For those who didn’t watch 205 Live last night, the show included a very brief and somewhat peculiar segment, which basically presented 5 of this past January’s UK Championship Tournament competitors to the live crowd. As this was on-going, Tom Philips explained to the viewing audience that these five men among other would be the stars of a UK-centric, weekly WWE Network show that is “arriving in the near future”. Philips then continued to explain how the UK competitors would join the stars of 205 Live for a special live event in Norwich early next month. Here is official footage of the
Philips then continued to explain how the UK competitors would join the stars of 205 Live for a special live event in Norwich early next month. Here is official footage of the segment in question from WWE’s Youtube channel:
So, what does this announcement actually tell us? Truth be told, not very much. It’s never been a secret that WWE is working towards a UK-based weekly TV show on their network Triple H stated that intention when the tournament was announced back in December and has reiterated it in subsequent conference calls. However, the one thing that has always been avoided is any attempt to give real details. In effect, we still haven’t got any here. How soon is “very soon”? Is the Norwich house show a secret television taping or just a loosely connected event that they took the opportunity to promote? As it stands, this announcement has basically told us that something we already knew was happening is indefinitely closer to happening.
So then the question becomes, “why would WWE make a non-announcement like this?” The most likely answer is simple: making a statement. Following a highly publicised pilot in the UK, ITV (a close competitor to the BBC) has decided to go ahead with a fully fledged World of Sport revival, set to start taping next month. The British television institution has even gone so far as to publicly partner with Impact Wrestling. For the US readers who are unaware, this has legitimate potential to reach many millions of viewers through free-TVn in Britain.
ITV are making rapid progress, while WWE is making little-to-none. At least publicly So WWE may have felt that they needed to make a big show of it while they had these guys in Orlando. That They needed to prove that they’re not actually spinning their wheels and actually have big plans. Even if they can’t quite tell us what they are yet. So, while this doesn’t actually tell us much about new WWE programming, it may well tell us about WWE’s current mindset, as they wander into a territory with some potential true competition.