As February Free rolls on, the WWE Network had another big week – most notably with the second Stone Cold Podcast making the airwaves, this time with Triple H as the guest.
Get the full lowdown on the podcast here or watch a preview clip below.
Other than the Podcast we didn’t get a whole lot of new shows. Countdown returned though, with a fun episode looking at the most unique matches, and there was a very late addition to the Network on Friday night which was Paul Heyman’s views on the disgraced NBC news personality Brian Williams – this turned out to be four minutes of…. I don’t really know what.
The biggest show for the week ahead has to be the fifth NXT Take Over special – Rival on Wednesday night. The live special will emanate from Full Sail University and will see Sami Zayn defend his NXT Championship against former friend turned bitter rival – Kevin Owens. In other matches: Charlotte will defend her Women’s Championship in a four-way match against Sasha Banks, Bayley and Becky Lynch, while Adrian Neville battles with Finn Bálor to become the #1 contender for the NXT Title, Wesley Blake & Buddy Murphy put up their recently won Tag Team Titles against the former champs The Lucha Dragons, and bitter rivals Bull Dempsey and Baron Corbin will fight it out in a No DQ match!
NXT Take Over: Rival kicks off with the pre-show at 7:30pm EST — we’ve not seen a bad NXT live special yet and I’m damn sure that this show won’t be breaking that streak.
Also… if you’re not caught up with the latest NXT goings on, don’t forget, Corey Graves will host a special Take Over Preview edition of NXT which will air tomorrow night at 9pm EST.
Also tomorrow, the second episode of Countdown season two will air. The episode will count down the oddest occupational gimmicks in wrestling history. So it looks to be another good show for you wrestle-crap fans. “Eclectic Odd Jobs” will be available from 5pm EST.
At a time when WWE has supposedly banned relationships between Superstars and office workers/production staff, tonight after RAW goes off the air WWE Network will air a special 30 minute show hosted by Renee Young. The show, which is titled: “WWE Crazy Stupid Love”, looks to be an attempt at Valentine’s Day themed programming and will have us “hear from Superstars and Divas as they discuss the most intimate matters of the heart” — this might be one to check out on Tuesday rather than after more than 3 hours of RAW!
What will be the next WWE DVD added to the Network? Expect to see “John Cena: Greatest Rivalries” in the Beyond the Ring section of the Network this week. The show will be a shortened, two hour version of the DVD set released last October and will first air on Friday 13th February at 4pm EST (read our review of the full 3-disc DVD by clicking here).
Throwback Thursday has now become an official entity on the WWE Network.
Over the past few months we’ve seen Thursday become the day where all the classic shows would air: RAW Replays, TNT, Nitro, WCCW etc. However this week the day got an official title – Throwback Thursday. Regretfully, none of the shows which will be airing right now are first runs; all of the shows are available in the Vault section of the Network already.
It would have been nice if WWE were actually adding up the new episodes of TNT, Nitro, World Class etc. to coincide with the themed night, but hey ho.
If you didn’t notice last weekend, when the new “WWE Honors Black History Month” section was added, the “12 Days of Attitude” were removed. Speaking via their official @AskWWENetwork Twitter, WWE Network commented that 12 Days of Attitude was a “special promotion”.
It’s a shame that the Attitude Era themed section was removed with absolutely no warning — especially for those who hadn’t quite finished watching the content! While personally I don’t have an issue with the removal of content, it should be made clear to users when content is scheduled to be removed to ensure that we aren’t caught unaware like now.
So, given that 12 Days of Attitude was pulled with little warning, you best get watching those “Black History Month” shows now…..
….speaking of those shows, if you are a fan of old school ‘rasslin (maybe even if you aren’t the biggest fan of that content they added) you should really watch (or just play) that content. WWE will of course be looking at the stats on the number of views each show garners. If you want want more classic old school territory content, the best way to send WWE that message is to watch those shows on demand to show that they’re in demand!
In case you didn’t know….. IT’S WRESTLEMANIA SEASON! In honor of this, we are going to look at a “classic” match from the past thirty years of the showcase of the immortals.
Kane vs. The Great Khali
WrestleMania 23 • April 1, 2007
Our first WrestleMania match comes from WrestleMania 23, in Detroit, MI. Twenty years after Hulk Hogan (with a broken back) slammed the 700lbs Andre The Giant through the ring at WrestleMania III in the SilverDome, WWE attempted to recreate this monumental moment.
Regretfully, they opted to use The Great Khali and Kane and it was bowling shoe ugly… in fact forget bowling shoes, this match might have been as ugly as a pair of Crocs…. yes, Crocs!!! Thankfully though it lasted less than 6 minutes and when you think WrestleMania 23, this isn’t the match you remember — that’s why we had to remind you. 😉
If you haven’t subscribed to the WWE Network before (why haven’t you?!) then February is your chance to get an entire month for FREE! Sign up now at WWE.com and take advantage of a free month and see the Fast Lane PPV and the latest NXT Take Over special.
I’m cool with the sections being removed, but for the content to be removed altogether bothers me to no end. What exactly do I pay for, me being one of the apparently few fans who watch archive footage over Live Stream 99% of the time? Having “Specials” is a great idea. My wife had the BRILLIANT IDEA of having these promotional months and moving already archived content, or links to it, whatever, so that certain content was easier to find in relation to the promotion. So for “Black History Month”, while adding new, fresh content, add links to memorable footage already on the Network, like The Rock winning the WWF WHC at Survivor Series ’98, for instance. Adding content is one thing, but streamlining the content is another thing altogether. Why not start adding some of this older WWWF stuff and Mid-South stuff. Christ, they’re not putting out another Mid-South DVD anytime this century. The rhyme and reason behind what goes up and what doesn’t really irks me. No WCW Nitro in months, no WCW PERIOD in forever. No Saturday Nights or anything. No Wrestling Challenge or Superstars. No WCCW in FOREVER. It’s really sad the lack of direction they have for this Network, imho.
I agree, I’ve said from the very beginning that smaller more regular content updates are much better than mass uploads and then nothing. Why couldn’t we have a new a new RAW, Nitro, ECW every week? After all they’re trying to keep people subscribed, what better way than having them keep coming back?
They actually do upload new Raws every week. They started from episode 1 in January 1993 when the Network first launched and now they’re up to June 1996. As for any other shows, nothing. Nitro and ECW haven’t been updated in months. WCCW hasn’t been updated since the launch of the Network. SmackDown does have every episode from August 1999-January 2000, but they haven’t updated that in months either.
SmackDown has been updated in the past two weeks, we covered it in a recent “Lowdown” – they filled in all the gaps. RAW, yes they do add – very quietly in the dead of night.
That’s right. There were shows missing from 1999. I was looking at post-January 2000. It seems like they haven’t moved forward from there in months.
I don’t mind the Network removing the temporary categories (“12 Days Of Attitude”, “Black History Month”, etc.) as long as they take those episodes and then put them into their respective permanent categories. There were several Raw episodes from 1997-2000 in the “12 Days Of Attitude” section that are not in the permanent “Raw Replay” section. Same with SmackDown.
There are some sections of the Network that just seem redundant. There’s a section called “Video Vault” where it’s just a bunch of random matches that are already available in other sections(PPV, In-Ring, Vault). That’s a section they should get rid of if they’re looking to streamline the Network. Also they have the “As Seen On Youtube” and “Quick Hits” sections. Those two should be combined into one section as they’re just short clips of old angles and behind the scenes interviews from WWE.com stories and things like that.
Yea! I’m quite pissed about them removing the 12 Days of Attitude because I was almost done watching everything, I only had 2 days left to watch and I was actually watching one of the episodes of Raw when it only had literary 1 minute left to finish and all of a sudden it kicks me out of it and I go to play it again and it didn’t let me and then I thought there was something wrong with the network so I got out of the network and went back and then it disappeared out of nowhere and I couldn’t find it, I was pretty pissed and right there I figured it was removed! I don’t know why they would delete it since they never removed anything else before and even if they did why not at least take the episodes of Raw and update them in the Raw replay section for people to watch them rather than delete them period! That’s why I personally used to download all the classic Raw episodes when they used to upload them in random websites and torrents and I would burn them for that reason of making sure I had them physically, I don’t know why nobody uploads them anymore , I would love to add more Raw episodes to my collection and even SmackDown, Heat, WCW Nitro episodes! Not a good move for the network to remove content but I’ve heard from a lot of people that this would eventually happen and that’s why it’s not good that people that collect DVDs like myself trade anything they have physically just because they have the network and can watch them on the network because you never know if they’re gonna remove anything! I’m a loyal WWE Network fan, have never gotten on the #CancelWWENetwork bandwagon because of how WWE programming is today simply because the network offers so much classic stuff which I am a bigger fan of then today’s programming with the exception of NXT which I’m a big fan of but yea I’m disappointed with the network for removing stuff to say the least!
WWE removing content from the network is why you should never get rid of your wrestling DVDs, VHS tapes and blu-rays.
At least they could warn people, and note that the content what date it will be removed.
I remember WWE mentioned that content would not be removed from the Network once uploaded. It sucks that 12 Days of Attitude was removed since I didn’t have a chance to watch everything believing I could watch it some other time.
I thought when they removed it they were going to put the shows and clips in their respective categories…i guess an eventual update will put these back, whenever that will be.
The weird thing about removing the 12 Days of Attitude content is that just a few days ago, they were linking to it via the WWENetwork Twitter account.
I believe it was last Sunday, during the Super Bowl, they put up a link to the 1999 Halftime Heat Empty Arena Match, and, having never seen that match, because we didn’t get Sunday Night Heat in Canada at the time, I was going to watch it, but the content was there anymore.