25 years after WWE’s first visit to the United Kingdom, John Lister looks back at some of the most memorable — and infamous — moments from the company’s transatlantic trips.
10 October 1989: WWE’s first show in the UK, held at the Docklands Arena, sees Hulk Hogan beat Randy Savage in the main event. The undercard includes a rare win for the Brooklyn Brawler (over Paul Roma), Bret Hart swearing on camera after losing to Dino Bravo, and Jim Duggan earning the appreciation of the cast of Hi-de-Hi.
3 October 1991: Davey Boy Smith wins a battle royale at the Royal Albert Hall to take the unlikely prize of the Samovar trophy: a Russian tea urn. The show also includes the Undertaker’s entrance theme being played on the venue’s magnificent 120-year-old organ.
29 August 1992: Davey Boy Smith wins the Intercontinental championship from Bret Hart in the final bout of SummerSlam at Wembley Stadium. Whether he wanted to or not remains unconfirmed. Legion of Doom member Hawk and the Berzerker disappear after the show and miss the flight home.
28-29 September 1992: Ric Flair beats Randy Savage and Bret Hart in Sheffield and Birmingham. Both matches are 25-minute plus technical wrestling displays kicking off a short-lived plan by Vince McMahon to revamp the company’s in-ring style in the wake of the steroid scandal.
April 1993: In its biggest ever European tour, WWE brings two crews and runs 14 UK shows in the space of 11 days, including visits to Bournemouth, Exeter and Whitley Bay. While house shows include attractive bouts such as Bret Hart vs Bam Bam Bigelow and the Steiners vs Money Inc, WWE curiously decides that a TV special on Sky Sports will have a main event of Lex Luger vs Jim Duggan along with Typhoon vs Brooklyn Brawler and Bob Backlund vs Damien Demento.
6 August 1993: Hulk Hogan beats Yokozuna in Sheffield in what will prove Hogan’s last WWE appearance for nine years.
29 March 1994: Men on a Mission defeat the Quebecers for the WWE tag titles, the first title change at a British WWE house show.
14 September 1994: Fans of Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano are left disappointed at Wembley Arena after confusion over local authority licensing means the women’s title match is cancelled at the last moment. It’s bad news for Earl Hebner too: he breaks his hand when Yokozuna falls on it during the tour
22 June 1995: Fans at the Royal Albert Hall are confused when IRS announces the resignation of Prime Minister John Major. They later discover the technicalities of Major vacating his Conservative party leadership to flush out would-be challengers proved too complex to fully explain in a pre-match promo.
28 November: 1996: The UK Express tour proves aptly-named in Birmingham when Sid beats Farooq in a main event lasting just two minutes and twenty-eight seconds.
20 December 1997: In the first UK-only pay-per-view, One Night Only, Shawn Michaels stuns the crowd by beating Davey Boy Smith for the European title. Smith had dedicated the bout to his sister, who was suffering from what would prove terminal cancer. He only did so as he was originally scheduled to win before a late change of heart on the part of Michaels.
4 April 1998: Two years before adopting his American Bad Ass persona, the Undertaker is forced to wrestle in street clothes, apparently after a problem at baggage control.
6 December 1998: During the Capital Carnage pay-per-view, Vince McMahon concludes an anti-British promo by threatening that the country will one day be governed “by a Prime Minister of Pakistani extraction.” The undercard features one of the more blatant excesses of the Attitude era, with Sable stripping Jacqueline of her top, exposing her bosom in full view of the hard camera.
16 May 1999: The UK version of No Mercy proves one of the worst pay-per-views in history, at one point offering Steve Blackman vs Droz, Kane vs Mideon and Nicole Bass in succession. Home viewer 64-year-old Nora Cuthbert phones 999, though not to complain about the poor line-up. Instead she demands that police attend the scene to protect Steve Austin from an assault by a sledgehammer-wielding Triple H. She later tells the BBC that “People say it is not real and it is all staged, but I knew it was real and he was hurt and I wasn’t going to stand by and watch it happen.”
3 November 2001: An Edge vs Christian bout at the Rebellion pay-per-view in Manchester is the last televised bout in the traditional WWE thick-barred steel cage. Although WWE had been using the mesh cage for a couple of years at this point, it’s likely the barred cage was still in storage in the UK after being used at the Rebellion 1999 show.
May 2002: The WWE hardcore title changes hands 12 times in the space of three days as crowds in Glasgow, Birmingham and London witness the 24/7 rule in full effect.
5 May 2002: The Insurrextion pay-per-view is the last televised event under the WWF name. Following the show, many in the WWE crew drink heavily on a journey home that is later dubbed “the plane ride from hell.” Lowlights include an impromptu grappling match between Brock Lesnar and Curt Hennig, Michael Hayes fighting Bradshaw and later losing his ponytail at the hands of Sean Waltman, Goldust serenading his ex-wife Terri Runnels over the crew intercom, and Ric Flair strutting around in a robe and nothing else.
12 October 2003: Following their victory over Brock Lesnar & John Cena in Manchester, Kurt Angle leaves the crowd perplexed by grabbing the house microphone and threatening to kiss the Undertaker during the flight home.
28 May 2004: Ric Flair beats Edge in an upset in Manchester, the pair having reversed their traditional babyface-heel roles after the crowd opted to cheer the Nature Boy. It later emerges the pair changed the planned finish of Edge winning in response to the crowd reaction.
11 October 2004: WWE tapes Monday Night Raw in the UK for the first time at the Manchester Evening News Arena. It kicks off a tradition of holding two sets of TV tapings in the UK each year.
26 April 2005: Following tapings in Birmingham, the WWE crew finds itself sharing a hotel lobby with competitors and supporters from a kickboxing tournament. With several from the kickboxing side apparently worse for wear after drinking, a brawl breaks out. Most reports suggest the combination of the WWE crew’s size and grappling ability is enough to take the advantage before police defuse the situation.
15 November 2006: WWE goes low-key for a series of meet and greet sessions, with some of the least glamorous bookings involving Carlito and Mickie James at Asda in Nottingham, John Cena and Maria also in Nottingham but at Woolworths, and Johnny Nitro and Melina visiting a Spar store in Aberdeen.
23 April 2007: Shawn Michaels beats John Cena in a London bout that takes up 55:49 of television time. Reports from the venue suggest the match, taped for Raw, is an extremely rare case of a bout being longer on television than in reality thanks to careful editing of the action during commercial breaks.
14 October 2007: The Smackdown tour follows in the footsteps of many British promotions by running Butlins at Minehead, the first of a series of annual visits. Although it’s a holiday camp, it does have a pavilion that can be transformed into a 5,000 seat venue, with Butlins including entry to the WWE show as part of a special weekend accommodation package.
April 2010: The WWE Raw crew is stranded in Belfast after the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland and the resulting volcanic ash cloud grounds all flights over Western Europe. Smackdown stars already back in the US are quickly rerouted to fill in on the live RAW broadcast. (TNA X-Division champion Doug Williams is also hit by the travel chaos, becoming the first wrestler to lose his title via volcanic eruption.)
12 November 2011: In an odd moment, WWE champion CM Punk is introduced to the Minehead as audience “the sausage king.”
15 November 2013: AJ Lee passes out during a match with Brie Bella in London. WWE later announces the fainting was the result of dehydration.
11 November 2013: The Wyatt Family and the Shield confront one another in the ring for the first time at a RAW taping in Manchester, earning a spectacular crowd response. It’s the initial tease at the start of a three-month build-up to their first match.
14 May 2014: WWE kicks off its WrestleMania Revenge Tour in Glasgow, marking 20 years since the first series of UK shows of that name. WWE officials remain tight-lipped about what would happen if all rivalries were to be amicably settled at WrestleMania.
