[WWE NETWORK] What Are You Watching?

[cwoy2j]

Watching The Wrestling Classic (1985), which is a 16-man tournament. And then I think it ends with a Piper-Hogan title match. I am watching it little by little.

 

What strikes me is the vast improvement in their production from Mania 1 to this show. It's well lit. The transitions to back stage and between announcers is smooth. It just looks and feels bright and desirable.

 

I think I still have the studio produced VHS of that somewhere. I have to say, WWF loved the "face suplexes the heel into the ring from the outside and gets popped with a foreign object" finish in the mid-80's, especially with Savage. Overall I thought it was a pretty good show but had lots of lame finishes, especially a countout in the tourney final. I know you don't want to job Savage clean on tv but why book him in the finals if he's not going to win then?

[Captain Kronos]

 

Watching The Wrestling Classic (1985), which is a 16-man tournament. And then I think it ends with a Piper-Hogan title match. I am watching it little by little.

 

What strikes me is the vast improvement in their production from Mania 1 to this show. It's well lit. The transitions to back stage and between announcers is smooth. It just looks and feels bright and desirable.

 

I think I still have the studio produced VHS of that somewhere. I have to say, WWF loved the "face suplexes the heel into the ring from the outside and gets popped with a foreign object" finish in the mid-80's, especially with Savage. Overall I thought it was a pretty good show but had lots of lame finishes, especially a countout in the tourney final. I know you don't want to job Savage clean on tv but why book him in the finals if he's not going to win then?

 

 

 

I haven't gotten to the finals yet. I assumed Savage was going to win, actually. But I am only on the second round. The matches for the most part have been rushed, which only makes sense for a short show. At least there's been some variety in the finishes. The most creative so far was probably Terry Funk vs Moondog Spot.

[cwoy2j]

Shit, sorry for the spoiler man. My fault.

[cwoy2j]

 

 

Watching The Wrestling Classic (1985), which is a 16-man tournament. And then I think it ends with a Piper-Hogan title match. I am watching it little by little.

 

What strikes me is the vast improvement in their production from Mania 1 to this show. It's well lit. The transitions to back stage and between announcers is smooth. It just looks and feels bright and desirable.

 

I think I still have the studio produced VHS of that somewhere. I have to say, WWF loved the "face suplexes the heel into the ring from the outside and gets popped with a foreign object" finish in the mid-80's, especially with Savage. Overall I thought it was a pretty good show but had lots of lame finishes, especially a countout in the tourney final. I know you don't want to job Savage clean on tv but why book him in the finals if he's not going to win then?

 

 

 

I haven't gotten to the finals yet. I assumed Savage was going to win, actually. But I am only on the second round. The matches for the most part have been rushed, which only makes sense for a short show. At least there's been some variety in the finishes. The most creative so far was probably Terry Funk vs Moondog Spot.

 

 

Funk's WWF run is highly underrated.

[Captain Kronos]

Shit, sorry for the spoiler man. My fault.

 

 

No worries. I can't expect spoiler-free for something that's 30 years old! 

[cwoy2j]

I loved the Orndorff/Tito match that started out scientific b/c they were both faces but got more heated as it progressed. The best is Jesse loving it when Orndorff starts being a jerk.

[Captain Kronos]

 

 

 

Funk's WWF run is highly underrated.

 

 

Very gross when he spits tobacco on the camera lens.

 

And I agree, from what little I have seen of his 80's WWF run. Good stuff there.

[Web Conn]

Bash at the Beach 94 is live streaming right now

[Raziel]

Uncensored 96 is worth watching it, even with the Shitty Doomsday Cage match, just for Regal and Findlay beating the shit out of each other for 15 minutes.

[Matt D]

Bash at the Beach 94 is live streaming right now

Yes but you could watch it whenever.

[odessasteps]

From today's WON update

-- For those wondering why some of the PPVs disappeared on the Network recently, Chris writes: Over the past few days, WWE has been pulling WCW shows from the Network and re-uploading them about a day or so later without the generic music dubbed over themes done by Jimmy Papa, the Texas songwriter who was/is suing WWE. The music affected is everything from the WCW Slam Jam album as well the entrance music for 2 Cold Scorpio and the Freebirds (Badstreet USA and I'm a Freebird and What Was Your Excuse). WWE seems to be going through all the shows with Papa music and restoring it (even WrestleMania X-7, where Michael Hayes entered to Badstreet USA, is currently down). Beach Blast 1993 and Fall Brawl 1993 are two examples of WCW shows that went down and are back up with Papa's music now intact. In addition, several ECW PPVs (including Barely Legal and the last one, Guilty As Charged 2001) were briefly removed from the Network a few days ago and went back up without bleeps over the profanity (which WWE had put in for when the shows aired on the old Classics On Demand channe

[Niners Fan in CT]

Ah so my and others speculations were correct. It sounds like they just wanted everything up for launch and are now fine tuning. Nice!

[Bustronaut]

 

Bash at the Beach 94 is live streaming right now

Yes but you could watch it whenever.

 

Isn't it the first WCW PPV to stream om the Network?  Realized the draw of non-WCW stuff after the initial launch, perhaps?

[Petey]

 

 

Watched SuperBrawl 96 last night. Johnny B Badd came out to some crappy stock music, but a att the emd of the match the "he looks like little richard" theme played. No Man Called Sting either

Judging by the WWE Network reddit, it doesn't seem like they've gotten around to re-doing the SuperBrawl's. I just checked out Bash at the Beach 95 and Man Called Sting is intact and Johnny B Badd's theme is correct for Fall Brawl 94, both events which were noted as being re-upped.

 

 

In my opinion, the most criminal music edit is the loss of the Midnight Express coming out to The Chase.

 

I don't disagree, but unfortunately I've had to (begrudgingly) come to terms with it. That said, at least they got the actual Demolition theme.

[sydneybrown]

Funk's WWF run is highly underrated.

 

 

While he was only there ten months or so, I literally can not think of a single Terry Funk WWF match that didn't entertain me.  Even his squashes was awesome.

 

 

What strikes me is the vast improvement in their production from Mania 1 to this show. It's well lit. The transitions to back stage and between announcers is smooth. It just looks and feels bright and desirable.

 

That's all thanks to Dick Ebersol and the NBC production crew.  Pretty much every major WWF show's look changed after the first SNME.

[Omega]

In Your House 16: Canadian Stampede

Their was only four matches but they were all great matches and the Canadian crowd always makes WWE shows better. Easily one of my favourite PPV's.

[piranesi]

Boston Garden, February 7, 1987

Hercules w/ Bobby Heenan!!!! vs. Billy Jack Haynes.

Before we even get started Bobby takes the mic and brings out Mr. Wonderful...but fuck all that, we cut for a second to some kids with signs..1987-era signage and this needs to be dealt with.

First the good: This is a heel sign.  A negative sign directed at heels.  It is specifically a sign about how Hercules Hernandez is a bad guy for being with Bobby Heenan.  So before we deal with anything else, we have to accept that in Boston in 1987 there was s kid that CARED ENOUGH ABOUT HERCULES HERNANDEZ to make a sign complaining about his relationship with Bobby Heenan.  This is historically significant as it increases the known number of people who cared about Hercules Hernandez from zero to one.

Hercules looks exactly like a Dean drawing of Damien Sandow and is holding up his hands standing next to Heenan.  His muscle boobs are square like a robots which is awesome.  There are dialog bubbles.  This is the heart and soul of this sign.  There are BOTH labels and dialog.  

Hercules is saying "Im the new Champion"  I'm not sure of what...because he's not.  I'm thinking this sign is a leftover from when he was challenging Hogan.  So this represents Hercules speaking of his dreams and this kid is mocking those dreams.  That is the best part of this sign...that this kid takes us into the inner life or Hercules Hernandez, exposes it to the world, and holds it up for mockery.  This is particularly cruel since he had jobbed out to Hogan so decisively and was now feuding with Billy Jack Haynes.  When Hercules sees this it will hurt.

The Bad: Everything else is shoddy.  Really 2nd rate work from this kid.

Heenan is depicted as a literal weasel, which is fine.  He has long pointy ears (both Bobby Heenan and actual weasels have small rounded ears, so he is confusing the weasel/ferret family with like a rat or something) and a Beavis' nose form BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD. which is remarkable given that this was six years before the show debuted and Mike Judge would be too old in 1987 to be this kid.  None of this makes sense.

Either way the Heenan is way off.  His hair is yellow, like what you would use for Hogan back in the day.  He is wearing a purple coat, but it's really tight.  It barely stretches across his body to button, like a short casual jacket over a red shirt and yellow tie, and he appears to be wearing jeans.  He is also really skinny.  He is drawn out of nothing but straight lines.  No curves at all...like imagine if Katt WIlliams was white.  Not good, kid.  

Heenan is thinking (not saying...the kid makes it very clear with bubbles leading to the words instead of a straight line that this is thinking) "Im the manager of you." SERIOUSLY.  Nevermind the problem with apostrophes all over this sign, I would like to think that there was more going on in Heenan's head than just stating his identity and vocation.  You had a FREE SHOT at Bobby Heenan, kid.  You could have put anything in his head.  Fears, inadequacies, shameful secrets and you went with something that, if the man himself saw your sign he would think "That is an accurate statement."  Maybe this sign goes back all the way to when Blassie sold him to Bobby.  In that case, this kid made this sign two years ago and SAVED IT KNOWING THAT IT COULD BE MODIFIED FOR FUTURE EVENTS!!!!!

Now things get really bad.  Heenan is the weasel, but there are remnants of a weasel tail on Hercules, which was then erased and put on Bobby where it belongs...This is a mess, like the kid got distracted by the SOLID GOLD dancers on t.v. (no one can blame him for this) while he was making this and put the tail on the wrong guy in bright red crayon.  Then tried to smear it out.  You know what I mean...and you know it doesn't work.  You either draw something new over it next to Hercules or you START OVER!!!!

Hercules is holding his chain over his head, but because this kid can't draw hands it looks like he is holding it with his hands backwards, like knuckles forward like he's doing a chinup. In this drawing the chain appears to be made out of eggs that are strung together like some sort of weird Easter garland.  The chain links don't actually link.  They are just sort of next to each other.  This chain would fragment within seconds of its construction.  I am absolutely appalled at the quality of this.

He added a heart tattoo to Hercules' arm which appears to say "Hercules + Bobby."  That is a nice touch, but too small to really hit home when they see it from the ring.  I'm sorry, kid, but your attempt to drive a wedge between them with hints of homoerotic attraction has failed due to poor execution.  He started to draw abdominal muscles or maybe navel hair?  But it ended up looking like Hercules has a guitar tattooed around his belly button.  He has flat Picasso cubist eyes that are off-putting.  

Taped to the side of this sign is another.  This one is a collage of things cut out of magazines with thought bubbles added around them and, like, whiskers drawn on Bundy's face.  This kid needs to choose a medium and perfect it.  I think that's his problem is that he hasn't specialized enough to master either pure crayon or collage.

The kid next to him has a simple but much more elegant sign.  Yes it is scribbled onto a chunk from a cardboard box but the lettering for one is much larger and more impressive.  It takes up nearly half of the sign down the left side creating an easy to process division between message and graphics.   This is a bland but proffesional concept. The left side reads:

WEASEL
HEENAN
and
FAMiLY

On the right side are really nicely drawn illumination style portraits of family members.  Haku is there in royal garb, but like a great abstract version of him where he looks like the King of Town from Strong Bad. There is a fantastic Bundy and sadly I can't tell the rest as the sign is cut off.  None of them are exaggerated or mocking.  It is a simple tribute to an amazing man and his sad menagerie of failure.  I think he is mixing parts form magazines with parts he has drawn in true Jasper Johns fashion.  The result is an engaging combination of hyper-realism and abstraction.

Final results:

Hercules-Weasel sign: * 1/2 (mainly for the cruel interior dialog.  Everything else is shite)

Cardboard sign: *** for basic competence and well laid-out structure.  Lacking in psychology.

[Web Conn]

Tommy Dreamers outfit at Heat Wave 99 is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

[hammerva]

Tommy Dreamers outfit at Heat Wave 99 is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

 

You clearly haven't seen Tommy Dreamer on the 1993/1994 Hardcore TV shows

[MonteCarl]

Very interesting episode of Smackdown on the Live Stream right now. It's the in-ring debut of Batista in a tag match with D-Von against Farooq and a very young rookie Randy Orton. Also on this episode is John Cena's debut match with Kurt Angle. They also showed a video package for the soon to be debuting Rey Mysterio. Quite a transition year with a bunch of fresh guys that would change the face of the company forever.

[SirSmUgly]

I don't know if this has been true for anyone else, but I just opened up a WCW PPV that I stopped in the middle of last week, and it continued right where I stopped off. It looks like they have added that feature. 

[greenbat]

I just noticed bash at the beach 96 and souled out 98 are missing

[Petey]

Probably more theme fixing.

[MonteCarl]

I'm now watching King of the Ring 2001. Was there any reason why DDP was completely buried by Undertaker when he came in? I remember the reveal of him being Sara's stalker was quite hot. Then they're building up a confrontation with DDP at ringside the whole time. Then Undertaker comes out and beats the shit out of him for 5 minutes straight. Why would they need to have any match after that? I seem to recall the entire DDP/Undertaker feud going the same way, with Sara also getting a pin on DDP at some point, and then DDP and Kanyon getting squashed by Taker and Kane in a tag match at SummerSlam. DDP was just never given any sort of real chance in WWF. Anybody know why that is?

[MGFanJay]

Going through MITB 2010. Wow was Drew ripped, and pushed. I can't believe it took WWE so long to fire Striker. MATT HARDY IS THE SENTIMENTAL FAVORITE OF MANY IN THE WWE UNIVERSE! THE UNIVERSE IS GETTING BEHIND THE GIANT!