Watching live, on tape?

After watching far too many mediocre WWE pay per views at 1 am on a Sunday night on Sky Sports, I decided to give up watching wrestling 'live' back in 2004. Instead I'd use the safety net of the internet and make sure the show was worth watching before investing three hours of my time. However as time went by, wrestling began to lose some of it's magic. The surprises became inevtiable and the shocking became passe. As WWE's product became worse and worse I did not feel I was missing out. However as TNA has begun to improve leaps and bounds, something was missing in the viewing experience - the genuine experience of not knowing what was about to happen.

So with TNA approaching it's 4th anniversary and the Slammiversary pay per view, I decided to revive some of that magic and try a little experiment and watch it as if it was live. Admittedly I chose Slammiversary on purpose as it had a card that, on paper, I knew should not dissappoint and boy did it live up to expectations. The good matches were still good and probably would have been just as good had I known the result. However the main difference was in the average matches. Where in previous months I would have fast forwarded, I found myself actually wanting to see what happened in the Bobby Roode vs. Rhino. OK, so it was still pretty poor, but at least it did not have the crushing inevitability of a match I already knew was bad.

So will this affect my wrestling viewing habits? I doubt it. Alas, TNA's output is as inconsistent than WWE. On the plus side, their product is consistently good rather than consistently bad. However until both WWE and TNA improve their product to the point that the shows are worth making the effort for, then I think I'll keep my internet based safety net for just a little bit longer.