WWF Shotgun Saturday Night (March 15, 1997)

Time for another exciting episode of Shotgun Saturday Night. This is the first episode of the show that wasn’t overlapping with WWF Superstar and the show isn’t coming to us from Europe so we’ll have an idea of what the new Shotgun Saturday Night format is going to look like going forward so let’s get to it!

WCW Festival de Lucha (January 27, 1999)

I was a big WCW guy and this is one of those shows that I’d read about taking place on message boards back in the day but also one that unfortunately never saw the light of day. When I first got the WWE Network it was one of the first things I went looking for but at that time all they had up was a single match that saw Konnan, Rey Mysterio Jr., Hector Garza & Silver King go up against Chris Jericho, Norman Smiley, Johnny Swinger & Lenny Lane. That is no longer the case and the entire show is now available though it lacks commentary or any sort of chyrons so I’m going to attempt to review it in spite not possessing Professor Iron “Mike” Tenay levels of knowledge of lucha libre so don’t expect much more beyond “So and so did some really cool dives” levels of play by play. Let’s get down to it.

WCW World War 3 1997 (November 23, 1997)

For reasons I cannot even begin to fathom the 1997 edition of WCW’s often reviled World War 3 PPV was one of the offerings on the freebie tier of the award winning WWE Network. Since WCW and shitty gimmick matches are my shit I had no choice but to watch it. So I did. Here are words about it.

WWF Royal Rumble 1997 (January 19, 1997)

The cheap as free version of the award-winning WWE Network has the 1997 Royal Rumble up as part of their celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. I love me a Royal Rumble and I don’t think I’ve seen this one since it happened live so why not watch 30 men attempt to throw each other out of a wrestling ring for a shot at the WWF World Heavyweight Championship?

TNA Impact! (June 4, 2004)

This is the historic first episode of Impact. Prior to this TNA had just done weekly PPVs. There’s an opening montage of a bunch of exciting stuff from previous TNA events. We then get an off-camera Professor Iron “Mike” Tenay introducing the show as the camera pans around the Universal Studios Arena.