WWE Saturday Night's Main Event

The first iteration of the show replaced Saturday Night Live in its late night timeslot on an occasional basis throughout the year. At this time when weekly wrestling programs typically consisted primarily of squash matches featuring established stars dominating enhancement talent, Saturday Night's Main Event consisted almost entirely of star vs. star matches rarely seen on television, including title defenses and specialty matches. It coincided with and contributed to the apogee of the "second golden age" of professional wrestling in the United States; bolstered by regular in-ring appearances by WWF stars such as Hulk Hogan, Saturday Night's Main Event drew large audiences for much of its run, while a spin-off simply titled The Main Event aired annually on a Friday night in February beginning in 1988. After a fall in ratings, NBC dropped the specials and it was picked up by Fox, which aired two editions of the special on the network until canceling it in 1992.

In 2006, Saturday Night's Main Event was briefly revived as a series of prime time specials on NBC, as part of WWE's agreement with NBC Universal to air its weekly program Raw on USA Network. Five episodes aired as part of the revived run before it was discontinued in 2008. In April 2022, WWE repurposed the Saturday Night's Main Event title for house shows held on Saturday nights. In 2024, as part of an agreement moving WWE SmackDown from Fox to USA, WWE announced that it would revive Saturday Night's Main Event, airing on NBC and streaming on Peacock in the United States and on YouTube internationally. In August 2025, WWE announced that going forward, Saturday Night's Main Event would air exclusively on Peacock in the US.