WWE Network... It's Here

[sek69]

There's also the weird dynamic where Ric is clearly living vicariously through her and she's stated several times she only got into wrestling because it was Reid's dream and she was fullfilling it for him. Every time I see them together it's like there's an undercurrent of "Dad finally is paying attention to me" to it that makes it uncomfortable. 

[flyonthewall2983]

Her body language in the 30 For 30 alone communicated to me something much deeper than her just showing bratty behavior around her dad, and that yeah she's only doing this for his affection. 

[flyonthewall2983]

On 8/23/2018 at 8:47 AM, Blehschmidt said:

I wonder why the first 5 minutes of the original War Games is cut off in the War Games collection on the Network. I am almost certain it was intact on the War Games blu-ray they released a while back. Weird.

Superbrawl '95 starts in the middle of the first match, which struck me as odd. 

[sek69]

Going through the end of 1982 Mid Atlantic and so far "Masa" Fuchi on excursion and Rick "Rudd" (Rude) have showed up for jobber duty. I love when random stuff like that happens. 

[LibSuperstar]

Anybody enjoying the All-Star Wrestling episodes?

[Ricky Jackson]

I watched a ton of the drop early in the year. I've only watched 3 of the recent batch, and was drunk at the time. I love this stuff but week to week it gets very repetitive if you binge watch 

[DeanColes1987]

Savage/Tito No DQ at MSG is such an awesome brawl and if it happened a few weeks earlier at WM2 it would be hyped as one of the best WWF matches of the decade.

Gorilla and Ladd forgetting/not knowing the stipulation and calling for Savage to be disqualified is such an 80s WWF thing to happen.

[CarpetCrawler]

Tito is awesome.  He has an awesome match on the March 1985 MSG show that's like two weeks away from Wrestlemania.  The crowd clearly knew he wasn't going to win the title two weeks before Valentine's big match with JYD but Tito is so good that he has the crowd in the palm of his hand with the near falls.  He doesn't get nearly enough love.

[TheDuke]

Thats interesting. I thought WWF only went to MSG once a month but they went twice in march that year. Did they skip the MSG show in Feb or April that year I wonder.

[Ricky Jackson]

I think it was more because Mania was considered a bonus show that month and the show with the Tito vs Valentine Lumberjack was the regular show

[Lee]

12 hours ago, TheDuke said:

Thats interesting. I thought WWF only went to MSG once a month but they went twice in march that year. Did they skip the MSG show in Feb or April that year I wonder.

They ran 13 MSG shows that year, the regular monthly one plus WrestleMania (so two in March). So yes, they ran February and April too. 

[C.S.]

The Foley 20 Years of Hell special was pretty good.

WWE really could learn from how stand-up shows are presented these days though. The Foley venue looked like a cheap, low-rent, subpar version of ECW while the stuff you see on Netflix or wherever have production values that are the equivalent of today's RAW.

I watched the Hell in a Cell match after, and it still holds up. A technical masterpiece? Hardly. But from a storytelling standpoint, it blows away anything Seth Rollins, Dolph Ziggler, and the like have ever been able to accomplish at any point in their careers. "THIS IS AWESOME!" and ROH are the worst things ever to happen to wrestling.

[SPS]

7 hours ago, C.S. said:

"THIS IS AWESOME!" and ROH are the worst things ever to happen to wrestling.

How so? curious you chose those two things specifically.

[C.S.]

4 hours ago, SPS said:

How so? curious you chose those two things specifically.

I should really stop posting late at night... 

I was exaggerating, but basically my point is this:

We've seen a rise in so-called "workrate matches" (think current Seth, Dolph, Adam Cole, and those types) that are terribly worked IMO and feature bland vanilla geeks with zero personality who are impossible to get behind and invest in. I can see Seth rising above that, but he'd be the exception.

Give me a rough around the edges, messy, not at all technical match like Foley/Taker HIAC (or Hansen/Vader) any day of the week because that had actual heart, told a good story, and featured characters that mattered. What is Seth's character? Dolph's? "I steal the show. Every. Single. Night. No one else can do what I do in that ring!" STFU, Dolph, you obnoxious geek!

[SPS]

1 minute ago, C.S. said:

I should really stop posting late at night... 

I was exaggerating, but basically my point is this:

We've seen a rise in so-called "workrate matches" (think current Seth, Dolph, Adam Cole, and those types) that are terribly worked IMO and feature bland vanilla geeks with zero personality that are impossible to get behind and invest in. I can see Seth rising above that, but he'd be the exception. Give me a rough around the edges, messy, not at all technical match like Foley/Taker HIAC any day of the week because that had actual heart, told a good story, and featured characters that mattered. What is Seth's character? Dolph's? "I steal the show...every single night...and no one else can do what I do in that ring!" STFU, Dolph, you obnoxious geek!

Ahhh I see what you mean now. Kinda like the change over from the fans of the early UFC talent with the motley crew of characters like the champions of their art of Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock mixed with the traditional Martial Art wannabes and street fighters like Tank Abbott to the modern crop of fighters who save for a few personalities are all solid well rounded fighters but lack a lot of charisma and character compared the the fighters of the early era If I'm understanding you correctly.

Like a good portion of people would find the older fighters and fights more exciting and attention grabbing but less technically sound but modern fans seem focused a lot on the technique and skill quality when that doesn't really matter to the masses.

Same as we see WWE go back to the stars of old who while not as technically great in terms of ring work they are more exciting characters and personalities.

I agree with you on guys like Dolph as Jim Valley on the Pacific Rim Wrestling Podcast put it, 'he's been on WWE TV for a decade and I still don't know anything about what his character is supposed to be'. 

[sek69]

I think that's more of a WWE problem not being able to write compelling characters than anything else. Most of the workrate guys had better worked matches and shown more personality in other companies before they went to WWE. 

[sek69]

On 8/17/2018 at 1:31 AM, sek69 said:

Binging on Mid Atlantic now, and for as good as he was in the ring,  Jack Brisco is human xanax on the mic. It's an even more stark contrast when Jimmy Valiant and Roddy Piper are running around like they combined to snort the whole GNP of Columbia.

 

I took a break on this and went back recently, finally got to the Briscos' heel turn and damn is it a difference.  I've never seen Jack outside of Florida and here, was he a heel anywhere else? If not that was money left on the table.

[Cornette's racket]

I said it was watching HHH vs undertaker but I'm also watching back some wcw PPVs from 1997 and 1998. The main event of Halloween havoc 98 between DDP and Goldberg was a bloody good wrestling match. 

[Cornette's racket]

Also Halloween havoc 1998 has that match between hogan and warrior that was as bad as I remember. I mean do somethings in match go wrong from time to time  ? Yes they do and nothing you can do except shack it off and keep going but this was a mess of a match. I've seen animals knocked down and dead that weren't as bad.

[JRH]

So the next content drop is apparently going to be 2012-14 episodes of Main Event. From what I've heard, there were really good matches on that show in it's first weeks.

[sek69]

The list for the upcoming Ted DiBiase collection looks good (any time we get Georgia stuff is a win for me), but I was hoping they would include the match from Boston where Ted was billed as WWF Champion and was wearing the belt since it took place in the week between when the Hulk/Andre match took place and when they announced the WM4 tournament on TV.  I guess since it's not WWE Canon it never happened. 

[paul sosnowski]

I just saw that list.   It has the 12/3/84 title change against the Rock & Roll Express.   They aired less than 2 minutes of this on TV, does it exist in any other form?

[Alucard]

3 hours ago, JRH said:

So the next content drop is apparently going to be 2012-14 episodes of Main Event. From what I've heard, there were really good matches on that show in it's first weeks.

I dug the concept of the first 15 or so episodes, where they'd have a big names match with a lot of time and then a lower card match follow. After that it slowly got more and more mid card ish and eventually became the nothing show it is today, but the first ones were definitely cool. The debut episode with a hyped Punk v Sheamus champion v champion match was good and my personal favorite was a Ziggler/Miz match that went 22 minutes. There's also the really great Kofi/Miz and Kofi/Cesaro matches.... Cesaro was a highlight of the early 2013 episodes.

[NickH]

6 hours ago, sek69 said:

The list for the upcoming Ted DiBiase collection looks good (any time we get Georgia stuff is a win for me)

Anytime we get Jack Brisco its a win for me. Cant believe they only faced each other twice according to wrestlingdata.com. 

 

[sek69]

They're showing a really obnoxious ad for Super-Showdown in between episodes on the Network now, just a shot of the main eventers with a loud BWWAAAAAA sound several times louder than the regular volume.