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WWE Network finally happening


flyonthewall2983

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Matt is exactly right.....I've gauged interest at my job and other social circles since the announcement of the Network and what do people want to see the most.......

 

Attitude Era

Nitro

ECW

 

And that is what they are offering a lot of.

I think I remember in the days when the WWEClassics crew interacted with viewers that modern/newer wrestling drew a lot more hits than the territories. Those of us who prefer watching old footage are really a small minority.

 

Yes. I have tried many times over to get friends and family members into Mid South, Memphis, AWA, hell even Crockett doesn't always hit.

 

But throw on some awful Nitro or a random Austin segment and instantly everyone is entertained.

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It's a roundabout way of getting there, but I made the point in my blog post today that I believe PPV quality won't drastically suffer just because "PPVs" are now on the WWE Network and TV is the priority.

 

There has been a remarkable cluster of years (2008-2013) with excellent per capita match quality on WWE PPVs as compared to the vast history of the product. (2010 and 2012 are tied for 6th with 2.34 unweighted all match averages). This result is even more amazing when you consider that during this era there's been an explosion of TV Rights Fees for WWE while PPV revenues have stagnant and dropping. (With the recent huffing & puffing about the death of PPV quality due to the WWE Network, three-hour Raws and meteoric rise of future TV Rights, might this represent a counterargument that "PPV" quality isn't going to necessarily plummet?)

Secondarily, if you're interested in Meltzer Snowflakes 1985-2013 so you can find some lost PPV gems to watch on 2/24, check out the data dump I posted.

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It's a roundabout way of getting there, but I made the point in my blog post today that I believe PPV quality won't drastically suffer just because "PPVs" are now on the WWE Network and TV is the priority.

 

There has been a remarkable cluster of years (2008-2013) with excellent per capita match quality on WWE PPVs as compared to the vast history of the product. (2010 and 2012 are tied for 6th with 2.34 unweighted all match averages). This result is even more amazing when you consider that during this era there's been an explosion of TV Rights Fees for WWE while PPV revenues have stagnant and dropping. (With the recent huffing & puffing about the death of PPV quality due to the WWE Network, three-hour Raws and meteoric rise of future TV Rights, might this represent a counterargument that "PPV" quality isn't going to necessarily plummet?)

Secondarily, if you're interested in Meltzer Snowflakes 1985-2013 so you can find some lost PPV gems to watch on 2/24, check out the data dump I posted.

 

Enjoyed the piece and the data dump. Thanks Mookie.

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Matt is exactly right.....I've gauged interest at my job and other social circles since the announcement of the Network and what do people want to see the most.......

 

Attitude Era

Nitro

ECW

 

And that is what they are offering a lot of.

I think I remember in the days when the WWEClassics crew interacted with viewers that modern/newer wrestling drew a lot more hits than the territories. Those of us who prefer watching old footage are really a small minority.

 

Yes. I have tried many times over to get friends and family members into Mid South, Memphis, AWA, hell even Crockett doesn't always hit.

 

But throw on some awful Nitro or a random Austin segment and instantly everyone is entertained.

 

I have the same problem but I'm in the minority when I say I don't like the Attitude Era. Especially compared to other eras of wrestling that I find way more enjoyable

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been reading some Network discussion on other boards and ran across a couple points not discussed here that I wanted to check on:

 

1) Someone mentioned the idea of the cruiserweight show again... has talk of that been revived from an official perspective? Or maybe this guy is just rehashing an old talking point and trying to make it relevant with KENTA's tryout.

 

2) I saw mention of TV shows from 1995 being there at launch with 1996 soon to follow. Not that I really care one way or the other as I have all the stuff I want from that era, but was there an announcement around this that I missed? Has there been any further word on content in general?

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I've been reading some Network discussion on other boards and ran across a couple points not discussed here that I wanted to check on:

 

1) Someone mentioned the idea of the cruiserweight show again... has talk of that been revived from an official perspective? Or maybe this guy is just rehashing an old talking point and trying to make it relevant with KENTA's tryout.

 

2) I saw mention of TV shows from 1995 being there at launch with 1996 soon to follow. Not that I really care one way or the other as I have all the stuff I want from that era, but was there an announcement around this that I missed? Has there been any further word on content in general?

1.) Best I can tell, there's been nothing new since last summer. It's mainly KENTA speculation, but if that was the case then the arguments about them not signing Richards/Edwards because they had too many guys like them already would be a little contradictory.

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1.) Best I can tell, there's been nothing new since last summer. It's mainly KENTA speculation, but if that was the case then the arguments about them not signing Richards/Edwards because they had too many guys like them already would be a little contradictory.

I think that's more about "small white workrate indy guys" the only other Japanese wrestler they have that I know is Yoshi Tatsu who is pretty much a non-entity for them. Wouldn't hurt to have him for when they do their rare Japan tours.
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1.) Best I can tell, there's been nothing new since last summer. It's mainly KENTA speculation, but if that was the case then the arguments about them not signing Richards/Edwards because they had too many guys like them already would be a little contradictory.

I think that's more about "small white workrate indy guys" the only other Japanese wrestler they have that I know is Yoshi Tatsu who is pretty much a non-entity for them. Wouldn't hurt to have him for when they do their rare Japan tours.

 

I don't know. if I was doing a Crusierweight only show, I'd probably want to sign Richards for it, if he was right there, and I can't stand him as a wrestler.

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Mike Johnson always mentions the WWE Crusierweight show as a "thing" often in conjunction with WWE's interest in Prince Devitt. There was an interview with the graphic designer of the WWE Network logo. He said he did concept art for the Crusierweight show too. Wish I would doublecheck it but the name for the show was the reuse of an old WWE name. To my best remembrance it was WWE Livewire. But a lot of this information goes back 2 years - when WWE Network was going to be an actual channel so who knows.

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I'm hoping that when this launches, if they have to edit entrance music, that there is some consistency. I'm watching the Cage Match DVD (the 2011 one), and during the Flair/Orton cage match from Taboo Tuesday 04 Flair's music is dubbed over with his original 1991 theme. Now on the WrestleMania Anthology DVD's, for Flair/Savage from WrestleMania VIII (1992) they dub Flair's music with the theme he was using during his comeback run (2001 - present). Makes no sense, why do they do this? The only I can think of is maybe they send a memo to an intern who doesn't know much about the product that says "EDIT OVER RIC FLAIR THEME." Not knowing what to do, they just edit over everything at random. There's other instances of this too, the Demolition Rick Derringer theme was dubbed over (understandable due to rights), but then the generic theme they used after turning heel in 1990 was dubbed over. Why would that need to be dubbed? Even if you don't care about entrance music, this is still annoying because the audio is often terrible and completely drowns out the crowd and commentary.

Since most of the old PPV's have already been edited for DVD release, 24/7, WWE.com, etc. with no consistency whatsoever, I'm wondering if they will take the effort to re-do them, or even better, air the originals.

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Very odd they're putting up Over the Edge 1999. I remember thinking they absolutely made the right call in not making a VHS release of the event, sad to see a new transfer of the event here. I feel odd knowing this will be the best video quality showing of the event since the initial broadcast.

I'm curious (although probably not enough to watch the show) to see how they edit it. Obviously you cut the fall... do you keep any of the updates from Ross? Just an interesting question that we'll get to see the answer to.

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You've also got promos for an hour with the wrestlers mentioning Owen before going on with their spiel. There's no way you can view that show without Owen being the huge white elephant in the room. And if you whitewash the incident, it's just as uncomfortable.

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Very odd they're putting up Over the Edge 1999. I remember thinking they absolutely made the right call in not making a VHS release of the event, sad to see a new transfer of the event here. I feel odd knowing this will be the best video quality showing of the event since the initial broadcast.

I'm curious (although probably not enough to watch the show) to see how they edit it. Obviously you cut the fall... do you keep any of the updates from Ross? Just an interesting question that we'll get to see the answer to.

 

The fall didn't air anywhere.

 

I actually know someone (who's not a crackpot) who says an honest to God legit fan-shot version on an early, low quality digital camera was on early P2P services like Hotline and shock sites like Ogrish, but I'm not sure I believe him just because the odds of it not getting attention on wrestling sites is nil.

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I'm pretty frustrated how ever since the announcement of the launch seemingly the #1 thing talked about has been Over The Edge 99. Will they show it? Will they edit it? Really? Why are people so morbidly fascinated by this topic?

 

It's even more annoying to me how many people will rush to watch that as the first thing they do when they get The Network. Fuck all this newly available awesome wrestling in high quality streams, let me rush to see how WWE handled showing Owen Hart's death!

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Things more interesting to me:

 

- The first Wrestlemania was actually a closed circuit show, as were Starrcades 1983-1986. Still, I thought they'd include them and I'm glad they did.

- By that same logic, a little disappointed that there are no pre-1988 Great American Bashes, although none were pay-per-views and the commercial releases were tour highlights. Based on the footage that has been released over the years, I have always suspected all the Bash house shows from 1986-1988 at the very least were taped in full for possible use on the tour video.

- Cool that they included the UK only pay-per-views.

- Other shows that weren't pay-per-views but that I was hoping they'd colloquially put under this umbrella anyway were the Crockett Cup shows, Clash of the Champions and the ECW "white box" commercial releases prior to Barely Legal

- No No Holds Barred: The Match, The Movie. No HOT TICKET pay-per-views like Hulk Hogan: A Real American Story or the Wrestlemania history one (not that we are missing much in either case).

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Not a bad way to kick-start the roll-out.

 

I'm a match guy. I've been collecting the highest quality rips of matches for years, so it will be nice to finally have some truly great stuff like Regal-Finlay '96 in top form.

 

The ECW shows will always be weird with all the music cut out. Think I'll just stick to the original VHS for those.

 

Over the Edge 1999 has to be an oversight.

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