House show (professional wrestling)

A house show is a professional wrestling show run by a major promotion, such as World Wrestling Entertainment, that is not televised. Promotions use house shows mainly to cash in on the exposure they and their wrestlers receive during televised events. For example, each WWE "brand" (RAW and SmackDown!) runs four shows in a typical week, but televises only one. Promotions also use house shows to promote upcoming televised events, especially pay-per-views; typically, wrestlers who are scheduled to work a match at the promotion's next PPV will work matches against one another at house shows.

Today, most major promotions try to develop their storylines only during televised shows, and will almost never book a major development (such as a storyline change, or a title change) for a house show. In recent years, one of the few major events to take place at a house show was the MSG Incident (see Clique for details). This was also a rare example of a shoot.

Another major event that took place at a house show, in this case planned, occurred in May 2004. As part of an ongoing feud between Eddie Guerrero and John Bradshaw Layfield, WWE ran an angle in which Guerrero's mother suffered a heart attack while Layfield attacked Guerrero during an in-ring celebration in Guerrero's hometown of El Paso. The heart attack was a complete work. WWE taped the entire lead-in to the "heart attack" for broadcast on Smackdown! later in the week.

Layfield was also involved in a somewhat controversial event the next month at a house show in Munich, Germany. In an attempt to draw heel heat, he gave the crowd several Nazi salutes while goose-stepping around the ring. Such a display is illegal in Germany if used for political purposes. The German government chose not to prosecute because Layfield's actions were clearly for show only. Several days later, the financial cable network CNBC fired Layfield as an analyst as a result of his actions in Munich. WWE was less concerned about the controversy; it soon placed one of its main championship belts on Layfield.

One major championship change occurred on January 16, 2005 in Winnipeg, Manitoba when La Résistance defeated William Regal and Jonathan Coachman to win the World Tag-Team Championship. Regal's actual partner, Eugene, had been injured at WWE New Year's Revolution so Coachman was Regal's tag-team partner for the match, though Regal never tagged him in.

See also: professional wrestling slang