Why certain territorial wrestling content didn’t make it onto the WWE Network

Photo Courtesy: WWE

A former WWE digital content producer recently shared insight into the process behind adding territorial content to the WWE Network.

Lou DiPietro, who worked for the company on two separate occasions between 2004-08, and from 2018-20, spoke with Brian Solomon on the Shut and Wrestle podcast about his experiences in the digital side of the company.

DiPietro was involved when WWE launched its 24/7 on-demand service, which was a precursor to the more expansive WWE Network that launched in February 2014.

After the collapse of WCW and ECW, WWE began acquiring multiple videotape libraries. However, plenty of territorial footage never made it to the WWE Network and DiPietro explained several factors including gaps in various libraries:

It’s usually one of three reasons why there is a gap.

Either a) Someone else owns the rights and/or it’s disputed, which is why there isn’t a lot of Memphis stuff on there, or they’re not sure who owns the rights to certain things from Houston or whatever, so they stay away from it because Vince didn’t want anything to do with a lawsuit of anything with people monetizing content.

That would be one reason. Two would be, as you might expect from carnies, sometimes were not found in the greatest of conditions. So, if a tape disintegrates while it’s being digitized, you know? That could happen.

Or, the third thing that’s more episodic specific is you’ll see ‘Mid-South is 42 minutes’ because it ran for an hour on whatever channel, but this one is 31 (minutes). There might have been a music video that was impossible to cover or there’s language or there’s something that just wasn’t worth the squeeze in that episode and it was easier to cut it out.

One of the big libraries was World Class Championship Wrestling, which belonged to the Von Erich family and a deal was completed in 2005.

DiPietro shared the reality of attempting to preserve footage from the ‘80s and the conditions that had to deal with:

My friends who worked in the library went to Texas to look at the World Class library when it was acquired. Kevin Von Erich just had cardboard boxes of tapes in various formats in a barn on Fritz’s ranch. If you’ve ever been to Texas, you know the weather in Texas. So, to have boxes of media in a barn for God knows how long, some of those tapes disintegrated the minute they were put on the machine.

There were other things like the story of ‘The Last Battle in Atlanta’ being found, they would tape over stuff to save money. So, Mid-Atlantic would tape a month’s worth of shows on this two-inch reel and then just use it again six months later.

Since 2021, the domestic streaming rights for the WWE Network have been licensed to Peacock in the U.S. with that deal coming in early 2026.

On the international stage, Netflix has taken over the streaming rights effective as of January 1.

 

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Born on a Friday, John Pollock is a reporter, editor & podcaster at POST Wrestling. He runs and owns POST Wrestling alongside Wai Ting.