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 This Tuesday In Texas

1991 was a transitional year for WWE, arguably the first they had had since Hulk Hogan had won the WWE Title for the first time back in 1984. Having ridden the ‘Hulkamania’ years for all they were worth, by the early part of the 90’s the magic was wearing off and Hogan was no longer quite as big a draw as he had once been. At Wrestlemania 6 they had attempted to put the Ultimate Warrior over as the next Hogan, and seamlessly usher in a new dawn of major business under the flag of this fresh star. Very quickly however, it became clear that Warrior was not the man to take over from Hogan in that top spot, and by the summer of ’91, Warrior had gone from the company. Not only was time catching up with them, but so was some of the darker parts of the industry with allegations of sexual abuse and widespread steroid use being levelled at the company during this period.  In July that year, Hulk Hogan made his infamous appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show, during which he blatantly lied about his own previous use of the banned substance, even before it was illegal to do so, in a denial so blatantly false it instantly made him look a fool, and by association, the whole WWE too.