Throwback Thursday: Looking back at WWE In Your House 1
WWE In Your House 1
Date: May 14, 1995
Venue: Onondaga County War Memorial (Now War Memorial Arena at The Oncenter), Syracuse, N.Y.
Some random notes
Up until this point, WWE produced at most five pay-per-view in a single year.
Those pay-per-views were WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, SummerSlam and Survivor Series, Tuesday in Texas only in 1991 and beginning in 1993, King of the Ring.
However, in 1995 WWE began producing pay-per-views every month. For the months in between those major shows, WWE produced shorter, more affordable shows called In Your House.
As oppose to an event that could be as long as three hours, In Your House was no more than two hours and cost only $14.95 in the United States.
There were untelevised matches before and after the pay-per-view to give the live crowd their monies worth.
Before the pay-per-view, Jean-Pierre Lafitte defeated Bob Holly. After the pay-per-view, The Undertaker Kama, Bam Bam Bigelow beat Tatanka and The British Bulldog and Owen Hart went to a draw in a King of the Ring qualifying match.
Besides getting another pay-per-view, another major hook for fans was that WWE was literally giving away a house for free.
WWE had people send in entries in which lucky entry would get picked. The luck entry would get a phone call live on pay-per-view and rewarded the house, which was located near a golf course in Orlando, Fla. The luxurious house even came with an indoor pool.
Everything in wrestling is scripted, but this was as real as it gets.
According to WWE, the company received more than 340,000 entries, which were driven in an armored car from Melville, N.Y. to Syracuse with a police escort.
The entries, which were in envelopes, were then placed in a massive tank in the arena and surrounded by I would assume were armed guards.
Todd Pettengill and Stephanie Wiand did the honors of giving away the house before the main event.
Wiand excitedly jumped into the tank full of envelopes and picked one. It eventually got to Pettengill, who dialed the person's phone number, but the call didn't go through the first time.
The call not going through was apparently hilarious to Vince McMahon, as it made him cackle with laughter into his microphone. Pettengill called the number again and it rang. Someone answered and Pettengill asked for someone by the name of Matt Pompaselli.
As soon Pettengill was finished answering the question, the person on the other end yelled with excitement. Pettengill and Wiand also got excited, as they awarded the house to Pompaselli and his family, who lived in Henderson, Nev.
The man talking on the phone thought it was a joke, but Pettengill insisted that it wasn't. That was because it wasn't. Pompaselli and his family had really won a house in Orlando live on pay-per-view courtesy of WWE.
Being that this was 1995 and WWE was looking for any reason to shoot off fireworks, fireworks were shot off in the arena in celebration of the big moment.
According to a 2012 WWE.com article, the Pompaselli family sold the house about six months after getting it. Matt Pompaselli said his family had just moved from New York to Nevada, which meant the family was not about to pack up and move again to Orlando.
Pompaselli said it was a tough decision to sell the house, but it did provide him plenty of money for college. According to Pompaselli, he made $175,000 from the sale.
The event took place on Mother's Day, which explains why babyface was talking about the holiday.
The one Mother's Day shout out that carried the most weight was Diesel's, as he said before his match that it was the first Mother's Day without his mother, who had died Dec. 27, 1994 due to a long battle with breast cancer.
McMahon and Dok Hendrix/Michael Hayes were on hand to call the matches and with that said, let's get to the matches:
Bret Hart def. Hakushi
There really weren't any bad matches on the card, but this was easily the best, as Hart and Hakushi were two of the best in-ring performers in WWE at the time.
Hakushi's athleticism is what caught my eye, as he was doing things that no one else was doing in WWE at the time.
He definitely had the most unique look of anyone in WWE with the supposed tattoos covering his entire body. In reality, the tattoos were not real and he was more known to Japanese wrestling fans as Jinsei Shinzaki.
On this night, Hakushi had a manager and his name was Shinja, who was better known as Sato of The Orient Express.
The one thing I had forgotten was how beautiful Hakushi's theme music and I am not even exaggerating. The song was almost unfit for a heel.
As for Bret Hart, he dedicated the match to his mother, Helen Hart, who was the butt of a lot of Jerry Lawler's jokes leading up to the event.
Speaking of Lawler, he watched the match backstage since he was slated to face Bret Hart later in the show.
Bret Hart and Hakushi seemed out of sync in the beginning of the match. They eventually seemed to settled in when Hakushi took control.
Bret Hart surged back into the match with a flurry of offense after Hakushi missed a springboard splash.
At one point, Bret Hart attempted to hit the ropes and attack Hakushi, but Shinja grabbed his ankle and caused him to fall. Hart retaliated by diving through the ropes onto Shinja and peppered him with a series of punches.
Once back in the ring, Hakushi regained control and attempted to hit Bret Hart with a vertical suplex, but Bret Hart blocked it and eventually countered it into a vertical suplex that sent Hakushi flying out of the ring. Bret Hart went flying out with him.
Shinja attempted to prevent Bret Hart from getting back into the ring by grabbing his ankle again. Bret Hart turned his attention to Shinja, but it gave Hakushi time to hit a springboard moonsault from the ring apron onto Bret Hart outside of the ring.
Hakushi crawled back into the ring well before Bret Hart. Hart eventually made it slowly back into the ring. Hart and Hakushi exchanged holds before Hart rolled up Hakushi with a victory roll to pick up the win.
For whatever reason, fireworks were shot off after the win.
Upon exiting the ring, Bret Hart apparently fell out of it and "twisted his knee". He even limped back to the locker room.
Handicap match – Razor Ramon def. Jeff Jarrett & The Roadie
Jarrett walked into the match as the Intercontinental champion, but this was a non-title affair, which almost assured that Jarrett and Roadie were losing.
1-2-3 Kid was supposed to be Ramon's tag team partner, but he apparently was sidelined with an injury. McMahon talked to him over the phone before the match.
Hendrix said before the match that this was the first handicap match on pay-per-view in WWE history. I'll take his word for it.
That wasn't the only first, as this was Roadie's first televised WWE match. He quickly helped swing the momentum in his team's favor via a sneak attack on Ramon while he was pursuing Jarrett outside of the ring.
Ramon regained control of the match when Jarrett attempted to hit a double ax handle from the middle rope, which allowed Ramon to hit him with a punch to the gut.
Ramon attempted the Razor's edge, but was flipped out of the ring. The Roadie then dove from the top turnbuckle onto Ramon.
Ramon barely beat the 10-count, but Jarrett maintained control of the match for his team by working over Ramon's knee, which had injured prior to the match.
Ramon fought his way back into the match with a barrage of punches and even suplexed Roadie from the top rope.
Jarrett eventually tried to lock in the figure four, but Ramon kicked him into Roadie, who was recovering on the ring apron.
With Roadie out of commission, Ramon got Jarrett up for the Razor's edge and clinched the victory.
Ramon tried to hit Roadie with Razor's edge after the match, but Jarrett thwarted him with a chop block. Jarrett then locked in the figure four.
Aldo Montoya ran to the ring to even the odds, but Jarrett and Roadie quickly dispatched him.
With Montoya gone, Jarrett and Roadie turned their attention back to Ramon, but before they could do more damage, an unknown man ran into the ring and helped out Ramon. Security guards, officials and police officers got the man out of the ring.
In a backstage interview later in the night, Ramon introduced the man to the world as Savio Vega.
King of the Ring qualifying match – Mabel def. Adam Bomb
Mabel and his partner Mo were full-blown heels by this point and it was obvious by the way they carried themselves before, during and after the match.
Mabel even attacked Adam Bomb before the match officially started.
The match was over soon after the bell rang. Bomb got in a good amount of offense, but Mabel hit a spin kick and a big slam before picking up the victory.
Mabel went on to win the King of the Ring in Philadelphia the next month. His victory in the tournament earned him a WWE championship match against Diesel at SummerSlam.
That last paragraph was not a joke. All of that really happened.
WWE Tag Team championship – Owen Hart & Yokozuna def. The Smoking Gunns
Lawler stormed to the ring before the match, demanding that his match with Bret Hart start immediately.
Lawler saw that Bret Hart had injured his knee and wanted to take advantage as soon as he possibly could, but he was not allowed to and security ushered backstage.
Owen Hart walked to the ring with both tag title belts. The title belt couldn't fit around Yokozuna's waist anyway. McMahon said before the match that he was more than 600 pounds by this point.
Owen Hart and Yokozuna held the early advantage until the latter ran himself into the ring post outside of the ring, which allowed the Smoking Gunns to isolate Owen Hart.
Owen Hart managed to fend off the attack by ducking out of the way of a cross body from Bart Gunn, which sent him flying out of the ring.
Yokozuna took care of Bart Gunn outside of the ring by dropping one of his massive legs across his chest.
Yokozuna then rolled Bart Gunn back into the ring and Owen Hart covered him to pick up the victory.
Jerry Lawler def. Bret Hart
Lawler was in the ring before the match with a beautiful young lady that he called his mother.
Since Bret Hart dedicated his earlier match to his mom, I guess Lawler wanted to do the same, but in a very weird way. The young lady challenged Helen Hart to a match and gave Lawler a kiss on the cheek before leaving the ring.
Bret Hart revealed in an interview before the match that he had apparently played possum and pretended that he injured his knee earlier in the night.
He pretended to limp his way to the ring, but quickly revealed that it was all an act, much to the dismay of Lawler, who ran away from Bret Hart to start the match.
Bret Hart quickly caught Lawler and began pummeling him.
Despite Bret Hart's barrage, Lawler was able to hit a pile driver, but even that didn't faze him, as he went right back on the attack.
Shinja then ran to the ring and distracted the referee. Bret Hart then Irish whipped Lawler into the referee while he was occupied with on the ring apron, which caused him to fall out of the ring with his foot being caught in the middle and bottom ropes.
While the referee was literally hanging out outside of the ring, Hakushi ran to the ring and hit Bret Hart with a double ax handle from the top rope.
Lawler then put Bret Hart in position so that that Hakushi could hit a pair of diving head butts from the top rope.
Shinja finally freed the official from the ropes, who then counted to three while Lawler pinned Bret Hart's shoulders to the match.
Hakushi and Lawler tried to attack Bret Hart after the match but to no avail, as Bret Hart was able to stand his ground.
WWE championship – Diesel def. Sycho Sid via disqualification
This was Sid's first pay-per-view match since he returned to WWE earlier that year.
Sid had recently joined Ted DiBiase's Million Dollar Corporation after turning on Shawn Michaels by power bombing him multiple times. In storyline, Michaels was injured and was watching the pay-per-view.
Michaels was scheduled to face Diesel for the title on this night, but was replaced by Sid, who posed as a massive threat to the champion's title reign.
Diesel started off fast, but Sid eventually gained control with the help of a distraction from DiBiase. Sid focused his attack on Diesel's lower back, which had been injured earlier that week by Henry Godwinn.
Sid beat the daylights out of Diesel and even power bombed him, but Sid took too long to cover him and the champion kicked out.
Diesel suddenly found his second wind and mustered up enough energy to deliver a power bomb of his own. Diesel went for the pin, but Tatanka ran to the ring and attacked him, forcing the referee to disqualify Sid.
Sid attempted to power bomb Diesel again, but Bigelow ran out to make the save.
Diesel celebrated his disqualification victory with Bigelow in the ring, as fireworks were shot off in the arena for the third time.
Vaughn Johnson has a podcast with Nick Piccone called the Straight Shooters on WildfireRadio.com. Check it out here HERE.