Major Reason Why WWE Edited Hogan vs Andre on DVD?
As has previously been reported, in the newly released "History of WWE" DVD set, WWE has massively edited the Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant Match, and as seen in the DVD the match is presented entirely from the hard camera point-of-view.
According to WrestlingDVDNews.com, the reason why WWE edited the match is due to the on-screen presence of Mel Phillips, a former WWE employee. For those unaware, Phillips was exposed as a pedophile who frequently took advantage of underage males he supervised during the ring setup at live events. Many of these males came from broken homes and troubled backgrounds.
Tom Cole, who worked for WWE as a ring attendant in the 1980s and 1990s when he was underage through young adulthood, hurled charges against his former employer that resulted in the resignation of three longtime employees and helped fuel a sex scandal that plagued the company for years. He went public in 1992 with claims that wrestler-turned-front-office employee Terry Garvin attempted to seduce him two years earlier when he was nineteen and that he had been sexually harassed at the age of thirteen by Phillips. WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart claimed in his 2007 autobiography, Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling, that both Garvin and Phillips, as well as Pat Patterson, resigned in March of that year, "as a result of the allegations of sexual conduct." Only Patterson was ever re-hired.
WWE Officially Cancel Classics OnDemand
WWE issued the following statement on Twitter, confirming the cancellation of its Classics OnDemand:
January 31, 2014 will be the last day of WWE Classics On Demand service. Please visit http://t.co/N4UBIoMn4N for more information.
— WWE Classics (@WWEClassics) December 1, 2013