Wednesdaymania 225: Wrestling-Talk

WEDNESDAYMANIA
OH YEAH, BROTHER

I'd have called this week's edition "Wrestle-Talk", except that's someone else, and I don't want to be a copy-cat, lol...

This week, Z and I mainlined the WWE Network to an almost embarrassing extent. Seriously, I spent all of yesterday sitting cross-legged on the floor watching old episodes of Raw, Smackdown, Table for 3, and more. I mean, I love modern wrestling - New Japan and AEW and ROH and MLW... it's an alphabet soup of awesome! But... I mean... sometimes you want to watch Owen Hart and D-Lo Brown be brilliant. Sometimes you want to watch Sting clear the NWO out of the ring. Sometimes, you want to hear the OG 4 Horsemen sitting around a dinner table, talking about how great it is that Arn Anderson will always have a job with WWE...

Oh Ric.

You didn't know that wasn't true at the time...

Seriously, though, with the return of the Auto-Play function on Roku, the WWE app is suddenly much, much more viable as a source of entertainment. So here we're going to have my list of things to watch on the Network and why I like them!

TABLE FOR 3

This show has three different wrestlers or managers or otherwise wrestling-employed people sitting down to dinner and shooting the breeze about things. I strongly recommend watching the ones with older people, like Sting, or the Horsemen, or Ricky The Dragon Steamboat...

I don't really get why they have young people on the T3 show. It feels like a format for people to discuss the weird things they've lived through, and younger wrestlers don't have that experience.

WCW NITRO

Okay, so Nitro isn't always great. In fact, I've seen some really awful episodes, and the more the NWO talks, the dumber it tends to be, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't check them out. Uh. Before the advent of Vince Russo. Yeah.

Nitro showcases some of the best wrestling in WCW, so it's almost always amazing to watch - especially if you like Lucha or technical/cruiserweight wrestling.

NXT

This one is kinda self-explanatory. I love watching wrestling. That's in short supply on the main roster, but in NXT, it's... it's still a wrestling show. It's not always perfect. There are good matches and bad ones. This is a developmental "territory", so that means you get all kinds of skill levels. Some of these guys? They're very, very green. They're young. They're just learning their trade. Others have been in the business for years, and they are obviously showing younger wrestlers how to do what they're doing. It's got better wrestling (match-by-match) and better promos (word to word) than the main roster. The characters are more interesting.

It's just a good show. It deserves to be watched.

STORY TIME

Wrestlers tell stories of life on the road. It's hilarious! Watch it.

Other Promotions

AWA, WCCW, Mid-South... it's a treasure trove of old promotions who fell to Vince's westward expansion. I've been loving the old promotions and their stars, and it's always a treat to watch some of my favorite characters (Sgt Slaughter or Dean Malenko, for instance) in their younger years. I really enjoy the older shows on the network!

WWE CONFIDENTIAL

This is a silly little interview/overview show with Mean Gene Okerlund which I love. It has a silly, tacky theme, it has silly, tacky stories, and it has Gene, so it's great. Just... be prepared for some weird, period-accurate misogyny, since Gene's character was supposed to lean into "dirty old man" territory, and the WWE was... not great about women back in the day.


There are plenty of other shows on the Network that I follow intently, but I would love for you guys to explore the Network and report back on your favorite shows!

Go Enjoy Something!
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