March 13, 2000 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Beyond the Mat controversy, New York Daily News stories on wrestling deaths and drugs, more
The controversy over the movie “Beyond the Mat” grew this past week when pressure tactics from the WWF caused the USA Network, UPN and Cris Craft Communications to all ban any advertising on any of their programs for the film.
While some were surprised at the lengths Vince McMahon would go to attempt to bury the movie, it has been clear for some time by anyone who understands the “with us or against us” and no in between philosophy of McMahon, that he felt the movie wasn’t “with us.” If he felt he had the power to pressure entire networks into not carrying commercials, of course he would. The surprise was that the networks allowed him to exert that much influence as it regards advertising on non-wrestling programming, which shows the surprising power within television the WWF franchise holds, particularly with McMahon leveraging everyone against one another since his USA network commitments come due in September. Such tactics, while apparently exceedingly rare when it comes to movies, are not unusual within the realm of television. For example, just in the wrestling wars world, TNT and TBS wouldn’t air the phone commercial with Steve Austin and D-Lo Brown, while USA and UPN won’t air the Spree commercial with Bill Goldberg. WWF has had a longstanding policy of not allowing what they perceive to be competition wrestling products advertise within the body of their show, but this is the first time they’ve exerted influence to all shows on the networks they air on.
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Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.