Back in the day I taped Invasion 2002 and was so excited to have a wrassling tape That I must have watched it at least 50 times until it stopped working. In my experience the official WWF Tapes were at least $15 and as a kid with only a couple bucks in my pocket it just wasn't an option to get them.
FF 15 years to The other day when I searched All Japan Pro Wrestling on YouTube and found over 100 matches from their heyday, all there free to stream in high quality. I watched two Misawa matches, then felt like watching Sami Zayn matches so I switched over to the Network. It was at this point that it hit me that we really might be in the best time to be a wrestling fan up to this point in history.
Anything you want to watch, you can watch it almost instantly in high definition for little or no money. Back in the day if you missed the PPV, you were assed out and just had to have your friends tell you what happened. Now Almost any WWF/E or WCW match/PPV is instantly accessible for $10/month. I can seamlessly and instantly go from Flair vs Steamboat to Bret vs Austin to prime Lesnar without even getting up to adjust my VCR or dealing with notoriously fickle VHS tapes.
Japanese stuff used to be notoriously difficult to get a hold of because it didn't usually come on American TV. now there's New Japan World, Stardom World, RealHero Archive, and YouTube bringing shyt that most of us had only heard about right into our rooms. This isn't even to mention U.K. stuff or Good Lucha Things.
I know we all complain about the direction of wrassling these days, especially Vince's Carny Playhouse, and how it's not how we want to be. but I personally am grateful for where we are in wrestling as a whole. There is more good stuff out there for us to watch now then there are hours in the day. It excites me to think about the future of wrestling given that the wrestlers of tomorrow have an entire Library of Alexandria to draw inspiration from.
FF 15 years to The other day when I searched All Japan Pro Wrestling on YouTube and found over 100 matches from their heyday, all there free to stream in high quality. I watched two Misawa matches, then felt like watching Sami Zayn matches so I switched over to the Network. It was at this point that it hit me that we really might be in the best time to be a wrestling fan up to this point in history.
Anything you want to watch, you can watch it almost instantly in high definition for little or no money. Back in the day if you missed the PPV, you were assed out and just had to have your friends tell you what happened. Now Almost any WWF/E or WCW match/PPV is instantly accessible for $10/month. I can seamlessly and instantly go from Flair vs Steamboat to Bret vs Austin to prime Lesnar without even getting up to adjust my VCR or dealing with notoriously fickle VHS tapes.
Japanese stuff used to be notoriously difficult to get a hold of because it didn't usually come on American TV. now there's New Japan World, Stardom World, RealHero Archive, and YouTube bringing shyt that most of us had only heard about right into our rooms. This isn't even to mention U.K. stuff or Good Lucha Things.
I know we all complain about the direction of wrassling these days, especially Vince's Carny Playhouse, and how it's not how we want to be. but I personally am grateful for where we are in wrestling as a whole. There is more good stuff out there for us to watch now then there are hours in the day. It excites me to think about the future of wrestling given that the wrestlers of tomorrow have an entire Library of Alexandria to draw inspiration from.
