WWE has confirmed its first match for Saturday Night’s Main Event next month.
Cody Rhodes is set to defend the Undisputed WWE Championship against Kevin Owens on December 14 at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island, New York.
The match will be featured on WWE’s return to NBC with the two-hour broadcast also simulcast on Peacock as part of WWE’s renewal with Comcast along with the domestic rights to Friday Night SmackDown.
Rhodes and Owens had a segment this past Friday where Rhodes challenged Owens to decide when and where they would have a match with the Survivor Series and Saturday Night’s Main Event listed as options on the broadcast.
According to WrestleTix, there are nearly 11,000 tickets distributed for the December 14 show.
Saturday Night’s Main Event was launched in May 1985 overseen by Vince McMahon & Dick Ebersol as a replacement for Saturday Night Live in the 11:35 p.m. ET time slot. The inaugural special did an 8.8 rating and a 25 share meaning one-quarter of televisions in use were watching WWF programming.
The specials expanded to multiples per year and ran on NBC through April 1991 before it was dropped and had a short revival on Fox before its final airing in October 1992.
The franchise was revived when WWE returned to NBC Universal in October 2005 and part of the agreement called for two prime-time specials per year on the network. They revived Saturday Night’s Main Event in March 2006.
The specials ran until July 2008 and were replaced with other WWE programming to fulfill the terms of the deal and the Saturday Night’s Main Event concept was shelved until this latest resurrection.