‘WWE In Your House’ Blu-ray Review
One of the WWE’s most famous monthly PPVs which began in the mid-1990’s In Your House provided fans with higher quality product for a cheaper then usual price compared to the likes of Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania; and no pay-per-view series produced more epic matches, historic moments or championship showdowns than the WWE’s In Your House. Hosted by Todd Pettengill, who was the face of In Your House, this eight hour collection features matches from all the top WWE stars of the 90’s, such as Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Triple H, The Rock, Kane, Diesel and many more!
Debuting in 1995 and retired in 1999, the In Your House PPV’s were the preeminent setting for the top Superstars in WWE to settle their scores in the months between the “big 4” events. Spanning five years and 28 events the PPV’s featured the first ever Hell in a Cell, Inferno and Buried Alive Matches, saw the debuts of Kane and Big Show, and the genesis of several yearly stables such as WWE Backlash, Judgment Day, Unforgiven and No Way Out. Yet at the same time In Your House was one of the most colourful of the WWE PPV’s, often looking more like a product of the 80s than a PPV that would herald the start of the Monday Night Wars/Raw is War era that defined the WWE for most of the 90s.
Unfortunately for me the In Your House era of WWE programming was during the time I didn’t watch wrestling – I originally got into the “sport” during the late 80s and early 90s thanks to the VHS releases from Silvervision and by the time 1995 rolled around I had lost interest in wrestling (mainly because I was a HUGE fan of the Ultimate Warrior and he left the company in 1992), plus we weren’t one of the UK early adopters who subscribed to Sky TV. So this new “Best of” release actually features a number of matches I had never seen before – and some I had seen on other WWE Best of… compilations.
And what matches! Some of the highlights include Bret Hart vs. The British Bulldog from late 1995, the infamous ‘Buried Alive Match’ between The Undertaker & Mankind, one of the WWE’s earliest “hardcore” matches – the no holds barred match between Shawn Michaels and Diesel, the Non-Sanctioned 8 Man Tag Team match from February of 1998 on the road to Wrestlemania XIV, and from the same year a fantastic match between Ken Shamrock and Mankind that, at least one paper, could have been a disasater but is one of the most entertaining in this set.
Packed with some of the best wrestling matches from the era, WWE: The Best of In Your House is out now on DVD and Blu-ray from FremantleMedia.
