1. Pay-Per-Views
If you were able to afford all twelve monthly PPV’s a year at $50 a pop then I envy your status on the money making ladder. For me and my friends, it was a given we would get around four a year: Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, Money in the Bank and Summerslam with the possibility for a fifth if Survivor Series had a good card. Why no Hell in the Cell? Because there is hardly a time you can have a great PPV called Hell in the Cell going TV-PG. It is possible, but it is like seeing a unicorn, it rarely happens.
All the PPV’s would cost a wrestling fan around $600 a year which is an insane amount of money especially considering WWE has the weakest on-air product in almost a decade. With the WWE Network only $120 a year that is a no brainer, which leads into…
2. The Price
When the WWE announced that the network would only be $9.99 a month earlier this year, I could not believe the deal wrestling fans were getting. I would pay that much just for the video library alone (don’t tell them that or they will take away PPV’s). That is why it surprises me more have not signed up. Now this could be because it was only available in North America for the first six months. It is now in 170 countries with the UK getting it in October.
WWE has not helped matters any by beating a dead horse with its $9.99 diatribe week after week, segment after segment. We know how much it costs, tell viewers about all the content they can get on it for that amount, and no, that does mean reminding us that we can watch repeats of Total Divas. Take time before coming back from commercial to show us a clip of a classic PPV moment or something from classic Raws instead of telling us that Raw had more tweets than The Big Bang Theory.
3. Monday Night War
Some of the WWE’s best DVD releases have been about the Monday Night War between WWE and WCW. Now they have taken all the video footage and old and new interviews to make a continuing show about the best time to be a wrestling fan, the late 90’s.
If that alone is not enough to warrant $9.99, the fact that Keith David narrates the show should have any self-respecting nerd reaching for their wallet.
4. NXT
Calling RAW the flagship show seems like an inside joke. Name wise it is, but as far as wrestling goes, WWE has one flagship and that is NXT. I dare you to watch NXT Takeover Fatal Four-Way and not say it is the best special the WWE has done since WrestleMania.
These guys are working hard to show that they should be on the main roster and RAW is already seeing benefits from NXT. Bray Wyatt, Bo Dallas, Paige and more were on the NXT roster before coming to TV. Here is the rub, though. With RAW being so weak is it really a step up to be on the show? Would you rather be giving great matches in front of great (albeit much smaller) crowds like Sami Zayn, Tyson Kidd, Adrian Neville and Tyler Breeze did or be like former NXT champ Big E who did…wait, was he even on RAW? Last week? The week before?
5. Monday Nitro
One of the newest additions of the WWE Network is previous episodes of Nitro. Now you can relive the time Lex Luger showed up at the Mall of America with magically longer hair than he had the previous week on RAW (who says hair extensions aren’t for everyone) or the debut of Glacier and even some Tongan Death Grip action by Meng. I am making fun, but going back and watching old Nitros brings back a lot of memories from a great time in wrestling history.
Want to know the ugly truth? I just watched a RAW last night that had Mark Henry and Rusev during the main event and Roman Reigns clean pin Seth Rollins BEFORE their PPV match Sunday. I actually would have rather watched an old Nitro than last night’s RAW…Cryonic Kick and all.
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