Apologies. Whether I like them or not, the stuff you said about the other guys in the group is all true, so I thought maybe you were serious about Credible as well. My bad.

 

and yeah, that gif still makes me laugh every time I watch it!

I was about to cancel the network but thought I'd give NXT a shot, almost exclusively because my old-school brother-in-arms Kelly vouched for it.

 

Here's what I dug:

 

- Proper face and heel dynamics.

- Crowd getting behind faces and booing heels. Hot crowd in general.

- Commentators bickering and taking sides as if they were Vince and Jesse. I thought some of the barbs were good. "You spent your youth playing Dungeons and Dragons" "Well ... it IS a good game". Ha ha.

- Southern-style tag opener was good, lower card babyface team seemed over like Too Cool. Heel team I REALLY liked, seemed to be working a version of The Andersons / Arn & Tully. Those guys have a future.

- Thought build to Charlotte match was good and her opponent was good on the mic and got me wanting to see the match. I think Charlotte has zero charisma and the match was really disappointing, but the build was good.

- I liked the Fat Bull. Bull-Fit stuff. William Regal obviously great in the role he's in, and I just kinda dug it as a goofy little angle.

- There was a tag team where one of the guys was a bit like Kurt Angle and the other guy is black. Their promo was pretty shitty, but they looked good in their match.

- Enjoyed the fact there was a sub-one-minute squash match.

- Vaudevillains were really really fun. There's at least three teams who looked like they should be champs more than the actual champs. But their valet looked like she's over like hell and got good heel heat being a dick to the Vaudevillains. However, neither one of them can throw an uppercut like Dory!

 

All in all, it's probably done enough to keep the sub and watch some more. I want to watch that Brooklyn show and I might as well cling on for Summerslam.

I've long thought NXT is a modern version of the old school one hour territory wrestling show, which makes it one of the easiest watches of the week for me.

I was about to cancel the network but thought I'd give NXT a shot, almost exclusively because my old-school brother-in-arms Kelly vouched for it.

 

You're in the UK, right? So this might not apply to you. But for everyone else: NXT is also on Hulu Plus - yes, even the Specials (but 24 hours later, and with commercials).

The Stone Cold-Paige podcast was better than I expected but she's a fairly uninteresting character. After 30 minutes it just seemed to be story after story of her wacky father. She was also getting on my nerves touching her hair every 30 seconds.

 

It's pretty clear that Legends of Wrestling, as a long, semi-shoot, zero budget program where guys are shooting the shit and sometimes not toeing the company line is never going to come back. That being said, I enjoyed Table For Three and I can see that program doing very well. I'd have done the show differently but it felt intimate and genuine. It's just a shame that the WWE seems to think that their audience has got no attention span because this program could have lasted an entire hour.

 

Also, Whoo Nation needs to be a part of the network. Let Austin interview the top legends (Sting, Undertaker, Vince again, Steph... I know I know, that that's how they see it), Jericho can interview the current guys and Flair the old timers.

Probably should've posted this here instead:

 

Anyone watch Table For 3 on the Network? Nothing groundbreaking, but definitely fun stuff. It's basically Piper, Mean Gene, and Mr. Wonderful telling stories and laughing for a half-hour. Orndorff's handlebar mustache is majestic. When he said at the end that they should do it again soon, that was kind of heartbreaking.

Was watching a Clash from 1997 and noticed they left in a Mighty Ducks commercial and a Chef Boyardee commercial. I know they leave their own product advertisement in, but these had nothing to do with wrestling.

 

I found that pretty weird?

I've seen a couple WCW things where they left in some commercials. Mostly just "paid for by the following" stuff.

I usually don't bother with the PPV hype stuff on the network, but the one from tonight hyping Taker/Brock is really good.

Hype specials like that are great, but would they mean more on USA? I need to ask what the value is in selling a show to people who are already getting it.

Hype specials like that are great, but would they mean more on USA? I need to ask what the value is in selling a show to people who are already getting it.

 

Or at least on youtube.

Was watching a Clash from 1997 and noticed they left in a Mighty Ducks commercial and a Chef Boyardee commercial. I know they leave their own product advertisement in, but these had nothing to do with wrestling.

 

I found that pretty weird?

Just be glad it wasn't a Foley Chef Boyardee ad. That would be grounds for "hey...wait a minute!"

 

Was watching a Clash from 1997 and noticed they left in a Mighty Ducks commercial and a Chef Boyardee commercial. I know they leave their own product advertisement in, but these had nothing to do with wrestling.

 

I found that pretty weird?

Just be glad it wasn't a Foley Chef Boyardee ad. That would be grounds for "hey...wait a minute!"

Foley was in those. These were just generic Chef Boyardee commercials.

 

Was wondering, is there any kind of legal weirdness that could arise from airing old advertising like that?

 

 

Was watching a Clash from 1997 and noticed they left in a Mighty Ducks commercial and a Chef Boyardee commercial. I know they leave their own product advertisement in, but these had nothing to do with wrestling.

I found that pretty weird?

 

Just be glad it wasn't a Foley Chef Boyardee ad. That would be grounds for "hey...wait a minute!"

Foley was in those. These were just generic Chef Boyardee commercials.

 

Was wondering, is there any kind of legal weirdness that could arise from airing old advertising like that?

He was, but it couldn't have been in 1997. He was still in the middle of his face turn, and not yet in his button down shirt that he wore during the ads.

 

 

Was watching a Clash from 1997 and noticed they left in a Mighty Ducks commercial and a Chef Boyardee commercial. I know they leave their own product advertisement in, but these had nothing to do with wrestling.

 

I found that pretty weird?

Just be glad it wasn't a Foley Chef Boyardee ad. That would be grounds for "hey...wait a minute!"

Foley was in those. These were just generic Chef Boyardee commercials.

 

Was wondering, is there any kind of legal weirdness that could arise from airing old advertising like that?

 

Maybe the opposite - the sponsorship contract says they stay in the show for re-airings/home video? It's not just an oversight - I've seen a couple Clashes that the "sponsored by" bits left in.

The "sponsored by" bits (assuming that precedes these ads) are part of the original production that was broadcast by WCW over satellite back to TBS. As such, it is technically a part of the show and WWE is supposedly doing everything legally possible to keep programs as they originally aired so it stays.

Yeah the sponsored stuff makes sense, old Raws they would have Vince doing these during ring entrances. No way around that. These were just regular commercials and not part of the show at all. Felt like I was watching one of my old tapes.

It really is weird that the Network has crazy high bitrates for video, even SD, but all the audio is a piddling 96kbps.

I had heard that the audio was mono.

The NHL also made a deal recently for MLBAM to handle their out of market games, I think there's a question there to be asked how to they allocate bandwidth, do the companies they do business with buy it like a giant sized version of a smart phone data plan or are there hard ceilings?

It really is weird that the Network has crazy high bitrates for video, even SD, but all the audio is a piddling 96kbps.

 

The audio on a lot of these streaming services leave much to be desired, really. On Netflix, the Metallica movie Through The Never is way quieter than you'd think.

They've started putting up Nitro episodes again. They're up to the first 10 or so of 1997, plus a couple random ones.

So I excitedly fire up Nitro #69, from 1/6/97. First match is Glacier squashing poor Bobby Eaton, in which Glacier blew the finish by pinning Eaton too close to the ropes. Then a "Mexican strap match" between Konnan and Big Bubba. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

I want to like the Network, I really do. I have to translate New Japan World with Goggle and even then I like their set up more than the Network.

Nitros all the way up to July 1997 up now, as much as I've been waiting for these it's a little sad to watch things play out and see all the mistakes happen again.