Classic Wrestling Is At Your Fingertips Now!
So it’s Sunday night and as usual, I have some old wrestling on the laptop (the Old Glory edition of Thunder if you’re curious) and a multiview of the Major League Baseball playoffs and Sunday Night Football on my TV. This got me thinking about more wrestling (most things do) and in this case it’s over a certain aspect of wrestling that has changed for the much better in the last few years.
When I was growing up, one of the highlights of my week was getting to go to a video store and see what new wrestling tapes they had. Once a week I was allowed to rent a wrestling tape and that was as big of a treat as you could imagine. It might be something that I had seen a dozen times (which could apply to all kinds of things on the shelves) or one of the new releases, but no matter what it was, the weekend meant wrestling and that’s all that mattered.
Survivor Series 1998: The Tape I Just Couldn't Find
Out of all those tapes available though, there was one that continued to elude me. That would have been Survivor Series 1988, which looked amazing (it wasn’t, mainly due to the extreme amounts of clipping on the tape) but was never available.
Since I was a kid, I didn’t quite put it together that someone had failed to return it with the store just leaving the box up on the shelf like some pesky little tease. I wanted to see the Mega Powers and the Twin Towers captain teams of five fighting to survive and it wasn’t fair that I didn’t get to see it.
The WWE Network Changed Everything
Now flash forward... oh let’s say fifteen years or so, with the launch of the WWE Network (we now pause for you to mourn its demise). Not only could I watch everything from the WWE (and more) that I wanted, but above all else, I could FINALLY see the show in full. With that and so many other shows available, it was like every day was the weekend when it came to wrestling, which was about as great as it could get.
While it was cool to see the show (which again, not that great), the bigger change was just how awesome it was to have this much wrestling at my fingertips. While the Network has gone away in its original form (I’m still not over that), the idea of the service is still around and has spread throughout the wrestling world. That’s where we get into the really good part, as we’re in quite the golden age of wrestling in a way.
We Live In A Golden Age For Wrestling Fans
Simply put, there is very little wrestling that you can’t find these days. You can easily find all kinds of wrestling available online on things like TNA+, Honor Club, Netflix and various other services. That’s not even getting into the YouTube side of things, with the official WWE channel offering all kinds of content.
Throw in things like finding content through less than legal means and there is very little that can’t be found if you’re willing to put in the time. Throw in all of the independent wrestling out there and my goodness what an era we’re living in. Or were living in if you’re reading this in the year 2473.
WWE Vault Is Such A Fun YouTube Channel
In addition to all of that though, there is one more place that has become a favorite of mine and genuinely one of the first things that I check when I wake up in the morning. That would be the WWE Vault, which regularly releases some kind of classic wrestling from the massive WWE tape library, often multiple times a day, every day, all year long, and often at the same time of the day.
This is where things get fun, because it’s the same principle as the countdown clock in the Royal Rumble: what’s next? What are we going to be getting today? Out of the around 150,000 hours that WWE is reported to have of footage in their video library (that’s over seventeen years if you’re watching 24/7), what is going to be released today?
You might get a classic match or a show in full or some kind of a collection of matches with a certain theme. This could stem from anywhere in the form of 24/7 Hardcore Title matches to the best of Scott Steiner to a 1996 house show from South Africa. That’s the best feature of the thing: you never know what you’re going to get and it’s so fun to see what they have next.
WWE Vault's Mixtapes Are Truly Special
The best thing of them all though is the Mixtapes, which feature hours of content centered around a featured wrestler. There have been names like Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart, Eddie Guerrero, Randy Savage, Terry Funk and others, with a completely random mixture of content. How random you ask? Totally random, featuring a non-chronological set of promos and matches, some of which are far less than well known. It’s a total guessing game to see what you’re going to get and there might not be anything more fun.
That’s part of the big appeal of the whole channel: it’s clearly run by a hardcore wrestling fan. You can imagine what would go up there from a generic WWE account, as they would trot out the same stuff that had been seen dozens of times. That’s all well and good, but how many times can you watch Savage vs. Steamboat and the Michaels vs. Ramon ladder matches? Now, the Mega Powers vs. Pretty Wonderful and a 1986 Boston Gardens house show? That’s more like it.
There's Never Been A Better Time To Watch Old Wrestling
What matters the most is that we’re getting to see some of this content. While I’d prefer to still have the big WWE Network collections available, there is something so fun about getting to see various things drop out of nowhere. If nothing else, I can go with the idea of this being on YouTube for free rather than having to pay for yet another streaming service that WWE gets some deal with elsewhere (I get that they make money for it but good grief enough already.). Either way, we’re getting to see some amazing things and it’s a blast to see just how random things can get with the releases.
There is something so magical about being able to see so much wrestling at the drop of a hat. I’ve yet to find a limit to the amount of wrestling I want to watch and with the options available, it is fascinating to be able to get pretty much whatever I’m looking for with just a few clicks. As cliched as it sounds, it’s not like the old days, where you were lucky to get a new hour and a half long tape from Coliseum Video every month. Things have gotten that much better, and while it’s annoying to see so much content taken away, my goodness do we have it better than things were back in my day.
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