Seriously, any fan of wrestling in the late 90s early 00s needs to watch Beyond the Mat

So good

https://youtu.be/Ryt6uc4Ojes

So just canceled, Need to cut back as everything is going up. Not watching it that much lately anyway and with how bad wwe is right now I think it's a good time. I will get it again for a month during the big ppv's and hope to be able to stream the other ppv's.

I canceled for a while, then dropped Netflix (which I literally never watch), and picked it back up.

What I most dislike about the network is that the awesome content is there; the issue is sorting through the massive amount.

For example: I want to watch ECW 90s Raven stuff, but there's not really a way to watch a storyline develop. I don't have the time or energy to watch week after week after week of the show, fast forwarding the other stuff.

Despite having the Network, I very rarely go on it. But I just watched this again and had to go watch the real thing again:

Back in early May, I placed an order of over $100 CDN through the WWE shop. As a result of this order, I received an email indicating I was entitled to 2 free months of the WWE Network.

I went to claim my 2 free months and found out I'm not eligible since I'm Canadian.

Has anyone else north of the border experienced this?

not canadian but yeah they do this to us europeans all the time, complain and give them a sob story about your 'kid', they gave me 12 months for the price of 6

Given WWE is dumb enough to concede that I haven’t really watched the Network since WM, I’ll probably be canceling after MITB.

That's definitely a bold strategy to deliberately wake up customers who are passively allowing you to bill them.

There has to be a reason for that. Something like they get a ton of complaints on PPV nights because people miss the beginning of the show because they don’t know their login info. Other than that it makes no real sense since one of the beauties of the reoccurring subscription model is that people forget and keep paying even though they don’t use it

I mentioned somewhere else that I have begun watching RAW from the beginning. I also will watch the PPVs as they come up. My goal is to watch through Wrestlemania X7. I’m not in a hurry so I have no idea how long it will take me or if I will even get there, but with a running time of 44 minutes or so, it’s a real easy watch. At least it will be until late 97 or early 98, whenever they moved to 2 hours. Even then 90 minutes isn’t to bad. I will tell you this, even if I fly through these, I will not be watching it when it gets to three hour shows.

Ok with that said, I have completed the first 30 which brought us to Summerslam 93. I have been really entertained by these initial RAWs which is something that I did not expect. Something else that I did not expect is how much I am enjoying the run of Doink. What a great character he has been thus far, and his ability in the ring is really good too.

The King of the RingPPV was an excellent show while Summerslam was an odd one. First it was on a Monday night which I found curious at first since RAW is on Monday, but then I saw that there was no RAW the following Monday. Then it hit me, they were preempted for US Open tennis. The show itself was just strange too. Jim Cornette was just introduced a week or two prior and he already had a tag team wrestling for the tag titles and he was put with the world champ. I’m not saying that Cornette isn’t worthy of that, I just found it odd that it happened all of a sudden.

Speaking of all of a sudden, what the hell was with that Lex Luger “turn”? He went from being a heel before KotR, to acting like a face at the end of his match asking for 5 more minutes, then going heel with the forearm shot, then disappears for a week only to become this ultra patriotic face who slammed Yokozuna. No wonder the Lex Express didn’t work, there was literally nothing there other than telling us he is this great man who slammed a far guy and loves his country. And with all of that we get a count out victory with confetti and wrestlers hoisting him on his shoulders like he won the world championship. Just very strange.

Luger getting that pop line for "five more minutes" is quite strange, I agree. I don't really think they had any of these SummerSlam intentions with him then, so I don't have any idea why that moment existed.

It seems like they started hyping the event at the Intrepid while still thinking that Hogan might come back and do it after all, and perhaps Luger was just a backup plan. If not Luger then it seems like this would have been the point that they would have gone with Crush. I don't see what other options they had for that spot.

At least Crush was a face, and it would have made a little more sense. But for some reason I feel he might be injured here. I’m going to relisten to the Lex Luger show from Something to Wrestle. I know your feelings on that show but I think something like this might get a truthful story.

I definitely remember that Crush participated in the bodyslam challenge. He was one who got Yoko slightly off the mat.

I did not remember that Vince McMahon and Gorilla Monsoon was ever the announce team for a PPV.

Canadian stampede?

That was my guess as well. I can't think of another time that they dressed up like that.

Survivor Series ‘94. I think Monsoon had been out of the commentary game for quite a while by Canadian Stampede.

Walking with Elias,lol. I don't know if berating drunk people in a bar is a good idea but hey it's Elias.

I started at the very beginning, watched every wwf raw/ppv up until early 1998. It took me about 4-5 months. The early raws were nostalgic and short which helped. The 2 hour raws fly by because you actually have good entertaining storylines.

I only started watching wrestling around 93 so for me it's a golden year. The whole lex express thing is funny, I actually love his video where he travels around the states in the bus. The ending of summerslam still amazes me, they put in all the effort to build him up only for him to win the match but not the title. Celebrating at the end on the shoulders of the wrestlers was hilarious considering he didn't win the title and made him lose credibility

I'm doing the watch-along with Conrad Thompson and Tony Schiavne on the What Happened When podcast of ECW Heatwave 98.

I'm also drinking lots of alcohol. Heck of a Sunday evening.

Mike Awesome should have been an all-time star. Instead he was a niche guy most fans have forgotten.

That's sad to me.

What the hell would Schiavone know about ECW?

He doesn't. It's essentially his first viewing. But he loves it for whatever reason.

I wish they would upload more Primetime Wrestling. I've watched a number of 1989 episodes, but I'm going to run out in a chronological watch.

I always thought that show was the WCW version of Pritchard's where he just rehashes events he was a part of from behind the scenes.