1992’s “House Show” Title Switches

By Scott Keith on 21 December 2018

Hi Scott- Jabroniville from the BOD here!

I've been reading through all of Bayless's fantastic WWF reviews, which at this point is just near the end of 1992. It's a really fantastic view of what's REALLY going on in the company- typically, we only get reviews of the PPVs, so we miss a lot of little
things, like what things are pushed and built towards, and some of the lame-duck acts that don't make the big shows (Lance Cassidy?!?).
One thing I noticed is just how many title changes took place on house shows- many of which we, as fans, never got to see. We had: The Mountie beating Bret Hart for the IC Title, Money Inc. beating the LOD for the Tag Titles, The Natural Disasters beating Money
Inc for the Tag Titles, Flair beating Savage for the World Title, and Bret beating Flair for the World Title VERY shortly afterwards.
What was the deal with all of these? I know some of them had extenuating circumstances (they needed the titles off the LOD IMMEDIATELY, for example), but five in one calendar year, in an era that saw VERY few title switches, seems very odd. Were they just trying
to juice house show attendance in an era that was seeing fading returns? It seems so weird to have so many high-profile switches take place where fans couldn't see them- it ran the risk of making various title holders seem weak, as we didn't get to witness
high-profile starts for reigns like those of Money Inc or the Disasters.

Thanks.

I think it was partially juicing the house show numbers and partially just Vince being generally distracted by the federal government's ridiculous witch-hunt against the WWF. I mean, wrestlers taking STEROIDS? I never! But anyway, long term planning wasn't really at the forefront around that time and it felt like they were just trying stuff to see what stuck and didn't have the time or inclination to properly build to it.