10 Wrestling Shows That Survived Real-Life Disasters

5. Beware of Dog Gets Put Down

WWE’s biggest run-in with Father Electricity occurred on May 26th 1996 at WWF In Your House: Beware of Dog. As anyone who’s ever owned a dog, they may be fearsome in normal weather, but they fall apart in a thunderstorm. Such a storm raged that night in Florence South Carolina, and as Savio Vega was making his way to the ring for a Caribbean Strap match with Steve Austin, the generator & satellite dish both went down, the arena was plunged into darkness and the everyone watching at home was instantly treated to a blank screen. 

Apparently even the benevolent almighty didn’t want to watch a 20-minute Savio Vega match.

The show continued in darkness, because of course it did, before the power could be restored for the main event. To make amends, WWE pulled a do-over and two days later restaged the matches that the audience at home didn’t get to see at a hastily assembled show called Beware of Dog 2. 

Fun fact, Mankind was under the ring and was scheduled to do a run-in on the Undertaker/Goldust casket match. However, as a result of not having power in his headset and therefore WWE having no way of giving him his cue, Mankind’s run-in was cancelled, meaning Mick Foley spent an entire PPV underneath the ring without ever getting involved in the action.

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4. TNA is On Fire

Total Nonstop Action has had its highs and lows when it comes to PPV. Its X division was a generation ahead of its time and created some of the greatest in-ring action out available in the mid-2000s, its Knockouts division was an actual women’s division while the WWE were still languishing with Divas, and also AJ Styles and Samoa Joe lived there. 

However, TNA has also seen its fair share of PPV disasters. Before their very first PPV a gigantic wrestler named, and don’t you dare laugh, Cheex, broke the ring in a dark match with his bodacious mass, forcing panicked repairs before the PPV went live minutes later. We also cannot forget the infamous incident when Jeff Hardy turned up wasted to wrestle at Victory Road 2011, forcing Sting to pin him hardway in one of the most excruciating matches of all time. 

However, for PPV disasters you can’t be a good fire. WWE have seen a few, with the notable example of The Undertaker being set ablaze by his own pyro at Elimination Chamber 2010. To that TNA says ‘hold my beer’ and during the Hard Justice 2006 PPV, during the very first match no less, a burlap sack in the rafters was set alight by pyro. The blaze was only put out when multiple dry powder fire extinguishers were emptied into the arena, all as Eric Young and Johnny Devine wrestled in something resembling the fog of Victorian London. 

They actually finished the match. 

The arena was evacuated for 30 mins, all as the PPV was airing live, to show segments filmed outside, before the show could carry on. Back in the mid-2000s, TNA was lit.

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3. ECW’s First PPV is Almost Shut Down

Extreme Championship Wrestling, the 90s grunge kid of professional wrestling, aired its first PPV on April 13th 1997. It was called Barely Legal, because that is ‘extreme’. However, the PPV was almost dead on arrival as a result of a horrifying incident that occurred at an ECW house show in late 1996. 

It’s become the stuff of gruesome legend. Axl Rotten was booked in a tag match with D-Von Dudley vs The Gangstas, one of whom was New Jack and oh no New Jack… Axl couldn’t make the show, so a 17 year-old fan called Erich Kulas asked to wrestle in his stead. He lied that he was 23 and had been trained by Killer Kowalski, so Paul Heyman put him in the ring where he was subsequently made an example of. 

During the match, as agreed between both men beforehand, New Jack cut Kulas’s forehead with a scalpel, but cut too far, severing arteries in his forehead. The punishment continued until Kulas lay in a heap on the floor, blood seeping from his head, as a medical officer rushed into the ring to try and patch him up. Cue lawsuits and outrage. 

When they got wind of the incident, PPV provider Request TV cancelled Barely Legal outright, forcing Paul Heyman to literally beg them to reinstate the show, which is not very ‘extreme’.

• Disaster
• wrestling
• 9/11
• wwe

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