WWE Vengeance


WWE Vengeance was a professional wrestling pay-per-view event produced by professional wrestling promotion WWE. The inaugural event took place on December 9, 2001 and replaced the regularly scheduled WWE Armageddon for that year. The 2002 event featured the Raw and SmackDown! brands. The event was made exclusive to the SmackDown brand in 2003, and beginning in 2004 it was made exclusive to the Raw brand. In 2007, following WrestleMania, all PPV events became tri-branded. Vengeance took over WWF Fully Loaded's scheduled date in July 2002 and later moved to June in 2005, switching schedules with The Great American Bash. The 2007 event was a crossover event with Night of Champions called. In 2008, Vengeance was retired in favor of keeping Night of Champions as its own event. In 2011, Vengeance would return to replace WWE Bragging Rights on the October 2011 event card. In 2012, the Vengeance name was removed from the scheduled event calendar for that year.

History

Vengeance was a pay-per-view event consisting of a main event and undercard that feature championship matches and other various matches. The first event was produced as a pay-per-view event for the World Wrestling Federation, the former name of WWE. The inaugural event took place on December 9, 2001 under the name Vengeance at the San Diego Sports Arena in San Diego, California and aired live on PPV. The event was a replacement for Armageddon as the name was considered potentially offensive to victims of the September 11 attacks.
In 2002, WWF was court ordered to change their name, which resulted in the promotion changing its name to WWE. Earlier in the year, WWF held a draft that split its roster into two distinctive brands of wrestling, Raw and SmackDown, and the ECW brand was added in 2006. Before the draft, matches featured wrestlers from the roster without any limitations; after the draft, matches only consisted of wrestlers from their distinctive brands. The first Vengeance event to be produced under the WWE banner and with roster limitations was Vengeance, which took place on July 21, 2002, taking the slot formerly taken by Fully Loaded and Invasion in previous years. The following year, WWE announced that PPV events, excluding WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Survivor Series, and the Royal Rumble, would be made exclusive to each brand; Vengeance was made exclusive to the SmackDown! brand in 2003 and in 2004 was made exclusive to the Raw brand. After three years of being produced as a brand exclusive event, Vengeance was the final Vengeance event that was brand exclusive, as WWE announced that PPV events from April 2007 onwards would feature all three brands of WWE. Only one Vengeance show was held following the change, before it was replaced with Night of Champions the following year, although it returned for 2011, now held in October slot replacing Bragging Rights.

Dates and venues