In Your House

The "In Your House" logo, 1995–1997.

In Your House was a pay-per-view series created by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) that aired throughout the latter half of the 1990s.

The original concept was that, in months when the WWF was not holding one of its major PPV events (WrestleMania, King of the Ring, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and Royal Rumble, which at the time ran for three hours and retailed for $29.95), they would offer a two-hour PPV, priced at $14.95. The price was raised to $19.95 starting in December 1995 with In Your House 5. The WWF did this in response to a move by competitor World Championship Wrestling (WCW) to increase their annual pay-per-view events (in 1995, WCW held 9 PPV events; in 1996, 10 and finally started airing monthly events in 1997). Notwithstanding the addition of more WWF events, WCW's events regularly ran between 2.5–3 hours. Starting in September 1997, the WWF expanded all of its In Your House events to three hours, thus matching the runtime of its major PPV events.

The WWF retired the In Your House branding for its monthly pay-per-views following April 1999's Backlash: In Your House event, as the company moved to install permanent names for each of its monthly events. The similar branding of this series was then used for the NXT TakeOver series in 2014.

The WWF Championship would never change hands at any event in the In Your House series. A new champion was crowned only once, in a four corners elimination match for the vacant title at February 1997's In Your House 13: Final Four; Shawn Michaels was forced to relinquish the championship due to injury three days earlier, turning what was originally a number one contender's match into a title match.

History

The first 6 In Your House events did not have subtitles. Some of these were added soon after the event while others were added years later, most notably on the WWE 24/7 Classics On Demand channel. The retroactive subtitles were "In Your House: Premiere",^[1] "In Your House: The Lumberjacks" (in reference to the main event),^[2] "In Your House: Triple Header" (in reference to the main event),^[3] "In Your House: Great White North" (in reference to its Canadian venue),^[4] "In Your House: Seasons Beatings" (in reference to being held close to Christmas)^[5] and "In Your House: Rage in the Cage" (in reference to the main event).^[6] The actual first event to officially start using a subtitle was the 7th event, "In Your House: Good Friends, Better Enemies" (referring to the main event of Shawn Michaels vs. Diesel). Subsequent subtitles included "It's Time" (Vader's catchphrase), "Buried Alive" (describing the main event match), "A Cold Day in Hell" (contrasting characters of main eventers Steve Austin and The Undertaker), "Rock Bottom" (The Rock's finishing move and the decline of his opponent Mankind), "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" (in reference to being held on Valentine's Day), among others. Gradually the subtitles became main titles (whereas the PPV was not named In Your House: Fully Loaded but Fully Loaded: In Your House), until regular named shows such as No Way Out, Backlash, and Judgment Day took over. The first of these, "Ground Zero: In Your House" was also the first In Your House PPV to be a three-hour event.

The WWF gave away a brand-new house in the Hunter's Creek subdivision area in Orlando, Florida on the first PPV to a randomly selected viewer.

Dates and venues

References

See also

• TNA One Night Only
• NXT TakeOver series