Sunday Night Heat Episodes Added To The WWE Network

On the heels of WCW Thunder and Saturday Night being added to the WWE Network, episodes of Sunday Night Heat are now available on the WWE Network.

WWE.com announced this week that the first full year of Sunday Night Heat has been added to the WWE Network.

Journey back to the heart of The Attitude Era and the peak of the Monday Night War with the first full year of Sunday Night Heat, featuring 47 episodes. What better way to fend off a surging WCW than with a second weekly showcase for WWE’s biggest Superstars. Debuting in the summer of 1998, Heat highlighted a who’s who of WWE royalty like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, Sable, DX, The Undertaker and many more.

While WWE.com says 47 episodes were added to the Network, it’s actually all 52 within the first year of the show. This is starting with the show’s debut on August 2, 1998, and ending with July 25, 1999, which was the pre-show for the Fully Loaded pay-per-view.

Sunday Night Heat began as the second primary program of WWE’s weekly television show line-up, serving as a supplement to Monday Night Raw. Heat would feature a format similar to that of Monday Night Raw in that continuing feuds from the previous week would progress during the show, and the following night’s Monday Night Raw would be heavily promoted. On pay-per-view event nights, Heat would also serve as a preview show to the events

During the first year, Heat would sometimes air live on Sundays, with Monday Night Raw being taped right after the live broadcast and airing the following night on the USA Network. However, when SmackDown debuted in August 1999, that became WWE’s secondary show and the top Superstars stopped regularly appearing.

After the brand split in 2002, the show exclusively featured Raw Superstars. However, there would be little in the way of storyline progression and it basically served as a straight-up wrestling show for those who didn’t compete on Monday Night Raw the week before. WWE continues this same format today with WWE Main Event.

Heat and Velocity were not picked up by the USA Network when WWE moved its programming over to that network in October 2005, leaving Americans no way to watch WWE weekend shows on television. To solve this problem, WWE decided to stream the shows on their website exclusively for the U.S. audience, with new editions posted every Friday afternoon. Additionally, prior to every PPV event, WWE would continue to air a live bonus 30-minute Heat pre-show on the PPV channel. Sunday Night Heat was soon renamed to WWE Heat since it no longer aired on Sundays.

Heat was still shown internationally to fulfill international programming commitments. When WWE went high definition in January 2008, Heat began using the same HD set as Raw, SmackDown, and ECW. After 10 years of programming and 513 episodes, the final episode of WWE Heat was uploaded to WWE.com on May 30, 2008.

The WWE Championship changed hands once on a special episode of Heat that aired during the halftime of Super Bowl XXXIII on January 31, 1999, when Mankind defeated The Rock in an empty arena match to win the title. This special episode, called Halftime Heat, drew the highest rating in the history of the show with a 6.6.