WWE NETWORK GENERAL DISCUSSION THREAD

[Brysynner]

8 hours ago, Go2Sleep said:

Camp WWE was definitely as bad as it looked. The show doesn't work at all unless every wrestler does their own voice. The Cena, HHH, Truth, and Austin were dreadful.

Could tell Vince was having the time of his life, though.

It makes sense in this Camp WWE universe where they're kid versions of themselves and only the adults are voiced by the actual person (Flair/Hunter). Hunter has said he will be voicing HHH's dad, Quad H. So I guess that if we see the Superstars do voice over work they will play their parents.

[(BP)]

I feel like this whole thing was a vehicle for Vince to take ownership of the Cranky Vince persona. 

[Gorman]

Thoughts on In Your House 8 (Beware of Dog)

During the Mero-Helmsley opener, Vince McMahon correctly predicted that the power might go out. Mero's win would have been considered his career highlight aside from the IC title win, since Mero was so quickly lapped by Austin.

Main event time already? I liked the Bulldog-HBK match despite the now-hackneyed double-pin finish. I also liked how Clarence Mason again tried to help his man win a match by serving a legal document on his opponent.

Yokozuna won his literal "dark match" over Vader, but Vader won the PPV bout at Beware of Dog 2. I still don't know why they didn't do this match at WrestleMania.

Goldust and the IC title didn't get a lot of shine from beating the Undertaker in a casket match, since it had the same finish as the casket match against Yokozuna, if you subtract nine bad guys. The Undertaker-Mankind feud is still rolling along well.

Showing footage of the dark match between Austin and Savio Vega made them both seem super-tough, showing that this was their second brutal strap match in three days. Austin gets the MVP award despite his defeat for shedding DiBiase as a manager and going off toward eventual superstardom.

 

 

 

[CSC]

They added a bunch of collections today - best of all a War Games one that includes a couple short Dusty interview segments on the making of and fantasy booking WarGames matches,

[Matt D]

Anything that looks even vaguely like a match that wasn't previously out there in the tape trading world?

[PetrolCB]

New Table for 3 was alright. The thing that hurts this show, is that it's so damn short. There's no reason something like this should be thirty minutes or less, just because they have to have time available for a year old episode of The List or Swerved. 

[Cristobal]

It was probably three hours of footage but they had to cut all the non-PG Flair stories. 

[Infinit]

Looks like they're starting to put up 2004 Raws.

[PetrolCB]

Haven't seen that Benoit/HHH ironman match since it aired. I remember enjoying it, hope it holds up. 

[Josh Mann]

And case in point, I'd love to have seen a longer version of Patterson/Steamboat/Hillbilly Jim.

 

[Go2Sleep]

I remember 2004 being pretty good for Raw. HHH was finally healthy and took as much of a backseat as he ever did in the 2000s. Orton took a big step forward. Evolution was actually clicking as a stable with some solid 6-mans. You had an interesting mix of solid to good vets like Benoit, Jericho, Regal, and Shawn mixed with younger guys like Edge, Christian, and Shelton. Kane was at the apex of his career and was constantly in hilarious angles that were played completely straight. Trish also started her fun heel run during this stretch.

It started to go to shit when they botched Orton's face turn, but Mania to Summer Slam was pretty good I think. Probably the only time during the hard split where Raw was fun and SD was garbage.

[The Iron Yuppie]

On 5/8/2016 at 0:52 AM, Go2Sleep said:

It started to go to shit when they botched Orton's face turn, but Mania to Summer Slam was pretty good I think. Probably the only time during the hard split where Raw was fun and SD was garbage.

I loved the Eddie-JBL feud, but it's astounding just how trash Smackdown was in 2004 otherwise. There was an SD-only PPV that blew off the Eddie-JBL storyline with a bullrope match -- I want to say Great American Bash -- that rivals December To Dismember for all-time garbage WWE shows. Just abominable. 

I'm OK with the botched Orton turn on one point, and one point only: it eventually led to Batista getting that face push. The reactions he was getting then were insane, and I really liked his Wrestlemania and Hell In A Cell matches with HHH. I thought moving him over to SD was bullshit. 

[Go2Sleep]

Those 04 SD-only ppvs were dire. That GAB show you mentioned and Armageddon are both among the worst shows of the decade for WWE. JBL's reign looks better in retrospect, but it took forever to click. You just had him and Taker in a stalemate at the top. The midcard had Cena, Eddie, and Angle, but they were all being kept apart until Mania season which led them feuding with guys like Show, Dupree, and Luther Reigns. Just terrible tv all around.

I didn't mind Batista going to SD because he would've been overshadowed by Cena on Raw. The split let them appear to be mostly equal for a while.

[hammerva]

From PWInsider.com:

Quote

The WWE Network is developing a new series titled "Behind the Curtain" that would take a documentary-style look at different stories from pro wrestling history.  Some of the topics that have been discussed for the series are the plane crash Ric Flair was in, Bruiser Brody's murder in Puerto Rico in 1987, and Gorgeous George's career.

Oh lord I can only imagine

[cwoy2j]

Watching some old JCP. I feel like whenever people talk about greatest jobbers, they should include Alan Martin and Mike Jackson in that conversation. Those guys got in enough decent looking offense to make it seem like they were some sort of a threat but ultimately weren't on the level of the guys squashing them. Put the squashers over way better than them just outright murdering guys who looked like they shouldn't even be out there.

[FakeWorker]

Has the Continue Watching feature stopped working for anyone else?

[lovchunky]

I think Mike Jackson actually won a match on the Saturday Night show (possibly against Rocky King). 

[Joecc]

I arrived home last night having consumed far too many beers and fell asleep on the couch. Before drifting off I did watch Austin v Vader from Raw on December 16,1996. To my barely functioning brain this was a lovely little brutal TV match that had me cursing that the pair never went 20 minutes on PPV. I thought about rewatching it in the morning but decided against it in case I had misjudged it in my non compos mentis state.

 

My advice: drink 12 beers then watch this match. 

[Gorman]

Thoughts on King of the Ring 96

Owen Hart wasn't the best on commentary, but at least he was a consistent heel. I would have loved hear him break out a "how much does this guy weigh?" as a homage to Art Donovan two years earlier when Owen became king.

Vader was kept strong with a DQ loss and a vicious attack on Jake Roberts. They are building him perfectly towards a match with HBK at SummerSlam. What could possibly go wrong with Vader's WWF push?

Too bad this was the end of Davey Boy's run as a WWF title challenger, but he did his job (literally) building up Shawn as champion. I didn't understand Mr. Perfect's involvement as special referee at all. I'm surprised Diana Hart wasn't more involved since the feud was originally about her.

Ultimate Warrior's match with Jerry Lawler was perfect. Lawler runs his mouth, piledriver fails, Warrior gets the win, and we're done in under 4 minutes.

Kudos to Goldust for dragging the extremely limited Our Man Johnson to a 15-minute match and putting him over as Intercontinental champ. Johnson's title reign was in the Paul Heyman-The Public Enemy category as far as masking someone's shortcomings.

Steve Austin is the obvious winner of the MVP award for his great match with Mero, his brutal destruction of Roberts, and his short but iconic Austin 3:16 promo. Not only that, but he went to the hospital between his two matches and got 16 stitches in his mouth. Austin also wisely didn't put on the crown and cape and talk about being a king. Still, he didn't get to the upper echelon of the WWF until his feud with Bret Hart. Austin had to fight Mero again at IYH 9, and he was actually in the pre-show match against Yokozuna at SummerSlam.

 

 

 

[cwoy2j]

7 hours ago, Joecc said:

I arrived home last night having consumed far too many beers and fell asleep on the couch. Before drifting off I did watch Austin v Vader from Raw on December 16,1996. To my barely functioning brain this was a lovely little brutal TV match that had me cursing that the pair never went 20 minutes on PPV. I thought about rewatching it in the morning but decided against it in case I had misjudged it in my non compos mentis state.

 

My advice: drink 12 beers then watch this match. 

You can watch it sober. It's a cool little match.

[cwoy2j]

Watching Bret/Perfect from KOTR 93. Totally should've been one of Bret's title programs. He and Perfect had awesome chemistry together. I guess the stars just never aligned due to Perfect's injuries and jumping to WCW but man, Bret vs. Perfect for the title in 95 or early 96 would've been awesome. A bitter Perfect heeling on Bret b/c Bret was the one who took his IC title and injured his back would've been an awesome little feud for an IYH ppv.

[cwoy2j]

And it's super sad to watch Macho relegated to commentary during that match. He's super psyched up for the entire thing and putting over both guys before and after the match but you can tell he's just fucking itching to get back into the mix. Still can't understand why Vince thought he was done at that point.

[Gorman]

Thoughts on In Your House 9 (International Incident)

Jerry Lawler lost the dark match to Phinneas Godwinn, of all people, Later on commentary, Lawler joked about how bad the Vancouver Grizzlies were. Little did he know they would become his hometown team.

Why would the Body Donnas-Smoking Gunns match on pay-per-view be non-title? I love how Skip essentially said, "We dumped Kloudy, and we don't need a manager, so now everybody likes us!" There was still no reason to cheer for them.

One month after "accidentally" costing The Undertaker his match against Mankind, Paul Bearer showed no signs that he would turn on Taker one month later. It's nice when the foreshadowing isn't so overwhelming that everyone knows what is going to happen.

Conversely, I wished Jim Cornette hadn't made his ridiculous money-back guarantee, because that gave away that his team was going to win.

Bob Backlund had a funny moment, campaigning for President in the wrong country.

Mankind gets the MVP award for his hard work. Even though original opponent Jake Roberts wasn't there, Mankind had a good match against Henry Godwinn. Then he popped up through the ring to attack the Undertaker two matches later.

Sid gets honorable mention for replacing Warrior in the six-man main event. It reminds me of a house show I went to in 1991 when Sid also replaced Warrior...so we got Sid-Undertaker. Sid busted out the first chokeslam I had ever seen, causing me to lose my mind on commentary (into my little tape recorder). "He just grabbed him with one hand, and lifted him six feet off the ground!"

[BurningBeard]

18 hours ago, cwoy2j said:

Watching Bret/Perfect from KOTR 93. Totally should've been one of Bret's title programs. He and Perfect had awesome chemistry together. I guess the stars just never aligned due to Perfect's injuries and jumping to WCW but man, Bret vs. Perfect for the title in 95 or early 96 would've been awesome. A bitter Perfect heeling on Bret b/c Bret was the one who took his IC title and injured his back would've been an awesome little feud for an IYH ppv.

I much prefer that much to the SS91. In fact I dare say it's my favourite match of all time

[Go2Sleep]

I was going through the KOTRs recently, and found a real hidden gem of Owen vs. 123 Kid in 94. It's definitely on the short list for my favorite sub-5-minute match. Kid works an injury angle as a big underdog, and Owen wrestles like the favorite to win the tournament. The pace is really good and there were a lot of good move sequences that seemed really out of place (in a good way) in mid 90s WWF. Opened with back to back dives by the heel, some sharp kicks from Kid, and my favorite spot of Owen catching a heel kick attempt and turning it into a deadlift high angle German. Super fun match that I totally wasn't expecting.