Right on the heels of adding new programming buckets to “The Vault” for Mid-South Wrestling and Smoky Mountain Wrestling, more old-school weekly TV shows continue to go up on WWE Network. They are the AWA (both their syndicated “All-Star Wrestling” show and the “Championship Wrestling” show that aired on ESPN) and World Class Championship Wrestling.
The AWA was long one of the best drawing and best paying promotions in the United States, with the luxury of a light schedule as well. The only caveat was that they were based out of Minnesota’s Twin Cities and a lot of wrestlers were not fans of the weather. However, the TV shows added to WWE Network so far are all from 1988 so far, which is near the end of the promotion and after they stopped running a full-time schedule, existing primarily to tape TV. The shows added so far feature Shawn Michaels as part of The Midnight Rockers.
WWE Network already had a World Class Championship Wrestling (or WCCW) section going back to its launch with mostly chronological shows starting in 1982. Aside from a one-off 1985 show added for Black History Month, the section of Dallas-based shows hadn’t been updated since April 2014, the point where WWE gave up on retro content for an extended period of time. While it initially looked like WWE was adding 1986-1987 shows (a low point for the promotion) Â because of the presence of The Ultimate Warrior as The Dingo Warrior, they added a 1985 show this morning. That show has Shawn Michaels as a job guy against One Man Gang.
So far, it seems like they’re mostly adding shows with big name WWE legends: Jim Duggan in Mid-South Wrestling, Chris Jericho in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, Shawn Michaels in the AWA and WCCW, Ultimate Warrior in WCCW, and guys like Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, and so on in the Jim Crockett Promotions World Championship Wrestling shows.
