10 Best WWE Network Shows Of 2018
Brutal honesty with The Hardy Boyz. Honest brutality from Dean Ambrose.
Contrary to some of the complaints below the line, many of the articles on here are based on one's genuine assessment of merit, or lack thereof. It's why some articles are positive, some are negative, and some are brazen with both.
All of them come from a place of love (even when they sound laced with latent hatred) because that's what got all of us here in the first place. Pro wrestling works like nicotine - hook somebody young and you'll hook them forever. Even when you "give up". You're an addict. You don't really give up, you just try not to indulge another day.
But at $/£9.99 a month, you might as well have another drag, eh?
A small caveat before the trawl:- With one notable exception, weekly wrestling television shows have been omitted - you've been able to unearth Hulk Hogan's hidden hideousness on old episodes of Nitro for years, it's truly timeless content - because when a pro wrestling broadcast is great. This won't instruct you to go looking for that one NXT where Daniel Bryan and Derrick Bateman rigged the newlyweds game or SmackDown where Kane rattled Albert with a hurricanrana.
But anyway. About that notable exception...
10. Sunday Night Heat (1998-1999)
You'd be forgiven for being bored rigid with WWE's unending love affair with the Attitude Era (often at the expense of just about everything else), but the mass upload of Sunday Night Heat episodes earlier this year offered countless new-old moments to savour rather than the self-fart-smelling of the D-Generation-X WCW invasion and relentless reruns of Steve Austin's beer bath.
Offering experimental glimpses of a frenetic product rapt in the throes of Vince Russo's better-and-worse booking, the original run of the Sunday night show offers far more than the pre-pay-per-view fodder it would later become known for.
Witness lesser-spotted interactions between Vince McMahon, 'The Rattlesnake' and The Rock, Shane McMahon's rank obnoxiousness as a charming heel characteristic, DX slumming it in midcard matches and more Headbangers/Oddities encounters than you even realised you needed.
A reliance on over-playing the period over the years has made so much of the footage staler than it perhaps should be. Releasing these mostly-forgotten episodes back into the wild has thus been cathartic viewing for those that lived through it the first time and were force to persistently revisit it - this reason to love everything earnestly all over again, rather than with a grizzled groan.