What can the WWE Network really do? After 1.5 years, WWE Network has started in Germany. For wrestling fans it’s a paradisiacal mixture of Netflix and NBA League Pass, for others it’s the most pointless pay-TV in the world.
As a German fan of American pro wrestlings you have been the ass with ears so far. The monthly Pays-per-View you could either order between 12 and 20 Euro at Maxdome (formerly Sky for 20-25 €), get them illegally or read the next day in the “Dirt Sheets” (Wrestling-News-Pages) how good they were. Because no matter how loveless and trashy TV shows like RAW or Smackdown! may be, WWE keeps the quality of their PPVs high.
Wrestling aficionados in America, Canada and since about a year also in England were there long ago. They use the so called WWE Network, which can be imagined from the user interface as Netflix, instead of series and movies it is full to the top with wrestling shows, wrestling documentaries, historical events and the current PPV. And the grotesque thing about it: everything for a monthly price of $9.99.
The network went on air in the USA in August 2014, and although WWE boss and muscle old Vincent Kennedy McMahon always wanted his own wrestling channel, the public was surprised by the price cuts. Until then, the PPVs cost American cable operators up to fifty dollars or more. So for twelve PPVs a year you paid an average of 600 dollars, whereas with an annual subscription for the network you only pay 120. This WWE rummage table has virtually killed the outdated business model wrestling PPV on its own. But the WWE now has well over a million subscribers (as of December) worldwide and has also technically arrived in the present – the streaming is exemplary. On the other hand, 1.2 million are literally not the world, considering that the network is now seen in over 140 countries.
But the grandiosity of the network is perhaps even a product of chance. It is really there for all wrestling fans. 7-year-old Roman Reigns or John Cena fans can admire their supermen in the endless feed in Jorts and Flakwesten, nostalgics and wrestling hipsters watch old Wrestlemanias, the junior league NXT and their fantastic PPVs.
For example, my first day on the network looked like this. First I switch to the “Live Program”, where the documentary series “Monday Night Wars” is running, which reports about the quota wars between WCW and WWE in the nineties. It’s about Mick Foley right now and they show the legendary Hell In A Cell cage match between the Undertaker and Mankind (Foley), where Foley falls almost six meters from the roof of the cage into a commentary table and then-because it was so nice- is slammed through the roof of the cage by the Undertaker again, which gives way, drops Foley down into the ring and gets knocked out by a chair coming behind. He also rams his own incisor into his nose. In the end it even goes into a bathroom made of rice, in short: it’s a massacre and in the network only one click away parental control function, ick listen to traps.
After that there is a historical PPV on the menu: Ric Flair against Terry Funk at the Great American Bash 1989 from the glorious pre-Hulk Hogan days of the WCW. Also no walk in the park and a lesson in intended bloodshed (man google blading in wrestling). Of course, I also look forward to a jump into Wrestlemania VI, the first PPV of my life, which I even had on audio tape, and which made me a lifelong fan. Ultimate Warrior versus Hogan is the main event, but there are also borderline style blossoms like the recently deceased Roddy Piper versus Bad News Brown, where Piper painted half his body black to mock his African-American opponent. Ahem.
Then an extensive interview with the grandiosely bratzigen and always slightly overweight Canadian Kevin Owens, then a consequence of the disarmingly demythisierenden and therefore progressive report soap Breaking Ground, which dedicates itself to the Wrestler training and then as crowning of the evening an old TV-show of Mid-South power Wrestling, in which Sting and the Ultimate Warrior in their original form as Flash and skirt (The Blade Runners) begin. The commentator says prophetically about Warrior: “The guy isn’t quite close. Probably the steroids.” In the next match between Chavo Guerrero (not Jr., but the original) and Steve Keirn, the winner is painted with yellow paint – in a broken way the perfect world is for many Americans who came up with regional wrestling shows in the mid-1980s.
It’s almost midnight, but an old WCW Monday Nitro from the peak phase of nWo (New World Order) is still going. It’s the show after the completely unsuccessful PPV match between Hogan and Sting at Starrcade 1997, but instead of straightening things out, you tweak a rematch (with which you could have earned a lot of money on PPV) to the end of the TV show and go off air at the finale. A classic WCW-Dick-Move at the end of the nineties. In general, these TV shows were like a burning bunch of car tires. You could hardly watch them, but you couldn’t leave either. That’s also the good thing about the network era, there’s a stop button now and always an alternative for the most embarrassing moments in pro wrestling. And there are lots of them – the network preserves them for eternity.
Note: The WWE network can be reached via network.www.com, the first month is free at the moment. The network can be cancelled monthly and costs 9.99 $. The German price varies according to the dollar exchange rate.