| Company | WWF/WWE |
| Event | In Your House 1 |
| Series | In Your House |
| Edition | 1 |
| Format | Pay-Per-View |
| Date | Sunday May 14 1995 |
| Venue | Onondaga County War Memorial |
| Location | Syracuse, New York |
| Attendance | 7,000 |
WWF In Your House 1
Today marks the landmark in wrestling history, as WWF In Your House 1 was held 25 years ago. Prior to this event, the WWF had five annual PPV events spaced out across the year, with very occasional one-offs. The first In Your House on May 14 1995 was the company’s official progression into holding monthly supershows, but with these IYH cards lasting two hours and at reduced price. In some respects, they were an updated take on Saturday Night’s Main Event, which had been the WWF’s network television outlet for stacked special shows that would feature WWF Title matches or major angles to set up feuds at the likes of WrestleMania. Though WCW had increased the number of PPVs to almost a dozen a year already, this event is seen as the moment when monthly wrestling PPVs would become the norm. In the future, In Your House would extend to three hours and with a regular price, and in later years, the WWF/WWE would add further cards to its PPV schedule (there were 16 PPVs in both 2006 and 2017, for example). At this point, though, it represented an exciting new chapter for the company, and things would never be the same again. As for whether the first In Your House is worth reliving, a quarter of a century on? Let’s go back in time and find out.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PREVIOUS TV SHOWS? READ OUR PRE-PPV REVIEWS OF RAW, SUPERSTARS & WRESTLING CHALLENGE!
Bret Hart vs. Hakushi
If you want to start off a brand new PPV with a bang, having Bret Hart competing in the first match is a pretty good way to achieve that. This was actually the first of two bouts on the show for the Hitman, so clearly the promise of two Bret encounters was designed to further sway PPV buys at the reduced cost. His first nemesis was Hakushi, a Japanese high-flyer who had targeted Hart prior to WrestleMania XI, following a ridiculous-in-hindsight (and ridiculous at the time too, to be fair) storyline where Jerry Lawler – Hakushi’s storyline pal – accused Bret of being a racist. That unpleasant undertone aside, and despite the shaky announcing debut of Dok Hendrix alongside Vince McMahon, Bret and Hakushi put on one hell of a battle. It was the right sight of clash for the era, mixing action and big moves with psychology and spots that had rarely been seen by a WWF audience before. Compare that to bouts involving the likes of Seth Rollins today, where most of his matches are very good or superb, but few of them truly stand out. Hart, though, was masterful at not only delivering incredible bouts, but making sure that they would be different from one another. In the end, Bret scored a roll-up to claim the pinfall victory. Afterwards, though, he seemed to tweak his knee, and considering that he would be facing Jerry Lawler later on, this would be troublesome for Bret’s fans to see. More on this shortly.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FIRST PPV OF THE YEAR? READ OUR WWF ROYAL RUMBLE 1995 REVIEW!
Handicap Match
Razor Ramon vs. Jeff Jarrett & The Roadie
Jarrett had captured the Intercontinental Title from Razor at Royal Rumble, and he managed to remain champion by the skin of his teeth at WrestleMania. This handicap match was designed to move their saga further along, though looking back on it, the feud more or less ground to a halt from a television aspect shortly after this contest. This was the first time that a handicap match occurred on a WWF PPV where it was one man against two (since we’d previously seen other handicap variations at events such as SummerSlam 1991), and this was one of the better handicap bouts that you’ll see. It was well-crafted, since Ramon had nobody to tag out to whereas Jarrett and Roadie could take turns attacking The Bag Guy, but as the stipulation was a supercard rarity at the time, it wasn’t obvious whether or not Ramon would make a big superhero comeback. As it turned out, he did, and he even pinned Jarrett with the Razor’s Edge.
Afterwards, the heels jumped Razor, and after a failed rescue attempt by Aldo Montoya (hah!), an unknown “fan” ran in the ring and struck the villains with roundhouse kicks; fans were confused at first, but as he did a number on Jarrett and Roadie, they popped, realising that he was battling on the right side (or something like that). Later, Razor introduced him as Savio Vega, and if you’re shocked that he was a trained professional wrestler rather than just some jabroni with a front row ticket, then I don’t know what to tell you.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PREVIOUS PPV? READ OUR WWF WRESTLEMANIA XI REVIEW!
King Of The Ring Tournament Qualifying Match
Mabel vs. Adam Bomb
Next up, we had another novelty, as a KOTR qualifying match was featured on PPV for the first (and possibly only) time. The downside was that it featured Mabel, who had not long turned heel along with his Men On A Mission tag team partner Mo. His opponent was Adam Bomb, and that character was fairly over, but he had been typecast as a big man who would lose matches of secondary significance. That was the case here, as Mabel would defeat him in fairly short order, and as you’ll probably know, Mabel would go on to King Of The Ring and win the tournament in an all-time booking balls-up. As for Adam Bomb, he didn’t last too much longer in the WWF, and aside from a brief return under his real name Bryan Clark (which included an infamously bad match at Unforgiven 2001), he would never resurface in the WWF/WWE again.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE VERY FIRST WWF PPV? READ OUR WWF THE WRESTLING CLASSIC 1985 REVIEW!
WWF World Tag Team Championship Match
Owen Hart & Yokozuna (C) vs. The Smoking Gunns
I was going to say that this marked The Smoking Gunns’ forgotten rematch for the Tag Team Titles against Owen and Yoko, but honestly, even the WrestleMania bout where they lost the belts in the first place is hardly recalled consistently by diehard fans. This wasn’t too bad, and as the only traditional tag match of the night, it marked a nice change of pace. The Gunns are an underrated team in my opinion, and while Bart Gunn didn’t have quite the same overall chemistry with Billy Gunn as Road Dogg/Roadie did, they still meshed well, and the cowboys were definitely popular with younger fans. Still, this wasn’t to be their night, as the heels retained when Owen pinned Bart after Yokozuna unleashed all of his weight on him with a huge arse-ramming legdrop. The Gunns would eventually regain the gold from Owen and Yoko on Raw in September 1995 the night after In Your House 3.
Bret Hart vs. Jerry Lawler
Jerry Lawler was delighted that his longtime enemy, who he had last faced on PPV at SummerSlam 1993, was coming in with a bad wheel, so to speak. Hart, after randomly wishing Jerry “Mother’s Day” due to him bringing an attracting young woman to the ring with him (yes, it was Mother’s Day, so Bret wasn’t going senile), revealed that his injury was a ruse! Yes, he had lured Lawler into a false sense of security, and so it gave him a chance to pound on The King with added vigour (was this a callback to the fake injury that Lawler claimed to have suffered before beating up Bret at the ’93 SummerSlam?). That aside, this match wasn’t particularly memorable and was nowhere near as good as the opener. As it turned out, Hakushi made his presence felt again: as his mysterious manager Shinja distracted the referee (who by the way had awesome entrance music for what that’s worth) struck Hart with a headbutt, giving Jerry the cheap pinfall win. Hart would exact true revenge on Lawler in a Kiss My Foot match at King Of The Ring. Yep.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LAST EDITION? READ OUR WWF ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE: IN YOUR HOUSE REVIEW!
Before the main event, we had the completion of a contest whereby one of the viewers, via good old-fashioned telephone, won a house. You know, because it was the first In Your House! I didn’t mind this as it was a fun way to mark the occasion, though such a segment (hosted here by Todd Pettingill and Stephanie Wiand) would not go over well with fans at all in the WWE of 2020.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FOLLOWING PPV? READ OUR WWF KING OF THE RING 1995 REVIEW!
WWF Championship Match
Diesel (C) vs. Psycho Sid
I have a theory about this match. Diesel had pinned Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania, and the next night on Raw, Michaels “fired” his bodyguard Sid, who responded with several Powerbombs, thus kayfabe injuring him. In the subsequent weeks, Sid joined Ted DiBiase’s Million Dollar Corporation, which led to him getting a title shot here against Diesel. However, Bruce Prichard has suggested that Shawn’s babyface turn in the aforementioned Raw angle wasn’t necessarily the long-term plan. So, I wonder if the actual intention was to deliver a Diesel-Shawn rematch here with Michaels still playing a heel, and with him capturing the WWF Title to make for a momentous PPV to kick off the In Your House era? We’ll never know, but if that had been the case, the “boyhood dream” stuff for Shawn would never have happened, which might have meant his Iron Man match against Bret Hart at WrestleMania XII would not have taken place either. And since we know what all that led to, in hindsight, that booking decision had major long-term ramifications. How different things could have been, eh?
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FOLLOWING EDITION? READ OUR WWF IN YOUR HOUSE 2 REVIEW!
Though we don’t know if Diesel-Shawn 2 would have taken place here, we do know that Diesel-Sid 1 did, and other than Sid’s romantic red trunks (hey, why else would a Psycho wear red?), it was rather uneventful, and a bit of a damp squib of an ending to a fun two-hour show. And because this was 1995, the match ended with a DQ, as Tatanka ran in to prevent Diesel pinning Sid with a Jackknife Powerbomb. New babyface and former MDC member Bam Bam Bigelow ran in to help Kevin Nash out, thus setting up one of the most pointless tag matches ever at KOTR. Diesel would eventually pin Sid in a Lumberjack rematch at In Your House 2 in July.
For the live crowd, there were two dark matches, both of which were included on the home video for this event (I remember watching it at the time and wondering aloud “post-event matches, what in the world?” (I was 7 so forgive my ignorance.) Since both were designed to be “for the house” (get it?), and because neither is particularly memorable upon a rewatch, I’ll simply run through them here by saying that The Undertaker pinned Kama (they would later collide in a Casket match at SummerSlam) and Bam Bam Bigelow pinned Tatanka in a continuation of the angle that closed out the actual PPV.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FOLLOWING TV SHOWS? READ OUR POST-PPV REVIEWS OF RAW, SUPERSTARS & WRESTLING CHALLENGE!
Considering that this was intentionally promoted as being a streamlined version of a PPV, WWF In Your House 1 is pretty good. Bret vs. Hakushi is a great match, and the rest of the card has its moments as well. The two-hour running time and the debut of the famous house set at the top of the aisleway make this feel like something special, but not something overwhelming for the viewer at the same time, which is a good thing. It was a gamble by the WWF to even hold the event, as it changed the dynamic of even its grandest PPV cards forever, since big matches were now occurring every month rather than every two or three months. But it definitely paid off, and it’s impossible to imagine WWE in 2020 with only 5 PPVs per year. That tradition began here, and on the 25th anniversary, it’s notable that it began on a relative high.
