Petey

I think a lot of the growing sentiment is more from a business perspective. I didn't get a chance to watch Money in the Bank live, although I heard there were a few technical hiccups with it and over the past week or two, there's been several technical hiccups with the live stream (which I admittedly rarely watch), but it seems like the majority of subscribers seem happy with the service. I think people are just disappointed that WWE hasn't done a better job at promoting The Network on Raw and that WWE has fallen short of their subscriber goals. I don't really care too much about the business part as long as it doesn't affect The Network's quality. I do wish that there was a wider variety of content, especially as someone who subscribed to Classics on Demand for a long time, so the stuff like Legends of Wrestling, WCCW TV and ECW Hardcore TV isn't really new stuff for me.

Legit question: For everyone who subscribes to The Network, if it had launched with just the vault and none of the pay-per-views, but still at the $9.95 per month price tag, would you have still subscribed to it? I definitely would have, but I also paid about the same for the Classics on Demand service which offered far less content. The pay-per-views are just a great bonus. I wonder how many people subscribed because of the 'free' PPV's and whether or not WWE would have been better off by just offering the vault and some of the original programming like the Beyond the Ring specials and Legends House.

JR's nuts. Ever since Pearl Harbor, I've never seen an American positively associate with a Japanese person ever. And we most certainly never buy their products. #wcwlogic

True, although I think WWE sometimes drops the ball in pointing out the wrestlers' past history with each other.

I don't know if business would have been much different had they built around the aforementioned guys instead of HHH. I loved most of those guys and at the time, that was when I was at my peak smark obnoxiousness levels so I personally would have rather seen any combination of them instead of Triple H, but I just don't see it mattering. For just about all of those guys, except Lesnar, I think they all had a ceiling that was clear to the fans that was basically, "these guys are good, but they're not at the level of Austin/Rock/HHH." Jericho never getting his win over Triple H in 2000 hurt and by the time they made him Undisputed Champion, they presented it as a fluke title win and that he wasn't really as good as the 'big three'. Angle got really over but I thought that the nature of his first title run was also presented as more luck than that he was legitimately good. I loved Eddy, Booker, RVD and Benoit (before, you know), but they were either lacking the look/size (which was more relevant in 2003 than it is now), charisma/mic skills or both. Even Lesnar, for as freakish as he was in terms of size and athletic ability, didn't really have the ability to cut 20 minute promos which had become a staple of the previous era. Perhaps if Jericho, Angle and Benoit were presented as equal stars in 2000 and had more momentum carrying them into the post- Austin/Rock era, business would have been better focusing around them, but assuming history played out as it did and WWF/E decided to build around them instead of HHH, I don't think much changes except for us enjoying the company more. And I know people can cite the great Raw tag match with Austin/HHH vs. Jericho/Benoit as a way to put over Jericho and Benoit as Austin and HHH's equal, but it got lost in the shuffle with Triple H tearing his quad and the Invasion angle starting almost immediately after.

I live in NY and they've been running commercials for the upcoming MSG house show on Raw for the past several weeks (possibly longer) and they've been specifically playing up Cena vs. Bray Wyatt in a lumberjack match. Small sample size and all that, and I do agree that WWE does try to push the WWE brand now more than ever, but I think there's still a tendency to advertise specific wrestlers/matches assuming the wrestlers and matches are worth promoting.

While I've enjoyed the NXT specials and the other few NXT episodes I've watched, I almost feel like they're impossible to screw up. The shows are an hour long, take place in front of a small but enthusiastic audience that wants everything to get over and have simple storylines with talented wrestlers who excel in going all out. Granted, I sometimes wish WWE only had an hour of weekly television because I almost prefer too little time and always left wanting more rather than too long and feeling burnt out, but I feel like anyone could be in charge of NXT at the moment and have similar success.

I don't really understand this mentality. I mean, if you refuse to watch it, it's not like it's like it's going to make the videos go away or reverse the effects that wrestling that style has already had on guys. Going online and condemning dangerous looking spots also isn't going to stop arena fans from continuing to pop big for them. After all, even when we're talking about reeling in new fans, the matches that generally get recommended the most and have the highest success are ladder and TLC matches built around crazy stunts. I'd argue that instead of there being some "workrate dogmatism" (lol) created by some obscure RSPW guys, there is just something about watching these athletically impressive or death-defying spots that appeals to some primitive part of the brain and creates the same unparalleled excitement seen while watching slugfests in boxing or MMA. WWE may have been able to condition fans to accept a less violent style, but I doubt that visceral quality so fundamental to wrestling's appeal can ever be entirely learned away. I don't refuse to watch the matches. I just look at them from a different perspective than I did a few years ago. I now also cringe at huge hits in football that I didn't back in the early 2000's. Part of that is an awareness on concussion issues and another part of it is that they also happen less frequently. It doesn't mean I'm gonna stop watching football though.

Wow. And here I thought Taco Tuesday was an unhealthy Tuesday ritual.

The WWF wanted everyone to be as over as possible as long as some guy didn't screw up a hugely planned program involving a guy who was gonna work with the top guy. There are exceptions to everything.

Benoit/Misawa dying and how they died greatly altered how I enjoy pro wrestling. I used to be a huge ROH fan back from 04-08 and loved all the head drops and everything. I went out of my way to track down some 90's AJPW during those years and ate it all up. But with Benoit and Misawa and even the increased concussion awareness in the NFL, I really got turned off to that style. Now when I go back and watch some of the ECW stuff and Attitude Era matches I actually cringe at unprotected chairshots and other stuff that I used to think was awesome. As for the other discussion about Meltzer and SKeith's influence, I'll try to add my perspective. I'm a relative newcomer compared to some of the rest of you. I didn't get a PC until Christmas 1997 (I was 10 years old) and when I first got the internet (around the same time), I was really only looking up insider/newz info to see what was gonna happen and/or what guys might be jumping from one company to another. I never knew what RSPW was and really didn't start to care about the workrate part of things until after the Monday Night Wars. I don't think I discovered SKeith until around 2002 but I'll be the first to admit he was a huge influence on how I started to view pro wrestling. He made me start to pay more attention to the in-ring action. I bought his books and thought they were like my bible. I was a disgruntled high school pro wrestling fan who longed for the times when I was still a mark for most of the Monday Night Wars. I always knew it was a work but them times were still a great time to be a mark. As a kid, I remember watching matches like Steiners/Nastys, Flair/Vader and remember being really entertained by the match itself. Ditto for Warrior/Savage and Hogan/Warrior. Those matches always stuck with me, not because of the result but because of the in-ring action. It wasn't until I was older that I finally understood why those matches stuck with me. I do think Dave has been a unifying component for good v. bad matches and I think he was probably the first to really communicate that on a relatively large scale. But at the same time, you can watch plenty of 1980's/early 90's house shows on WWE Network and hear boring chants during certain matches and of course there was Black Saturday with WWF replacing GCW, so I think fans were always able to understand that there could be good and bad matches much in the same way that there are good an bad boxing fights. Dave just seemed to be the guy to really stress the importance of good/bad at a whole new level. And finally, for me personally, EWR also greatly shaped how I viewed 'workers' and actually got me into the indy scene. When I saw some of the ratings the indy guys got, it made me want to check out AJ Styles, Chris Daniels, Low Ki and the like.

I think that by all the house shows are up, that person may have been specifically referring to the Roku finally having all the house shows that are currently up on the Network because the website seemed to have more of them than the Roku for a while.

Loved hearing Steve's dog playing with a squeaky toy in the background.

Nothing better than Fink saying, "newwwwwwwwwwwwwwww..."

Hoping that with there being two women's matches it means that the Divas Title match won't be put in the pre-main event bathroom break spot.

Not just that, but the angle already happened. It's one of the biggest moments in the history of our sport (channeling my inner Tony Schiavone there). Editing the line now makes absolutely no sense. Even if the belief is that Heenan gave away the turn, I don't understand why WWE would be concerned with trying to fine-tune a WCW angle. As for certain stuff being censored v. uncensored, I'm of the belief (based on nothing, mind you) that certain things that were uploaded may have been home video releases/Classics on Demand versions that have already been somewhat edited.

I had no idea they always muted that Heenan line on DVD's. I wonder why. Interestingly, the version of Bash at the Beach 96 they have up is actually the VHS release because the Turner release edited out the bit with a fan trying to save the day after Hogan's turn and it's edited out on The Network.

Exactly. I understand cancelling the account but blowing it up like this is just comical.

One of the other folks who posts on Scott's blog does a daily news update thing. He compiles news from the Observer, Torch, PWInsider, wherever and makes a daily post. He always gives credit to where the news comes from and generally doesn't quote as much as summarizes. I guess someone told Scherer what was happening and now we have this. It's tremendous. I love IWC bitchfests.

Folks, that is why Dean Ambrose is THE Titty Master.

Well anyone who was on the fence about subscribing should be signing up any minute.

That should be a love fest with Russo slobbering all over Austin. And I think I might really enjoy that.

I just watched the This Is Your Life episode and HHH is horrendous. His promos were so much worse than they would be just a few months later. Amazing how quickly he grew into being a competent main eventer.

Vince really can't afford to lose interest in The Network. I also think he knows it's probably the last big thing he's gonna head as leader of the company and I'd imagine it's important to him that The Network succeeds in order to have a positive impact on his legacy.

Pretty sure Bob Backlund has never been a crackhead.