In the fallout from the Survivor Series in 1997, one of the concessions WWE assumed through its nasty divorce with Bret Hart was that it may have handed over Canada to its rival. Just over one year later, it packed over 40,000 fans into Toronto’s SkyDome.
Fast-forward to this week and WWE will shatter its previous existing gate records in the country when it stages the Elimination Chamber from the former SkyDome, now Rogers Centre. For four decades, the promotion has had a command of the market, which is punctuated by this latest achievement.
Toronto has a long and loyal relationship with professional wrestling, from the promoter Jack Corcoran, the rollercoaster run of Ed “The Sheik” Farhat, a period where they were utilizing AWA & WWWF talent, and its ties to the Mid-Atlantic office before becoming a largely WWF exclusive territory in 1984 when Tunney Sports shifted allegiances to Vince McMahon.
Every wrestling hotbed has its historical roots, and whether it’s St. Louis, Houston, or Montreal, often it’s because there is a multi-generational affinity for the unique genre and a degree of credibility among those that staged pro wrestling in those markets. Sam Muchnick, Morris Sigel, Paul Boesch, Johnny Rougeau, and Frank Tunney worked within their communities to sell legitimacy among fans and media for an industry wrapped in illusion and secrecy.
By 1984, the Canadian market was exposed to a lot of pro wrestling, and it was a foregone conclusion that McMahon’s control of Toronto would extend coast to coast. This was a city that had been exposed to years of matinee bloodbaths involving The Sheik, which like any novelty, wore thin and didn’t rebound until Jim Crockett Jr. and Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling partnered with Tunney. It was through the exploits of Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat among others that the Toronto fanbase recovered with some of the best performers of the day performing at Maple Leaf Gardens on a routine basis beginning in 1978.
It grew to a peak when they booked Exhibition Stadium in July 1983 with Ric Flair challenging Harley Race for the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship and attracting over 20,000 fans to the venue.
JCP ran Toronto no less than twenty times throughout 1983 and was on pace for the same number in ’84 when McMahon struck a deal with Tunney in June, took over Maple Leaf Wrestling on CHCH, and ran its first exclusive card at Maple Leaf Gardens on July 22.
Tunney would land a great deal where he was cut into the percentages of multiple regions throughout Canada as a partner and later served as an on-air president of the WWF through 1995 when he was ousted.
With Intercontinental champion Tito Santana defending against Paul Orndorff in the main event and a card including Jimmy Snuka, Sgt. Slaughter, Iron Sheik, and Pat Patterson, the July 1984 show attracted 10,000 fans. Despite the addition of Hulk Hogan on August 5, they returned to the venue way too soon with Hogan and Greg Valentine on top only generating 7,200. It would be months before Hogan returned to the market. By year’s end, they would pack in 15,000 to the Gardens for a December 30 show headlined by Jimmy Snuka vs. Bob Orton Jr. and Andre the Giant & Blackjack Mulligan vs. Ken Patera & John Studd.
McMahon’s takeover in Toronto coincided with his attempt to do the same in Western Canada when striking an agreement with Stu Hart to overtake Stampede Wrestling’s TV slots and bring in several of Hart’s talents including his son, Bret. The deal was for a reported $1 million to be paid over the next decade and a non-compete agreement was included. One year later, McMahon got out of the deal with an argument that Bruce Hart may have violated the non-compete by engaging with a new upstart out of Alberta during the period, and McMahon gave Stu his blessing to relaunch.
By 1987, the Canadian market was ripe for the taking and one dominant promotion. Three years prior, The Sports Network (TSN) had launched with access to sports fans across the country. With a 24-hour grid to fill, pro wrestling was an enticing property, including becoming the home for Stampede Wrestling.
With a sophisticated knowledge of a VCR and TV Guide, a Canadian wrestling fan could have the ability to find WWF, Pro Wrestling Canada with Angelo Mosca, Al Tomko’s All-Star Wrestling, Stampede, Bill Watts’ UWF, the AWA, and International Wrestling out of Montreal.
However, the bill was coming due, and many of these territories were not long for this world. The UWF was on the brink of being absorbed by Jim Crockett Promotions, International Wrestling had been decimated by the WWF, and Stampede and AWA were past their peaks but at least held on for a few more years.
WWF was becoming the market leader in Canada, but the event that cemented that status occurred unexpectedly in August 1986 on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE).
Teaming with Concert Productions International, the sold show was designed to be a special attraction for carnival goers at the annual end-of-summer tradition in the city. Major sponsors and promotional partners such as Molson, CHCH, and Q107 were onboard and amplified that Hulk Hogan and Paul Orndorff were coming to town and WWF was bringing its hottest feud to the city.
Tickets topped out at $20 with a reported attendance of 64,100 filling the grounds. This led to an overflow crowd that caused chaos that night and over 200 fans requiring refunds because of the confusion over tickets.
It far exceeded any level of event that the WWF had staged from a volume standpoint in the arena era of the company’s history.
Hogan and Orndorff was a red-hot feud, and this is the zenith for many of Orndorff’s Hall of Fame arguments before his induction. It was also the first of Hogan’s big drawing events in a city he became synonymous with over the next two decades, with several of his career highlights occurring in Toronto.
Many have suggested that the success of the CNE show in August 1986 opened the doorway for the booking of the Pontiac Silverdome the following March for WrestleMania 3, knowing there would be plenty of Canadians crossing the border to seek out the show.
Despite a paid attendance of 61,470 and historian Matt Farmer noting an $800,000 (CDN) gate for ‘The Big Event’, the WWF and the CNE did not partner for a follow-up show in future years, only returning to Exhibition Stadium for an event in August 1996.
What is even more impressive is that after the August 28 event at the CNE, the WWF came back only ten days later and drew 13,000 to Maple Leaf Gardens for Hogan & Roddy Piper vs. Paul Orndorff & Adrian Adonis. The year was capped with Hogan and Kamala selling out the Gardens on December 28 with 18,000.
Jim Crockett Promotions was barely holding onto a presence in the country. It had extremely limited television penetration, largely reserved for out-of-date footage airing on Pro Wrestling Canada, hosted by Milt Avruskin. The proverbial towel was thrown in after an ill-fated “Battle of Ontario” in February 1987 when JCP ran an afternoon show in Hamilton, which was greatly overshadowed by WWF running the Gardens that evening featuring Roddy Piper’s farewell match in the city before WrestleMania 3. It was three years before WCW returned to Toronto once they got on CFTO and wouldn’t make a dent in Toronto until the end of the ‘90s.
WWF’s next major move was bringing its signature event to Toronto with WrestleMania VI in April 1990, with Los Angeles as the other leading candidate. Like the success of the 1986 show, this would feature Hulk Hogan in the main event in a babyface attraction involving Ultimate Warrior, who was to be ushered in as the company’s successor for the new decade.
Less than one year after the stadium’s opening, WWF sold out the SkyDome with an announcement of over 67,000 fans and a gate of $3.5 million (U.S.) – setting the Canadian gate record, which lasted over a decade. The paid attendance in 1990 was reported as 61,864. Although Elimination Chamber will obliterate the gate record, it will come nowhere close to this amount of tickets sold.
In the ‘90s, WWF’s coverage in the market persisted with syndicated programming Superstars and Wrestling Challenge remaining its fixtures, but without access to Monday Night Raw when it premiered in January 1993. In later years, Raw would have a presence on The New VR and TSN and didn’t have a dedicated Monday night slot on TSN until 1998.
Toronto became a regular tour stop for house shows multiple times per year at Maple Leaf Gardens until 1995, when it shifted venues, running one card at Exhibition Stadium in 1996 and entering the SkyDome the following year as its regular stop.
WCW continued to struggle to have a regular presence in the country with Power Hour airing on TSN in the early ‘90s, TBS still having limited exposure in the country, and no access to TNT when Monday Nitro launched. Eventually, CHCH would incorporate a one-hour edited edition of Nitro to air six days later before TSN gained the rights to Nitro and ran it on Wednesday afternoons.
The WWF’s Canadian office was turned over during this era with Jack Tunney on the outs with McMahon and replaced by Carl DeMarco. DeMarco had previously served as the business manager for Bret Hart and would go on to add Latin America and China to his responsibilities at WWE.
In 1997, it was a major crossroads for the company as it produced excellent weekly television but was well behind the industry leader in WCW. Its top story throughout the year was the reinvention of Bret Hart as a heel alongside The Hart Foundation while being held as heroes when presented in Canada, making for one of the most interesting dynamics they had ever played with. During that year, the WWF drew over 23,000 spectators for a special edition of Raw at the SkyDome in January and topped 14,000 for subsequent house shows at the stadium in June and November. Toronto continued to shine bright when the company was desperately trying to catch up to its rival south of the border.
Everyone knows the story of the Survivor Series in Montreal and Hart’s exit from the WWF. It was of grave concern given the business Hart helped generate based on his standing in Canada as a legitimate celebrity. Was WCW going to usurp WWF in a country that had remained a Titan Sports hotbed?
The answer would be provided in February 1998 when the company returned to Toronto for the first time after the bitter split with Hart and attracted over 13,000 for a house show at SkyDome. Of its four live events at the stadium that year, the February show would be the lowest attendance they drew with follow-ups in May and August, and topping out with more than 16,000 in November on the back of Steve Austin.
WCW failed to run a single show in Canada that year despite its acquisition of Hart and providing the keys to the country. It was not until March 1999 that they brought Monday Nitro to the brand-new Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena) and sold it out instantly.
The wrestling boom was in full effect and Canada was not excluded. TSN had acquired the rights to both Raw and Nitro while TBS was becoming more widely available as fans had to chance to follow the new Thunder program.
It peaked in Canada during a seven-week period where the WWF would stage Raw is War at the SkyDome on February 8, 1999, and Nitro emanated from Air Canada Centre on March 29. WWF would set its record for the show, drawing over 38,000 paid and more than 41,000 in the stadium, while WCW sold out its venue with 16,195.
WWF followed with three additional house shows that year including a November 1999 event that exceeded 18,000. WCW managed one more show in Toronto with the Mayhem pay-per-view the very next night more than 12,000 paid and throughout two nights, the promotions drew over 31,000 fans in the city.
The next year, the WWF would gain the rights to run at the Air Canada Centre, leaving the SkyDome despite a tremendous track record of attendance figures it drew at the baseball stadium multiple times per year.
By 2000, the company had a stake in The Score television network, which opened the door for SmackDown to receive clearance in the country one year after the show’s launch in the U.S. and place Raw and SmackDown on different networks. By the start of 2000, the WWE content was getting tougher and tougher for TSN to defend the content airing in its Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET slot for the “after school” crowd. and got rid of the Tuesday replay.
WWE’s next milestone was WrestleMania’s return in 2002 for its 18th installment (In Vince McMahon’s numerology, ‘X8’) at the tail end of the Attitude Era. Over two nights of television tapings in September 2001, the company hosted a major press conference to formally announce the event, with politicians Mel Lastman and Mike Harris on hand and flanked by company officials Carl DeMarco, Jim Ross, and various talent.
This was preceded by a public push for the event by Ontario Premier Mike Harris and Tourism Minister at the time, Tim Hudak. In its push, Harris emphasized, “The event wouldn’t cost taxpayers a cent, but would generate substantial tax revenues.”
The March 17 event generated a new Canadian gate record for professional wrestling of $6,143,822 (CDN), which was the equivalent of $3,846,033 (U.S.) Incorporating inflation, that’s a gate of $6.8 million (U.S.) and over $10 million (CDN).
The show’s star was the same figure that drew stadium-sized crowds in 1986 & 1990, Hulk Hogan. In his first WrestleMania match in nearly a decade, the then 48-year-old stepped into the ring with The Rock in the Icon vs. Icon attraction. It led to one of the all-time great crowd receptions to a match in ‘Mania history while babyfacing Hogan in the process.
The attendance was announced at 68,237, topping the 1990 figure, but the later reported paid figure of 61,069 fell short of WrestleMania 6 and The Big Event.
In 2006, the television picture changed dramatically as TSN had gained the rights to Monday Night Football and WWE was no longer going to be its tenant on that night, leading to both Raw & SmackDown airing on The Score while the re-launched ECW brand would find a home on Global TV.
The Score would go from a third major sports network to be absorbed by Rogers and rebranded to Sportsnet 360 in the coming years. Rogers would go “all in” with WWE programming, signing a ten-year pact in 2014 during an era when the company’s U.S. television rights skyrocketed. It took WWE’s programming right up to this most recent change where the ten-year deal expired, and all programming migrated to Netflix along with other international markets following suit.
It also ended Rogers’ run as WWE’s distribution arm of the WWE Network in the country where they had launched a digital channel for subscribers of the service and ran it for a decade.
There was a notable undertaking in 2019 when WWE held its SummerSlam weekend of events in Toronto including NXT TakeOver and the subsequent episodes of Raw and SmackDown following the pay-per-view. Various independent groups along with Ring of Honor took up shop in Toronto to create a miniature ‘WrestleMania Weekend’, which appeared to be too ambitious of a demand on the market where many shows were poorly attended with few success stories among the non-WWE entities.
While Elimination Chamber is categorized as a ‘middle tier’ premium live event and it won’t set an attendance record in the country, it reflects both WWE’s popularity and TKO’s aggressive monetization of this boom era to ensure that revenue records will be set on Saturday.
Toronto is not the first market to experience the ‘sticker shock’ of prices these days, where it’s going to set you back a minimum of $200 for a seat high up in the 500 level for the show and tickets topping out at more than $800 on Ticketmaster and even higher when searching on StubHub.
There is a drawback to the continued price escalation in WWE and that is pricing out certain fans. With days to go, WrestleTix reports just under 30,000 tickets distributed, and therefore, the attendance markers from past WrestleManias are not within reach despite a gate this weekend that will greatly exceed the 1990 and 2002 events.
While homegrown stars like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and Trish Stratus will generate local coverage and attention, it’s a brand that’s hot. That appeal goes beyond one’s passport as evidenced in the post-Bret Hart boom of the company’s successes in the country.
Many theories can explain how one determines the secret sauce to this market’s continued demand. There is a generation that grew up on easily accessible territories, a media that took a more accepting approach to its coverage of the industry, and a steady flow of Canadian talent throughout its lineage.
Regardless of the era, state of the company, or talents on top, Toronto has been a pillar since the national expansion, whether it’s Maple Leaf Gardens, the Coca-Cola Coliseum, or the Rogers Centre. The numbers have always been there, and the present TKO ownership has no reservations about cashing in on the extraordinary demand the current product commands.
Several notes courtesy:
– The History of WWE
– Wrestling Observer Newsletter
– Wrestlenomics
– SLAM! Wrestling
– From Nanjo to The Sheik: Tales from Toronto Wrestling
– Maple Leaf Wrestling
– Pain and Passion
