Wasn’t able to catch the full show (although I did managed to catch up by watching the rest of it on YouTube), but for the most part, I thought the show was a nice concept. The show itself wasn’t all that special, but the whole attempt to recreate the atmosphere of a 1980s WWF show (old sets, old ring set-ups, Wrestling Challenge-esque interview boxes during matches, old ref shirts with little bowties, MEAN GENE OKERLUND, HOWARD FINKEL, JIM ROSS) gave it a nice little atmosphere and overall, I enjoyed the show more on that merit than on the content itself. I’d be open to another one if they decide to go for it… it’s certainly better than a lot of their other 3-hour RAWs.
Some random thoughts that might or might not be related to the actual content of the show:
– Feels totally weird to see all the original WWF block logos all over the place but they can’t actually MENTION the initials or even the old name unless they want to be bitchslapped by the pandas again. Would have been nice if they’d gone the whole way and reverted to the old name, but at least they didn’t use the butchered WWE Legends logo that appears on merchandise. (2015 Update: Subsequent “old-school” themed shows would use said WWE Legends logo and feel even more half-assed than this initial effort.)
– Hey, why isn’t Jerry Lawler wearing the old cape he had really early on? And what’s with the bland beige jackets? What about the canary blue jackets?
– Nice to see Daniel Bryan and Jack Swagger have a great match with enough time to do their thing. Also nice to see Jim Ross call a match one more time… even if Coleslaw had to ruin it.
That’s all I can really say. Show was okay, but I just like to look at the old-school set-pieces.
dtm666 