[4] The collection represents a very significant portion of the visual history of modern professional wrestling in the United States and Canada.

The library also maintains footage from WWE's non-wrestling sister companies, the World Bodybuilding Federation and XFL.

The first significant purchase took place in 2001 when the company bought the complete historical archives of their former competitor World Championship Wrestling.

[11] As part of the agreement, all the respective promotions would continue to own their footage and remain separate entities from WWE.

The historical availability of individual, non-televised matches is also incomplete, as likely only the most significant bouts were recorded for posterity, and can be lost to time.

Upon taking control of the World Championship Wrestling library, it was noted that the tapes were unlabeled and not categorized.

[19] As a result, any instances of someone saying "WWF" (though not World Wrestling Federation) were edited and shots of the "scratch" logo were either removed or blurred on re-airings or video releases released during that time frame, except for the United Kingdom exclusive WWE Tagged Classics DVD line.

Videos heavily affected in particular by these cost-cutting decisions are those featuring footage from Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), which was famous for using recordings by mainstream music acts such as Metallica, AC/DC, and Dr. Dre for their wrestlers' entrances, although AC/DC and Metallica have provided music for WWE pay-per-view events as well.

Exceptions to non-Johnston composed themes that WWE leaves in its archives are either songs that are in the public domain, such as the "Dawn" section of Also sprach Zarathustra used by Ric Flair and Pomp and Circumstance, which was used by Gorgeous George and later Randy Savage; or songs that the WWE acquired from its purchase of WCW.

Due to a 1991 lawsuit, matches featuring Jesse Ventura on commentary were dubbed over for subsequent home video releases.