10 Matches That Made Chicago The Hottest Wrestling City In The World

This weekend, WWE will present two consecutive nights of action from the Allstate Arena in the village of Rosemont, just north of Chicago, Illinois.

The venue has been the company's home base in the state for nearly forty years, and in recent times has almost become a new spiritual home base for the organisation as they move away from the increasingly expensive Madison Square Garden.

Cultivated in recent times mostly by CM Punk's presence (or lack thereof), the atmosphere within the former Rosemont Horizon has provided the most consistently electric atmosphere for cards over the past decade regardless of stature, and should offer a phenomenal stage for the stars of NXT and WWE alike as TakeOver and Backlash emanate from the historic venue.

A homebase to the passionate ardour Chicagoans feel for professional wrestling, there's simply no North American location that stirs up as much excitement in advance as well as upon reflection, and the noise levels within the Arena itself make the location as popular with wrestlers as it is with fans.

As hosts to multiple pay-per-views including three WrestleManias, the Chicago crowds have played a vital part in some of the most pivotal contests in the history of the industry. Tastemakers and dissenters alike, the audience represents everything WWE want in a crowd, and sometimes (regrettably for Vince McMahon), everything they need.

Billed as a 'Chicago Street Fight', the mass brawl between the vast Nation of Domination and the Ahmed Johnson/Road Warriors unit was emblematic of a brave new frontier the company was about to embark on, harnessing the energy and spirit of the passionate city it required as a host.

Always announced as natives themselves, Hawk and Animal were 'home' amongst the frenetic Chicagoans in attendance, and remarkably re-energised a crowd that by rights should have been too exhausted to care after a scintillating Bret Hart/Steve Austin clash (more on that later) just minutes earlier.

The eventual outing was neither stylistically pleasing nor psychologically sound, but had an unease to it that lifted the brawl far beyond reasonable expectations and probably would have taken match-of-the-night honours on a card without the single greatest contest in company history.

Long before the Attitude Era established weapons-grade chaos as the norm in WWE, the sense of urgency to the various plunder assaults felt far more real that Rodney from the Mean Street Posse patiently waiting for the Big Boss Man to waffle him with a tin foil trash can lid.

Finishing with a flourish, the three faces ploughed through Crush with a 2x4, then hit a double Doomsday Device on PG-13 for a spectacular closing visual.