WWE has never been short of programming to help support and augment their main shows Raw and Smackdown, and on This Day in Wrestling History the first episode of Sunday Night Heat was taped.
The episode aired on Sunday, July 27, 1998 as a companion/lead in to Monday Night Raw. It took place at Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, California and focused on promoting the next night’s WWE Raw and alternated weeks of being live and prerecorded.
Like most things in the creative world, it was meant for a different purpose. In this case, it was supposed to be six episodes meant to lead into SummerSlam, but its popularity kept it going on the USA Network.
It eventually became the preshow for pay-per-views.
WWE’s first empty arena match
During the recent pandemic, we grew accustomed to empty WWE events, but this wasn’t the WWE’s first time dealing with this.
In what proved to be Heat’s most popular episode, it was shortened to air during the Super Bowl XXXIII halftime show.
Halftime Heat saw the Rock and Mankind face off for the WWE Championship in an empty arena.
It may have been a gimmick then due to the grander stage it appeared on, but it was a pretty cool experience that showed how mainstream professional wrestling had become.
In 1999, the WWE added Smackdown to its programming lineup and Heat shifted to a preshow for Smackdown as new shows, Jakked and Metal, took it’s place prior to Raw.
In the shifting landscape, Heat was reworked into a summary magazine type of show for highlight, and then shifted to MTV in 2000. To fit in with MTV’s energy, it started airing live.
Brand split
Following the WWE’s brand split, Heat was then moved back to being a support show for Raw and Velocity taking its place as Smackdown’s support show.
Heat continued moving from network to network for the next few years before being streamed on WWE’s website and moving to Fridays.
It then became the preshow for pay-per-views and eventually ended it’s run on May 30, 2008 with a total of 513 episodes aired over its ten year rung.
This was a fun era where WWE programming added so much more content and we were eagerly gobbling it up.
At any time, we expected a This Day in Wrestling History moment and we weren’t often disappointed.
What’s your favorite WWE show? Let us know in the comments below.
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