Hi Scott,
As someone without Network access I rely on DVD/Blu-Ray purchases to satisfy my lust for wrestling of years past. Be it WCW, ECW or early 90's WWF.
Which of the boxsets released by WWE have been your favourite? Any particular one you thoroughly enjoyed enough to suggest for a purchase?
Clash of Champions has got to be my favourite of recent-ish releases.
Thanks.
It's your own fault for having a co.uk address. However, if you REALLY wanted, you could have Network access.
That being said, the Ultimate Ric Flair collection is by far my favorite, with a bazillion ***** matches on there and another metric fuckton of awesome promos. The HITC set is great, but not the kind of thing I can watch straight through for 9 hours because it tends to get a bit overwhelming. Of course, the Punk set (which fucking WWE.com apparently sent to the WRONG ADDRESS and so I never got it!) and I also really loved the SNME set, even if it didn't sell great. The Rise and Fall of ECW and Unreleased sets are nice slices of the promotion that distill it down to watchable chunks and eliminate a lot of the extraneous crap, so I'd recommend either of them as well. Finally, the original Bret Hart set, tears in my eyes, blah blah.
As someone without Network access I rely on DVD/Blu-Ray purchases to satisfy my lust for wrestling of years past. Be it WCW, ECW or early 90's WWF.
Which of the boxsets released by WWE have been your favourite? Any particular one you thoroughly enjoyed enough to suggest for a purchase?
Clash of Champions has got to be my favourite of recent-ish releases.
Thanks.
It's your own fault for having a co.uk address. However, if you REALLY wanted, you could have Network access.
There a few good Hogan sets too.
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Wow, tell me more! I hear AJ Lee might be looking for a job soon.
ReplyDeleteIs this where I got "metric fuckton" from?
ReplyDeleteNow, if only someone can help me remember where I got "fuck the heck" from.
Ultimate Ric Flair is very good - my favorite match on it being the Royal Rumble.
ReplyDeleteBut I think it did somewhat validate for me what someone once said (with a tear in his eye) that Ric Flair is a formula guy, where every match is sort of the same...
hard to find but the WrestleMania 1-13 VHS box set is the best, direct unedited copies of every show from the CCTV or PPV broadcasts
ReplyDeletethe Ric Flair set is great to for the rare gem of the Barry Windham match that took up an entire episode of WorldWide in Janurary'97
To a certain extent I guess some guys do more of a "routine" than others...but it's pro wrestling. A guys' moveset mostly stays the same, because if someone was trying new moves every match they'd probably hurt someone. The pacing and psychology is designed as such for the crowd, of course so if something works why would that vary greatly? I guess some guys are a bit more rote than others, sure, but the notes you're hitting throughout a match are there for a reason; to expect someone to go out and create a brand-new piece of art that is greatly different from their previous matches is sort of silly, to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of the recent Sting set as well as Eddie Guerrero's first 2 disc release. You get a documentary and some of his absolute best matches. Halloween Havoc vs Rey, Eddie vs Brock, an amazing tag match from the When Worlds Collide ppv.
ReplyDeleteThe 3 disc Mysterio set is one that isn't talked about a lot but it's full of great matches from Rey when he was in his prime.
The Ultimate Warrior Amateur Wrestling Collection is the shit. Dude was amazing at Parts Unknown Community College.
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered why WWE never tried to work out a deal where they would be the official US/Canada distributor of either AJPW or NJPW footage. Obviously it might be a moot point now with online/digital distribution being all the rage, but it seems like something that could have been accomplished after the end of the Monday Night Wars. Plus, it gives WWE a chance to promote DVD sets of "lost' matches featuring some of their biggest stars.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, it's probably not a big enough market to make it worth it for WWE to sink its claws into. Plus, they have TONS of footage that they own that they still haven't utilized yet.
ReplyDeleteI have the Rumble boxset and Summerslam boxset. Pretty much don't need the network.
ReplyDeleteBut we've seen that there's a limited audience for most of that footage anyhow, so even if it's a niche market I still think it would have been worth looking into. The AWA and World Class sets didn't exactly fly off the shelves and according to Scott even the SNME set didn't do all that well. But they still made some money, and it's not unreasonable to think that the same crowd who bought those sets might be interested in some easily accessible puro from thr 1980s and 1990s. Now maybe the cost of obtaining said footage might have been prohibitive, but if WWE could have worked out an equitable deal then it might have been worth a shot.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the first thing about business but, if the NJPW network got popular couldn't WWE try to make some sort or co-promotional deal where you could access both networks?
ReplyDeleteGo Fighting Unknown'ers!
ReplyDeleteBut with the AWA, World Class, and SNME, WWE owns that footage. If they put out NJPW or AJPW footage, they'd have to share any profits with the parent company. I don't think WWE is interested in that.
ReplyDeleteI am sure inquiries were made since WWE collects tape libraries like I collected baseball cards as a youth, but I don't think WWE is interested in putting anything out that it doesn't fully own. They won't even put out a Memphis set because they don't own the footage... and Lawler (who I believe owns the footage) is on the show every week and apparently isn't selling.
Two essential releases that weren't boxsets but rather two-disc DVDs from the mid-2000's are Shawn Michaels: From The Vault and Mick Foley's Greatest Hits....and Misses. Great matches and great bonus features. No documentaries though.
ReplyDeletethere are dozens of great dvd sets.
ReplyDeletefor example "The Best of In Your House": http://www.rspwfaq.net/2013/04/the-smark-dvd-rant-for-best-of-wwf-in.html
(and also, going just by match quality doesn't make sense. because that way one would repeat getting the same matches over and over: I was glad when they decide to put the Survivor Series 1996 match on the "Legacy of Steve Austin" dvd because it was unreleased before and I already owned a copy of the WrestleMania match)
If it was still WWF, then yes. Because ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN THE WWF!
ReplyDeleteSince it's now WWE, I don't think it's going to happen.
All I need is the Summerslam box set and I'm pretty much set.
ReplyDeleteactually they did make some kind of deals a few times.
ReplyDeletefor the Chris Benoit dvd - which features three matches that (afaik) are owned by NJPW (against Liger, Black Tiger and Sasuke) - as well as for dvds for Guerrero and Mysterio (both featuring full matches from the AAA).
Interesting tidbit: Never had any home games.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, haven't thought of that. I guess it's a possibility, but maybe a full-out release would be cost prohibitive.
ReplyDeleteSomething, something, something, Chris Benoit censored, something, something.
ReplyDeleteFlair's problem wasn't his moveset, it was his bumpset. Are we supposed to believe that everyone he ever faced in the ring threw him hard enough to get that exact same flip out of the corner? How many times does Ric have the get thrown off the top rope before he learns to just stop doing it? Does every opponent he's ever had punch hard enough to make him stagger for three steps & then fall on his face, or is he's just faking? IF he's faking, why hasn't anyone learned to run up to Flair & stomp him while he's pretending to be hurt?
ReplyDeleteI understand that to enjoy pro wrestling you have to pretty much throw logic out the window, but more than anyone else Ric Flair has caused me to question my suspension of disbelief... I don't care how many armdrags Steamboat gave him.
Yep, I didn't even watch the whole thing. As you said, pretty much the same match every time for the most part.
ReplyDelete"How many times does Ric have the get thrown off the top rope before he learns to just stop doing it? "
ReplyDelete2005 against Carlito made it totally worth it!
That paintball on a pole match he had with El Tigre Chino was easily ***** - even after Chino tried to bite his face off!
ReplyDeleteI am not sure how much Memphis footage Lawler truly owns. I remember hearing several stories that the Memphis library is in disarray with several parties claiming complete or partial ownership. Lawler was said to be iterate and contemplated legal action when the late Corey Macclin released the 18-disc "best of" Memphis Wrestling set on Highspots a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteTNA featured a couple of Memphis matches on the Jeff Jarrett set awhile back, and a lot of Memphis stuff can be found on 70s-TV.com, so who's to say what's going on.
CM Punk and Shane-O-Mac are two characters I would've loved to see bounce off of each other. Not sure if they would have been better as enemies or allies though
ReplyDeleteThat's an excellent point about his bumping. I hadn't quite thought of that, actually.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest...Flair isn't one of my all-time favorites strictly in terms of his matches. If I was stranded on a desert island and had to pick which wrestlers I could watch the entire catalogue of, the following guys would probably all be ahead of him for me, roughly in reverse chronological order: Bryan, Punk, Edge, HHH, Jericho, Benoit, Eddie, Rock, Austin, Undertaker, HBK, Bret, Hennig, Steamboat, Savage, and Dibiase. Maybe more. That isn't to say I think they're all better than Flair in the ring, necessarily. But I think I'd rather watch their matches.
Would it be worth it to watch a Best Of AJPW in the 80s DVD with Miz as a talking head talking about how he remembers watching it all as a kid? You'd shoot your television.
ReplyDeleteI know it is part of th egimmick but there really are. I liked all 3 sets.
ReplyDeleteWhich PPV was it where Shane was randomly sitting in the front row and basically acting like a normal fan?
ReplyDeleteWhat gimmick? All three sets are great. Was there a gimmick version of a Hogan DVD or something?
ReplyDeleteI liked the sets for AWA and Four Horsemen, both great docs going in depth to the history and such of each with fantastic comments. Like Vince saying he wasn't worried about SuperCLash III because he knew the guys in charge "couldn't order a cup of coffee together let alone work a show." Plus the "McMahon" DVD is nice showing his rough sides in a fair way with fun insight (Linda comes off as a truly lively woman) and nice shots on XFL, Vince as WWF champ and more.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else get the vibe that Shane is dead? The we he was slumped over on his horse in that final shot?
ReplyDeleteThe one downthread about Shane going broke paying people to leave WWE shows is the best thing I've ever read here.
ReplyDeleteFour Horseman doc is one of my favorites. I wish the match listing was a little deeper, but as they say, they didn't have a ton of matches as a unit (outside of Wargames).
ReplyDeleteGotta go Shane/Vince. That match rocks
ReplyDeleteI generally enjoy the WWE sets. It would probably be easier to list the ones I don't like since I have almost everything (save Cena, Morrison, Big Show, and Hardys). too much kayfabe on Road Warriors and Piper sets. Hennig doc was just awful, but great matches. off the top of my head, that's about it. Some that stand out in my mind at this time (which means I'm forgetting some) are the new Foley set (great documentary save leaving out TNA for obvious reasons), newest Austin set, newest Rock set, first Bret Hart set, Rise and Fall of ECW, first Edge set, Benoit set (yeah I said it), the 2nd Eddie G. set, any of the Flair and HOgan sets, Best of the Clash, WCCW, AWA, HITC, and first ladder match set. That list is certainly not all inclusive. In general I think WWE almost always does a good job on the sets and I find myself enjoying them even when I think some stuff could be done better (such as the best of WCW Nitro or the Hart family set).
ReplyDeleteThis will get so many less likes than it deserves.
ReplyDeleteDoh, I've always thought that too, I figured it was at a much later show. Henceforth I will revise my revisionist history.
ReplyDeleteIf you are with Joanie Laurer, sleep is one of the few things you won't be doing....
ReplyDeleteI love the fact that all of the other Horsemen talk openly talk about things like drug tests, booking, etc but Arn keeps kayfabe.
ReplyDeleteI always thought it was funny that in PWI, they listed him as being from Queens, NY but WWF always insisted that he was from Parts Unknown.
ReplyDeleteIt's like the one time Arn hit his double axehandle from the 2nd rope!
ReplyDelete