This is a super niche topic that I can't imagine anybody else here caring about (and why would they?) but I've always been curious about the 80s boom (and 90s fall) of wrestling in my hometown. Tonight I finally remembered to research the topic.

Baltimore had historically been a WWF city during the territory era. They ran shows here approximately once a month. Growing up in the 80s & 90s Bruno Sammartino was big with dads. I never knew a single dad who ever mentioned Backlund, Morales, Strongbow, Putski, etc. It was always Bruno, and Bruno alone. 

Baltimore was one of the hottest wrestling towns in America during the mid 80s wrestling boom. WWF was still running shows here approximately once a month. NWA also expanded north into Baltimore and started drawing big monthly(?) houses almost immediately. A lot of guys from the 80s boom (Flair, Cornette, Hogan, JR, etc.) have said Baltimore was one of their favorite towns to work during that era. 

By the mid 90s Baltimore had seemingly dried up as a wrestling town. WWF only ran one PPV here during the entire 90s and not a single Raw taping until 1998. We did fare a little better with WCW, but the monthly house shows were a thing of the past. 

I'm going to take a look at every Baltimore show from 1980-2000ish starting with the 80s. Getting this info from  www.thehistoryofwwe.com/baltimore80s.htm Their records are very detailed, though I do take their attendance figures, like all wrestling attendance numbers, with a grain of salt.

1980- 10 WWF shows drawing between 9,000-12,500
1981- 9 WWF shows drawing between 8,700-11,941
1982- Only 7 WWF shows drawing between 8,900-12,800
1983- 10 WWF shows drawing between 8,000-12,800 (records incomplete)

1984 (17 shows)- 11 WWF shows drawing between 9,000- sellout. Records Incomplete
-6 Georgia Championship Wrestling shows. The only one we have records was the first which drew 7,500- a fairly strong number for a debut show.
*The birth of the Baltimore Wresting War with GCW, which was attempting its own nationwide expansion, being the first to challenge WWF.

1985 (21 shows)- 11 WWF shows drawing between 7,800-multiple 13,300
           8 joint JCP/AWA shows drawing between 5,600 for the first to "sellout"
           2 AWA shows. The only one we have records for drew a paltry 2,900
           There's also this...
"2/9/85: The Civic Center was used as a film site for the movie 'Blood Circus,' a wrestling/sci-fi film featuring Ox Baker and Woman. About 2,8000 fans paid $9.95 apiece to be extras in the movie. The movie had limited screenings in 1987 and was never mass produced for home video."
*I had never heard of those joint JCP/AWA shows. Also never knew AWA ran here. Pretty cool. Wrestling is booming in Baltimore with a show every 2.5 weeks.

1986 (22 shows)- 12 WWF shows including a Prime Time taping, a Superstars taping, and The Slammy's(!) drawing between a low 5,000 to a huge 14,000.
           2 joint JCP/AWA shows including something called Battlestar 86 which drew a 13,000+ sellout
           8 JCP shows drawing between 5,500-14,000 sellout
*Wrestling continues to boom in Baltimore with one more show than the previous year.

1987 (21 shows)- Down to 9 WWF shows drawing between a paltry 3,500-12,000+ sellout
         11 JCP shows including the two night Crockett Cup tournament drawing between 4,000-13,500. Looks like JCP was actually winning the War for Baltimore.
         1 POWW show. Pretty sure this women's fed was an offshoot of GLOW.
*Still running a ton of shows but there will be far less in '88. Looks like '87 is the year they burnt out the town.

1988 (15 shows)- Only 5 WWF shows including a SNME tv taping. Only shows with records had mediocre crowds of 5,500 & 7,000
         10 JCP shows including a tv taping and Great American Bash '88 drawing between 5,000-13,000. But the real highlight was drawing 10,000 during a freakin' snow storm. I remember Cornette talking about this on one of his shoots.

*JCP is officially whipping WWF in a historically WWF town. I never knew it got this lopsided.

1989 (12 shows)- WWF only ran 2 shows this year! One drew 6,500. The other drew 14,000+. Hogan is huge here. WWF itself, not so much.
10 NWA shows including Great American Bash drawing between 4,500-12,500 sellout

Final 80s Stats/Thoughts

86 WWF shows including 3 tv tapings drawing between 3,500-14,000+. Hogan outdrew Backlund on average, but pre-Hogan WWF actually drew better than Hogan era WWF if Hogan wasn't on the card.

39 JCP/NWA shows including a tv taping, 2 pay per views, and a supercard. JCP didn't run a JCP exclusive card here until 1986. Within 2 years they owned this historically WWF town. I knew they drew well here but I never knew they drew that well. Pretty crazy. But it does make sense in a way. Growing up in the 90s, and even today to a large extent, most of the wrestling fans I'd run into at baseball games, the mall, concerts, etc. who were 5-10 years older than I was LOVED Ric Flair & The Horsemen, and were more likely to talk about Dusty Rhodes than Randy Savage.

*Now you could make excuses for WWF here if you wanted to. WWF did run a lot more towns than NWA. They didn't necessarily need Baltimore the way the NWA did. But the fact still remains. WWF ran 12 shows here in 1986. That number had plummeted down to 2 in 1989.

10 joint JCP/AWA shows including a supercard which drew a 13,000+ sellout.

6 Georgia Championship Wrestling shows with the first being the only one we have an attendance record for. It drew a solid 7,500.

2 AWA exclusive shows. The only one we have records for drew a lousy 2,900.

1 POWW show

*1990s tomorrow

Continuing this into the 90s.....

Before I go any further I want to address ECW. ECW never ran a show in Baltimore, and only had a handful of shows in the northeastern corner of Maryland (basically Philly suburbs) back in their Eastern Championship Wrestling days. The reason for this is because Maryland had one of the strictest athletic commissions in the entire nation. Blood was banned in Maryland, for example. NWA worked this into the story of Flair vs. Luger @ Great American Bash '88 in a fun FU to the notorious Maryland State Athletic Commission.

1990 (9)- Only 1 WWF house show with incomplete results. This is a total NWA town at this point.
               8 NWA shows including Great American Bash. A 9th show was cancelled due to snowstorm. Attendance was way down though, bottoming out at a pathetic 1,700 for a June house show headlined by Flair/JYD. Even Great American Bash only drew 8,900 paid.

1991 (9)- 0 WWF shows! How sad.
               9 WCW shows including Great American Bash. Baltimore was dead as a wrestling town with attendance numbers such as 1000, 1300 & 1400. At another show children got in for a mere 54 cents. Even Great American Bash only drew 7,000 paid.

1992 (11)- WWF was back with 3 shows. Attendance for the two with records were 2,200 & 3,100. 
 8 WCW shows including a TV taping where Simmons won the belt from Vader. Attendance was up from 90 & 91 as they drew between 2,500-5,000.

1993 (7)- 3 WWF shows drawing between 1,800 (lowest WWF # yet) in February and 5,800 in October. Told ya babyface Lex Luger was a draw here.
               4 WCW shows drawing between 1,000-4,000. No WCW shows after May. Perhaps they had given up on B-More.
*7 shows marks the lowest number since 1982. This is also the first year since 1985 without a tv taping or PPV in Baltimore.

1994 (3)- 3 WWF shows including their first Baltimore ppv- King of the Ring. KOTR allegedly drew 12,000 while the house shows drew 4,500 & 5,000.
               0 WCW shows
*A mere 3 shows is easily the lowest in modern Baltimore wrestling history up to this point.

1995 (3)- 2 WWF house shows drawing 2,500 & 3,000
               WCW held their Super Brawl pay per view here in front of 10,000 paid.

1996 [6]- 3 WWF house shows drawing between the oddly specific numbers of 4,016-6,559. Business is finally on the upswing for the first time in years.
 3 WCW shows including Great American Bash returning to Baltimore for the first time since 1991. These shows drew solid crowds between 6,500-8,000. 

1997 (5)- 1 WWF house show drawing 4,182. 
               4 WCW shows including two Nitro's which were the first tv tapings here since 1992. The Nitro's drew 8,058 & 11,040 (sellout). 

1998 [6]- 2 WWF Raw tapings. Both were sellouts. I was at both. First WWF tv tapings here since way back in 1988.
  4 WCW shows including Great American Bash and a Nitro. GAB drew 12,810. The house show even drew 10,076.

1999 (7)- 3 WWF shows including a Smackdown taping I attended. Both Smackdown and the house show with attendance figures were sellouts.
4 WCW shows including Great American Bash and a Nitro. GAB drew 11,672 but a September house show only drew 3,190 while only 4,589 tickets were sold for a December Nitro. 

Final 90s Thoughts and Stats 

66 overall shows. A decline of 78(!) from Baltimore's 80s wrestling heyday. WWF alone came to Baltimore 86 times in the 80s.

21 WWF shows including a pay per view, 2 Raw tapings, and a Smackdown taping.

45 NWA/WCW shows including 6 pay per views (5 Great American Bash's & a Super Brawl), 4 Nitro's, and a pre-Nitro tv taping.

*Will take a look at the 2000s later.

Let's travel back in time to the days of Bruno Sammartino real quick.

1960s- WWWF ran 77 shows at what was then known as the Baltimore Civic Center. This works out to approximately one show per month if you factor in the first of these shows didn't take place until August 1963. Attendance records are sketchy at best with the lowest recorded number being 7,350 (no Bruno) while the highest was 12,535 for Bruno vs. future NWA champ Gene Kiniski. They cracked 10,000 for the first time in February 1965.

*For some reason there are no (listed) shows from September 1969-May 1971. No idea whether this is just bad record keeping or whether there was some kind of building/contractual dispute keeping WWWF out of town for those 20 months.

1970s- WWWF ran 88 shows at the Baltimore Civic Center from May 1971-December 1979, which works out to about one show every 5 weeks. The lowest attendance figure I could find was a paltry 2,000 for Pedro Morales vs. future WWWF Champion Stan Stasiak while the highest recorded numbers were a pair of 11,000 shows in 1979.

*No other promotion ran a show at Baltimore's main arena during the 60s or 70s.

2000s

2000 (5)- WWF ran 3 shows- a Raw taping and two Smackdown tapings. I was at all 3, and two of the three were confirmed sellouts.
-WCW ran a house show and Great American Bash. The house show drew a pathetic 1,733 while the Bash drew 7,031 paid.

2001 (3)- WWF ran 2 shows- a Smackdown taping and a house show which drew a very healthy 11,013.
-WCW ran 1 last show in Baltimore- a January Nitro/Thunder taping.

2002- 3 WWF shows including a Raw taping I attended.

2003- 2 WWE shows including No Mercy which I attended and a Smackdown taping which I did not. That Smackdown was the first WWF tv taping or PPV in Baltimore I had missed since KOTR 94. Speaking of KOTR 94, No Mercy was the first WWF pay per view in Baltimore since that show 9 years earlier.

2004- 3 WWE shows including a Raw taping which I attended. 

2005- 2 WWE shows including a Smackdown taping which I did not attend. At 4,000 & 5,500 these were the lowest drawing WWE Baltimore shows in nearly a decade.

2006- 2 WWE shows including a Raw taping and the No Way Out pay per view. I did not attend either, though NWO was a sellout. 

2007- 2 WWE shows including a Smackdown/ECW taping I did not attend.

2008- 2 WWE shows including a Backlash ppv and a Smackdown/ECW taping. I did not attend either show.

2009- 2 WWE shows including a Raw taping and a Smackdown/ECW taping. Once again I did not attend either.

2000s Stats and Stuff

-Only 26 total shows. For comparison there were some years in the 80s with 21-22 Baltimore shows.

-23 WWF shows including 3 pay per views, 5 Raw tapings, and 8 Smackdown tapings. The one bright spot in 2000s Baltimore wrestling is we got a lot more WWF pay per views and tv tapings in the 2000s than we had in the 90s, or even in our 80s heyday.

-3 WCW shows including a Nitro taping and their final Great American Bash pay per view.

*2010s records appear to be incomplete and I don't really care much anyway.

In conclusion I am going to share a neat little two part article on Great Moments In Baltimore Wrestling History by Kevin Eck. 

www.baltimoresun.com/bs-mtblog-2010-04-top_20_moments_in_baltimore_wrestling_history_nos_110-story.html
www.baltimoresun.com/bs-mtblog-2010-04-top_20_moments_in_baltimore_wrestling_history_nos_1120-story.html

Mr. Eck is a longtime writer for our big local newspaper The Baltimore Sun. He has been a wrestling fan since 1973. Eck hosted a local wrestling radio show here around 1999, though it's not the one I often bring up. I did listen to his show a fair amount though. Just not as much as the 96-97 Saturday night wrestling radio show. Anyway, Eck then went on to become the last editor of WCW Magazine. He came back to the Baltimore Sun once WCW folded. A few years after that he got back in the wrestling business as a WWE writer from 2011-2014.