We previously noted that it was John Laurinaitis who acted as head agent for the WWE shows in Japan last weekend, including the WWE Beast in the East live WWE Network special.
Some of the ideas to come from Laurinaitis were how the NXT championship match between Kevin Owens and Finn Balor was booked, and some of the traditional Japanese elements (streamers, flowers) introduced during the entrances.
The Wrestling Observer Newsletter noted WWE the live WWE Network special was considered to be a major success for the company. It’s being said that WWE officials are already looking at doing more Network-exclusive live specials in the future, but most likely in a timeslot more friendly to the United States, as fans in the Eastern time zone were up for the show at 5:30 a.m.
We previously noted that WWE kept announcers Michael Cole and Byron Saxton in the WWE Studios to run commentary to save on cost. They saw the same video as the Japanese team did on On-Demand viewing, but WWE actually did still send a crew over to Tokyo. They were ultimately not used as it was another cost cutting measure by not using a tradition pay-per-view event setup.
