The Evil History Of Pro Wrestling: Heroes Of Wrestling

An infamous event showcasing the WWE stars of yesteryear, the unaffiliated Heroes of Wrestling is often - and fairly - remembered as the worst event ever held under the broad classification of professional wrestling.

Emanating from the Casino Magic riverboat in St. Louis, Mississippi, on October 10, 1999, the event was phenomenally bleak before the action, not that the word “action” is an adequate descriptor.

Horribleness oozed from the screen. The show was barely lit. The production values were non-existent, several notches below rinky-dink. The juxtaposition between the name of the show and the presentation of it was tragic. The show “drew” 2,300 fans, but was “mainly papered,” per the October 18, 1999 Wrestling Observer Newsletter.

In the first match, the Samoan Swat Team, comprising wrestlers best remembered as Headshrinker Samu and the Tonga Kid, defeated Marty Jannetty and Tommy Rogers. Samu at the time was 36; the former Kid just 33. Illustrating the toll that the early cable boom and its brutal schedule took on the professional wrestler, in 2025, they’d each be on the young side for a top champion in WWE. In 1999, they were past it, a broken-down nostalgia act who had aged out of the business.

The match was very poor - a mediocre slow-motion tag that demanded too much stamina across 10 minutes. It was the second best match of the night. Jannetty, who has lived every year of his life like it was 1989, tried to get a babyface clap going in an age where a wrestler was better off using their hands to tell everybody to suck them off.

In one of many brutally incriminating shots of the crowd, the director cut to an uninterested, borderline depressed young child barely playing along.