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WWE Network... It's Here


goodhelmet

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Watched the Nitro where the Outsiders attacked for the first time, and it's kind of a shame it's only known for Rey getting thrown into the production truck. The whole angle was excellent from start to finish. It starts during a six man between Sting/Luger/Savage vs Flair/Benoit/McMichael, Jimmy Hart comes out and is freaking out for the guys in the match to come help because the Outsiders are attacking people. Everyone ignores him for a while because it's Jimmy Hart and everyone there has a reason to distrust him (the Horsemen were feuding with the Dungeon of Doom and Sting's team were faces), but eventually everyone notices how scared he is and decides to check it out. They follow him to the back and find Arn, both American Males, and Rey all wiped out as Hall and Nash jump into their limo and run off. Savage tries to climb on the limo while it's moving and you see him drop into the sun roof just as the car ducks out of sight around a corner (also you can hear what seems like actual fans yelling for the limo to stop because there's a crazy man flailing on top).

 

From there you have what might be Tony Schiavone's best work as an announcer, noting how both teams from the match are putting their differences aside in the face of such carnage. Sting is shown attending to Bagwell as Tony mentions their out of the ring friendship, and the rest of the Horsemen are shown with Arn. Woman is yelling for someone to get an ambulance as Flair is attending to him while Mongo is stomping around like an angry bull, which is exactly how you'd expect a football jock like him to react in this situation. Eddy is shown with Rey as the announcers mention they were supposed to have a match for the Cruiserweight title later that night, and he relayed that Rey saw four attackers.

 

The rest of the show carries on with an air of fear and uncertainty. When Bischoff and Heenan come out to announce hour two, Bobby tells him that with his history of neck problems and WCW's inability to guarantee security he's not doing the show and leaves. Larry and Tony stay with Eric, and the first match after has the Steiners vs High Voltage. Larry mentions how the young guys haven't been around long enough to have any concern for the people who were beat up, while Rick Steiner especially is being distracted by what happened.

 

All in all it was one of the most well done angles in terms of everyone involved playing their parts perfectly. If it was done today, we'd have announcers overselling everything and wrestlers not reacting at all.

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The craziest thing about that segment is that they intentionally, literally turfed the entire second hour of the show just to put the angle over. The planned main event of Giant vs. Savage turned into the Giant vs. Greg Valentine. High Voltage was subbing for the American Males or somebody. There was no contrived "surprise" replacements--half the night's roster was wiped out and WCW simply had to make do with who was left, resulting in an hour of JTTS squashes. And they comfortably won the night anyway. That kind of commitment to getting an attack over would never have occurred to the WWF, at any time.

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Even when the fans started chanting "boring" while guys were being loaded into the ambulances (they were at Disney and the fans couldn't see what was going on since there were no screens), the announcers were quick to mention they understand why the fans are upset since nothing had been going in on the ring for a long time but when they realize what happened they would understand. It added to the whole feeling of "these guys just straight fucked up our whole show".

 

All this makes it even more amazing in retrospect that not only did WCW never get the decisive win, but the nWo ended up being the most popular faction in history as a result.

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Watched the Nitro where the Outsiders attacked for the first time, and it's kind of a shame it's only known for Rey getting thrown into the production truck. The whole angle was excellent from start to finish. It starts during a six man between Sting/Luger/Savage vs Flair/Benoit/McMichael, Jimmy Hart comes out and is freaking out for the guys in the match to come help because the Outsiders are attacking people. Everyone ignores him for a while because it's Jimmy Hart and everyone there has a reason to distrust him (the Horsemen were feuding with the Dungeon of Doom and Sting's team were faces), but eventually everyone notices how scared he is and decides to check it out. They follow him to the back and find Arn, both American Males, and Rey all wiped out as Hall and Nash jump into their limo and run off. Savage tries to climb on the limo while it's moving and you see him drop into the sun roof just as the car ducks out of sight around a corner (also you can hear what seems like actual fans yelling for the limo to stop because there's a crazy man flailing on top).

 

From there you have what might be Tony Schiavone's best work as an announcer, noting how both teams from the match are putting their differences aside in the face of such carnage. Sting is shown attending to Bagwell as Tony mentions their out of the ring friendship, and the rest of the Horsemen are shown with Arn. Woman is yelling for someone to get an ambulance as Flair is attending to him while Mongo is stomping around like an angry bull, which is exactly how you'd expect a football jock like him to react in this situation. Eddy is shown with Rey as the announcers mention they were supposed to have a match for the Cruiserweight title later that night, and he relayed that Rey saw four attackers.

 

The rest of the show carries on with an air of fear and uncertainty. When Bischoff and Heenan come out to announce hour two, Bobby tells him that with his history of neck problems and WCW's inability to guarantee security he's not doing the show and leaves. Larry and Tony stay with Eric, and the first match after has the Steiners vs High Voltage. Larry mentions how the young guys haven't been around long enough to have any concern for the people who were beat up, while Rick Steiner especially is being distracted by what happened.

 

All in all it was one of the most well done angles in terms of everyone involved playing their parts perfectly. If it was done today, we'd have announcers overselling everything and wrestlers not reacting at all.

 

WCW also provided a great follow up the next week: Ric Flair wrestled The Booty Man, with Meng, Norton, and other WCW wrestlers standing guard outside. The Horsemen all kick the dogshit out of him. Gene is all indignant about it, asking Arn how he can do this when he was a victim last week, and Arn responds with one of his greatest promos ever, Benoit and McMichael get a chance to talk, and then Flair cuts his usual crazy ranting promo on Hogan.

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At the end of his podcast interview with DDP, Austin mentions a dream of recording a commentary track with Bret Hart for their WM13 match (he also mentions solo commentary he was recording that he ditched after a few minutes). Another great idea (though I think some version of it has been proposed here and elsewhere) that will never be a reality!

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I've not been one to bitch about the Network, but the lack of new (old) content is pretty depressing now.

It's pretty alarming that even the SmackDown shows have stopped dead in their tracks. At this point there is now zero archival content being added with any regularity.
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I've not been one to bitch about the Network, but the lack of new (old) content is pretty depressing now.

It's pretty alarming that even the SmackDown shows have stopped dead in their tracks. At this point there is now zero archival content being added with any regularity.

 

 

This is budget-cut related, right? Adding new content doesn't cost zero, though I'm sure it's far cheaper than new original content, even the clip shows.

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I've not been one to bitch about the Network, but the lack of new (old) content is pretty depressing now.

It's pretty alarming that even the SmackDown shows have stopped dead in their tracks. At this point there is now zero archival content being added with any regularity.

Plus a ton of the deadlines have passed that the Observer reported a while back on ECW and WCCW.

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I noticed they had Hallowe'en Havoc 90 on the livestream in a 3 hour slot today. The on demand version is still the 2 hour THE release, so I don't know if this was a screwup and they just mis-scheduled it, or if they've found the original PPV tape.

It was a 2 hour window. 3-5 AM ET.

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Hopefully it will be in a similar mould to the Bret and Shawn DVD from a few years back. Even if it were a case of two guys sitting down having a laugh about their memories and showing mutual respect (Piper and Flair for example). I wouldn't expect anything controversial but there are certainly some fun possibilities that would make a nice watch.

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They also did a top rivalries of all time DVD set a couple of years ago with Hogan/Andre on the cover.

 

EDIT: This one - http://shop.wwe.com/WWE%3A-The-Top-25-Rivalries-in-Wrestling-History-DVD/W05276,default,pd.html?dwvar_W05276_color=No%20Color&start=60&cgid=dvd-bluray

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