11 Off-Air WWE Moments You Weren't Supposed To See
Hidden gems acquired from unconventional sources, mainly leaks and unencrypted satellite feeds.
Though it's bound to be cut swiftly, the Raw taping this week saw the accidental inclusion of Titus O'Neill grabbing Vince McMahon "for a hug" and the boss losing his mind. It was a rare slip for the tightly edited programme that notoriously now edits anything controversial out and something of a flashback to the days when things went wrong and still ended up being aired.
There's a surprisingly rich history of that happening...
As we've learned with the advent of DVD documentaries and WWE Network programming, WWE tapes a lot of things that go straight to the vault. There are the things you'd expect, like dark matches and various post-show segments, as well as all sorts of backstage footage. And if they're taping something in the arena while the satellite feed is open, it could be intercepted by one of a few remaining consumers who have large satellite dishes that pick up whatever unencrypted signals are coming through the air.
In addition, changes in modern technology mean that we also have access to a lot more things that happened in front of live crowds but weren't meant for TV viewers. As a result, a lot of dark matches, filler during commercial breaks, censored parts of promos, are in the wild that weren't in the era where you needed to smuggle a camcorder into an arena.
This means that all sorts of things that were not meant for public viewing have shown up among collectors and eventually ended up online among the goldmine of wrestling material that's on video sharing sites: Announcers talking off the air, the producers chiming in, rehearsals, weird off-air in-ring segments, and of course things cut out of pre-taped shows like women falling out of their tops.
There's some crazy, awesome stuff that most of you probably haven't seen before, so let's get started.