Why WWE Will Use Wembley Stadium In 2020
London's Burning?
"The time zones are the big kicker - we have to go where the most people can watch. I always hear about Wembley, I always hear it was such a massive success: It was not. From a business standpoint, it was not. That's why we didn't come back and that's why we're still trying to figure it out." - Triple H, 12th October 2018.
B*llocks, mate.
'The Game' might be the babyface boss figure of WWE in the modern era, but his odd heel turn on SummerSlam 1992 during an interview with The Mirror late last year was a narrative rewrite too far for those that lived through the iconic event or even simply those that lived with the consequences of the company's incredible takeover of the UK at the time.
Hunter was presumably pointing to the buyrate, but one doesn't need a nose as big as his to sniff out the reasons beyond "time difference" complaints as to why it tanked domestically. Yes, it was down an almighty 125,000 buys on the prior year's event, but WrestleMania (-10,000) and Survivor Series (-50,000) also advertised similar decline. The Royal Rumble's gulf between the 1991 number was even bigger that the Wembley supercard. 180,000 passed on the PPV compared to the year before, despite the WWE Championship itself being on the line in the titular main event.
He didn't make this point while burying the show, but 1992 was the year where WWE's commercial decline across virtually every metric could no longer be masked. SummerSlam, in the United Kingdom was in fact the only time they managed it.
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