Rocco's Dark match

This would be an easy try out for Regal as he was ten times better than Maxine

This happened in 1989 and again in 1991 (Dave Taylor, Tony St. Clair, & Steve Regal defeated Drew McDonald, Chic Cullen, & Johnny South when Taylor pinned McDonald and The Brooklyn Brawler pinned Steve Casey) As noted, a dark match is one that happens before the televised matches. It's partly to warm up the crowd but mainly to check all the camera equipment is working, the lighting is correct and so on. The reason for having the Brits on these two tours was that at the time the Home Office treated pro wrestling as a sport for immigration purposes. That meant the biggest events of the tour, namely the televised ones, were treated as a sporting tournament. One of the conditions for giving working visas to the US was that that some British competitors had to be allowed to "enter the tournament". WWF used the wrestlers to both tick this bureaucratic box and serve the dark match role. They weren't treated very respectably and weren't allowed in the main dressing rooms. The Home Office then reclassified wrestling as entertainment, removing the need to use British talent on the shows. (Steve Regal vs Brian Maxine was the dark match in a late 1991 Royal Albert Hall TV show, though that was more of a tryout for Regal.)

Rocco, Finlay and Murphy defeated Al Perez, Tim Horner and Dusty Wolfe. Bizarrely, the fans were cheering for the Americans.

I was at the show at Docklands Arena. It was the very first WWF event in the U.K. The headlining bout was a world title match between Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan. Bear with me and I will get the details of Rocco's match, which was indeed on before the official opening bout.

Dunno if it is correct.A Dark Match is one that was not shown on TV.