Last week I turned off Raw twenty minutes in. I know. I missed the brawl between Brock and the Undertaker. I watch the 90 minute replay on Hulu (because I don’t have cable), and the way WWE chose to edit the program last week, the portion I saw was all promos and no wrestling. Just after Steph and HHH’s speech to the backstage troops, I turned it off. I went to my YouTube app on Roku and I watched wrestling.
Time was if you didn’t like what WWE had to offer, you didn’t have a choice. There’s no excuse today. If you have cable, TNA and Ring of Honor are on Destination America (for now), and even if they go away, the far superior Lucha Underground is on the El Rey Network.
Don’t have those stations? Or cable? You have YouTube. You can watch classic matches, if that’s your preference, but I strongly recommend giving one of the new indies a try. IWA Mid-South’s channel is packed with recent classics featuring CM Punk, Chris Hero, and Colt Cabana. It’s also a great place to meet their newer stars like Reed Bentley, Hy Zaya, Shane Mercer, John Wayne Murdoch, and rising star Kongo Kong.
Rockstar Pro in Dayton, Ohio is another option on YouTube with their weekly program Amped. (Yes, they had the name before Jeff Jarrett decided to make use of it!) In fact that’s the show I turned on after turning off Raw. RPW’s locker room is packed with rising stars like Ron Mathis, Aaron Williams, Jake and Dave Crist, and Kyle Maverick to name a few.
And let’s not forget the second longest running weekly wrestling program, Ohio Valley Wrestling. The former WWE developmental territory is still going strong and releases new episodes weekly on the OVW website.
If you have Roku, you need to add the Indy Wrestling Channel. This app includes dozens of promotions from across the country, and they’re all free.
No more settling when the big E doesn’t give you more than a few minutes of wrestling on Monday nights. There’s great wrestling to be had online – not to mention in your own neighborhood.
No more excuses.