Martin Wright
Smackdown! Tenth Anniversary was put together with the Best of SmackDown 1999 – 2009 counts down the 100 greatest moments in the show’s history.
WWE Superstars is a professional wrestling television program produced by WWE that originally aired on WGN America in the United States. It debuted on April 16, 2009 and ended its domestic broadcasting on April 7, 2011. After the final domestic TV broadcast the show moved to an internet broadcast format while maintaining a traditional television broadcast in international markets. The show features mid-to-low card WWE superstars and divas, in a format similar to the former show WWE Heat which served the same purpose. Big names such as John Cena and Randy Orton previously appeared on the show at its beginning. The show also previously featured talent from the now-defunct ECW brand.
WrestleMania 23 was the twenty-third annual WrestleMania PPV. It took place on April 1, 2007 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan. The event was a joint-brand pay-per-view, featuring performers from the Raw, SmackDown!, and ECW brands. The main match on the Raw brand was John Cena versus Shawn Michaels for the WWE Championship. The predominant match on the SmackDown! brand was Batista versus The Undertaker for the World Heavyweight Championship. The primary match on the ECW brand was an Eight Man Tag Team match between The ECW Originals and The New Breed. The featured matches on the undercard included Bobby Lashley versus Umaga and an interpromotional Money in the Bank ladder match. It set an all-time Ford Field attendance record of 80,103. WrestleMania 23 grossed US$5.38 million in ticket sales, breaking the previous record of $3.9 million held at WrestleMania X8. With about 1.25 million buys, the event is the highest WWE pay-per-view buyrate in history.
No Way Out (2007) was the ninth annual No Way Out PPV event. It took place on February 18, 2007 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California and was the final branded pay-per-view before the brand split ended. The main event was an interpromotional tag team match between Batista and The Undertaker (from SmackDown!) and John Cena and Shawn Michaels (from Raw). The main match on the undercard was an interpromotional Six-man tag team match between the team of Chris Benoit and The Hardys (Matt and Jeff) and the team of MNM (Joey Mercury and Johnny Nitro) and Montel Vontavious Porter.
Armageddon (2006) was a PPV presented by Activision's Call of Duty 3, which took place on December 17, 2006 at the Richmond Coliseum in Richmond, Virginia. The event starred wrestlers from the SmackDown! brand. The main event was a tag team match, in which the team of Batista and John Cena took on the team of King Booker and Finlay. Two featured bouts were scheduled on the undercard, including The Undertaker versus Mr. Kennedy, in a match where the objective was to place an opponent in a hearse located on the entrance stage and drive them out of the arena and an Inferno match featuring wrestlers attempting to set the opponent on fire with flames surrounding the ring featuring Kane vs. MVP.
WrestleMania 22 was the twenty-second annual WrestleMania PPV. It was presented by Snickers and took place on April 2, 2006 at the Allstate Arena in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. The main match on the Raw brand was John Cena versus Triple H for the WWE Championship. The predominant match on the SmackDown! brand was a Triple Threat match for the World Heavyweight Championship between Kurt Angle, Rey Mysterio, and Randy Orton. Featured matches on the undercard included a No Holds Barred match between Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon, a Casket match between The Undertaker and Mark Henry, a WWE Women's Championship match between Mickie James and Trish Stratus and an interpromotional Money in the Bank ladder match featuring six participants. Tickets sold out in under two minutes, grossing US$2.5 million for the event, making it the highest grossing one-day event at the Allstate Arena. More than 17,155 people attended, with millions more watching in more than 90 countries.
Royal Rumble (2006) was the nineteenth annual Royal Rumble PPV. It was presented by Sony Computer Entertainment's The Con and took place on January 29, 2006 in the American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida The biggest Superstars of WWE RAW and WWE SmackDown! clash at Royal Rumble to determine who will go to WrestleMania 22 as the heavyweight contender. Also, WWE Title: Edge vs. John Cena, World Heavyweight Title: Kurt Angle vs. Mark Henry, WWE Cruiserweight Title (6-way Match): Kid Kash vs. Funaki vs. Gregory Helms vs. Jamie Noble vs. Nunzio vs. Paul London, Mickie James vs. Ashley, & The Boogeyman vs. John 'Bradshaw' Layfield
Survivor Series (2005) was the 19th annual Survivor Series PPV. It was presented by NovaLogic's Delta Force: Black Hawk Down and took place on November 27, 2005 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Michigan and featured wrestlers from the Raw and SmackDown! brands. The first of the main events was an interpromotional 5-on-5 Survivor Series match, a type of elimination match, between Team SmackDown! (Batista, Rey Mysterio, John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL), Bobby Lashley, and Randy Orton) and Team Raw (Shawn Michaels, Kane, The Big Show, Carlito, and Chris Masters). The other main event was a standard wrestling match between wrestlers from the Raw brand, in which WWE Champion John Cena defended his title against Kurt Angle. Another match was a Last Man Standing match between Triple H and Ric Flair.
Saturday Night's Main Event was a professional wrestling television program produced by WWE. It aired occasionally from 1985 to 1992, under the World Wrestling Federation banner on NBC in place of Saturday Night Live. At the time of the original airing it was a rare example of professional wrestling being broadcast on an over-the-air commercial television network after the 1950s. It coincided with and contributed to the apogee of the "second golden age" of professional wrestling in the United States. In a time when weekly programming consisited primarily of established stars dominating enhancement talent, Saturday Night's Main Event was made up entirely of star vs. star bouts. After leaving NBC in 1991, it aired twice on Fox in 1992 before disappearing for over a decade. When WWE's flagship show, Raw returned to the USA Network in 2005, Saturday Night's Main Event was revived in 2006 as a "special series" to air on occasion on NBC as part of a deal between WWE and NBC Universal. The Raw, SmackDown, and ECW brand rosters were featured on the show.
