WWE Royal Rumble 1989

Back in the late 1980s, WWE was engaging in an aggressive war on Jim Crockett Promotions, having already put a number of the regional territories out of business in the preceding years. JCP was the one promotion still standing and had done quite a lot of expansion itself in an attempt to keep up with WWE. In November 1987, as part of that expansion, JCP ran Starrcade, their main show of the year, as a pay-per-view, hoping that the revenue generated by the event would help them survive the continued onslaught from McMahon’s company. In a bid to undercut JCP, McMahon dreamed up Survivor Series, scheduled it on the same day as Starrcade and told pay-per-view providers that they could only run one of the two events. As a proven pay-per-view buy getter, the majority of the providers dropped Starrcade and aired Survivor Series instead. Crockett attempted to once again take advantage of the growing pay-per-view market just a couple of months later, presenting The Bunkhouse Stampede event, again WWE decided to eat into the show’s potential buy rate by airing a free television special on the USA Network entitled The Royal Rumble on the same night. With wrestling fans being forced to chose between a free wrestling event on a widely available cable channel and a pay event, Bunkhouse Stampede was another commercial failure for Jim Crockett Promotions.

WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event 14 (January 1988)

WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event is less appreciated than perhaps it should be, given its importance to the national expansion of WWE during the mid and late 1980’s. When WWE cut a deal with NBC to broadcast these occasional special events it was a massive happening in the world of pro wrestling- at a time when not only WWE, but other promotions across North America were looking more and more at expanding beyond their borders and competing on a national level, Vince McMahon’s ability to showcase his stars and his brand on nationally available free-to-air major commercial television gave him an unbelievable advantage over his rivals. All of a sudden, whether a household had cable television or otherwise, they could watch special WWE events on an occasional basis in their homes, no matter where they lived in the country. It was on Saturday Night’s Main Event where stars like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage and many others became genuine household names and led to the boom in the business that took place alongside ‘Hulkamania’. In truth, there may not have ever been a more significant wrestling programme in changing the face of pro wrestling in the US than Saturday Night’s Main Event.