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WWE Network... It's Here


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1 hour ago, flyonthewall2983 said:

The battle royal is the only match from that show I've ever enjoyed. I also liked Piper's promo that is only on the Coliseum Video release. It must have been a real chore to watch live on PPV. 

I saw it live.  There really wasn't any such thing as "Pay Per View" at the time, and if there was very few people had it.  You have to remember, a lot of people didn't even have cable at that time. The majority of people saw the show on "Closed Circuit Television" where you bought tickets to go to a local arena, and they broadcast the show on huge screens with crappy audio. At the time, I didn't mind Wrestlemania 2 all that much.  I got kind of caught up in the spectacle and the experience.  You have to consider that WWF shows really weren't all that great at that time when it came to the quality of the matches, either.  At the time, I remember enjoying the Battle Royal and the Bulldogs match, and not minding the Hogan/Bundy match.

But you're not wrong, it does not hold up well at all.

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22 minutes ago, Migs said:

It seems like they're waiting on Tampa or the state to cancel to avoid cancellation fees on the contract. (This is almost certainly the case for the other events over the weekend as well, perhaps even moreso.)

Pretty much all the folks promoting indy shows on Mania weekend have come out saying if they make the choice to cancel on their own it will be instant financial ruin, making it sound like there's some kind of safety net in place if it's mandated by a government agency. 

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46 minutes ago, The Thread Killer said:

I saw it live.  There really wasn't any such thing as "Pay Per View" at the time, and if there was very few people had it.  You have to remember, a lot of people didn't even have cable at that time. The majority of people saw the show on "Closed Circuit Television" where you bought tickets to go to a local arena, and they broadcast the show on huge screens with crappy audio. At the time, I didn't mind Wrestlemania 2 all that much.  I got kind of caught up in the spectacle and the experience.  You have to consider that WWF shows really weren't all that great at that time when it came to the quality of the matches, either.  At the time, I remember enjoying the Battle Royal and the Bulldogs match, and not minding the Hogan/Bundy match.

But you're not wrong, it does not hold up well at all.

Vince's big head must have watched Live Aid and thought he could do something like that better, and in one more city. The fact he never tried it again, even with the advances in that kind of technology in the 3+ decades since speaks to how much of a production nightmare it was. 

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1 hour ago, sek69 said:

Pretty much all the folks promoting indy shows on Mania weekend have come out saying if they make the choice to cancel on their own it will be instant financial ruin, making it sound like there's some kind of safety net in place if it's mandated by a government agency. 

I think the safety net would be the way contract law applies in a state of emergency - if the government says the event CAN'T happen, then there'd be no cancellation fee / forfeit of deposit, because the contract would be unenforceable. 

EDIT: for WWE, I'd assume it's much more complicated, because they may be getting paid by Tampa to do the event, which would mean cancellation fees and maybe forfeiting the amount they were supposed to get paid. What I said above would apply for the indy companies that probably have pretty generic contracts ("I pay you X to rent a place, no cancellations more than X days before").

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21 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

I saw it live.  There really wasn't any such thing as "Pay Per View" at the time, and if there was very few people had it.  You have to remember, a lot of people didn't even have cable at that time. The majority of people saw the show on "Closed Circuit Television" where you bought tickets to go to a local arena, and they broadcast the show on huge screens with crappy audio. At the time, I didn't mind Wrestlemania 2 all that much.  I got kind of caught up in the spectacle and the experience.  You have to consider that WWF shows really weren't all that great at that time when it came to the quality of the matches, either.  At the time, I remember enjoying the Battle Royal and the Bulldogs match, and not minding the Hogan/Bundy match.

But you're not wrong, it does not hold up well at all.

Watching Vince with Susan St. James do segments, including a post match promo from Piper, from a Nassau Coliseum suite, with the arena darkened behind them was strange.  

I know people were still in the stands watching the Jumbotron, but the segments gave off the impression that they let the arena out.  Yeah I know the lights would have all been on and you’d see workers taking the ring and everything WWF owned apart, etc, but it felt like a dark and empty arena.

Wonder if there was a thought given to do it the way the two arena Starrcades were done.  Alternating from each venue all day?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Reportedly, WWE have made every WrestleMania ever, every Rumble, and a bunch of other stuff, available for free on the network. As much as I love to hate on that company, it sure seems like a very classy move to make that available at this time. Hats off to them for doing this.

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10 hours ago, flyonthewall2983 said:

It would be a great time to lean into the older stuff now. 

I just started at Mania 1 and am working the old PPVs, SNMEs and any key angles/matches I can ID from Prime Time or other content I can quickly ID.  Its been very fun and a nice escape, which current TV doesn't provide since the fact its even occurring is disgustingly offensive.

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I've been out of the loop for a while. Checking my list of matches I had saved from the decade, I left off at Lesnar-Joe from mid-2017. 

Can anyone throw out there some of the top matches since then? I caught all the Brock stuff, Styles-Orton, Styles-Balor, Bryan-Kofi, but that's probably all I can remember. 

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Is it just me or was the Ric Flair episode of Broken Skull Sessions the weakest yet? Flair seemed to mumble throughout it (but he was still sharp as a tack, if that makes any sense), and nothing really new was revealed. Too much time was spent on his self-confidence issues, which was a drag, to say the least. 

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I think it's hard for most wrestlers who are not just on top but carrying companies for years at a time to accept that it's over when it ends. I understand it. In Flair's case, his removal didn't happen because they had someone younger who was just as good and ready to carry the torch forward, but because there were people trying to sabotage him for their own reasons. And that has stuck with him for the last 30 years, to the point that I think he still gets his dander up thinking about ways that people like Herd and Bischoff sabotaged his career, particularly when he sees that plenty of people have been kept strong and used in a productive way in their 40s and beyond since then, proving that it can be done. At the same time, there comes a point when you'd like to just see him accept it and be grateful that he spent so much time as the top guy, and that he's still viewed by just about everyone as a legend that is almost in a class by himself. He has some legitimate grievances, but his legacy was secure long before anyone started fucking around with it.

There is a passive aggressive fury to almost everything that Flair says, but he also strikes me as kind of a small man underneath the Nature Boy persona, and one who is not very self aware or secure in who he is at all. That comes out sometimes in some very telling ways.

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It was interesting to see Flair say that he thought he was a terrible babyface and had very limited offence. I thought his offence, while not elite, was great, and I thought he was an all-time great face, in the Carolinas, in 1989, and in WCW in the late 90s. 

It's funny, because as good as he was, I think he would have been even better had he thought more highly of himself. 

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23 hours ago, Loss said:

There is a passive aggressive fury to almost everything that Flair says, but he also strikes me as kind of a small man underneath the Nature Boy persona, and one who is not very self aware or secure in who he is at all. That comes out sometimes in some very telling ways.

That's a good point.  It reminds me of that ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on Ric Flair, and the comments Shawn Michaels made about Flair, that upset Flair so much afterwards.  Michaels talked about how Flair is so wrapped up in the Ric Flair lifestyle and gimmick so much, that he doesn't even know who Richard Fliehr is anymore.  That really stuck with me, and I think in interviews like this one you really see how wrapped up in his gimmick Flair is.  I wonder if there even is a Richard Fliehr anymore, and if there is one...he isn't a very confident person.

By the way Charles, it is great to see you back here regularly at PWO and posting more regularly.  Always great to see your contributions. :)

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Regarding Flair vs. Fliehr in the 30 for 30 documentary: his first wife (Leslie) more or less states that she married Richard Fliehr and over time he became more and more Ric Flair. There was no accusations from her or anything (anymore), just plain acceptance on her side that the man she first fell in love with and married does not exist anymore.

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13 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

By the way Charles, it is great to see you back here regularly at PWO and posting more regularly.  Always great to see your contributions. :)

Hear hear! I've been burying myself in the archives lately, and Loss is one of my favourite posters. Always has well-thought and well-written arguments and seems exceedingly calm (at least, in comparison to some of the other old regulars, god bless 'em all).

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