It may not have seemed like it at the time, but the six-man tag match pitting Madcap Moss and the Street Profits against Austin Theory and Alpha Academy at Clash at the Castle last year in Wales may have been a bout that will go down in history.
Don’t remember that one? It might be because it took place on the pre-show, or kickoff show, as WWE likes to call them. It’s the hour-long (usually) combination of talking heads, predictions and short interviews that the company does ahead of every premium live event.
They also used to feature a match or two. But the six-man tag mentioned above was the last WWE kickoff show match to take place, as none of the PLEs held since Clash at the Castle have had one.
Does that mean kickoff show matches are done forever? WWE hasn’t made any kind of announcement to that effect, but considering we’ve rolled through Royal Rumble and WrestleMania without them (and ‘Mania was two nights, so if you were going to make an exception to the rule, that would be the time), it certainly looks possible.
Dave Scherer of PW Insider thinks so too. In his most recent Q&A, Scherer had this to say:
Kickoff matches? I think they are done and that’s fine by me. They add nothing to the show in my opinion. They aren’t trying to entice people to buy a PPV anymore so they aren’t needed.
He’s made this point before, and it’s a sound one. In the days when big WWE cards were still legitimate pay-per-views, kickoff show matches were a free preview of sorts, offering some in-ring action in the hopes that a few more people would buy the show (or even remember it was on, in some cases).
Almost everyone who watches today’s WWE premium live events does so through Peacock in the U.S. or WWE Network everywhere else. They’re all subscribers who have paid their monthly fee, so there’s no reason to dangle a carrot in front of them as there’s nothing else to sell.
An argument could even be made that the kickoff show itself isn’t necessary at this point, but that’s an entirely different discussion.
Contrast that to AEW, which still operates on a traditional pay-per-view basis for its biggest shows. Tony Khan always includes matches on every kickoff show, which is usually called the Buy-In: both because AEW loves its casino/gambling references and because that’s literally what the company is hoping people do when they see some free wrestling ahead of time.
All of which is to say that the WWE kickoff show match may have become a relic of the past with little fanfare. If you watched Moss and the Street Profits beat Theory and Alpha Academy last fall, you can say you witnessed the end of an era, even if you didn’t realize it at the time.