Peacock Is Removing Controversial Moments from Old WWE Shows

NBCUniversal is trimming some of the more questionable content from past wrestling shows on Peacock after the acquisition of WWE Network and its video library. While WWE programming has gotten to be much more family-friendly in recent years, there have been many moments from the past that probably wouldn’t fly in our current climate. Likely not wanting to ruffle any feathers, Peacock has been heavily editing these old shows as noticed by many wrestling fans tuning in.

Reportedly, one of the most evident examples of Peacock’s censoring of old WWE shows can be seen in the streamer’s offering of WrestleMania 6. Aired on pay-per-view in 1990, that WrestleMania featured a match between Roddy Piper and Bad News Brown with Piper, a white wrestler, painting his body half-black for his match against Brown, a Black wrestler. The entire match along with an interview segment of Piper in the paint have been completely removed from Peacock’s version of WrestleMania 6.

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Meanwhile, WWE fans have also noticed that an infamous moment from Survivor Series 19, which went down in 2005, has also been nixed. On that show, company chairman Vince McMahon, portraying the role of an aloof villain, referred to Black wrestler Booker T with a variation of the “n” word. That moment is now completely gone as well, though the footage still continues to float around on social media and video sharing websites.

It’s going to take some time for Peacock to add more content from the WWE Network library, so time will tell how much more from WWE’s past will end up getting the axe. During the late 90s and early 2000s, the company was in the midst of what’s called the “Attitude Era,” a period of time when WWE was aiming for a more mature audience. This was the time when characters like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Undertaker, The Rock, and Mick Foley were able to flourish with beer drinking, hardcore violence, and even nudity sometimes making it into wrestling shows.

The more controversial moments from WWE’s history were available on WWE Network before the switch to Peacock. Even so, there are certainly a lot of segments from WWE TV that the company probably wouldn’t be sad to see getting buried by NBCU. Many of these moments have already faced their share of criticism over the years, and while there hadn’t been much of a campaign for Peacock to trim down the WWE Network’s content, it would seem that they wanted to get ahead of the backlash before it started.

While some diehard WWE fans won’t be thrilled to learn that some matches and segments are getting nixed from Peacock, the good news is that the network is much more affordable than it was before. Peacock subscribers will have access to the service at just half the price of what the WWE Network cost subscribers, although this will be for an ad-supported tier. In addition to watching WWE pay-per-view shows with no added cost, the service also allows for wrestling fans to enjoy everything else Peacock has to offer. This news comes to us from WrestleZone.

Topics: WWE, Peacock, Streaming

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