10 Pay-Per-View Concepts WWE Needs To Bring Back
It's safe to say, all of these would have been better options than Great Balls of Fire
WWE announced the name of its Raw brand pay-per-view Great Balls of Fire to howls of derisive laughter from all quarters. Few could believe that they had actually gone ahead and named a show after a Jerry Lee Lewis song. Once can only hypothesise that Vince McMahon was driving to work in his Bentley one morning and heard the song on the radio, then declared, “Dammit, that’s a helluva name for a pay-per-view.” It’s not of course, but he is 71 so let’s indulge him and his crazy ideas.
With an increased pay-per-view output due to the brand split, WWE creative bods are clearly struggling for ideas when it comes to naming these new shows. In many cases they reverted to the past, bringing Backlash and No Mercy back from the ethers of time as SmackDown Live events. Well why not delve a little deeper into the rich pay-per-view back catalogue?
There are some brilliant concept pay-per-views forgotten by time or cruelly ignored, all of which could generate interest, and in many case provide fresh, never-before-seen-in-WWE scenarios.
10. Bash At The Beach
For the most part, WCW’s Bash at the Beach was just another pay-per-view, albeit one on which several notable moments occurred (Hulk Hogan’s first WCW match, the formation of the New World Order, Dennis Rodman wrestling two consecutive years, the Hogan-Jarret-Russo screwjob), but the one I am specifically focusing on here is 1995’s event.
That show was held on an actual beach, with the ring erected on the sand, the sea in the background, and fans dotted all over the place. It was an incredible, memorable spectacle that made what was an otherwise fairly shoddy event seem like something important, big, and different. It was WCW’s equivalent of WrestleMania IX, if you will.
WWE could make a real party out of an annual beach show, giving a much-needed fresh look to one of its pay-per-view events, rather than the carbon copy cut and paste jobs that we see month after month now. They could even do the go-home Raw or SmackDown Live at the Club La Vela, home of WCW’s famously great spring break Nitros. WWE has plenty of experience with outdoor events (several WrestleMania’s, SummerSlam 92, the annual Tribute to the Troops), so there is no reason they could not pull this off.