19 years ago today, WWF tapes the premiere episode of
Sunday Night Heat from the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, California.
By far, the most popular episode of the series was a special episode airing during halftime of Super Bowl XXXIII. Dubbed
Halftime Heat, the abbreviated show featured The Rock and Mankind fighting for the WWF Championship in the company’s first (and to this day, only) empty arena match.
With the addition of
Smackdown in August 1999,
Heat’s profile greatly decreased, with its matches taking place prior to
Smackdown tapings (it was around that time that WWF introduced
Jakked and
Metal, one-hour syndicated series in the vein of the old
WWF Superstars; matches for those shows would be taped prior to
RAW).
Heat also briefly experimented a magazine-style format, summarizing the week’s events on the company’s main shows via music videos.
In the fall of 2000,
Heat moved to MTV, with its shows broadcast live from WWF New York. Following the brand extension in April 2002, the show served as the B-show for
RAW (with the recently-introduced
Velocity doing the same for
Smackdown). By this time, ratings for
Heat had been in decline for some time (thanks in part to the introduction of
Smackdown).
Heat was moved from MTV to TNN (later renamed Spike TV) in March 2003, and would remain there until Viacom lost the rights to WWE programming in the fall of 2005.
With USA Network opting not to bring
Sunday Night Heat with them, the show was streamed for American audiences to WWE’s website and moved to Fridays, with the site also airing a 30-minute preshow prior to PPVs (the preshows were discontinued in April 2006), while the show continued to air internationally to fulfill programming commitments. The series ended on May 30, 2008 after 513 total episodes aired.
Of note, this show is Shane McMahon’s WWF on-camera debut (if you don’t count his time as referee Shane Stevens in the early 1990s).
- Edge defeated Jeff Jarrett.
- Darren Drozdov and The Headbangers (Mosh & Thrasher) defeated Kai En Tai (dikk Togo, Men's Teioh, and Sho Funaki).
- D-Lo Brown defeated Ken Shamrock to retain the WWF European Championship.
- The Nation (Owen Hart & The Rock) defeated Kane & Mankind in a #1 contender’s match for the WWF Tag Team Championship.
.. Let's not forgot Halftime Heat also. 
Heat was like the ultimate kickoff show for PPVs due to extra booking. The show died down in favor of Smackdown, but it was still a fun watch. Especially seeing some of the mid/undercard do their thing
.
