Missing Episode/Professional Wrestling

• In the era before VCRs and cable television, many promotions (from tiny local promotions to those covering entire regions of the country) had their own syndicated programs. Until the late 1970s/early 1980s, videotape (for those promotions that could afford it) was an expensive commodity, meaning that once a show aired it was reused for taping a future week's show. That, plus the perceived lack of future interest in classic wrestling programs (some stations destroyed the films once aired) probably means that, except for those who are lucky enough to have preserved videotapes/films of the programs, the weekly syndicated programs of many promotions -- especially the smaller ones -- are forever lost to history.
  • That said, World Wrestling Entertainment has hundreds of thousands of hours of videotapes and films of classic matches, including its classic syndicated and cable programs (at least from the early-1980s forward), plus programs and matches from now-defunct rivals including the NWA, WCW, ECW and AWA.
  • Some larger independent promotions have syndicated shows that are only shown regionally, and may only be clip shows. Usually this isn't a big deal, but occasionally a really good match takes place, and with the exception of the live audience is never seen in full by anyone. (Usually, the matches are edited for time, placement of commercials and to remove "dull" moments.)
    • Arguably the best example of one of these is an ECW in 2000 between Yoshihiro Tajiri and Psicosis. For some background info - Psicosis was running out his WCW contract and planning to go to ECW, and the mutants were very high on the possible matches. Psicosis and Tajiri outperformed even the mutant's expectations and put on a near-5star match. But... it aired on ECW's syndicated show instead of ECW on TNN, and the whole thing to date hasn't been seen.
• Rey Mysterio's WCW career from the point he was unmasked to the demise of the promotion will never be officially marketed by WWE thanks to the fact that they want to keep his face a mystery.
  • That's not the only reason. He was forced to remove his mask by WCW or he would be fired, and so he would like to forget that it ever happened. He still has to wrestle without it on his occasional appearances in Mexican promotions, as per their 'once off, the mask stays off' rules.
• Dragon Gate has a weekly television show, but they're only allotted one hour. So they record the show and then "clip" the matches (and occasionally omit some less important ones) to fit the TV show. The full matches are never seen by anyone aside from the live fans.
• Several title changes of the WWF's major titles have never been recorded -- or if they were, were never shown on television. Two prime examples came early in the history of the Intercontinental Championship:
  • Pedro Morales winning the title from arrogant weightlifting hero Ken Patera. The match took place December 8, 1980 -- the night of the murder of John Lennon -- at New York's Madison Square Garden. It is unclear whether that night's card was televised (as the venue's cards routinely were through 1992) on New York's MSG channel, but if it was the broadcast would have been pre-empted due to breaking news coverage of Lennon's death. (Lennon was shot at about the time of the Morales-Patera match.)
  • Tito Santana defeating the evil Magnificent Muraco on February 11, 1984, for the title. The most common explanation for the lost footage was that, in taping matches for later broadcast, there was no more videotape available to tape the Santana-Muraco match. Only brief clips from the match exist today and were later included as part of several video releases showcasing the title's history.
• Over The Edge 1999 is one of the few PPVs to not have appeared on video or repeat. This is because Owen Hart died whilst he was making his entrance from the ceiling. The footage of Owen falling exists in the vaults but on the PPV itself it was replaced by a different camera facing the crowd. Owen's wife has filed a lawsuit against WWE to ensure they don't release the footage, so it is unlikely we'll see it.
• Most, if not all, matches involving Chris Benoit will likely never be re-aired or -- with the exception of supercard releases such as Wrestlemania -- included in future video releases, due to the circumstances surrounding his death and the deaths of his wife and son.