A Brief History Of World Wrestling All-Stars

Perhaps one of the most obvious things about the early WWA cards was the over-reliance on gimmick matches and stipulations. Booked by Jeremy Borash, it’s clear to see that he was still very much finding his feet as a wrestling creative and countless matches on the early shows were held under some form of gimmick rules.

In fact, a straight-forward, one-on-one contest was an extreme rarity in the early days of WWA and the very first PPV show, The Inception, was completely void of standard matches. In an attempt to be different, the show became overly-cluttered with gimmicks, from Ladder Matches and Cage Matches to a “Guitar on a Pole” match and even a bizarre “T**s, Whips, and Buff” match, involving Buff Bagwell (amongst other things).

Luckily, this was reigned in considerably for the follow up PPV and WWA seemed to be on the right track when it came to balanced booking. They continued this momentum into their later PPVs, The Eruption and The Retribution, and the WWA did a good job of covering the spectrum evenly enough to appease all non-WWF fans.

With enough violence for the ECW crowd and a good mix of cruiserweights and established names to keep the WCW fans happy, WWA seemed to really hit their stride and find their niche as the company grew with time.