Cinematic Matches

By Scott Keith on 18 July 2024

Good morning Mr. Keith, hope all is well. As I start to think if there will be a Stadium Stampede Match at All In ( i feel they will book one), I was reminiscing about how phenomenal the original was. then went down the rabbit hole of the Cinematic matches that have happened since that time of no crowds. But then i started going backwards and finding the rare examples that pre-date Covid:
Lawler/Funk, Mankind/Rock Empty Arena Matches
Boiler Room Brawls
King of The Road Match
Back Alley Brawl
Anymore more examples from the Blog would be fun for me to hear as well!
Now the quality may vary, but they still stand out in some degree because of the unique settings they were in. My question is, especially in the era of filling up tv time with taped shows and content for coliseum videos, why do you think we never saw more matches taking place outside of the ring, away from crowds? For all the goofy and ridiculous storylines and gimmicks that came out of wrestling pre-covid, the ideas tossed around, and what production would do to achieve them, The cinematic match idea rarely comes up.

The endless parade of “hardcore” matches during the Attitude era would likely count , as well as stuff like the monster truck match at Halloween Havoc. But look at what WCW presented when trying to do “cinema” in the 90s and it’s obvious why no one wanted to touch the idea again for decades following.