5 Retro Wrestling Shows That Should Be Revived, And 5 That Absolutely Should Not

Avoid (3.) – Sin

The final years of World Championship Wrestling saw the Turner-owned company throwing whatever they could at the wall in the hopes that something would stick. After trying to appeal to the biker community with Road Wild/HOG Wild, the group tried to exploit the success of the New World Order. After the Bischoff-Russo reboot, we got the New Blood. After yet another change of management, 2001 brought with it a renaming of all WCW pay-per-views, apparently invoking the biblical ‘seven deadly sins’.

Sin took place just the once, replacing the equally pointless Souled Out in WCW’s January slot. With no real explanation of reasoning for the new themed pay-per-view names (Greed was another), fans were left to wonder if it was some cynical in-joke being made at the foolish decisions and overspending that had brought the company to the brink of extinction.

WCW Sin aired in January 2001 with such memorable classics as Shane Douglas against General Hugh G Rection in a First Blood Chain match. Ah, the memories. The only reason anyone remembers Sin, of course, is due to the horrendous leg injury suffered by Sid Vicious in the main event. Probably best for all of us if we act like Sid and forget it ever happened.

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Revive (3.) – Shotgun Saturday Night

One from the ample back catalogue of the World Wrestling Federation this time. Not a pay-per-view event, but rather a weekly TV show that launched in January 1997 and ran for a couple of years. Believe it or not, the concept for Shotgun Saturday Night started out as a weekly pay-per-view, with mid-90s WWF bosses keen to see how they could attract more buys and more revenue. While this was dropped, the intention of making the show appointment viewing stuck and the first month of Shotgun episodes were wild.

Clearly influenced by the phenomenon that was ECW, the first few weeks of Shotgun embodied the ‘attitude’ the company would later become synonymous for and set the tone for the next few years. Episodes were shot in unusual settings, such as the Mirage nightclub in New York, and even the world-famous Penn Station. The latter gave us the low-key iconic moment of Undertaker tombstoning Triple H at the top of a moving escalator… which then conveyed the beaten Trips to the bottom.

Once the world fully opens up, what better way for NXT to get back on the road than to return to Penn Station and dust off the old Shotgun banners from the WWE archive? It would also give Triple H the perfect opportunity to do a heartfelt promo about how integral that match was to his career, which you know he’d love. 

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