WWE Network... It's Here

[C.S.]

16 minutes ago, PhilTLL said:

But THIS... this is just disappointing. 

 https://www.ninelineapparel.com/collections/mens-t-shirts/products/mens-t-shirt-dustin-rhodes-mwga

It's not black and white with Dustin, based on what I've seen on Facebook.

He's a "good ol' boy" in some respects, but also has no patience for transphobia because one of his kids is trans. 

Edit:

 

[William Bologna]

2 hours ago, sek69 said:

As stated, the Blue Lives Matter thing started as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement that came about as the result of several instances of police shooting black people first and asking questions later and normally facing no repercussions for it.

Blue Lives Matter started in response to two NYPD officers being murdered by someone who was angry about Eric Garner. You can be skeptical of their aims (I'm no fan of extending hate crime protections to cops), but it does no good to strawman their stated purpose and goals.

[PhilTLL]

I was mostly being excessive to be facetious, but I'm sure it's not a 100% reflection of his personal beliefs. Just a buck or two to make. I rarely begrudge a wrestler making a buck by knowing their audience.

[WingedEagle]

2 hours ago, C.S. said:

It's not black and white with Dustin, based on what I've seen on Facebook.

He's a "good ol' boy" in some respects, but also has no patience for transphobia because one of his kids is trans. 

Edit:

 

Does that mean he's okay with discriminating against people unless they're in his family or house?  Legitimate question.

[C.S.]

13 minutes ago, WingedEagle said:

Does that mean he's okay with discriminating against people unless they're in his family or house?  Legitimate question.

I realize you're being facetious and asking a rhetorical question, but I obviously don't have the answer. 

[Loss]

I have definitely enjoyed parts of The Last Ride, but it all felt very same-y after a while. He's in a lot of pain, but wants a classic match to go out on. That point is made, and made, and made ... and made. When they move past that, they make that point some more. It's fascinating for all the behind the scenes clips, though.

[C.S.]

23 hours ago, PhilTLL said:

https://www.ninelineapparel.com/collections/mens-t-shirts/products/mens-t-shirt-dustin-rhodes-mwga

Speaking of which, I wonder if Taker has some sort of sponsorship deal with this company - because every shirt he's worn in this documentary is from them (with the exception of that amazing yellow Japanese Andre shirt). 

[Coffey]

On 5/25/2020 at 4:23 PM, Loss said:

I have definitely enjoyed parts of The Last Ride, but it all felt very same-y after a while. He's in a lot of pain, but wants a classic match to go out on. That point is made, and made, and made ... and made. When they move past that, they make that point some more. It's fascinating for all the behind the scenes clips, though.

It's interesting to me because the Michael Jordan The Last Dance was so successful & now wrestling has The Last Ride. I don't know how successful it is, as we never really get WWE Network information other that the subscription number they give investors which includes free memberships. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more of these style of episodic, documentary like shows. Not just as a whole, but even just within the confines of professional wrestling, I think we're just getting started. Especially now during CoVid-19. 

In the sports world, I wouldn't be surprised to see them on the likes of people such as Tiger Woods or Mike Tyson & in wrestling, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw them in other promotions. It feels like WWE is definitely going to do ones on Triple H, Shawn Michaels & Ric Flair. 

[C.S.]

3 hours ago, Coffey said:

I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more of these style of episodic, documentary like shows. Not just as a whole, but even just within the confines of professional wrestling, I think we're just getting started.  

WWE Network has been doing them all along.

- Monday Night War

- Breaking Ground

- Ruthless Aggression

Just to name a few. 

[flyonthewall2983]

To do that format on individual careers, as opposed to specific eras, would be great. They not only have the footage of entire careers, but by now have done tons of interviews with. All just a matter of doing some editing and maybe new interviews. Guys like Flair and Hogan are the obvious choices, but surely it could apply to a few others like Shawn or Bret as well.

[Al]

3 minutes ago, flyonthewall2983 said:

To do that format on individual careers, as opposed to specific eras, would be great. Some guy's careers certainly warrant it. They not only have the footage of people's careers, but by now have done tons of interviews with. All just a matter of doing some editing and maybe new interviews. Guys like Flair and Hogan are the obvious choices, but surely it could apply to a few others like Shawn or Bret as well.

Could honestly do a real interesting Hogan piece if you collected all of his media appearances.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm really interested in just how much backstage stuff they have. Not just recently but going back to the 90's when they would film stuff at MSG, or the behind the scenes stuff at WrestleMania 9. It's so funny I remember someone on reddit just randomly asking for the Network to put up the Yokozuna slam challenge on that aircraft carrier and maybe even the same day the Network announced they were putting up a three hour doc on the Lex Express. 

[DMJ]

I had not seen the three hour documentary about the Lex Express and all I can say is...Holy shit.

This is less of a "doc" than just a bunch of mostly raw, unedited footage. I'm only 30 minutes in and I can't imagine what the rest of this is going to be like. It starts with a lengthy, lengthy music video that was definitely made back in 93' and I'm guessing played on Superstars and stuff? Think "Tell Me A Lie" but more patriotic. We then cut (kinda) to the USS Intrepid, but its being captured by a single camera so it is dizzying, sea-sickness-inducing "fan cam" style. At points, the cameraman zooms in on random fans and it just crazy raw, uncut. I'm guessing they were going to edit this all down.

So far, no "talking heads," no post-production at all, just random and rather minor (to my knowledge) sports celebrities* attempting to slam Yoko mixed with some random WWE stars like Bob Backlund (still sporting long hair) and Scott Steiner. 

Also, for those that still have The Last Dance on my mind, at one point Scotty fucking Burrell shows up to try to slam Yoko! 

 

 

[MoS]

"Burrell choked again and got that Luger guy to choke later too" - MJ, probably 

[flyonthewall2983]

 

Worth a watch

[Dale Wolfe]

A similar documentary on flair would probably be the greatest thing they ever did but if they couldn't get arn involved then its kind of pointless. Strange really. 

Im surprised at just how good this undertaker one is. 

[sek69]

The ESPN doc on Flair is pretty much the definitive word, anything WWE did would pretty much just be a retread of the same stuff for the most part. A Hogan one actually covering his entire career would be interesting, but it would fly in the face of WWE Canon that Vince created Hulkamania by himself, so I don't know if t would be worth the effort. 

The Undertaker doc is them catching lightning in a bottle, the one guy who never opened up and publicly breaking character doing so for a full length doc is not something easily reproduced. 

[flyonthewall2983]

The AWA doc that is on the Network from 2006-7 shows Hogan's rise as a babyface and shows that Hulkamania pretty much started in the Midwest. The thing Vince can claim is that his father came up with the name. 

The ESPN Flair film is mostly about his personal life with the Reader's Digest version of his career to pad it out. They wouldn't need to get Arn for such a thing since they surely have tons of interviews with him for past programs anyway. 

[Alucard]

On 5/28/2020 at 3:29 PM, DMJ said:

I had not seen the three hour documentary about the Lex Express and all I can say is...Holy shit.

This is less of a "doc" than just a bunch of mostly raw, unedited footage. I'm only 30 minutes in and I can't imagine what the rest of this is going to be like. It starts with a lengthy, lengthy music video that was definitely made back in 93' and I'm guessing played on Superstars and stuff? Think "Tell Me A Lie" but more patriotic. We then cut (kinda) to the USS Intrepid, but its being captured by a single camera so it is dizzying, sea-sickness-inducing "fan cam" style. At points, the cameraman zooms in on random fans and it just crazy raw, uncut. I'm guessing they were going to edit this all down.

So far, no "talking heads," no post-production at all, just random and rather minor (to my knowledge) sports celebrities* attempting to slam Yoko mixed with some random WWE stars like Bob Backlund (still sporting long hair) and Scott Steiner. 

Also, for those that still have The Last Dance on my mind, at one point Scotty fucking Burrell shows up to try to slam Yoko! 

 

 

One of my absolute favorite things on the Network. Lex comes off the coolest in the bus clips, the Slam Jam album release party, etc. It's got the original "I'll Be Your Hero" track on the opening music video which is replaced by another song when it airs on SummerSlam 93 on the Network. 

[flyonthewall2983]

They just put up a video on Sting, taken from backstage footage of him at Slamboree 95. Just about to watch it, but this is going deep into WCW archives which is interesting for them to do at this point. 

[C.S.]

On 5/31/2020 at 11:37 AM, flyonthewall2983 said:

They just put up a video on Sting, taken from backstage footage of him at Slamboree 95. Just about to watch it, but this is going deep into WCW archives which is interesting for them to do at this point. 

I watched it last night. It's basically ten minutes of weird kayfabe footage, followed by the Sting-Big Bubba match from Slamboree.

Still cool though. I definitely hope we get more of these.

I skipped the match itself because highlights of it were shown beforehand. From the highlights, I was surprised to see tables in WCW in 1995.

The Sting-Big Bubba feud was underrated. 

[flyonthewall2983]

The 24/7 on Flair's WM 24 weekend was good. But I imagine it could have been a hell of a lot longer, or perhaps even being the basis of the career-long retrospective I fantasized about on the last page. Tough seeing the footage of all of his kids together in the front row watching him. 

[sek69]

Watching part 4 of the Taker doc, and it's practically endearing how he and Vince interact. Vince pretending his idea for Taker on the RAW after Mania was a feud with Giant Gonzalez's son was an unexpected LOL moment. 

Also it's pretty astounding how snakebit how many of his recent matches have been seeing it back to back like this.  First he got concussed, then Hunter got hurt at the first Saudi show, then Goldberg got concussed in the next. Not that any of those matches would have been five star classics, but for a guy knowing his in ring days were running out it must have been beyond frustrating to deal with.

[flyonthewall2983]

It's interesting that the whole Starrcast drama was brought up. His body language regarding the fallout makes me think that (at least at the time he was being interviewed) the whole thing had not settled in his mind.

Reddit is picking apart the moment after the Extreme Rules tag match where he goes up to Vince after and says basically that's it and Vince appears to subtly beg him to reconsider that position. 

Towards the end Triple H talks about the buzz of performing being an addiction, with clips of Ric and Shawn talking about how difficult retirement was. This kind of thing is usually portrayed a bit more heroically but it felt particularly sad considering that moment he is chasing through this whole series. 

[sek69]

6 hours ago, flyonthewall2983 said:

It's interesting that the whole Starrcast drama was brought up. His body language regarding the fallout makes me think that (at least at the time he was being interviewed) the whole thing had not settled in his mind.

 

The idea that he didn't realize AEW had a PPV the same weekend as Starrcast is preposterous, but they also conveniently left out that WWE let his deal run out so Vince expecting him to not look for a payday is also ridiculous. It's such a perfectly Vince thing to expect a guy to sit home and not make money when he didn't feel he was worth keeping under contract. 

Also, while clearly he's got the typical "one more, one more" wrestler disease it's been more a little disingenuous for them to leave out money being such a big factor.  Dave mentioned he's had some real estate deals and other investments that didn't pan out,  plus factoring in two divorces, he wasn't nearly in as good financial shape you'd expect someone at his level to be. It's why he started using social media and initially did the Starrcast deal, and why he kept coming back for the Saudi shows. It's why there was hard feelings with Vince over having his Starrcast gig cancelled, and it's probably the reason Vince ended up offering the lifetime deal (Taker seems to be one of the few people Vince feels bad about pissing off).  

It its funny how often WWE does the "wrestler would be broke without us offering them the honor of working for us" angles, they dance around it when it actually happens IRL.