Wrestlefest 88

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Hi Scott,

Long time reader and, by now, long time emailer (thanks for your answers on the blog!) Anyway, I had a semi-obscure question based on when I became a fan. Early in the summer of 1988, I got on hooked on wrestling through Legends of World Class on ESPN at 4 pm M-F. By the end of the summer, I had also migrated over to the WWF. At the time, the Fed was obviously hyping Summerslam. But in the meantime, they aired matches on Prime Time Wrestling from a huge outdoor show (Wrestlefest) at a baseball stadium with PPV-quality matches up and down the card. It was quite the spectacle. Summerslam, by a contrast, aired from inside a dark arena (I wasn’t schooled on MSG yet) before a much smaller crowd. From a 9-year old mark’s perspective, Wrestlefest felt much "bigger" than the PPV.

So what was the business idea behind Wrestlefest (and, for that matter, the very similar Big Event in Toronto in 86)? It took place right in the middle of the WWF’s expansion from one PPV (Wrestlemania) per year to four come 1989. Was the plan to have even more PPV’s if this show hit it big? If so, it was extremely close in time to Sumemrslam so that seems counterproductive. Or was the plan to have a couple really big house shows each year that would be super-promoted locally to draw a huge house with clips could be used on TV for weeks on after? If that was the plan, why didn’t it take off? I can’t remember a similar show anytime after 88. Historyofwwe.com says there was a house show from Busch Stadium in St. Louis in the summer of 1991, but it drew a much smaller crowd than Toronto or Milwaukee and no footage of the event ever made it onto WWF TV at the time.
​Not sure if you’ve been following the Observer Flashback threads from 88, but then this e-mail was written months ago anyway. But to answer the question, the show was basically done to fuck with Jim Crockett’s kickoff of the Great American Bash tour the next night in Milwaukee, and it basically accomplished that task. So yay for Vince, I guess. There was no plans for it to be a PPV or annual show or anything of the sort, which is too bad because it would have been a decent stopgap between WM and Summerslam.

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