Welcome Back to the Wkly Hit List, KlicKNettars! You may wondering where I was last week. Just to clarify, I was out filming another movie as an extra and I'm pushing to do more work in filmmaking this year, outside of the KlicKNet Universe or perhaps call it the "KlicKNetVerse!" In a few weeks a have a really big announcement that is going to have everyone's pumped up. Another thing I wanna address is the fact that last Monday was by my 28th Birthday, so feel to send me any "Happy Belated Birthday" messages in the comment section down below, which nobody has used in almost ten years apparently. We are more than proud to welcome back the 5-Day Rounder in all of its glory, which news stories that you might be pleased with.
We have just finished making a brand new episode of FakeTV Box with Kwame Alexander in which I'm reacting to the trailer for the Knuckles miniseries on Paramount Plus. Originally it was going to premiere on Sunday, but we believe that KlicKNettars do not want to wait that long, so they'll be able to see it today on our YouTube channel, throughout social media, and best of all through this post in our BIG PREMIERE of the WEEK!
Our Inside Scoop this week concerns wrestling. This morning the WWE held its Elimination Chamber event from the Optus Stadium in Perth, Western Australia. It's marked as WWE's first event to be held in Australia since Super Show-Down in October 2018, and it's also the last bog event before WrestleMania XL which will be LIVE from Lincoln Financial Field in April 6 and April 7. Things have been getting a little fluster regarding what the Main Event of WM 40, it looked like it was going to Cody Rhodes vs Roman Reigns II after Cody won the 2024 Men's Royal Rumble Match a month ago, but then it looked like it was going to be The Rock vs Roman Reigns which is what so many have wanted for years. But then, there was a lot of criticism simply because WWE fans wanted Cody vs Roman II instead, and understandably so because the match last year between these two at WrestleMania 39 in Hollywood was just too good, so why wouldn't fans want a rematch.
People were hoping Rock vs Roman would happen last year and the year before that but it never came to fruition back then. The criticism over the idea of The Rock (who is a new member of the TKO Board of Directors) trying to take Cody's place at year has been insane, because personally as a fan, I too wanna see Cody "Finish the Story" and win the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship away from Roman Reigns who has had it for almost 1,300 days now. You might recall seeing the WrestleMania XL Kickoff Press Event which ended with The Rock slapping Cody Rhodes dead in the face after Cody decided to challenge Rock's cousin Roman. So now, The Rock has gone back to being a bad guy and has even joined The Bloodline led by the Head of the Table Roman Reigns. After this morning's Elimination Chamber event, we have more clearer picture of what the match card of WrestleMania XL is going to look like in April. Becky Lynch will challenge Rhea Ripley for the Women's World Championship, followed by Seth "Freakin" Rollins vs Drew McIntyre for the World Heavyweight Championship, and let's not forget Iyo Sky taking on the winner of the 2024 Women's Royal Rumble Bayley for the WWE Women's Championship.
Now that I'm finished recapping what's going on in the WWE right now from a storyline standpoint, I want to discuss what's going on with the company in real life, and the one story that needs to be acknowledged on this blog is the fact that 2024 will be the last year for Monday Night RAW on the USA Network. On Tuesday, January 24th, the whole world shut down after it was announced that the WWE reached a $5 Billion Deal with Netflix in which the streaming giant will exclusively broadcast Raw for the next ten years starting in January 2025 in the United States, Latin America, Canada and the United Kingdom. Furthermore, Netflix will also be the exclusive home of all WWE content outside of the United States, which will include documentaries, original series, SmackDown, NXT and Premium Live Events such as WrestleMania, SummerSlam and the Royal Rumble.
Netflix has streamed a few live specials on its platform in the past and according to the Hollywood Reporter: "Netflix has also been exploring sports-adjacent content (a category that the WWE fits into, given its self-titled genre of “sports entertainment”). Netflix last year had Formula 1 drivers team up with PGA golfing stars in the Netflix Cup golf tournament, and next year will have tennis stars Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz face off in what it is calling the Netflix Slam." THR believes that "WWE Raw is a big step in the direction of live sports, with recurring rights fees similar to that of other major leagues. Netflix, like Apple, has sought global rights for sports in the discussions it has held with partners. While the WWE is not entirely exclusive, it will give the streaming giant near-global scale for WWE content, and total global rights to Raw over time."
Monday Night RAW has been on linear TV since its debut in January of 1993, it started out on the USA Network from 1993-2000, then it spent five years on Spike (now called Paramount Network) from 2000-2005, before coming back to USA Network in 2005 and has been there for 19 years, and now the show is heading to a place where nobody thought it would go in a million years, and that's a subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. Personally, I wished RAW would have signed a contract that would keep it on our television set because so many famous shows started out on TV and should end their runs on TV. I manage to watch Netflix on my mobile devices, though I rather not say anything further than that, so a year from now I have to watch RAW LIVE either on my iPhone, my iPad, and maybe through my XBOX One which hooked up into a TV, but I'm hoping that Netflix doesn't raise it prices next year, making it impossible to watch anything.
According to Deadline Hollywood, "Streaming has begun to draw significant live sports away from the traditional TV bundle. In 2022, Amazon’s Prime Video kicked off an 11-year exclusive on NFL Thursday Night Football and Apple has joined Amazon and Peacock in streaming Major League Baseball. ESPN is preparing a full direct-to-consumer version to debut by next year." Just a weeks ago, ESPN, FOX and Warner Bros. Discovery announced that they were going to form a Joint Venture to Launch a new Streaming Sports Service starting in Fall 2024 in the United States, though I should mention that WWE programming is leaving our television sets for good. Friday Night SmackDown has spent five years on FOX since 2019 and WWE reached a deal to bring it back to the USA Network in October 2024. On top of that, NXT will be leaving USA Network and move to The CW Network in October, the last time wrestling was on that network was Saturday Morning Slam from 2012-2013, and prior to that SmackDown was there from 2006-2008 in the early years of The CW.
Hopefully, SmackDown remains on Friday Nights and RAW is still Monday Night RAW when it moves to Netflix next year because they were made for those particular nights. RAW has a way of ending the first day of the week with a bang while SmackDown has a way of starting the weekend with a bang, they might as well call it the "TGIF of Wrestling!" In closing, I'm sad that RAW won't be on linear television for the foreseeable future, but I'll to look forward to what they do on Netflix which doesn't stream any ad/commercial breaks in between its content. The Wrestling Business is in the middle of a really big boom right now and WWE is leading the way with its highly popular weekly shows, premium live events, and has locked in the biggest multi-billion dollar deal with the biggest streaming platform in the world.
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