What’s the story?
In a recent episode of his podcast, Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard, former WWE official Bruce Prichard opened up on why the King of the Ring pay-per-view was scrapped by the WWE post its 10th edition held in the year 2002. According to Prichard, the driving force behind this decision was none other than WWE Chairman Vince McMahon. On McMahon’s opinion about the PPV, he said:
“Vince McMahon didn't like it.”
In case you didn’t know...
The history of the King of the Ring tournament dates back to 8 July 1985, when its first ever edition took place at the Sullivan Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. However, starting 1993, an eponymous pay-per-view was introduced which centred around the tournament and it remained a regular feature on the WWE calendar for a decade.
After a three-year hiatus from 2003 to 2005, the King of the Ring returned as a SmackDown-exclusive event with its final match taking place at the Judgement Day pay-per-view in 2006. Three more editions of the tournament have taken place ever since in 2008, 2010 and 2015 respectively but none of these has been part of a pay-per-view.
Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart has been the most successful superstar in King of the Ring history with 2 consecutive wins in 1991 and 1993. Former WWE star Wade Barrett is the last man to have won the tournament in 2015.
The heart of the matter
On his podcast, Bruce Prichard elaborated on the reason why Vince McMahon disliked the King of the Ring pay-per-view. He claimed that it was the WWE’s lowest selling pay-per-view of the year mainly because it was held during the summer season. So McMahon thought it was best to change it up completely and pulled it out of the calendar.
Here’s the explanation Prichard gave about the pay-per-view being discontinued:
“It was probably our lowest sales pay per view of the year, which is crazy because in the territorial days, the summer months were money months and for WWF the summer months were slower months. The Pay Per Views during the summer didn’t do all that well, and King of the Ring wasn’t a large grossing pay per view, so Vince wasn’t really excited about it, and decided to change it up.”
What next?
Although we can perhaps rule out the possibility of the King of the Ring pay-per-view returning after such a long gap, the tournament may certainly make a comeback at some point in the future.
Sportskeeda’s Take
The King of the Ring tournament may be of great historical value to the WWE, but for it to really work well, there needs to be some added incentive for its participants. The best thing that could be done is giving the tournament winner a #1 contender’s spot for either of the two major WWE titles.
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