Outside of the formation of The Corporate Ministry, and the aforementioned all-star tag team match that closed out the show, the pilot episode of “WWE SmackDown” was, to put it bluntly, a bit all over the place. This is 1999 WWE we are talking about here, the height of the Attitude Era where “car crash television” reigned supreme. So if you go back and watch this show for yourself, don’t be expecting any five-star classics because you’ll be majorly disappointed.
Including the main event, a total of seven matches took place on the two-hour broadcast, and none of the matches went longer than seven minutes. In fact, the total in-ring time for the pilot episode of “SmackDown” comes in at 24 minutes and two seconds which, for context, is shorter than the match John Cena had with Logan Paul at WWE Clash In Paris 2025.
Of course, the wrestling was the least important part of the show during this era, but some of the matches did have their moments. The first match in “SmackDown” history was between The Blue Blazer, played by the late Owen Hart, and Val Venis, with the masked man getting the victory. The Big Show would proceed to beat Test in under a minute, D’Lo Brown’s match with Droz ended in a disqualification, and the longest match on the show at seven minutes exactly featured Kane and X-Pac defending the WWE Tag Team Championships against The New Age Outlaws.
Ken Shamrock and Bradshaw would follow that with a No Holds Barred Street Fight which some fans have since called their match of the night. Mankind took less than two minutes to defeat The Big Bossman, and the main event of Steve Austin and The Rock defeating Triple H and The Undertaker sent the fans home happy.
The show is looked back on fondly for its historical significance, but from an in-ring perspective it isn’t going to blow anyone away from a quality standpoint. What made the pilot episode of “SmackDown” unique looking back on it was that it is a true representation of how popular WWE was at the time, and a time capsule of where the company was heading. Everyone who wrestled on the show got a reaction regardless of their placement, the old school stage set up that would evolve into something more grand, and the stories that were told had everyone hanging on everything that happened. You wouldn’t think this was a pilot, you’d see it as a bonus episode of “Raw” for how lively and energetic it was.
“SmackDown” has gone through many phases throughout its 26 year lifespan, some good, some not so good. But everything that has happened in those 26 years has been built off the success of this pilot, and for that, it has earned its place in history.