10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 1995
The wrestling versus sports entertainment debate has raged across 2023. 1995 may have answered it.
1995 is remembered, with little fondness, as the worst year in WWE history.
How true is that?
2004 was abysmal, a torturous experience, and the promotion had fewer excuses. WWE had monopolised the entire industry three years prior. If he were so inclined, Vince McMahon could have signed a vast majority of the best talents working across the globe and promoted them to their fullest potential. WWE was the place to make great money. He didn't.
He promoted the Undertaker Vs. the Dudley Boyz in a Handicap PPV main event and put the entirely useless Mordecai and Kenzo Suzuki on the Great American Bash undercard.
2019 was a disaster; with its Wild Card Rule, inexplicable influx of Two out of Three Falls matches, Shorty G, doppelgänger angles, dog food beat-downs and the like, Vince could not have promoted a worse product with which to hand the upstart All Elite Wrestling every advantage in a brand new optics battle.
2020 was also pathetic, with its horrific "cinematic" detours. Did WWE have the excuse of a pandemic interfering with its storytelling? AEW conspired to book a pretty great if bittersweet product, so no.
1995 - some sterling individual performances aside - was pretty awful, mind...
10. It Was That Bad
How bad could it have been, come on.
This tends to happen with history. People reduce it to the headlines over time. This is normal. Memories fade, the brain can only recall so much.
1995 couldn't have been all bad. Bret Hart worked magic with Hakushi and Jean-Pierre Lafitte, who would have made Mick Foley question one of his bumps at In Your House: Triple Header. Shawn Michaels and Jeff Jarrett was incredible too. Bret Hart and the British Bulldog eclipsed their Wembley classic with a blood-soaked war at Season's Beatings. Bret Hart and Diesel changed the big match PPV layout forevermore by crashing through a ringside table. Randy Savage and Sabu got there years earlier, true, but that was a pivotal moment in the structuring of every match in the subsequent quarter of a century.
The good : trash ratio was heavily skewed towards the latter. Just look at the absolute state of the In Your House: Great White North card, Christ almighty. Were it not for the Smoking Gunns Vs. Razor Ramon and the 123 Kid, hardly blow-away great, the show averaged out on par with Heroes of Wrestling quality-wise.
In amongst all this, Doink walked so that Natalya could run: flatulence effects were played over his Whoopee Cushion finish for a brief time in '95.
A man with a stupid gimmick farting and calling it a living: Doink beat Road Dogg by three years.