area, because the two arenas I'm closest to are both larger arenas they tend to use for TV and PPVs.

 

[Fansince1992]

Well as a Brit myself and with the Superstars close to me at the moment. I can't find the time at the moment to go and watch them. I am very dissapointed as i would of loved to have taken my Son and Daughter to see the likes of Cena, Punk, Orton , Sheamus and Ryback. There is Critisism about all those that i just mentioned, but seeing those guys in the flesh surely is something you would remember for years to come.

I mean who gives a shit if the show was the same in Nottingham, Manchester, Birmingham or even London, I'm looking at the crowd tonight for Raw, British Fans love WWE and wether or not they repeat what they performed the night previous doesn't really matter. The stars are on show and they will all be happy and they will be loud

I've been to a dozen WWE shows, and have never once been to a house show. They very rarely run them in my area, because the two arenas I'm closest to are both larger arenas they tend to use for TV and PPVs.

I don't know what sort of mileage you mean as your area. I would drive 140miles to London if the circumstances were right, just to see a Show, or i could drive 25 miles to Manchester while the Superstars are touring the UK. It all depends on your own finances and if you are prepared to travel a little.

 

[Aquaman6686]

I don't know what sort of mileage you mean as your area. I would drive 140miles to London if the circumstances were right, just to see a Show, or i could drive 25 miles to Manchester while the Superstars are touring the UK. It all depends on your own finances and if you are prepared to travel a little.

I don't make a lot of money, so for me, an hour or two is the furthest I'm willing to travel. I live in New Jersey, and the closest arena to me is the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, followed by Madison Square Garden. The only other arenas within driving distance for me are the Prudential Center in Newark, and the Sun National Bank Center in Trenton. I've been to one show each at MSG and Prudential, two in Trenton, and all the rest were in IZOD. The Prudential Center is crap and I'm never going there again, and the arena in Trenton is so small that I don't even think WWE uses it anymore (the last show I was at in that arena was a SmackDown taping a few weeks before WrestleMania 23). Although it was plenty big enough for TNA, they had Hard Justice 2008 in there, and couldn't even fill the building a third of the way.

 

[ECWcyrus]

I've been to several house shows and one Monday Night RAW. I live in a rather small town so we rarely get anything bigger than a wrestling house show.

Anyway, I don't have a problem when WWE does this, or TNA for that matter. They do the same matches with the same outcomes but it's the overall experience that I have that makes the show so much fun.

 

[flyingslugs]

I live on Long Island NY and when I first started going to shows back in 92 they would sometimes run all 3 venues (Nassau Coliseum, MSG, and Izod) in a weekend.
Each show would have different matches. Usually MSG would have the better matches from the old live event desk updates but thats understandable.
I will be going to back to back house shows in Dec (MSG on Thurs and LI on Fri) and i would be very disappointed if they do the same card as the night before.
They do change some of the matches I guess pending on the location. Living in a bigger market I guess I have the advantage of seeing the better matches. I try not to read the results of the show from the night before in fear of it being the same.
Another thing I miss with house shows would be getting the programs (when it would be an actual program until they changed it to a Raw magazine and then that giant photo book) with the sheet inside of who will be seeing that night.
I do like the new setup they do as it does add a different feel to the shows and houseshows are fun where you can see longer matches than what you would on tv and more fan interaction.

 

[Mustang Sally]

The only house show I ever attended was in 1991. It was so much better than watching the squash matches presented on TV because we got to see top stars going against each other. In the main event, Hulk Hogan faced Sergeant Slaughter, with Randy Savage as referee (he was still in forced retirement after losing to Ultimate Warrior).

There was a lot of action and a lot of excitement and it was only when going home we realized that nothing had been accomplished for plot-line purposes, no titles had changed hands, and nothing noteworthy had happened that would need mentioning next time we watched on TV.

This is what house shows were like back then.....and obviously still are today. It's understandable; the Creative team has 5 hours a week to fill with original programming; they can't be expected to come up with storylines for all the house shows, too. Still, there's writing and planning involved in the way the whole card was presented, making it seem as if great changes were going to take place, although none did.

Back then, an occasional title change would occur at a house show. I remember WWE announcing the change on the next TV show ("The Intercontinental title recently changed hands in St. Louis, Missouri") but today, with TV and the Internet ruling all, it's not something we're likely to see again.

No problems there. House shows have their function.

 

[CrazyMatt88]

Im from Australia, so House shows once a year is all we get. Personally I find the House Show's more entertaining, with no camera on them, the superstars are more relaxed have more fun with it, and the crowd feed off that, also they always try new moves and stuff on House Shows.

 

[FlairFan2003]

House show business boomed in during certain periods in the 90s, especially in the late 90s, both in WWE & WCW. The product in general was more popular then. When RAW draws ratings in the 2.8 range, without any direct competition from a major wrestling company (they were drawing in the 2.5 range in the mid 90s going opposite WCW Nitro which also drew near exact that number). The audience in general has significantly declined. It shows not just in house show attendance but also PPV buys and merchandise sales.

No doubt that the Internet publicizing results of the shows (and letting people know that the matches happen alomst exactly the same with the same result in each city) hurts a bit. However, I realized back in 1988 when I was in Junior High School after our local paper ran match results from a show outside Pittsburgh that mirrowed what happened at a recent show here. Then a relative saw a card in Las Vegas (these were NWA shows) that not had only most of the same matches but he saw the last few bouts and they had the same spots and same ending as what we'd seen a month earlier in Pgh. I immediately figured WWE did the same. Interestingly enough I learned about fake crowd noise from a WWE show in 1992, when the ring announcer did an entire segment where the crowd was asked for reactions to certain wrestlers by name, and if it wasnt loud enough they were asked again ("Let me hear what you REALLY think of Randy Macho Man Savage). About five or six weeks later some of the matches that night began airing on WWE Monday Prime Time Wrestling but the crowd noise for Brett Hart's match was a lot louder on TV than it was in the arena. I also remember that Shawn Michaels wrestled four times that night because he was getting a major push (his first as a singles star) and they wanted matches of him to air on multiple TV programs.

Definately the move to better televised matches hurts house show appeal a bit because we see our favorites in major bouts on free TV so unless they are in a really big match a the local arena it isnt as big a deal to see them. TV was populated almost exclusively with jobber matches save for the occassional WCW Saturday Night Special or WWE Sat Nite Main Events on NBC. Yeah, I saw Ric Flair & The Horsemen every week on TV but when they came to Pgh fighting Dusty Rhodes and The Road Warriors that was an event. Nowadays you can see similair matches on a weekly basis on Raw or Smackdown. This of course is a side effect of Eric Bischoff, the guy who really spearheaded the change in match quality on televised wrestling at the start of The Monday Night Wars. The Inintial boast in Nitro's ratings, especially their main events was significant but now there is no way to "dial it back" for WWE, especially with their over all popularity down so much.

Ultimately however the house shows are not for grown adults...they are for kids. No doubt the free TV ratings are driven in part by adults and adults boast PPV sales (they dont do much for merchandise outside of the Retrospective DVDs, how many 27 year olds do you know buying action figurs, T-shirts and posters...). For kids seeing their fav's live, even if they are wrestling the same guy you saw them face two weeks on Raw, is still a big deal, their heroes live and in color in their face, not on TV. For adults, this is no longer a big deal, although the match quality on a major PPV like WrestleMania might be enough to get me to buy even though I have no interest in going to our local arena to see a house show. For the kids the idea that the matches are scripted and the results the same from city to city throughout the tour makes no difference, if Im 10 years old and want to see Cena I dont care if he's wrestling a paper bag I want to go. In fact, I may not even be aware of the fact the match results do not vary on tour or even that these guys are wrestling all over the country, not just here in Pgh tonight. Even when I was in High School and knew about the touring, scripted matches, etc I still went because I was young and enjoyed seeing the guys I watched on TV in person. Nowadays it's lost its appeal, even if the product was more entertaining. The fact that I know the matches are scripted and the results the same doesnt deter me, just as it didnt back in the late 80s. House shows are for kids, and the kids dont care or even realize that stuff.