By Michael Moore, PWTorch Collectibles specialist

Colorado is a far different place today than it was during Verne Gagne’s heyday and throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 2015 WWE can run shows in Loveland, Denver, and Colorado Springs over the course of three or four days and pack all three venues. It wasn’t always that way.

Denver was a Verne Gagne town. The AWA promoted more than 170 shows in the 1970s, regularly putting between 7,000 and 10,000 fans in Denver’s Auditorium Arena in the 1970s. Sure, Denver embraced Hulkamania and the WWF in the mid-'80s. But the crowds that would flock to McNichols Sports Arena or the Denver Coliseum were made up of fans who watched Hulk Hogan ascend to superstardom in the AWA, and younger fans captured by the Rock & Wrestling movement.

In between the boom periods of Hulkamania and the Attitude Era, the WWF couldn’t give away enough tickets to fill even smaller sized venues in Colorado. After 1990, Denver crowds dwindled, and the WWF stopped running shows in Colorado Springs for nearly a decade. The WWF promoted just 23 shows in Denver in the 1990s.

Less than 24 hours before reading about Verne Gagne’s death, I was reading over the results of a WWF house show I had attended on June 14, 1996. What strikes me the most looking back on that event is the sheer amount of star power that was on that show, albeit with a bunch of guys like "Hunter Hearst Helmsley" who had not developed into the stars we know them today.

- Shawn Michaels, fresh into his first run as WWF champion, defeated Goldust.

- The Ultimate Warrior fought Vader to a double count-out. How many fans can say they ever saw a match between those two?

- The Undertaker (with Paul Bearer) defeated Mankind (Mick Foley).

- Steve Austin pinned Duke “the Dumpster” Droese in an early match on the show in front of a silent crowd. Nine days later, Austin would go on to win the King of the Ring tournament and give his famous “Austin 3:16” speech.

- Marc Mero pinned some guy named Hunter Hearst Helmsley.

- Justin “Hawk” Bradshaw (you may know him as JBL) squashed Barry Horowitz.

- Owen Hart lost to Savio Vega, and Davey Boy Smith lost to Ahmed Johnson by disqualification.

Some of the top wrestlers in WWF history competed on that show – in front of a nearly empty arena.

What struck me the most at that time, and has stuck with me to this day, was how cavernous the Denver Coliseum looked with such a tiny crowd. According to wrestlingdata.com, attendance for that show was 2,203. The Denver Coliseum could hold well in excess of 10,000 people for a wrestling show.

“This is really sad,” I said to an older fan sitting next to me.

He simply shrugged.

“Denver was always an AWA town,” he said matter-of-factly. “When the AWA went away, so did most of the wrestling fans.”

PWTorch Collectibles specialist Michael Moore can be reached at michaelmoorewriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @MMooreWriter.

Stay tuned for a Collectibles Card-related column on Verne Gagne later this week...

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