Heroes of Wrestling - Overview

Overview

Playing off the recent rise in popularity of pro wrestling at the time, Bill Stone, president of Fosstone Productions organized what was intended to be a series of pay-per-view (PPV) events consisting of wrestling stars from the 1980s and early 1990s. Stone had three subsequent PPV shows (to be broadcast on a quarterly schedule) already in the planning stages if the first one achieved the break-even point of 40,000 PPV buys. Heroes of Wrestling only did 29,000 PPV buys, so Stone scrapped all future shows. In addition, Stone was furious with the lackluster show itself, and especially the antics of Jake "The Snake" Roberts. The show was heavily criticized and ridiculed by the wrestling press, some going as far as calling it the worst wrestling PPV event ever produced. Heroes of Wrestling was declared a failure by the wrestling mainstream and was recognized as the worst major wrestling PPV of 1999 by the Wrestling Observer newsletter, and throughout the years has called the tag team match between the Bushwackers and Sheik/Volkoff one of the worst wrestling matches ever if not the worst. Observer editor Dave Meltzer gave that match the number of "Absolute Zero," while Bryan Alvarez of Figure Four Weekly gave it "minus more stars than there are stars in the universe, and the universe is infinite".