C Is for Controversy: ESPN Review of Wrestlepalooza Sparks Debate

John Powell

C Is for Controversy: ESPN Review of Wrestlepalooza Sparks Debate

WWE has been rightly touting their new partnership with ESPN in the United States. All of their upcoming PLEs have shifted to that service. For Canada and other places in the world there hasn’t been any change though. All WWE content except, Evolve, is part of a Netflix subscription which includes the PLEs and weekly shows. Last weekend’s Wrestlepalooza was the first event of the partnership.

The relationship has already faced some bumps in the road. Some American fans are not pleased about the move and that it could cost them more a month. Stephanie McMahon raised some eyebrows when on her talk show she voiced a controversial ad for a VPN service telling American viewers: “Just set it to Canada and boom — you unlock the Canadian Netflix library, which includes all that awesome WWE programming, commercial free. And while you’re there, you can also check out other shows exclusive to Canadian Netflix.”

Now, ESPN’s own Andreas Hale rated Wrestlepalooza on the official ESPN site and gave it a ‘C’ stating: “The excellent Vaquer vs. Sky match saved this show from being truly average. It was a phenomenal display inside the squared circle. Everything else was either underwhelming (the short Rhodes-McIntyre match) or a setup for a future match (Lesnar dominating Cena). For a card that promised to have epic moments, it fell a little short of expectations.”

The critique is the “talk of the town” amongst fans:

AEW’s Ricochet shared his thoughts too:

https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2025/08/29/stephanie-mcmahon-sparks-vpn-buzz-over-wwe-on-netflix/

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