WWE 24/7 October 2006 Review - November 5, 2006

As promised, here is my review of my first look at WWE 24/7. This review will cover stuff in October. If you aren't familiar with WWE 24/7, it is WWE's On Demand service that they started a couple of years ago. WWE has a monthly schedule of programming that revolve around a certain theme for the month. The programming is available to you for a certain amount of time and you can watch it anytime until its expiration date. There is usually new programming added every week. If you want a schedule, you can check it out at WWE.com. It's been no secret about how bad that I've wanted WWE 24/7 since it was announced and it has been a long delay in getting it. If you are a wrestling fan, this is going to be one of the greatest things ever. Wrestling from the 70's on up to today is available. Let me go over the categories of programming.

Hall Of Fame: Every month a hall of famer will be featured with several matches of that wrestler available to watch. Also, a program is shown as a type of biography.

The Big Ones: These are normally PPV events or TV specials from the past and present. They are also showing current PPV's in about a 2 month delay. For example, November is showing SummerSlam 2006 on there. Good bargain there if you can wait on a 3 month delay and not spend 40 dollars. There is also a Pick Your Big One show. WWE.com will up a poll every month of three shows letting fans vote on which that they want to see. The winner is shown for the entire month.

Specials: These are mostly DVD and Coliseum Video stuff. There is also a roundtable discussion show called Legends in Wrestling with them talking about various stars and telling stories.

Territories: This is programming of various companies such as ECW, NWA, AWA, and CWF. ECW and NWA are having their weekly shows shown in order.

Primetime: This is pretty self explanatory. Prime Time Wrestling and Tuesday Night Titans are shown. Also, the Monday Night Wars is shown. Monday Night Wars is a program where they will have a date of a Raw and Nitro show and show them back to back. These are being shown in order too.

Shorties: These are matches and segments that will revolve around the 24/7 theme for the month.

Now, let's get into October. October featured of course Halloween related programming. I'll go over thoughts on various programs, any editing that was done logo wise or music related, or anything else that I picked up on. November 2, 1985's Saturday Night's Main Event Halloween special was shown. This featured a lot of fun segments with the Halloween games with wrestlers and managers competing against each other in various games. Hogan and Andre teamed together in a match. One of my favorite Roddy Piper segments was shown where he is giving candy to kids at his home trick or treating. I believe that a young Stephanie McMahon is one of the kids from what I have heard in the past. This was a fun show and actually the first thing that I watched on 24/7. Editing changes are music related. Real American was put in to Hogan's entrance as he was not coming out to that at the time. Gone is the 80's song Obsession that was the theme song for the show in the mid 80's. It was replaced by a generic sounding song that sounded sort of similar. The 1988 Prime Time Wrestling Halloween special was shown. Funny segment in this with Gorilla and Heenan going to a restaurant and Gorilla putting hot peppers in Heenan's food.

Smackdown 2002 Halloween Special. Really interested to see the editing in this. Show was cut down to 1 hour 25 minutes instead of 1 hour 30 minutes. The theme song was changed to a generic sounding theme that was similar sounding. Interesting to note that on the Slam Of The Week segments that the sponsor of that week was left in. I was surprised by that. One of the sponsors was NBA 2K3 from Sega Sports. Edge's Rob Zombie theme is gone and is replaced by his 2000-2001 theme. Kind of looks cheesy seeing him running up and down the stage to this song when you know how much of a rock song that he is running around to. Good show overall and fun to watch again. Reminds you of how good Smackdown used to be. Kurt Angle vs. Eddie Guerrero was on the show along with Edge vs. Chris Benoit. Both matches were really good. Lesnar and Big Show were having their build to Survivor Series. This was right before Heyman turned heel and joined up with Big Show. Stephanie hosted a Halloween party with many funny moments. One thing that I had thankfully blocked out but was unfortunately reminded of on this show was the Torrie Wilson, Al Wilson, and Dawn Marie feud. Oh, it was so bad. Bad memories!! Fun to watch this show again overall.

ECW. Music changes? OH YEAH. Ton of them and that was expected. I am REALLY enjoying watching these shows. I saw the 7/10/95 and 7/17/95 ECW weekly shows. Tazz hosts these shows in the WWE 24/7 studio and tells some stories here and there about this time period in ECW. Lots of brawls in these shows. The Tommy Dreamer/Raven feud was ongoing. The Pitbulls are feuding with the Dudley Brothers of Dudley Dudley and Little Snot. The 7/10 show had the Pitbulls face the Dudleys . Raven and Richards were at ringside. During the match, a debuting Francine shows up as an admirer of Richards. Wow, Francine looks young at this time. Beulah gets tired of Francine pretty quickly and her and Francine end up fighting in the crowd. The main event featured Raven and Richards taking on Dreamer and Luna Vachon. This doesn't end up being the only ones involved as the Pitbulls get involved. Raven wants the Pitbulls to superbomb Luna but they hesitate on doing it. So, Raven and Richards attack the Pitbulls. The Pitbulls though had already been having all they could take of Richards and Raven so they get the upper hand. Pitbulls go to superbomb Richards but the Dudleys stop it. It ends in a big brawl with everyone involved. 7/17's show featured more of the same. Richards and Raven lose to Donn E. Allen and the Bully in the opening match by countout when Richards and Raven were distracted. Francine once again shows up and this time her and Richards kiss. Joey Styles has a GREAT line in this that cracked me up as Joey has been making jokes about Richards' manhood. Joey says "I'll be, Richards likes girls??!! And a girl likes him". Raven ends up stopping the kissing and Beulah attacks again. Dudleys and Pitbulls get involved and there is a brawl that goes all over the place. The Bully is then shown in the ring saying that they want a rematch at the tag titles with Raven and Richards since they had won. Raven makes his way to ringside and destroys him. Pretty funny. Taz (yep with one (z) just like used to be) teams with Eddie Guerrero against Dean Malenko and 2 Cold Scorpio. Taz and Eddie win but Bill Alfonso comes out who was still a heel referee at this point. He wants the match restarted due to "illegal use of the phone" by Heyman. Alfonso ends up counting Eddie and Taz down for a pinfall right after. Lots of battles between Alfonso and Heyman/Tod Gordon. Good stuff. It was funny to see how disliked Alfonso was. One sign in the front row said "we know where Alfonso lives!!". 911 is running wild. Fun to see him being the chokeslamming destroying machine again.

NWA. I am loving this show too!! May 11, 1985's show is what I'll be talking about. The champs at the time are Ric Flair as world champion, Magnum TA as US champion, Tully Blanchard as TV champion, Ronnie Garvin as national champion, and the Koloffs as tag team champions. First thing I noticed about this show was the theme song. I had forgotten all about this theme song to the show but remembered it really well when I heard it. Lots of squash matches in this one but very entertaining ones. Flair and Magnum TA were sizing each other up through the whole show building to a match with them. People in action on this show were Flair, Magnum, The Koloffs, Tully Blanchard, Ronnie Garvin, and The Andersons. The non squash match was Arn & Ole Anderson and Bob Roop defeating Buzz Sawyer, Pez Whatley, and The Italian Stallion in a six man tag. Can't wait to watch the rest of these shows!! The footage looks amazing for 20 years old.

Monday Night Wars. October 7, 1996. Very interested to see what changes would occur during this. I am happy to say that 99% of the music is there. The 1%? I am not sure about the Jim Powers music as it sounded like it was inserted. Surprised to see what all is left in there such as sponsors and all. Valvoline is shown during Nitro replays. Merchandise commercials are left in but ordering info is cut out of course cause its pointless. Sunny is on the phone during the Raw show and is talking about Livewire which was the Saturday fan call in show at the time. She gives the info on how to send in questions and the email address and phone number are edited out. I can understand that obviously. The F in WWF is obviously cut out every time it is said but I have to say that it really isn't that distracting to me anyway. Just sounds like a glitch in the tape. The Nitro show is seeing the nWo run wild and the build to Savage/Hogan at Halloween Havoc. The main event for Nitro was set to be Savage vs. Flair. Flair is attacked backstage by the nWo. Savage is then destroyed in the ring as the nWo makes Elizabeth watch. Elizabeth has also been trying to open communication with Savage after she turned on him earlier. He has wanted nothing to do with her but goes to defend her when The Giant is backing her into the arena as she is trying to get away. Harlem Heat defeated The Public Enemy. Jeff Jarrett debuted in WCW. Raw was an all right show. I talked about Jarrett debuting on Nitro that night. WWF is airing segments with Jesse James or The Road Dog if you will about how James was the one that was singing for Jarrett's WWF music career. Jarrett was lip synching. This is back when they had the fake Diesel and Razon Ramon. I still don't know why they thought that was a good idea. Mr. Perfect is about to make his in ring return with many promos of him airing. Sid is about to face Vader with the winner facing Shawn Michaels for the title at Survivor Series. The Smoking Gunns defeated The New Rockers. Fake Diesel defeated Marc Mero. Other matches are The Sultan taking on Aldo Montoya, and Goldust taking on Sid.

The Legends Of Wrestling show has Jim Ross as moderator talking with Dusty Rhodes, Michael Hayes, Pat Patterson, and Mike Graham in a roundtable format. This first of a (I'm assuming) three part series is talking about superstars of the 80's. First half was devoted to Roddy Piper. Second half was devoted to Terry Funk. The stories they tell about Terry Funk are very funny. Good stories on Piper too. Hayes talks about how Ric Flair is the biggest Roddy Piper fan. He tells a story of how Flair was watching the Piper's Pit at WrestleMania 21 backstage and had tears running down his face from laughing so hard. It's really fun seeing them tell stories. They all talk about the current wrestlers and how most don't ask for advice from the veterans. Hayes tells about the great promo he did on Edge on Raw late last year. Everyone came up to him backstage afterwards saying great job but said that not one person asked "how did you do that". They all agree that with guys like Terry Funk doing independent shows that those young guys need to go over and talk to him getting advice. They all say that Terry would be happy to help guys and give advice. Definitely check this show out as it is really fun hearing them tell stories.

Halloween Havoc 1999 was the fan voting winner. Why? I have no clue considering it was up against 1989 which is the best one in my opinion. Entering the Russo era of WCW on this show and that isn't good. Honestly, I didn't watch a lot of it so I'm not going to comment much. Music changes here. No surprise as Sting's Metallica theme of Search and Destroy is gone.

AWA Classics. The debut episode of the AWA on ESPN from June 27, 1985 was shown. Good show. Greg Gagne hosts this in the 24/7 studio. Champs at this time were Rick Martel as heavyweight champion, Road Warriors as tag champions, and Sgt. Slaughter as America's champion. Jimmy Garvin returns from suspension to open the show. He wins a squash match. He and valet Precious do an interview where Garvin talks about being the greatest wrestler alive. Good interview. Greg Gagne wrestles and has returned from his training at Camp Slaughter. He wins with a sleeper hold and a big debate is brought up about sleepers and how they are done with the Gagne sleeper and the Bockwinkle sleeper. Both claim each other's sleeper is an illegal one and is a choke. Remember when things used to be so simple like that. I liked that whole sleeper debate. Larry Zybysco had a new segment that is called In This Corner where he will talk to various wrestlers. Rick Martel is the guest and it ends up with Martel and Larry arguing over Larry's disrespect of him. Gagne explains in the 24/7 studio about the Larry segment and how Larry pitched the idea of doing it. Larry thought it would be bigger than Piper's Pit. Yeah, it wasn't. Road Warriors defeated the Long Riders. The Freebirds of Hayes, Gordy, and Roberts defeated Curt Hennig, Tom Zenk, and Buck Zumhoff. Main event was Sgt. Slaughter taking on Boris Zhukov that ended up in a double countout and a big brawl.

WWE also shows house shows that were only shown in the local market at the time. The one I watched was from 12/6/86 from the Boston Garden. Main event saw Hulk Hogan defeating Kamala to retain the WWF title. Hogan was a bloody mess in this one. Other highlights of the show was a good tag team title match with the Dream Team of Valentine and Beefcake taking on The Islanders. The time limit expires just as it appears that The Islanders are about to win the tag team titles. Others in action were Harley Race, Junk Yard Dog, Adrian Adonis, US Express, and The Rougeaus.

Shorties for the month mostly included segments more than matches. Some of these were bad stuff too. The Vampiro/Demon graveyard match. Yikes. Russo WCW. Also shown is the Ultimate Warrior/Jake Roberts promos. Oh yeah, Snakeman is on 24/7. The Taboo Tuesday 2004 women's battle royal is shown. Just a lot of various stuff.

Those are my thoughts on October 2006 of WWE 24/7. I am LOVING this. If you are a wrestling fan and have access to it, get it. You won't be disappointed!! I know I haven't been and can't wait to watch the rest of November. I'll be back in a month with my thoughts on November. Hope you enjoyed this look at WWE 24/7. Take care and God bless!!