Petey

If parents weren't happy with the language in the Steph/Brie segments, they're gonna be FURIOUS with that Cena/Lesnar video package.

If it helps, the early 90's are now on the Roku.

The week after the Germany RAW was when they had the entire new set, graphics, and intro. I wonder how long they were sitting on all that and waiting to debut it. I was just watching the Owen-Davey matches and noticed in the reviews here that Loss is saying the April RAW from South Africa was the decider though. Loss might be right since Russo's timelines are notoriously inaccurate. However, I also remember him saying that after a Raw got a 1.9 (the Germany Raw), the next day Vince held a meeting with his inner circle and called in Russo which was when he held up an issue of the Raw magazine and said that was the direction the show needed to go into. The turning point toward Russo-iffic booking to me is SummerSlam 98. Up until then, the product is still holding together pretty decently. The fall is when it really began to crumble into shit. I said it a million time, my breaking point was the Royal Rumble 99. Totally broke my spirit of being a WWF fan, which I had been for ten years. I actually loved the WWF Title booking through Survivor Series 98. I thought both Austin-Kane matches, Austin-Taker, the three way, Kane-Taker with Austin as referee and then Rock winning and becoming Corporate Champion was a great blend of coherent storytelling with the perfect amount of tweests without getting M.Night ridiculous.

I think it was the In Your House immediately following WrestleMania XIII. It seemed to have a lot of Russo's staples compared to the PPVs just before it. The night after was the Austin-Bret Hart ambulance angle as well. Wasn't this the same time we started getting more and more twenty-minute promos on "Raw"? Russo's always claimed that Vince made a conscious decision following the Raw from Germany to take the show in a different direction with Russo as a big part of it and it was within weeks to where he and Jim Cornette were writing the television. It wasn't until December of 1997 that Cornette left creative and that's when it became just Vince & Vince. I actually thought 1998 held up pretty well. It still had some Russo tropes but it wasn't nearly as egregious as 1999 and the stuff on top aged REALLY well, to me at least.

Looked pretty good on this guy...

I was such a huge WWF fan when I was 11/12 back in 1999 but man, that stuff has not aged well at all. I know that's not breaking news or anything, but I was shocked when I was re-watching a lot of the Raws from Classics on Demand last year. I know the 1999 PPV's were largely garbage because even as a kid I regretted all the ones I ordered, but the Raws are just terrible aside from Austin/Rock/Foley. I can actually pinpoint the jump the shark point... the episode before WrestleMania 15 when they decided to switch the IC and Hardcore Champions just to swerve everyone which in turn killed the feuds for each of those title pictures at WM 15. From that point on, the booking just got more and more illogical and things occurred at an increasingly breakneck pace. By the summer it was just horrendous with nothing being able settle and just one thing leading into another and blowing a month's+ worth of storylines into one show.

I think the problem with lapsed fans, and it's already kinda been said, is that a lot of them were a fan just because wrestling was hot and not because they necessarily loved wrestling. Having access to old stuff is awesome for those of us who LOVE pro wrestling but not so much for others. And when I mention lapsed fan, I'm speaking purely in the "watched wrestling during the Monday Night Wars" and once they ended, stopped watching wrestling, not the lapsed WWE fan but still huge fan of other wrestling companies. A lot of people make a big deal about the lack of variety with the content and while I agree I wish there was more territory stuff and/or rather than a random episode of Smackdown, they'd upload an entire year or even a month, I don't think they'd really get anyone who was a huge fan of Mid Atlantic or Mid South who hasn't watched wrestling in 20 years to now pay $9.99 per month to relive the glory days. $9.99 doesn't seem like much but for a nostalgia kick? I'm not sure a lot of people would even pay .99 per month. I also think a big problem, and it's one they can't do anything about, was waiting as long as they did to launch The Network after it was announced. I remember a lot of people buzzing after the presentation, some of the aforementioned lapsed Monday Night Wars fans included. I honestly think that if they announced The Network and launched it the next day, maybe with a free week trial, they probably would have gotten a lot more potential subscribers than having the full month or whatever in between. At this point, I'm not really sure how WWE can garner a significant chunk of new subscribers. There's plenty of stuff they can do to improve the experience: more diverse content, better/functioning search, more original programming like Countown and WrestleMania Rewind, but I can't think of any real significant change they would make that would get people who are either on the fence or not interested to have the desire to subscribe.

Why don't they just send Steve Blackman out to collect the money and make a series out of it? Two-for-one.

A few reasons: they don't want to give away too much, too early. Stuff that was first on Classics may need to be re-edited (de-edited?) for The Network which I think means pretty much starting from scratch (it did seem that there was a bunch of stuff edited on CoD that hasn't been edited on The Network, like Benoit mentions and being able to say WWF). They also have to add closed captioning for everything which isn't a quick process. And finally, Mike Johnson did an article a few months ago about the process for uploading stuff and in general, it seemed harder than one would assume.

Tyson working house shows?

They always do those "SummerSlam Moments" or whatever showing match highlights or a big angle from a past SummerSlam. They could keep doing that and just add a tagline with, "and now relive it all any time you want with WWE Network."

I've been watching wrestling for as long as I could remember. I was obviously a huge fan during the boom but I had been watching as a real little kid for a few years before that. Right after the boom ended is when my wrestling tastes started to evolve, as I reached high school and the like. I remember actively disliking the Alliance angle, HHH's run in 2002-2003, but still watching Raw every week because my best buddy was also a huge wrestling fan. But by the end of 04/05, he started to fall out of it, I graduated HS, started working full time and going to college, so I kinda tuned out of WWE at the end of 2005/2006. At this time though, I was a huge ROH fan and attended virtually every NY-area show, so while I was no longer watching WWE, I wasn't completely out of wrestling. I was on and off with WWE for a while, more off once the Benoit stuff occurred. The first time I tuned in was right after the Nexus angle on Raw but when the followup was pretty bad, I tuned out again. Tuned back in for Punk after my Facebook blew up with the pipe bomb promo but again tuned out after the followup. I tried to get back into it when TNA went to Mondays because I was hoping it'd kinda rekindle the Monday Night War magic, but that obviously didn't last. Once Daniel Bryan started getting pushed, I found myself watching more regularly. I generally don't watch during football season unless the Monday Night Football game is a blowout. I was really getting back into things around WrestleMania but have started to drift away again. I guess the key is to just not watch if you're not being entertained. When I wasn't watching, I subscribed to Classics on Demand and got my fix that way. I remember when I would randomly check in on WWE, there was so much I hated about Raw. The 50/50 booking, constantly having PPV rematches on free TV and/or having PPV matches on Raw only for them to be a rematch on the PPV itself. Everyone having a generic rock entrance theme, everyone looking like the same cookie cutter person (I'm generalizing, I know). Eventually, I just sorta learned to accept that this is the new reality for wrestling and no matter how much I might want it to be different, it's not gonna be 1985 Jim Crockett Promotions. Once I accepted that, I found watching Raw to be slightly more appealing.

Was there anyone who left ECW that made him think to himself, "this is a big blow. I don't see how we replace this guy."

I think the consensus is that right now, the archived footage is drawing the least amount of eyeballs and that the most watched stuff on The Network is related to current programming. While I think that a better diversity of old stuff would draw in some new subscribers, I doubt that's what the WWE brain trust believes.

I hope Metlz is alluding to the big stories being MMA-based. It'd be funny to watch a bunch of people get all mad.

How was CoD better about constant updates? For the stuff they showed, they would generally upload a new episode of ECW, Raw or Nitro every other week. Sure, each week there was new content, but most of it was stuff that's already on The Network.

But for whatever reason, Ambrose's matches have had quiet crowds since his face turn. The end of his match with Cesaro picked them up, and I know it's a small sample size, but Reigns and Cena both get way better crowd reactions during their matches and hell, again for whatever reason, Ziggler always gets great crowd reactions during his matches.

And Nash always did the hair flip.

Does WWE do a lot of PPV buys internationally? If so, that might be a reason why they won't cut back. I don't think 12 PPV's are as much a problem as the amount of TV time they have to fill which leads to tons of rematches that by the time you reach the PPV match, you're likely to have seen the match a lot on free TV already. Ideally, Raw would be two hours and every other show would only have squash matches or be a recap show.

LeRoy McGuirk? I don't see Watts as a racist for pretty much the same reasons that everyone else have already noted.

It wouldn't surprise me if Pat encouraged the behavior. It's wrestling.

It was the issue I had when they brought back Foley for the Orton and Edge feuds. The matches were good (really good in Orton's case), but you knew he just had no shot.

The non-Raw shows should just be squash matches. Aren't Main Event and Superstars only an hour anyway?

Tremendous.

I'm confused, is Hogan being racist in this video or just being Hogan?