Last night, the WWE held its first ever “House of Horrors match.” It did not go over well.
It was, basically, a fight in an abandoned, poorly-lit house. It was a pre-taped segment, made obvious when Randy Orton showed up to the house in a limo(!) in the dark of night. It was still sunny in San Jose, where WWE Payback was being held.
Orton and Bray Wyatt held an awkward fight in the house, one with lots of jump cuts and lots of reaction shots of Orton writhing in pain. It was hard to see. The two fought in the kitchen. They fought in a room where baby dolls hung from the ceiling. Orton stumbled around the house into a bunch of rooms that were kind of creepy. Finally, Wyatt dumped a refrigerator on top of Orton, then made the lights go from blue to red.
Wrestling promotions often fail when they attempt to hold matches outside of a ring. It just so happens that last summer there was a pretty good one. The promotion then known as TNA held a Jeff Hardy vs. Matt Hardy match, The Final Deletion, held on a compound the brothers own. It worked because it was intentionally cute and campy and silly and over the top. The House of Horrors match was just a boring, hard-to-see fight.
As such, it was not well-received. The crowd in San Jose booed it. Most of the real-time reaction on Twitter was negative. People were angry when the match seemed to just end with one wrestler getting into a limo. They got angrier when the match hit the ring for its conclusion: Wyatt appeared in the ring, but Randy Orton was behind him all along! Somehow this ended with Wyatt pinning Orton after interference from Jinder Mahal (previously seen working an angle with Rob Gronkowski) and his cohorts.
But one good thing came out of it. The Comeback points out that the actual house from the House of Horrors match is out there, and it is for sale. Orton and Wyatt fought at 39115 Business 10 Highway in Richmond, Missouri, about 45 minutes from Kansas City and 28 hours from San Jose.
The house is available for the low, low price of $36,000. That’s pretty cheap—plus you get to own the house where Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton had a horrible match! It’s almost as good as owning the actual backlot from the Hollywood Backlot Brawl.