wrestling / Columns
Cook’s Top 7 Worst PPV Names
What’s in a name?
Typically when it comes to wrestling PPV events, not very much. Most event names are bland, inoffensive & basically mean the same thing. TNA had an entire calendar of PPV events that blended together with generic, non-memorable names. Does anybody remember any difference between TNA Genesis or TNA Against All Odds, or even TNA No Surrender? After In Your House was phased out, the WWF/WWE fell into a similar pattern of meaningless names that blended together. No Mercy, Armageddon, Bad Blood, stuff like that.
Just recently, WWE re-branded one of their June events as Stomping Grounds. Complete with a boot-inspired logo. I feel like Stomping Grounds would have been a great name for a Smoky Mountain Wrestling event. Jim Cornette totally would have run a Stomping Grounds show in the Knoxville Civic Coliseum hyping up the long-awaited return of the Mongolian Stomper.
In any other context, Stomping Grounds sounds like the drizzling shits.
There have been some pretty bad names over the years. Here are seven names that were magnificent in the way they stunk. Before I start, I wish to note that we’re talking about major promotions here. I know that Women’s Extreme Wrestling had some downright awful names for their shows, and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla had a gimmick of having bad show names, but we’re looking at the big fish here.
7. WCW New Blood Rising
This wasn’t a bad name on paper. The New Blood became WCW’s top heel faction after the Bischoff/Russo reset and theoretically was going to run roughshod over everybody in their way. It also had a cool sound to it and wasn’t at a motorcycle rally like WCW’s previous August PPV offerings were. Should have been fresh and unique, right?
Well, except for the part where the New Blood broke up the month before and were no longer rising. Oops. I think this is the part where we say “Because WCW”.
6. WWE The Bash
Bashes have been a long-standing wrestling tradition going back to the days of Dusty Rhodes & the Great American Bash tours of the mid-1980s. WCW later added Bash at the Beach, which often had pretty major happenings.
WWE shied away from using WCW event names after the purchase until they brought back the Great American Bash in 2004. I assume Vince McMahon wanted an AMERICAN theme, this was around the time he was billing Chris Benoit as from Atlanta, Georgia. WWE paid tribute to WCW by putting on a series of terrible events under the GAB name. So bad that they killed the name value and just went with “The Bash” when 2009 rolled around. We all knew it was still the Great American Bash, and people tried to tell us they went with “The Bash” because it was in June instead of July. When WCW held the GAB PPV in June for the second half of the 1990s. C’mon now.
5. WWE Taboo Tuesday
There wasn’t really anything taboo about this show, except when they would have people vote on what outfits the Divas would wear. They always picked “schoolgirl outfits” because people are predictable.
I think this would be one of the more embarrassing shows to tell people you went to. Telling people you went to Taboo Tuesday sounds like you hit the strip joint on 2 for 1 night.
4. NWO Souled Out
The late 1990s were all about bad spelling and adding unnecessary letters to wrestling show names. This one bothered me the most because it made zero sense. What does it mean to be souled out? Are you all out of soul? Are you jammin to some Aretha Franklin?
I feel like the NWO’s effort at running an event would have gone better with a name that made sense. Also, if they had done every single thing differently.
3. WCW World War 3
This one always bugged me as a child from a numerical perspective. My feeling was that the second one of these events should have been called World War 4. It would have been followed by World War 5 & so on. I feel like I’m probably alone on this one.
Had World War 3 continued into the early 2000s, it surely would have faced criticism from people offended by the usage of the term “war” in the non-War on Terror sense. Now we don’t care, of course, but I bet it would have been a thing then.
2. WCW Greed
Rumor & innuendo of the time told me this was part of an idea to re-brand most of WCW’s PPV events with the names of the seven deadly sins. I have no idea if that was ever seriously in the cards, but I can tell you that I was hyped for the potential of WCW Lust & WCW Gluttony.
Greed was also the name of a game show featuring noted blowhard Chuck Woolery around this time, so it was an odd choice for a wrestling event name. Hindsight being 20/20, Greed does seem like the optimal name for WCW’s last PPV event. If that was the plan when they named it, I might rate it as the best PPV name of all time.
1. WWE Great Balls of Fire
Vince McMahon is often accused by wrestling fans as being out of touch. His defenders will tell you otherwise, and for the most part it’s tough to argue with his business results.
When he’s naming events after songs that were hits over 50 years ago…it’s a tougher sell. Its not like Kane was even in the main event, that could have at least made it somewhat sensical. At least we got the hilarity of the WWE Superstars hyping their upcoming matches at “Great Balls of Fire” out of this whole fiasco.
I’m kind of sad they didn’t bring it back this year.
* Intro
* Raw 7.09.2001: 3:05
* The deaths of ECW & WCW: 47:00
* The early days of the Invasion: 1:05:00
* Looking at Episode One of Viceland’s The Wrestlers: 1:14:30
* The guys reflect on their time at 411: 1:36:00
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