WWE Halftime Heat Start Time, How to Watch

WWE's Halftime Heat event will return for the first time in 20 years on Sunday, as Velveteen [...]

By Connor Casey

WWE's Halftime Heat event will return for the first time in 20 years on Sunday, as Velveteen Dream, Aleister Black and Ricochet will take on NXT Champion Tommaso Ciampa, NXT North American Champion Johnny Gargano and Adam Cole in a six-man tag match.

The match will take place at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida and will be broadcast on the WWE Network as well as the WWE's YouTube Channel, Facebook page, Twitter account and on WWE.com.

Super Bowl LIII between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams is scheduled for a 6:30 Eastern Standard Time kickoff at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. Halftime Heat will begin once the game reaches halftime, and will air throughout the Super Bowl halftime show headlined by Maroon 5.

WWE Hall of Famer and NXT trainer Shawn Michaels, who announced that the match would be happening on the Royal Rumble pre-show, will be a special guest commentator for the match.

The bout was made after the controversial closing moments of NXT TakeOver: Phoenix, where Ciampa and Gargano stood on the entrance ramp as a reunited DIY to celebrate their championship reigns. But once the cameras stopped rolling Dream, Ricochet, Black and Cole all eventually made their way out in front of the crowd, leading to a brawl between the six men that wound up spilling into the backstage area. The fight only stopped after Triple H intervened.

WWE's first Halftime Heat special took place in 1999 during the halftime of Super Bowl LIII and saw Mankind defeat Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to win the WWF Championship in an Empty Arena match.

Foley reflected on that famously brutal match in an interview with ESPN this week.

"I don't know when the idea came to Mr. McMahon to take that giant audience and kind of keep it for ourselves, but I do remember being asked about it — and then it was my suggestion that The Rock and I do an empty arena match," Foley said.

WWE decided to pre-tape the bout to make sure it perfectly fit in between the end of the first half at the start of the third quarter, and opted for an Empty Arena match to prevent its result from being leaked out ahead of time. The match is regarded by many fans as a classic in both men's careers.

"The fact that it was so completely different than anything on television was also indicative of the chances we regularly took, whether it was on the microphone or in the ring," Foley said. "Later on, [that] really led to great chemistry as a tag team. We were really rolling, and it was understood that The Rock was going to go on to bigger and better things — one of them being a WrestleMania main event with Stone Cold Steve Austin."

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