Post by Super Nintenjoe KBD on Feb 25, 2017 13:46:55 GMT -5
Just came across this the other day:
"“Beer, Chairs, and Liquor Bottles- Oh My!” The Time Fans Rioted at a 1997 WWF House Show"
prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/beer-chairs-and-liquor-bottles-oh-my-the-time-fans-rioted-at-a-1997-wwf-house-show/
"“Beer, Chairs, and Liquor Bottles- Oh My!” The Time Fans Rioted at a 1997 WWF House Show"
prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/beer-chairs-and-liquor-bottles-oh-my-the-time-fans-rioted-at-a-1997-wwf-house-show/
Any Attitude Era aficionado should easily remember the angle where Steve Austin and The Rock were feuding over the Intercontinental title. On the December 15, 1997 episode of Monday Night Raw, Austin ended up tossing the belt in a river. If you were a fan living in Little Rock, Arkansas and went to the live WWF show on December 15th, you weren’t at that Raw show.
The house show that took place on that Monday, almost 19 years ago, is one of the rowdiest crowd incidents in post-territory day wrestling history.
Fans packed into the Barton Coliseum thinking they were attending a Raw show. It was just a house show, as Raw was taped from the week before. Not too many of the fans knew this and were rightfully upset right from the get go. Fans started hurling garbage, beer cups and even spit on the wrestlers.
The crowd was warned multiple times that if they didn’t calm down, the main event would be canceled. That just made the hostile fans in attendance more rowdy and upset.
The most surprising incident happened when Danny Hodge was given an award. Instead of cheering on the amateur and professional wrestling legend, fans just booed (though this was mostly because the ‘Heart Break Kid’ Shawn Michaels was in the ring helping with the ceremony).
The Undertaker wrestled The Rock in a casket match that didn’t even last ten minutes. D-Generation X made their way down for the main event and HBK was hit with paper, so he went on the live mic and told the crowd they just lost the main event and that the show was over.
The fans were confused and very upset. Sure enough, the ring announcer came out and announced that the show was indeed over.
The scene took a turn for the worse.
Fights broke out with security. Fans fought other fans. One account says he watched fans rip a security guard’s shirt off and light it on fire! Fans threw empty Jack Daniels bottles and chairs. There were around 6,000 disappointed fans on hand and only around 20 security guards. This did not make for a good situation. The security had to call in extra police to help, resulting in the use of tear gas to break the rowdy crowd up, with around a dozen fans getting arrested.
The then-WWF should have had the foresight to have more security on hand, just in case, since the same thing happened the night before in Memphis, Tennessee. While it didn’t escalate as bad as it did on the 15th, the main event was canceled there, too, and nearly every match was under ten minutes long.
There have been many run-ins and instances of fans hurling garbage and other various objects into the ring over the years, but this incident was as bad, if not worse than the reaction induced by Hogan’s heel turn in Daytona in 1996. Over the years, I have read many accounts of what happened that fateful night in Little Rock, and the picture provided always proves the chaos that took place.
The house show that took place on that Monday, almost 19 years ago, is one of the rowdiest crowd incidents in post-territory day wrestling history.
Fans packed into the Barton Coliseum thinking they were attending a Raw show. It was just a house show, as Raw was taped from the week before. Not too many of the fans knew this and were rightfully upset right from the get go. Fans started hurling garbage, beer cups and even spit on the wrestlers.
The crowd was warned multiple times that if they didn’t calm down, the main event would be canceled. That just made the hostile fans in attendance more rowdy and upset.
The most surprising incident happened when Danny Hodge was given an award. Instead of cheering on the amateur and professional wrestling legend, fans just booed (though this was mostly because the ‘Heart Break Kid’ Shawn Michaels was in the ring helping with the ceremony).
The Undertaker wrestled The Rock in a casket match that didn’t even last ten minutes. D-Generation X made their way down for the main event and HBK was hit with paper, so he went on the live mic and told the crowd they just lost the main event and that the show was over.
The fans were confused and very upset. Sure enough, the ring announcer came out and announced that the show was indeed over.
The scene took a turn for the worse.
Fights broke out with security. Fans fought other fans. One account says he watched fans rip a security guard’s shirt off and light it on fire! Fans threw empty Jack Daniels bottles and chairs. There were around 6,000 disappointed fans on hand and only around 20 security guards. This did not make for a good situation. The security had to call in extra police to help, resulting in the use of tear gas to break the rowdy crowd up, with around a dozen fans getting arrested.
The then-WWF should have had the foresight to have more security on hand, just in case, since the same thing happened the night before in Memphis, Tennessee. While it didn’t escalate as bad as it did on the 15th, the main event was canceled there, too, and nearly every match was under ten minutes long.
There have been many run-ins and instances of fans hurling garbage and other various objects into the ring over the years, but this incident was as bad, if not worse than the reaction induced by Hogan’s heel turn in Daytona in 1996. Over the years, I have read many accounts of what happened that fateful night in Little Rock, and the picture provided always proves the chaos that took place.