WWE Keen To Make House Shows "Special" - Roster Reacts (WWE News)

Fightful Select has heard from several workers on the WWE roster about their experiences and thoughts on the current live event schedule. On the whole, those sources are having a blast with the limited dates generally, but they're also enjoying being back out on the road for the company's current UK and European tour.

The tour kicked off with the 22 August SmackDown in Dublin, Ireland, and concludes with the 1 September edition of Raw over in Paris. Of course, WWE is currently in France for this weekend's Clash In Paris PLE, and they shot an episode of SmackDown in the city on Friday night.

WWE made the call to scale back on house shows domestically a few years ago, and it's made a huge difference to talent. Here's a comparison: In 2023, they'd promoted approx 50 live events by August. In 2025, that number is approx 15 by the same month. That's a massive drop off, but it has benefitted the previously-exhausted crew.

This is a far cry from the double shot grind of the 1980s, or even the relentless touring cycles that WWE took wrestlers on until just a few short years ago.

One wrestler told Fightful that they "don’t miss house shows at all". Whilst "fun to wrestle on", they think "the current method is much better", and remarked that live events finally feel "special" again. That's a big thing for WWE management too.

WWE Higher-Ups Also Like The Current Structure

WWE management told Fightful that "there are no talks of accelerating house show schedules outside of overseas and international trips". Domestically, the promotion will continue to run sparse and sporadic live events where suitable, but they're not going back to a 3-4 events per week house show loop in the United States any time soon.

Decreasing the number of shows weekly "was a multi-pronged decision related to costs, scheduling, keeping talent healthy and the weighing [of] pros and cons". A neat knock on effect is that this helps during contract negotiations too. WWE can now tout concrete appearance numbers without tacking on a lorry load of dates for non-televised matches.

Another upside of limiting house shows to select US specials and international tours is that anything "buzzworthy" which happens on cards is immediately picked up by social media. Not much gets lost in the shuffle due to an endless, non-stop churn of content.

So, to summarise, there are currently no plans to return to the old way of doing things. WWE's roster, staff and management like the setup they have now, because it's beneficial to everybody without robbing international markets of the chance to see their favourite stars up close and personal a few times per year.