Hi, Scott!
I'm not sure if this is being done already, but just in case it hasn't
yet, what do you think of the idea of the WWE releasing DVD's that
cover:
a.) Memorable feuds & storylines ( Rock-Austin, Kane-Taker, Shawn-HHH,
Cena-Punk, etc.); or
b.) Recaps of a single year in wrestling history (WWF 1997, WCW 1998, etc.);
That way, viewers can see the context of the matches, as in why they
take place, and they can also see some of the angles that made these
feuds/years memorable.
Thanks and more power to your blog!
a) They're already doing this one with Shawn v. Bret and soon Rock v. Austin. It's a great idea and a whole-heartedly approve.
b) They usually do yearly recap DVDs now (Best of RAW 2012, etc) and I whole-heartedly approve of that as well. The yearly retro thing might be a bit too niche for most people, which is another instance where a DVD-on-demand service would be beneficial.
Taker vs Kane dvd sounds like absolute misery. The matches and the angles. There is plenty of material, from 1997 to present, but the match list would be excrutiating. For discussion: what is the best one-on-one Taker vs Kane match?
ReplyDeleteCena vs Punk dvd would be cool, but years down the road after they've had their last matches.
ReplyDeleteI've said it before but I still think they should do a Rock v Austin v HHH DVD. They all came to the WWE at around the same time. Austin made it big in 1998, The Rock in 1999 and Triple H in 2000. By Wrestlemania 17, they were the three biggest stars in the company. For the next two years they all missed time for various reasons, (quad injury, Hollywood, taking his ball and going home,) And after 2003 they all went in different directions. Rock left to make movies, Austin retired, and HHH became more active in the company. Really a Shawn/Bret sitdown style interview between those three would be fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI found an amazing torrent the other day that covered the entire Shawn-Taker feud from 09-12 with every memorable event in chronological order. It's insane. It covers promos, raw matches, ppvs and of course, the WM matches. The whole thing is about 16 gigs and it's in really good quality HD.
ReplyDeleteI want DVD's with this level of detail regarding feuds. The Bret-Shawn one was great mainly because of the stuff that surrounded their feud with the screw job and the fact that they interviewed both men. Rarely will you find another feud with that much real life intensity. I'd rather have the DVD's be more like the torrent I found.
A sit down shoot style interview with those three dudes would be pretty fucking cool. I would add JR as moderator and make it in the style of Legends of Wrestling.
ReplyDeleteAnd some combination of the 3 were feuding during most parts of 98-01. Rock v. HHH in '98 (hell, they can even touch on Rock v. Austin at the end of '97 which helped elevate Rock to upper midcard), Austin v. HHH in 1999, Rock v. HHH again in '00, Austin v. HHH in '01 (and then the brief alliance), Rock v. Austin in '01 and finally Rock v. Austin in '03. Lot of fun stuff to cover. I support this idea.
ReplyDeleteAnd the really cool thing is that they may have had their issues from time to time, but there was never any real dislike, (unlike Bret and Shawn.) And you get to see it through three different point of views, a 3rd generation wrestler, (Rock) a guy who was pretty much a shooting star his entire career but also almost got crippled because of it, (austin) and a guy who fucking loved "this business" and get got everything he ever wanted out of it, (Hunter.)
ReplyDeleteAnd you get FUCKING AWESOME matches on the DVD to boot.
ReplyDeleteI've found I like the WWE Product more in past-tense then I do in present terms. It seems I spend most of my life watching WWE on Netflix while playing video games. It ain't bad.
ReplyDeleteEveryone needs to watch "The Epic Journey of Dwayne The Rock Johnson" and take a drink for every homo-erotic overtone.
The thing is they never got to have a wild out of control bloody brawl. They were always having straight up "slobberknockers" or some ridiculous gimmick match (i.e. Inferno Match). Even a cage match with some blood might have been cool. As it stands I can't think of one I would want to rewatch ever again in my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteI've gotta dvd of me and the Mrs banging on a pile of snapping turtles we found in our pond. Their brains are all smashed in, but some of them are still making weird noises... like they might be alive still. Also, if anyone's interested, we spray painted the shells and made them up to look like the old NWA TV Title. We've got about 7 or 'em, and I only want one of them. If you're interested in either the shell titles or the dvd of us banging on the turtles lemme know.
ReplyDeletePlease give us the Flair-Steamboat rivalries DVD before either man (well...Flair) dies. Although I wonder how good the actual sit down would be. The alternate commentary on their matches, however, would be tremendous.
ReplyDeleteI found a similar one excerpt its pretty much Shawn's ENTIRE career. It's 33 gigs but full of awesome.
ReplyDeleteGiven how awful Flair has been on roundtables, I don't think the alternate commentary would be that good.
ReplyDeleteIt would be way better than Steamboat. On his DVD commentary he can barely get a sentence out and he kayfabes the whole time.
ReplyDeleteYea I saw that one too. Solid stuff there
ReplyDeleteThe commentary would be fine because they would be focusing on a match rather than...going wherever Flair tended to go on those roundtables.
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing. It's gonna get old quick, but amazing nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteI once bought a bootleg DVD set of the entire Tommy Dreamer - Raven fued. I think it was like 6 DVDs or something. Anyway, I'd like to buy a package like that officially. Something niche like 10 people would care about.
ReplyDeleteArn Anderson was on the Survivor Series 1989 card...so that last statement of it being his last (at least WWF) appearance is wrong...
ReplyDeleteCopy and pasted from the WWE History site. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteI would but that, it's my favorite feud ever.
ReplyDeleteI want Hogan V Andre: the complete feud, even if I have to compile it myself.
ReplyDeleteGiven that they have released roughly four ECW box sets already, a Dreamer-Raven DVD is not out of the realm of possibilities. The feud has reached a mythical status, too. I would hope they would tack on an hour long chat with Styles, Dreamer, and Raven.
ReplyDeleteIs Raven clean these days? Does anyone know?
After two volumes of "The Best of WCW Nitro," I would hand over my cold hard cash for "The WORST of WCW Nitro." There's so much great stuff to work with: Se7en, Tank Abbott vs. Big Al, Sid's crushed car... it'd be hilarious!
ReplyDeleteAgreed. For a man who many profess has a brilliant wrestling mind, he sounded DUMB. Really dumb.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to hear Flair and Steamboat do commentary on their own matches. I'd rather hear wrestlers who are good at commentary and who were influenced by those matches. Punk, Jericho, or Edge watching old Flair/Steamboat (or Hart Foundation/Bulldogs, or Savage/Dibiase, or whoever) matches, talking about their influence, and fanboy gushing over their favorite parts would be far more entertaining.
ReplyDeleteSame with Double A. At least in the sense he only speaks in kayfabe.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see them do DVDs for guys' favorite matches or matches that inspired them. Have, say, Daniel Bryan go through his five or ten favorite matches and do commentary on them or something like that.
ReplyDeleteThey did that "Raw Volume 1" of highlights of the first two years of the show, hoping for more of those.
ReplyDeleteMe, I want a full on set of "Are you Serious" to mock all the crap, not just from WWE but WCW, World Class, AWA, Memphis and more, SO much there to fill a few sets out.
And wishing they'd do more sets of the Legends roundtables, those are pretty good.
Don't HHH and Rock have some mild heat, or at least dislike for one another?
ReplyDeleteI don't think they dislike each other and Rock probably receives a Christmas Card from the Levesque family...but I don't think they seek each other out first at the annual mixer.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's also why I would just rather see Rock-Austin...I think they can really provide a lot of context to all the work they did and what they thought of each other as workers. Hell I could listen to an hour on them talking about that final Wrestlemania showdown and it being Austin's last match.
ReplyDeletePresumably there was no volume 2 because volume 1 didn't sell well. They were also doing retro year recaps of Raw (Best of Raw 1993) and that was canned b/c of poor sales, right?
ReplyDeleteAn old Coliseum video (Hulkamania 3?) does a decent job of this up to and including WM3. And it's probably best if we just pretend the feud ended there...
ReplyDeleteI'd pay big money for a compilation of Hulk's insane interviews being played over the actual matches he's supposedly describing.
Rock vs. HHH '00 is probably my favorite feud of all time. Good stuff.
ReplyDeleteI'm praying for the big WM blow-off to that feud. Could be one of the greatest matches of all time.
ReplyDeleteI think the retro year lookbacks could work only if they chose the good years. For instance, Best of WWF: 1997 would be awesome. Best of Smackdown 2003 would be awesome. But best of Raw 1999 or Best of WWE 2008 would be misery.
ReplyDeleteA Cena-Punk DVD would be a fucking dream.
ReplyDeleteThey should have the now middle-aged William Regal attempt to recreate his old habit of putting on the Clash 2/3 Falls match and do hindu squats for its duration.
ReplyDeleteGot that one too. Loved to be able to send it to Scott for a review.
ReplyDeleteExtremely well worth the download.
I think the most amazing thing about their feud is that their matches are all so unique - "MITB 2011" is very different than "Night of Champions, 2012", both of which are very different than their match on "Raw" earlier this year, etc.
ReplyDelete"Best of Thunder"!
ReplyDeleteOnly thing is, I would expect at least one or two (or more) of the match choices to be politically motivated rather than by the wrestler's actual personal opinion.
ReplyDeleteAs of 2009 he was.
ReplyDeleteWhich isn't great but if THAT'S the worst problem, it's not that bad as long as it doesn't hurt the enjoyment of the disc.
ReplyDeleteAlso, something that'd probably work better for the website or a Netflix style service, since WWE loves when people outside This Business are fans, they could take a page out of the Criterion Collection's book and have celebrity fans go into the "Vault" and pick out their favorite matches. I think iTunes does or used to do something similar with the celebrity playlists.
I don't think they own a lot of what inspired D-Bry, since so much of his inspiration came from Japanese and British wrestling. But in general I like the idea. Maybe do it as a YouTube show, have a guy talk over clips of his favorite match about why its so great.
ReplyDeleteFrom drugs, maybe. But i'd hate to see what his STD tests look like.
ReplyDeleteMe neither. For all the different styles of match they had, every one of them was just a stale brawl, as you noted.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. We've got to have 60-minute Ironman at some point
ReplyDeleteOh yes. Anything Tank Abbott belongs on there.
ReplyDeleteIt's on an upcoming set!
ReplyDeleteYeah, some choice editing could really make their stories intertwine nicely
ReplyDeleteI'm sure HHH would be all about it, since he gets mentioned on the same level as Austin and Rock
ReplyDeleteFor all Cena's years on top of the promotion, are there really any special, epic feuds aside from his great matches with Punk? He did some great work with Edge, but I don't really see that he has a Rock-Austin or Michaels-Hart
ReplyDeleteWay to go WWE!
ReplyDeleteHe tends not to have epic feuds (outside of the ones with Edge and Orton in the mid-aughts) because the pattern tends to be Champion Cena vanquishing a challenger once or twice, and then someone else gets the draw against him until WWE pulls the trigger on the next beltholder, to which Cena gets right back in the hunt. Since he's usually in the main event title mix, he doesn't get a lot of long-boiling personal feuds a la HBK/Y2J 2008; his usually go a couple of months tops. He also didn't have a true "rival" pre-2011 outside of Orton, and a lack of a classic match with him the way Cena has with Punk or Shawn Michaels didn't make the rivalry memorable. Until Punk, he didn't have that counterpart his legacy would be joined at the hip like the two you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI don't think he's ever been clean. I've met him a couple times and he fucking STINKS, hygiene is just not in his vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteWait, you mean from drugs, right? I believe he has been for a few years now.
I think he's talking about historyofwwe.com , which isn't affiliated in any way with WWE themselves.
ReplyDeleteWait, are you hitting the turtles or fucking on top of them?
ReplyDelete"If Chris Benoit hadn't 've done... what I told him not to do... I would've loved to see a Kurt vs. Benoit DVD."
ReplyDelete"My fucking hero!"
...Many points for the reference...
Best of Nitro 3-20
ReplyDeleteAll WCW PPVs.
Interesting. Thanks, I definitely haven't been watching much during the Cena era, so I legitimately had no idea where his feuds stood in terms of historical value
ReplyDeleteDROP THE TURTLES OFF THE CLIFF IN THE BACKYARD (ITs OK, THEY ARE SNAPPERS IN M'POND), THEN WE RIP THE REMAINS OUT OF THE SHELL, RUB 'EM ALL OVER M'LADY AND THEN BANG. TWO OF THEM MIGHT'VE BEEN ALIVE STILL Im NOT SURE - DID YOU WANT ONE OF THE NWA TV TITLE TURTLE SHELLS?
ReplyDeleteIT may have been his last appearance on WWE's tv shows (rather than the PPV's)
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine it would cost much to get that footage for one-time use. I know they did that for the Benoit dvd set where they put a J-Cup match of him and Eddy on there.
ReplyDeleteOther than Punk/Cena (which I personally think is so far a better feud than Bret/Shawn), he had really good feuds with Edge (like you mention) and Batista. His on-and-off feud with HHH over the years was pretty good. He had decent chemistry with Orton in the ring but their characters didn't really gel and their feud was too stretched out.
ReplyDeleteIt was his last TV appearance in the sense that it was TAPED before the Survivor Series, but it didn't air utnil AFTER.
ReplyDeleteFlair will live forever.
ReplyDelete