The Heroes of Wrestling PPV is often considered the worst PPV event of all time. On Cagematch, the match has an average rating of 0.83 out of 10. Wait, I’m sorry the rating is 0.38 out of 10.
Just looking at the card, it looks unappealing for a show in 1999. It features a lot of veterans who were either past their ring date, just weren’t in the shape for PPV matches or both.
Fans who either caught the show at the time or watched it years later pretty much dunk on this show because it didn’t come off as a decent PPV. Let’s find out how safe it is to view or if the whole show should be thrown away and burned in this Train Wreck Theater!
What Was Heroes of Wrestling?
Billy Stone—currently an executive with CBS—wanted to get in on wrestling’s popularity in the late 90s. Heroes of Wrestling was supposed to be a quartet of seasonal PPVs featuring veterans from the 80s and 90s.
As a concept, it wasn’t awful but presented some problems. First, you want wrestlers who can at least deliver decent or serviceable matches and promos. This is a pay-per-view meaning people parted with their cash to watch this show.
A decent-at-the-minimum show isn’t too much to ask. To run future events, Stone shot for 40,000 buys which should’ve been attainable but without TV to lead into the PPV and build up some stories, it was going to be a climb.
The Heroes of Wrestling PPV managed to pick up 29,000 paying customers for the event and managed to host 2,300 fans. While Stone was short of expectations, for a show in 1999 without TV and a mostly aged roster with few wrestlers who were in the main event in recent memory, this was a good shot.
However, from what others have said of the show, that spirited attempt was soured by bad commentary, salty matches, and a train wreck of a main event.
Basement-Tier
This main event: horrendous. Nothing went right or as it should’ve in Jake Roberts and Yokozuna vs. Jim Neidhart and King Kong Bundy. Neidhart could still do a decent match at this point, Yokozuna had put on an unhealthy amount of weight at this time but could still go, and Bundy was his usual big heel self.
That last one wasn’t a knock on King Kong Bundy, he was always just King Kong Bundy. The problem in this match was Jake Roberts showing up intoxicated—on what, I forget—and just ruining the match.
Everyone had to work around him and when a match has to be salvaged from one person, that match isn’t going to go down well. Oh, it’ll be remembered but not how fans or even the wrestlers would want.
Abdullah the Butcher vs. One Man Gang wasn’t nearly as bad as the main event but these two just never gelled for me. Both were great brawlers with OMG not being pushed as hard as he should’ve been as a monster heel in the 80s.
I mean, Akeem the African Dream was a thing in WWE.
This match had the benefit of being short but dropped to basement level because it was a stock Abby match with an expected ending. Both of those would’ve been acceptable if the match was at least entertaining or exciting but it wasn’t.
The final entry of the basement-tier is The Bushwhackers vs. The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff. I know this match was to cater to 80s WWE tag team enthusiasts. It had to be because there was no reason for anyone to put this match on paper past 1987.
If anything, the Iron Sheik should’ve had a solo squash against someone and did the national anthem of Iran.
Instead, we got an actual tag team match that I doubt anyone asked for and it went longer than it should’ve. I didn’t expect this to be a good match, I didn’t expect it to be entertaining, I just expected it to be less than five minutes.
Mixing these three matches in with a card of mostly sour matches really gives you a pungent dumpster juice stew.
Low-Tier
There are too many bad and/or boring matches on this card featuring people who shouldn’t be on a PPV past a certain decade. However, this show was about highlighting legends and veterans of yesteryear.
Greg Valentine vs. George Steele just wasn’t going to be interesting and I dig the stiff, methodical pace of The Hammer’s work but this was the late 90s and pacing standards in matches were rapidly moving towards being faster.
Fortunately, this match was brief but in watching it, it seems longer.
Bob Orton Jr vs. Jimmy Snuka was a match that hovered between low-tier and mid-tier. It wasn’t dead awful, it just went a little long. Orton was fine here and Snuka went through his usual match routine.
Honestly, it would’ve worked if it was under ten minutes in length. Better yet, the promoter could’ve taken this match, combined it with Tully vs. Lane, and had the best tag team match on the card.
Mid-Tier
The opener wasn’t anything special but it was one of the better matches on the show. You couldn’t put The Samoan Swat Team vs. Marty Jannetty and Tommy Rogers as a PPV main event but this wasn’t bad at all.
It’s a match that you would’ve seen in the early hour of RAW or Nitro or an indy main event around this time. Definitely better than the actual main event on this card by leaps and bounds.
The best match of the show was 2 Cold Scorpio taking on Julio Fantastico. If you know your late ECW and early TNA, you’ll probably know Fantastico better as Julio Dinero, a regular tag partner of EZ Money as Hot Commodity.
I always felt that was a solid team with a dope name. This match benefited from featuring two wrestlers with similar, exciting styles and a short time limit. It meant that they had to get their good stuff in a short amount of time and it worked.
After this show, Fantastico would join ECW, debuting at ECW November To Remember 2000.
The other solid match here was Tully Blanchard vs. Stan Lane. I would’ve bought this as the main event since they actually showed up with the intent of putting on a TV-worthy match. Yes, that’s the bare minimum here at this point.
Tully vs. Lane would’ve probably been a good, old-school showdown with just seven minutes of the main event’s time limit.
Heroes of Wrestling PPV Verdict: Low-Tier (1.5/10)
If you look at the card for Heroes of Wrestling you might think “What’s with all the old-timers” or “This is not an attractive card.” You’d be correct. There’s nothing on the card that would sell it and warrant paying actual, real-world currency to watch it.
This isn’t a PPV that you would save up for as you’d be disappointed by what you paid for and that’s just points against you. All of that aside, I did find a couple of matches that were watchable and pretty enjoyable.
No gems but this wasn’t a complete fail of a show. A hard fail? Yes, the hardest of fails. It broke new ground in failure. The matches that made it to the mid-tier would be better served on another event toward the bottom of the card.
I try to find some enjoyment in even shows that were considered bad but Heroes of Wrestling just had awful pacing throughout and too many bad-to-worse bouts that overshadowed the decent ones.
Listen, I came up with a fourth rating tier because of this show. There was just too much bad here.
Ultimately, this card would’ve only gotten a decent score if the 2,300 in attendance and the 29,000 at home got refunds for this. The NL Wrestling Archive has the show up on YouTube for those brave enough to sit through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZNw_KAhn_w&t=920s
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