For almost two and a half years now, WWE Network has aired events from independent promotions on a near-weekly basis. These specific promotions have a working relationship with WWE, which are PROGRESS Wrestling, ICW, wXw Wrestling, and the now-defunct EVOLVE.
Apart from distributing their events on-demand on the WWE Network, World Wrestling Entertainment seemingly has little to no control over the type of events those promotions run, who they book, or what storylines happen on those shows. There has been an amount of doubt if collaboration events with other indie promotions are off-limits for the WWE Network, but those doubts aren’t there anymore.
Update: WWE has stopped uploading indie programming for the past two weeks, now putting the future of these shows in question.
Upcoming Indie Collaborations
The first collaboration event that will air on Peacock and the WWE Network will be PROGRESS’ collaboration event with Dubai’s WrestleFest DxB titled “Sons and Daughters of the Desert”. The show is scheduled to release on the platforms Saturday, January 7th, according to the show’s description on DemandPROGRESS, PROGRESS’ own on-demand service. This will be the first wrestling event from Dubai that gets aired on Peacock and WWE Network.
Meanwhile, multiple collaboration events, namely the wXw x Smash events in Toronto and London, Ontario, Canada and wXw x Bodyslam in Denmark, are openly advertised as “Filmed for WWE Network”. As more of these collaboration events get announced and eventually happen, more promotions and wrestlers get to make their debut on the WWE Network & Peacock, which might open the door for those promotions to get their own partnerships with WWE and those wrestlers getting their work seen by more people plus as a origin point & stepping stone for their possible WWE career.
The wXw x Smash events were already taped, with the Toronto show available to watch on wXw’s own streaming service, wXwNOW. With this and the PROGRESS’ shows appearing on their own services first, it seems that it will be the norm that such collaboration shows will air second-run on the WWE Network. This, however, won’t take away from the stage that Peacock and WWE Network gives to the collaborating shows.
What do you think about more promotions making their WWE Network debut via this route? Are you open to follow more promotions than just WWE on both Peacock &WWE Network. Would you rather have it kept closed to WWE alone?
As always, for any updates regarding indies affiliated with WWE Network and other WWE Network & Peacock shows, keep it locked to WWE Network News!
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