10 Crazy Things You’ll Find On WWE Network (If You Search Deep Enough)
The Bad, the Bad and the Ugly.
The Network is an odd and wonderful aberration in this era of WWE, which until very recently was unilaterally dictated by the whims of one spent force.
Unlike the television storylines, pushed projects, and excessive, draining PPV run-times of the mid-to-late 2010s, the Network stands alone as the one thing that benefits the fan more so than the company. As yet, not that it matters much in this age of exorbitant rights fees, WWE hasn't recouped the (not at all inconsiderable) revenue stream lost by dropping the traditional pay-per-view model. The Network has under-performed against initial projections, and WWE have reached a point at which they no longer report the subscriber count to investors in quarterly financial reports. This isn't a good omen.
WWE likely aren't thrilled, but the fans are: the Network is exceptional value for money, insofar as the relative cost of monthly pay-per-views, but its brilliance is genuinely profound. Its existence allowed hardcore fans to at last watch the Bret Hart Vs. Tom Magee Holy Grail, something, in another time, we'd have been lucky to wait 18 months to see on a three-disc DVD set or other. We can relive the glorious territory years through their own filter, and not merely a two-hour retrospective doc. We can also...
...see lots of deeply weird and ill-advised sh*t.
10. WWE Being Lazy, Hilarious
At Uncensored 1996, WCW gifted us the greatest best-worst professional wrestling match of all times, in which Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage took on eight (8) heels, all at once, a monstrosity of two factions incorporating Ric Flair and a jobbing actor named after the Nazi plan to exterminate the worldwide Jewish population.
In three cages.
With frying pans ultimately proving the most effective weapon.
It's the most harebrained piece of sh*t ever curled off by any wrestling booker ever. It's The Room of professional wrestling, and Lex Luger literally couldn't even get the "I did not him. I did naht," part right because he mistimes an accidental glove shot so awfully in Flair's direction that he actually appears to hit him on purpose. Even Hogan, who received a preposterous ego rub, was fed up with this world, and turned heel months later.
On the Network, in what might actually be a farcical meta joke in tribute, the thumb features said jobbing actor (later renamed the Ultimate Solution) in his guise as Bane from 1997's Batman and Robin, and if it's not in fact a joke, some staffer has flirted with a copyright strike because they couldn't bring themselves to watch the sh*tshow long enough to take a screen grab.