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35 Years As A Wrestling Fan


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35 years ago today, Friday, May 4, 1979, my parents let my brother and I stay up late to watch Johnny Carson.  We watched the monologue and the next skit and then my brother changed the channel.  What I saw was something that I thought was the most ridiculous and stupidest thing my 5-year old self had ever seen.  Who would have expected that over the next 35 years other than the “four necessities” of family, friends, faith and office that professional wrestling would be the most important thing in my life.  

 
Wrestling has certainly changed dramatically since then and it has changed often.  With the exception of the last 10 years, you could never look at wrestling from 3 years prior and think “yep, it’s the same thing”.  And I love wrestling for that.  Not every change has been great and it definitely doesn’t always get better, but it has kept me in the game, so to speak.  We all have our complaints about the current state of the business, but every so often a new character will come along or a storyline will develop that ties me in, that keeps me thinking about wrestling in the middle of the day, and that keeps me emotionally invested in this crazy world.
 
I’m a sentimental guy.  I’ve spent most of this weekend watching the WWE Network and reminiscing about the past 35 years and all of the joy that pro wrestling has brought me.  Some random thoughts…
 
- Don’t ask me why I know the date of the first time I watched wrestling.  Let’s suffice to say that it probably really isn’t May 4, but it is close.  I used to think it was the Moondogs that I saw that first time we watched it, but now that I look back at history sites I realize it must have been the Valiant Brothers.  I still think they were ridiculous.  In turn, I would go on to become a big fan of the Moondogs.
 
- I didn’t really start watching wrestling regularly for another year or two later.  The first big angle that really sticks out to me is the Sgt. Slaughter-Pat Patterson angle.    
 
- My neighbor was a widow who also happened to love wrestling.  She took me and my brother to our first live wrestling show at the Scranton (PA) Catholic Youth Center on August 18, 1982.  Andre The Giant beat Blackjack Mulligan in the main event. Later that year we went to see Bob Backlund defend the WWF title against Playboy Buddy Rose.  I also remember her taking us to a show involving George Steele…who frightened me greatly.  She was a Jimmy Snuka fan, so I also got to see classics with him against Ray Stevens and Magnificent Muraco.
 
- S.D. Jones was my first favorite wrestler.  To this day, I believe that if he had just not rushed the corner after throwing his opponent into the turnbuckles he would have won a lot of matches.  They always moved when he did that.  He should have stopped doing that.
 
- My neighbor also owned a satellite dish, while we did not even have cable back then.  Every Saturday night, I would walk over to her house at 11:00 pm and we’d watch Championship Sports on Channel 11 out of Dallas, Texas (World Class).  She grew raspberries and I’d get either shortcake or ice cream with her awesome raspberry sauce each week.  The wrestling was awesome, too.
 
- She was also the first in the community to get a VCR.  When we finally got ours, she would tape wrestling from territories across the country and let me watch it.  I’d return the tape and get a new one each week.  She didn’t tape the same shows each and every week, so there were a lot of holes, but I was very lucky to get to see some great action from pretty much every territory in a day and age where the only other means for me to follow wrestling would have been the magazines.
 
- I didn’t attend my first tv taping until I was in college.  It was one of those 4-hour Wrestling Challenge marathons and took place in Binghamton, New York.  Nothing of note ever took place at any of those tapings that I would end up attending…I think three in total, although my friends and I sat in a great seat for getting on camera at a taping in Wilkes-Barre, PA that included great shots of me waving my flag for Hacksaw Duggan, waving a fist at Ludvig Borga, and wearing a clown wig during a Doink the Clown match.
 
- As mentioned, I’m a sentimental guy.  I remember fondly attending my first live Mania…24 in Orlando.  I got to my seat pretty early.  I sat down, looked around at the magnitude of the stage and realized that I had made it to a Mania.  I’m pretty sure I shed a tear.  
 
- I don’t know if its my short-term memory starting to go or a note on the quality of the shows lately, but I can’t recall the main events of the last seven WrestleManias even though I’ve attended them all in person.  However, I can probably tell you about 95% of all of the matches that happened on the first seven.
 
- I’m starting to finally get accustomed to the idea that pro wrestlers die and many die young.  It used to really bother me.  My family was on vacation in Virginia when I heard that Adrian Adonis had died.  We were staying in a hotel that has since been torn down.  Adrian was one of those wrestlers that to me at the time, personified what was wrong with the cartoon era of wrestling.  I always wanted to see him return to his old style and make a comeback.  For years after, any time I was in Virginia - which was frequently - I would stand outside the door to that room and say a prayer for Adrian.  
 
- One thing that for me that has not changed in 35 years, is that I am easily amused by new characters.  My favorite part of watching the WWF as a kid was the end of the show and watching them say who would be wrestling next week to see if there were any new names.  Even today, new wrestlers come up to the main roster and I am quick to jump on their bandwagon.  Currently, it is Adam Rose.  
 
- My favorite non-televised match I ever saw in person was a Scranton house show match between Ron Garvin and Greg Valentine.  My favorite overall match ever was the Chi Town Rumble match between Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat where Steamboat won the title.  My favorite televised match I saw in person was the first Mania matchup between Undertaker and Shawn Michaels.  Just a classic, as far as I’m concerned.  Interesting side story, I was sitting next to a guy and his significant other.  He was like me, not saying a word through most of the show while the girlfriend read a book.  However, again like me, he became quite vocal during this match.  The girlfriend at least watched it.  He was clearly rooting for Michaels…me for the Undertaker.  After the match he put his hand on my shoulder, breathed a deep breath and said, “That was awesome.”  We both sat down and didn’t say another word to each other for the rest of the show.
 
- Ron Garvin was my favorite wrestler for some time.  Growing up in Northeastern PA, most of my friends never heard of him.  I will always remember the day I got off the school bus, my neighbor opened her door and yelled for me to come over.  She gave me a tape and said I should watch it.   It was the match where Garvin had won the NWA title from Flair.  At the age of 14, I celebrated like I hadn’t before or since, running from room to room, jumping up and down on my parents’ bed and generally acting like a fool.  My father returned home from work shortly after, and I put the tape back on to shortly before the finish acting like I hadn’t seen the ending yet.  When Garvin won, I recreated my dramatic reaction for my father.
 
- I used to enjoy bringing wrestling into my schoolwork.  I wrote a paper on the 1988 stock market crash and included as a reference an article from one of the Apter mags that had a quote from Paul Ellering.  My teacher called it the most creative use of a reference she had ever seen.  I don’t recall the specifics, but I had a computer course of some kind in the 10th grade where the teacher was doing some programming that required a phrase that would be repeated throughout the process.  He asked for a simple one to use and I shouted out, “Hogan Cheats”.  He liked it enough to use it for the rest of the week and used it for every class, not just mine.  People I didn’t even know were coming up to me asking if the phrase came from me.  Apparently, I had a reputation for not being a fan of Mr. Hogan.  I had one professor in college I did not like at all.  She gave us a project to write a journal that she would read “but feel free to make it as personal as you want.”  We argued a lot and I knew she thought wrestling was the stupidest thing ever…so each and every journal entry I wrote was about wrestling.
 
- I don’t follow the indies all that closely; however, my biggest live mark-out moment came at the Chikara World Tag Grand Prix where C.P. Munk revealed himself to be Necro Butcher.  I leapt from my seat.  So awesome.
 
- I was in Hershey the night Jim Ross introduced fake Diesel and Razor Ramon.  I think that’s the closest I ever came to saying I was done watching the WWF and to me is its low point. 
 
- I was in Wilkes-Barre the night Vince McMahon blew up.  Every time I drive past the arena, I point to it and say, “That’s where Vince McMahon blew up”.  I do that even if nobody is in the car with me.
 
- I have a tendency to not show emotion while watching wrestling at a live show.  I used to attend Afa’s WXW promotion in PA quite a bit.  At one show Afa walked over to me, shook his fist at me (in a playful manner) and yelled, “Cheer!”
 
- I do, however, tend to react vocally while watching at home.  In addition to the Ron Garvin title win mentioned earlier, I remember cheering loudly when the Godfather won the Intercontinental title, when Cena returned for the Royal Rumble at MSG, and during Occupy Raw.  If anyone reading this ever saw the Bill Murray movie Scrooged, the ending has the Alfre Woodard character doing this great single clap where she’s so emotional but doesn‘t want to really show it.  That was me when Daniel Bryan told Triple H that the match between the two wasn’t the only thing he wanted at WrestleMania.
 
- This past Mania weekend was a notable exception to my stoic live reactions.  I Yessed myself silly.  
 
- I am currently the Chief Compliance Officer of a small financial group.  I am one of those people who doesn't take much time away from the office, so I get great joy from telling people that I will be out for a few days because I'm away for Wrestlemania Weekend.  The reactions are priceless.
 
- I think today’s WWE is fantastic.  The Shield, the Wyatts, Bryan, Bad News Barrett, Cesaro, Emma and Paige are all examples of people I could watch over and over.  I’m also still holding out hope that Damien Sandow’s best days are ahead of him.
 
If anybody actually took the time to read all of this…thanks.
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That was a great read. I think it's awesome that your neighbor used to tape all the territories for you. I didn't start watching wrestling until the early 90's but had I been ten years older, I would have been in my glory being able to watch all the different wrestling.

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Awesome read, fellow old dude. It kinda makes me sad that I've drifted from wrestling. Occasionally when I drift back, it amazes me at how well it seems to be going, in spots, these days. I think Daniel Bryan, the Shield and the Wyatts are great examples of wrestling still working.

 

You would've loved Garvin before WCW neutered him. See if you can find some stuff of him in Southeastern or ICW (Poffo's promotion in Kentucky). I was lucky to grow up as a Southern boy so I got to see lots of "The One-Man Gang" Ronnie Garvin (kind of a Canadian old-school version of Stone Cold) instead of "The Man with the Hands of Stone."

 

I also got to see a decent amount of Smoky Mountain Wrestling live, with many people who knew it was still real to them, dammit. And the true highlight of my week for ages was ECW tv coming on at like 2 a.m. on Friday night before they got on TNN.

 

There are some great characters now, but a lot of "filler" characters, a lot of people I can't get interested in. I love the Shield, but damn, I literally couldn't care less about the reunited Evolution. And there's not a lot of compelling characters in the mid/lower cards. 3MB? No thanks. Santino? Would rather not. WWE needs another Boogie Woogie Man. 

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What an awesome post. Favorite stuff in it was probably the speculation about SD Jones and the Paul Ellering quote. Awesome. I didn't get into wrestling until the tail end of 2000, and going back and watching tapes is never going to be the same as being a kid growing up during those times. It's great to hear what it was really like for you guys. My generation will never see stuff like Andre The Giant in some little hall while he's still a huge star.

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Awesome read, fellow old dude. It kinda makes me sad that I've drifted from wrestling. Occasionally when I drift back, it amazes me at how well it seems to be going, in spots, these days. I think Daniel Bryan, the Shield and the Wyatts are great examples of wrestling still working.

 

You would've loved Garvin before WCW neutered him. See if you can find some stuff of him in Southeastern or ICW (Poffo's promotion in Kentucky). I was lucky to grow up as a Southern boy so I got to see lots of "The One-Man Gang" Ronnie Garvin (kind of a Canadian old-school version of Stone Cold) instead of "The Man with the Hands of Stone."

 

I also got to see a decent amount of Smoky Mountain Wrestling live, with many people who knew it was still real to them, dammit. And the true highlight of my week for ages was ECW tv coming on at like 2 a.m. on Friday night before they got on TNN.

 

There are some great characters now, but a lot of "filler" characters, a lot of people I can't get interested in. I love the Shield, but damn, I literally couldn't care less about the reunited Evolution. And there's not a lot of compelling characters in the mid/lower cards. 3MB? No thanks. Santino? Would rather not. WWE needs another Boogie Woogie Man

 

You know Boogie Man's with ya!

 

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As an old school wrestling fan, one of my favorite angles was Pez Whatley morphing into Shaska Whatley b/c Jimmy Valiant said he was the best *black* athlete he ever saw. Loved that.

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Awesome read! Tempts me to do fifty years as a wrestling fan, but I've got a bunch of real work to do today so it will have to wait.

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I definitely don't know the exact date, and it wasn't the very first time I watched wrestling, but later this year will mark 24 years for me since I went from watching wrestling occasionally if it was on when I was in control of the tv, to watching it every week I don't care if I see anything else but I have to watch Superstars.

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I definitely don't know the exact date, and it wasn't the very first time I watched wrestling, but later this year will mark 24 years for me since I went from watching wrestling occasionally if it was on when I was in control of the tv, to watching it every week I don't care if I see anything else but I have to watch Superstars.

 

We must have started watching around the same time. I think it was '89 but I was too young to remember much about it. Luckily we had a couple video stores in town where I was able to rent the crap out of the NWA/WCW and WWF tapes. My only non-viewer gap is between '95-'97. I had to go back and watch all of that.. actually, there's a lot of shows from that timeframe that I still haven't seen.

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Great post. 

 

Similarly, my dad's best friend had a satellite dish and he would always record WWF Madison Square garden house shows for me.  (I guess technically they weren't house shows if they were on the MSG network but whatever)

 

I can remember, before I grew up enough to overthink things, really getting into Hogan's title defenses, worrying that oh man, he might lose the belt to King Kong Bundy, because I didn't know yet that they would save something like that for a big event.

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This is why this message board is my cyber home. I know exactly what you mean and I'm the same way, I think there was a story on the old board about a poster passing up a date that would've lead to a threesome because had to stay home and watch World Class. We're all weird, obsessive wrestling nerds and we all fit in here. This is why I love this place.

 

I liked the part about using wrestling for school, so far it's gotten me through high school and college, whether it's a statistics, creative writing, advertising photography and graphic design, video production, strategic management, sociology, etc. If given the choice I use wrestling, it is the greatest thing.

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I don't remember how old I was or what match was on TV, but I vaguely remember my older brother turning wrestling on and explaining it to me when I was likely 9 or 10 years old. How they're fighting but not really fighting, how they have to hold them down for a three count, etc. What I always cite as my first real wrestling memory was Paul Orndorff turning on Hogan on SNME. I had to have been a wrestling fan before then or else I wouldn't have been watching the show, but I think that was when I first really became hooked. I was completely a WWF kid from the beginning. I would catch NWA here and there when it was on, because it was wrestling, but it never got ahold of me like WWF did.

 

I would watch Superstars religiously, and would race home from church on Sunday mornings to catch All American Wrestling on USA. I'd catch the first hour of Prime Time Wrestling every Monday night before I had to go to bed. I was there through it all. When Prime Time went from Bobby and Gorilla to that weird round table thing, and the even weirder studio audience version with Vince in those horrible outfits. I was a huge "character" guy. LOVED Honky Tonk Man, Ultimate Warrior, Macho Man, and (embarrasingly enough) Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake. However, I was never a Hulkamaniac. I was there for the first episode of RAW in '93. Out of the over 1000 episodes of RAW, I probably have not watched a few dozen of them live. No matter where I am or what I'm doing, if it's Monday and a TV is present, RAW is getting turned on. Even when we went to Vegas for my brother's birthday, we had the bar we were at turn the show on the TV for us to watch (it was the show where Hurricane beat The Rock). Monday night has ALWAYS been wrestling night for me.

 

I stuck around through the stupid gimmicks of the early/mid-90s. The Attitude era hit just as I was leaving my teens and entering my 20s and I thought it was crazy what was going on compared to what it was just a few years prior. I think '96/'97 WWF was my favorite time being a wrestling fan. The Monday Night Wars were JUST starting to really heat up. The Bret Hart/Austin feud is my favorite of all time. Bret Hart doing his anti-America/pro-Canada bit is some of my favorite things in all of wrestling. Then Shawn Michaels and DX starting to break out, along with the rise of The Rock and Ministry era Undertaker, not to mention the beginnings of the nWo over on WCW.....all great and exciting stuff.

 

I think the last 10 years or so I've really only watched just because it's such a habit for me. I've always watched. ALWAYS. But something just hasn't been the same in the past years. I'll usually watch the first hour or so of RAW, then then fade off to do other things or watch some show with the lady, and then I'll either watch the rest of RAW the next day online or just read the results. I think it was the transition to a 3 hour show. That's just too much to watch every single week. However, like most of you these days, I'm loving watching the rise of Daniel Bryan, Cesaro, The Shield, and The Wyatts. Bray Wyatt is the most interesting character to come along in years. Cesaro is amazing. Every time The Shield is in the ring something great happens. And nobody has been able to take Chicken Shit and turn it to Chicken Salad like Daniel Bryan has. We may be on the verge on another wrestling renaissance, but even if the next big "boom period" isn't right around the corner, the ring work these days is the best it's ever been.

 

I'm still proud to say I'm a wrestling fan, and I don't hide it. I'm not embarrassed to wear my Macho Man shirt in public. I'm not scared to admit to new people I meet that I love "the business". It's always been there for me.

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Great first post.  You lucked out with that neighbor.  My neighbor had a son.  I was about 9 or 10 and he was in college.  He looked exactly like Paul Roma.  My friends and I thought it had to be him.  It wasn't.  My other neighbor had a son who played on the Yankees farm team.  We thought that the fake Paul Roma was way cooler.  

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I'm pretty sure this is the earliest match I have a memory of seeing on t.v.:

 

 

The ending freaked me out.  The announcer said the words I'll never forget: "Von Erich with the iron claw has opened up Race's head!"  (it's 4:00 into this clip)  The kid I was watching with screamed "He cracked his skull open!!!" and that was the first time I had really contemplated the notion of a skull cracking open or a head opening up and was convinced I had just seen it happen.  It wasn't traumatic exactly.  But it was, like, heavy.  It stuck with me. There's a reason that one moment is imprinted in my brain to the point that 30 plus years later I remember it clear as can be.

 

The Iron Claw was like magic to me.  I also remember we didn't keep watching for the promos after.  As soon as the bell rang we ran outside and got on that kids trampoline and started trying to kill each other.  Neither one of us would dare try the iron claw, though.  Nope.  Too fucking dangerous. 

 

The only other really early memories I have are of being in awe of King Kong Brody and this commercial for, I think, WCCW that used to run every day with Ric Flair twirling around in a golden robe while "We are the champions" played.

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- My neighbor was a widow who also happened to love wrestling.  She took me and my brother to our first live wrestling show at the Scranton (PA) Catholic Youth Center on August 18, 1982.  Andre The Giant beat Blackjack Mulligan in the main event. Later that year we went to see Bob Backlund defend the WWF title against Playboy Buddy Rose.  I also remember her taking us to a show involving George Steele…who frightened me greatly.  She was a Jimmy Snuka fan, so I also got to see classics with him against Ray Stevens and Magnificent Muraco.
 
 
...If anybody actually took the time to read all of this…thanks.

 

 

Thank YOU. What an awesome read, and what a great introduction you had to the world of pro wrestling. Andre, Blackjack, Backlund, Buddy Rose... for me it was Gene Kiniski and Don Leo Jonathan:

 
 
It all started for me with an argument at recess. You could see the BCTV studios from my elementary school playground. My friend Dave asked if I wanted to go there to watch them tape All Star Wrestling. I scoffed at the suggestion, because that stuff is all fake, you know. Dave, who was bigger and stronger than me even though he is almost exactly one year younger than me, got pretty upset when I said that. He told me I should go sit in the front row and get spattered with blood, then see if I still think it\’s all fake. That weekend, I watched my first Episode of All Star Wrestling. It would not be my last.
 
The big stars of the show were ”Canada’s Greatest Athlete” Gene Kiniski and ”The Mormon Giant” Don Leo Jonathan. I\’d like to say that the action and the stories sucked me in right away but I think it would be more accurate to say that I kept tuning in to try and figure out what was going on. I definitely loved Kiniski's growling promos. Whatever the reasons, I was hooked and I absolutely hated to miss an episode. A couple of years later, though, my father got memberships at the YMCA for my brother and I, and I had to sacrifice my Saturday wrestling program in favour of swimming, judo, and weightlifting. That was cool by me, I wanted to be big, strong, and fit like the wrestlers on TV.
 
Looking back at those days on Kayfabe Memories, I can see that Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant, Rick Martel, and Jake Roberts were all on the program then, but I guess I missed most of that. By the time I started watching again in the early 1980s the promotion had changed drastically, featuring home grown talent like Rocky Dellesara, Moose Morrowski, Tim Flowers, Ole Olson, Verne Seibert, and Wojo The BC Hulk. I loved watching that show and I used to dream about being on TV with those guys one day.
 
Toronto’s Maple Leaf Wrestling was changing too, in the opposite direction. After Frank Tunney died in 1983, his nephew Jack sold out to the WWF, and the program started to use the local talent as jobbers, if at all. I didn't know any of that at the time, of course. I became more of a casual fan, occasionally catching a show when there was nothing better going on. I started to develop a fondness for the action from Stampede Wrestling, an independent promotion out of Calgary.
 
My friend Kevin was a more serious WWF fan, he had posters of a bunch of different wrestlers in his room. He was pretty much the only person I knew at the time who ever wanted to talk about wrestling.
 
THE HULKSTER COMES TO TOWN
 
After graduating, I got a job in a video store. The job didn't pay very well, but I got to watch a lot of free movies. I took out a couple of Coliseum Video releases, and I finally got to see what the deal was with all of those wrestlers who were on the posters in Kevin’s room, like King Kong Bundy and The Magnificent Muraco.
 
In 1986, my friend Glen asked me if I wanted to go and see Hulk Hogan at BC Place Stadium. I figured "Might as well." I had no idea that the live experience was going to make fall in love with Pro Wrestling all over again. The show was pure entertainment, as much fun as anything I'd seen or done in years. After that, I took out every wrestling video in the store multiple times.
 
I started dating a girl who worked at one of the other stores in the chain. Her family was from England, and she was a big fan of the British Bulldogs. Her older brother got me into watching the NWA, and I went out and bought my first issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated, to try and figure out who the good guys and the bad guys were.
 
The late 80s were a pretty good time to be a wrestling fan in Canada. In addition to All Star and Stampede, we got WWF, NWA, AWA, and Bill Watts' UWF on television. I hated to miss anything, so I got a VCR and started taping it all. I loved how each of those shows had its own distinct personality. WWF had the great production values, NWA had more wrestling action, UWF was hard-hitting and violent, and the AWA had the Road Warriors. Stampede Wrestling had some of the best young workers in the world, but my favourite was the local show. More than a decade after my argument with Dave, I finally attended my second All Star Wrestling show, a TV taping. It wouldn't be my last. 
 
OUTSIDE IN
 
I kept buying occasional Apter magazines, and also a full colour glossy mark rag called Wrestling's Main Event. Frustrated that none of the magazines ever covered the action from Stampede or All Star, I wrote to the editors of Wrestling's Main Event, and ended up being offered the position of Western Canadian Correspondent.
 
The first piece of writing that I ever got paid for was a story on ”Big” John Tenta. The second was an interview with ”Diamond” Timothy Flowers. I wrote about everyone from Velvet McIntyre to Brian Pillman.
 
At the time, Kayfabe was still in full effect, and it was pretty difficult for an outsider to get close to ”the boys." Luckily for me, my father knew All Star announcer Ed Karl, and one phone call later I was backstage. Al Tomko, the promoter, allowed me to stick around, probably hoping that I'd give some publicity to his sons, who were being pushed as the promotion's top faces.
 
Almost everyone who watches wrestling wonders what it would be like to be part of the show. When I was invited to hang out in the heel dressing room at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds that weekend, I realised that I was a lot closer to finding out than I had ever imagined.
 
My foot was in the door.
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There would be absolutely no way for me to overstate how much I enjoyed my time with All Star Wrestling. I was nothing but a big mark, but I had been given the opportunity to play a bad guy manager and occasional colour commentator on the TV wrestling show that I grew up watching.

 

The show was clearly on its last legs, but it was still broadcast across Canada, and we still got fan mail from all over the country. There were a number of talented and dedicated wrestlers who gave it their all every show, regardless of how few or how many people were there to see them. There were young high flyers like I-Ton, Wolverine Eddie Watts, and The Frog, and there were three hundred pound guys like J.R. Bundy. There were foreign bad guys like Tiger Dory Singh, huge power merchants like Ole Olsen, mat wrestlers like Mike Roselli, and grizzled veterans like Verne Seibert, Rock Dellaserra, Dan Denton, Diamond Timothy Flowers, and too many others to name. Raven spent a little time in the territory, working as Scotty the Body.He had some pretty sarcastic and funny things to say about the promotion in his shoot interview. Big John Tenta got his start in All Star, after leaving the world of sumo. Everyone was happy for him when he made the big time.

 

Almost all of the people I met ’backstage’ were funny and interesting, and the fans were fantastic. I remember that at one of the TV tapings I was finally given the chance to interfere in a match. The fans were screaming and cursing at me. After the taping, as I was making my way to my car, a group of them approached me. I was seriously concerned for my own well-being. Much to my surprise, the same people who had been calling for my blood a half hour earlier were now smiling, shaking my hand, and letting me know what a good job they thought I’d done. A few of them even asked me for my autograph! They had books that were filled with signatures from all of the great stars who'd passed through the territories over the years. I was so honoured at being included in their company that I made the mistake of signing my own name. One of the fans took me aside and patiently explained that most of the wrestlers use their wrestling name when signing autographs. It's probably fair to say that I was the biggest mark in the building that night.

 

I’ll tell you how much of a mark I was: Gorgeous Michelle Star used to tease me about working for Dave Meltzer, and I had NO IDEA what he was talking about. Those were the days when Kayfabe still reigned, and nobody was eager to clue me in. Just from being around the wrestlers, though, I gradually smartened up a little.

 

I also spent a fair chunk of time training to get in the ring. I was physically strong enough and my body was able to take the punishment, but it quickly became apparent that I was never going to be a good wrestler. I simply wasn\’t agile or athletic enough to handle more than the most basic and simple of manoeuvres. I had trouble chaining moves together smoothly, never mind working the kind of match that could keep an audience entertained.

 

I wasn’t even a good heel. Once, at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds, a group of young punk rockers came out by the heel dressing room and asked to see me. The veteran bad guys advised me to go out there and treat the kids like crap and intimidate them a little, so that they\’d get mad at me and we’d be able to draw more heat from the crowd later on. Instead, I ended up riding around on the kids’ skateboards and trading corny jokes with them.

 

Frankly, I was a terrible wrestler. About all I was good for was doing a few run-ins and taking the occasional bump.

 

I think that there are a couple of ways I could have reacted to this unpleasant revelation. I could have turned my back on wrestling and become bitter about the whole thing. I could have kept pushing myself and hoped that either nobody noticed my obvious shortcomings, or that they would just be too polite to kick me out of the ring. I could have beaten myself up mentally and emotionally for not being good enough to live the dream. I guess I could have blamed the infinitely more talented guys who were training with me, or claimed that politics were holding me back. What actually happened, though, was that I became a bigger wrestling fan than I'd ever been before.

 

Putting together a compelling match is incredibly difficult. A good wrestler needs to be strong, tough, quick, and agile both physically and mentally. I have a reasonably high IQ and I am able to think on my feet in most situations. Sitting at the announce table, calling the moves and coming up with off the cuff humorous remarks came to me as naturally as breathing. In the ring, though, with the lights shining, the crowd screaming, my adrenaline flowing, and some huge guy laying the chops in, I fell short. There are just so many things to think about, so many decisions that have to be made in a fraction of an instant, and so many distractions. Having trained as a wrestler, however unsuccessfully, has given me some understanding of the precise timing, extemporaneous creativity, trust, and teamwork that go into making even a halfway decent match. That, in turn, has given me enormous respect for the very few people who are able to do all of those things well.

 

In addition to making me a better fan, my time with All Star provided me with a lifetime's worth of unique and special memories. Including one of the coolest things that ever happened to me. In 1989, which was the final year that All Star Wrestling's TV program would be produced, I went to a WWF show at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver. I was going to get some popcorn and drinks when the people around me started booing. I couldn't figure out why, since the show hadn't begun and there was nobody in the ring. On the way back to my seat, the same people started up again, and then some of the people from the other sections started joining in. I looked around, but I couldn't see what they could possibly have been booing about, then I realised: They were booing me.

 

I still get a little chill thinking about it now. Up until then, it never occurred to me that so many people actually watched our show.

 

I can remember reading a quote from Jesse Ventura about Verne Gagne's AWA being at about the third to last swirl before it finally went down the toilet completely, and thinking that his quote could have also been applied to our show. For me, All Star Wrestling was a glorified hobby that let me have a blast while being seen on national TV. I loved every minute of it, but I often used to wonder how the serious professionals, the guys who took it as more than a hobby, must have felt about it all.

 

I got my answer a few years ago, on the Wrestlecrap forums, where Big John Tenta used to pretty regularly. Here is what he had to say:

 

"Gordi, All-Star was on its last legs but you must understand, All-Star is what made me want to become a wrestler. When I got to wrestle there, my father, and grandfather got to watch me participate in their favourite ”sport”. My father never watched me play basketball, rugby, or football, and only watched a few amateur matches, but put me in Cloverdale on a Saturday night, he was front row! I'd be there today if they still had TV."

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All Star folded before the 80s were through, but I still worked occasional spot shows for local legends like Rocky Dellasera. The crowds were small for those shows, however, and they seemed to get smaller every month. Wrestling's Main Event, the magazine that sent me the first cheque I ever received for writing something, also folded. The wrestling landscape had drastically changed, and there were essentially only two successful promotions left in North America.

 

The Brain Busters, Earthquake, Bad News Brown, and the Hart Foundation were tearing things up in the WWF, and Sting, The Steiners, The Great Muta, Terry Funk, The Road Warriors, Brian Pillman, and of course Ric Flair were putting on great matches for the NWA. It was still a good time to be a fan. My friends and I were all getting a little sick of Hulk Hogan, because it was painfully apparent that all of his matches followed the exact same pattern. Still, when we heard that he was going to star in a movie, we made plans to be there on opening night.

 

Seeing No Holds Barred  in the theater was an experience that I will never forget. It changed the way I felt about Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon, and the WWF. The movie was terrible. It wasn't even enjoyable in a campy, Wrestlecrap kind of way. No Holds Barred was irredeemable garbage. I felt ripped off, and so did the people I saw it with. To make things worse, Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon lied through their teeth about it on TV. Heenan claimed that people were lining up around the block to see the movie. Monsoon actually hinted that Hogan's performance had been Oscar-worthy. This was still before the invention of irony, so our only available reaction was to get angry. We had been looking forward to hearing Heenan rip into Hogan's piece of crap movie, and to hear him pathetically shilling it was almost more than I could take.

 

A tape of The Great American Bash ’89 was enough to rekindle my interest in wrestling, but I was pretty much an NWA fan from that point on. I didn't watch the WWF again until the fall of 1990. They recaptured my interest by putting Earthquake in a program with Hogan, and they held my attention by coming up with an interesting gimmick for that year's Survivor Series. The gimmick took the form of a giant egg that they dragged out on TV and at arena shows for months. At Survivor Series, we were finally going to get to see what was inside the egg. Our hottest speculation was that it might be Lex Luger.

 

I had to work the day of the show, but my then-girlfriend's younger brother went to see it on closed circuit. I dropped by their house the next day, and I was more excited about hearing what was inside the egg than I was about visiting my girl. When he told me, it took a while for me to accept that he wasn't pulling my leg. What was in the egg, what we had been waiting months to see, was some guy (Hector 'Lazer Tron' Guerrero, as it turns out) in a giant rubber turkey suit. He ran around the ring flapping his arms, and danced with Mean Gene as the fans booed like crazy and the announcers tried to claim that the kids in the crowd were loving it.

 

The Gobbledy Gooker pretty much turned me off the WWF for years. I was tired of being lied to, and tired of having my intelligence insulted. (Again, ironic appreciation just wasn't something I was into back then) I was sick of Hulk Hogan, I missed the British Bulldogs, and I just didn't care any more.

 

I was still a fan of the NWA, but McMahon\’s empire had pretty much squeezed them out of Canada, and it wasn't always easy to find their shows. I remember how excited I was in early 1991 to get hold of a copy of StarrCade 1990. The show featured the culmination of the Black Scorpion story line! I couldn't wait to see how that would turn out.

 

Those of you who already know may not be surprised to hear that Starrcade 1990 pretty much destroyed the lingering remnants of my wrestling fandom. The story of what happened is covered pretty well on pages 197-198 of Flair\’s autobiography. What it came down to, essentially, is that even the NWA were now running angles that flat out insulted their fans’ intelligence.

 

Later that year, I moved away to go back to University. The local TV station in my new home didn\’t carry wrestling, but I didn’t mind.

 

(Dramatic pause...) I was no longer a fan.

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I don't know if this will make sense, but when I stopped watching wrestling in the early 1990s it wasn't because I had outgrown wrestling, it wasn't because wrestling wasn't cool any more, and it wasn't because I had developed different interests. It was because the specific version of Professional Wrestling that was then available in North America no longer appealed to me. The main storyline in the WWF at the time had Sgt. Slaughter taking the wrong side in the Gulf War. The National Wrestling Alliance was basically dead, and to be honest, WCW didn't exactly rise phoenix-like from the ashes to save wrestling from itself. Check out the card for the 1991 Great American Bash:

 

Non-Televised Match: Junkyard Dog pinned Black Bart

Flag Match: PN News and Bobby Eaton defeated Steve Austin and Terrance Taylor in a scaffold match. (Sooooo bad! How can you waste those guys this way)?

The Yellow Dog defeated Johnny B Badd by Disqualification 

Ron Simmons pinned Oz. (Yikes, this was bad)!

Big Josh pinned Blackblood.

Elimination Match: Dustin Rhodes, Tracey Smothers, and Steve Armstrong defeated The Freebirds (Badstreet, Jimmy Garvin, and Michael Hayes) in an ”elimination” match. Rhodes was the only survivor. (Possibly the best match on the show, and IMO it was not good).

The Diamond Stud pinned Tom Zenk. 

El Gigante pinned One Man Gang.

Ricky Morton pinned Robert Gibson. (So disappointing, this should have been a great an memorable match)

Russian Chain Match: Nikita Koloff defeated Sting in a ”Russian chain” match. (Terrible pacing, terrible finish)

World Heavyweight Title Match (Steel Cage Match): Lex Luger pinned Barry Windham in a ”steel cage” match to win the vacant title. (This match was the result of Jim Herd firing Ric Flair for refusing to drop the strap to Luger. One of the most disappointing matches ever, IMO).

Steel Cage Match: Rick Steiner and Missy Hyatt defeated Arn Anderson and Paul E Dangerously in a steel cage match when Steiner pinned Dangerously. (A decent candidate for The Worst PPV Of All Time ends with a two-minute abortion of a Main Event. The crowd pretty much only popped for Sting's entrance, and they chanted for Flair like a Chicago crowd chanting for CM Punk. It's possible that many of the wrestlers were deliberately wrestling badly to protest Flair's firing).

 

I missed the 1991 Great American Bash, but I had friends that watched it and called me to tell me how bad it was. I missed WrestleMania 7, but I had friends at University who made fun of me for being a wrestling fan because the Hogan vs. Slaughter storyline was so blatantly exploitative. I wasn't watching any more, but I didn't feel like I had turned my back on wrestling, I felt that (once again... dramatic pause) wrestling had turned its back on me.

 

The house my friends and I were renting had a TV, but it didn't have cable. The local stations that we could pick up with the antenna didn't carry any wrestling programs. I suppose my friends and I could have scraped enough money together to get cable but this was the era that brought us The Chamber of Horrors match, and it just didn't seem worth it.

 

We got a Super Nintendo. At the start of the 1992 school year, my housemate's brother gave us a box of tapes that contained every episode of the first three years of The Simpsons. The bands that we used to see at small punk rock clubs started breaking on a national scale, and music became interesting again.

 

After a while, I didn't even miss wrestling any more.

 

In a way, that was too bad, because it wasn't until 2003 that I got to see Ric Flair\’s run with the WWF title, Hogan putting the Ultimate Warrior over cleanly, or Cactus Jack being power bombed on the concrete. My favourite wrestler, Bret Hart, made his big singles run without me watching. I missed Pillman vs. Liger, Hitman vs. Perfect, and the Monday Night Wars. On the other hand I never had to suffer through Spin the Wheel Make the Deal, The Shockmaster, Arachnaman, King Mabel, or WrestleMania 9.

 

From time to time a friend from the old days would come up to visit, and sometimes they\’d bring a wrestling tape with them. I was re-introduced to puroresu in this way, and although I was resistant at first I eventually became kind of a fan of Misawa, Kawada, Hansen, Tsuruta, Muta, Tiger Mask and Liger. I might have gone on to become a full-fledged puro nerd in the early 90s, but in 1995 I moved to Europe, and it would be two years before I saw my next match.

 

In one of those coincidences that would seem too good to be true if it hadn't really happened, I went to visit some of my then-wife’s relatives in March of ’97, couldn't get to sleep, and turned on their television. They just happened to have satellite, and one of the German sports channels just happened to be showing WrestleMania 13. Vader and Mankind were double-teaming Owen Hart outside of the ring! After getting beat on for a few minutes, Owen nailed Mankind with a belly to belly on the concrete floor. He made the hot tag to Davey-Boy! I was blown away to see the two former stampede stars as WWF champions. Even though the match ended in a double count out, I was glued to the screen waiting to see what would happen next.

 

What happened next, of course, was that I marked out like a little bitch as Bret Hart and Steve Austin brawled into the crowd, Bret broke out the ringpost figure four, Austin dripped blood on the canvas, Bret got superplexed, and Austin eventually blacked out from the pain.

 

By the end of the match, I was a wrestling fan again.

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Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin made me a wrestling fan again after years of apathy. The match made a real impact on me for a number of reasons. For one thing, I grew up in Western Canada watching Stampede Wrestling so the wrestlers who got their start there were pretty much guaranteed to be among my favourites. The Hart Foundation, for example, were my favourite tag team when I stopped watching in the early 90s. I still though of Bret Hart as a tag specialist, so it was a real surprise to see him fighting in a key singles match at the biggest show of the year. Another thing that caught my attention was that Stunning Steve Austin had morphed into Stone Cold Steve Austin, complete with a shaved head and a goatee. I grew my first goatee in 1991, and started shaving my head in ’93. Back then, my wrestling friends teased me for going with the Nikita Koloff look. I was actually a little torn over whether to cheer for the Canadian or for the badass brawler who shared my grooming habits. That slight conflict played pretty well into the story being told in the ring.

 

When they took the fight into the stands, I marked out because it was clear that the WWF were no longer putting all of their eggs into the “Cheesy Saturday Morning Cartoon” basket. I could remember seeing Abdullah the Butcher and the Sheik brawl through the crowd on videotape and thinking at the time that it was something I’d never see in the WWF. When Bret slapped on the Ring Post Figure Four, I just about lost it. After seeing that, I was 100 per cent behind Bret, up until Austin got busted open. There was something about the way that Stone Cold refused to give up, even when the Hitman trapped him with his Sharpshooter. Watching Austin pass out face first into a pool of his own blood, I am sure, made many of us bigger fans than we’d ever been before.

 

I was ecstatic that Bret won, bit I also wanted to see Austin get another chance. The trouble was, there was really no way for me to keep up with what was happening in the world of Professional Wrestling while I was living in the Czech Republic.

 

There was also the bizarre experience of watching the rest of WrestleMania 13, being bitterly disappointed by the boring Undertaker vs. Sid Main Event, and realising that I honestly didn't know a single person in country where I was living who might have wanted to discuss that with me.

 

In 1998, when an opportunity arose for me to go back to Canada and work for a year, I took it. I knew that I would miss Europe, but I wanted to see my friends and family again, and I also wanted to watch football, eat chicken wings, drink huge cups of good coffee, and catch up with everything that had happened in the world of wrestling.

 

One of the fist things I did was to pick up a copy of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. It blew my mind to see that both the WWF and WCW had bald, goateed World Heavyweight Champions. My job involved running recreational programs for “special needs” kids. It made me so happy when, on my first day at work, an argument broke out among the kids over whether I looked more like Stone Cold or Goldberg. It seemed that Pro Wrestling was more popular than it had ever been before.

 

I caught my first episode of RAW that evening. The last time I’d seen wrestling on free TV the shows had consisted of nothing but squash matches, and the rules of Kayfabe were strictly enforced. For example, my “insider” friends and I knew that goofy commentator Vince McMahon was in fact the owner of the WWF, but we only knew that because of the connections I’d made while I was working for All Star Wrestling. If you can remember those days, then you can probably imagine my shock when I turned on the TV expecting more of the same, only to catch the Monday Night Wars, and the Austin vs. McMahon feud, in all their glory.

 

Obviously, I picked a pretty good year, wrestling wise, to come home for an extended visit. I saw DeGeneration X invade Nitro. I saw Ric Flair return to WCW. Damn near everywhere I went, I met fellow wrestling fans. If anything interesting happened on one of the shows, there was always someone who wanted to talk about it the next day.

 

I went back to the Czech Republic in January, which was also pretty good timing wrestling wise. I avoided having to see the Finger Poke of Doom, for example. I didn't know what I was missing, though, and it drove me crazy to be cut off from wrestling again. Some of my friends from the Pilsen Tornadoes American Football team were wrestling fans and I got to watch an occasional show with them, but we never got into arguments or even discussions about wrestling. This was partly because of language difficulties and partly because they tended to believe that the matches might be genuine athletic contests.

 

I bought a second hand computer with money that I’d saved while working in Canada. A small mountain of paperwork later, I had a dial-up internet connection. I was pretty happy to find that there were so many sites devoted to Pro Wrestling, at least until I started reading them. The first few sites I tried seemed to be written by people who fit pretty well into the unfortunate stereotype of 14-year-old idiots with limited understanding of the rules of English grammar who were using their parents’ computers to complain about things that they don’t understand. I also found a few wrestling sites and message boards that seemed to be populated entirely by people who took themselves and their opinions far too seriously. The writers on those sites and the posters on those boards seemed to believe that wrestling should be written about in absolute terms. They seemed to be utterly committed to a very narrow and specific definition of what comprised good wrestling, and there didn't seem to be much willingness to discuss any ideas or opinions that were even marginally different from their own.

 

I found the Wrestling Observer website, but it was just too expensive to get a subscription delivered to where I was living.

 

It took me a while, but I eventually found the PWTorch and then the 411 Wrestling websites. It was worth the effort, though. At that time both sites had columns and reviews that were written with humour, personality, and something like genuine insight. I not only got to keep up with the latest wrestling news, but I was able to compare my thoughts on what was happening with those of several reasonably talented writers who, despite their frequently sarcastic and cynical approach, clearly enjoyed watching, thinking about, and writing about wrestling.

 

Of course, that eventually led me here.

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Sorry about that. It was more or less a copy-and-paste from a series of articles I did for insidepulse in 2004 and 2005. Uncle Coaster's awesome post reminded me of that, and I wanted to read it again. I'd forgotten that I'd written so much about it.

 

Anyway, I returned to Canada in 2001, just in time to catch the gradual rise of Benoit and Eddie to the top of the card. That totally drew me back in again, and watching the WrestleMania 20 "live" broadcast with friends in the cinema and subsequently making the drive to Alberta with my All Star Wrestling senpai Vicious Verne to watch Backlash 2004 and the subsequent RAW were big highlights of those years. 

 

I was also just in time to catch the last years of the wonderful tape-trading community that flourished back when it took hours to download a ten-second .gif file. Through guys like Tabe, Rob Hunter, Dan Ginnety, my good friend Verne, and quite a few others I amassed a huge library of tapes and later DVDs of indy and classic and Lucha and - particularly - Japanese Pro Wrestling. 

 

And it was a great time to finally get a decent internet connection. There was a ton of great discussion about pro wrestling online at that time, perhaps culminating in the epic Greatest Wrestler of All Time argument, discussion, and poll on the old Smarkschoice boards. 

 

Another highlight from that time was watching WrestleMania 21 at a sports bar in Surrey, British Columbia with a huge group of indy pro wrestlers, including at least one you have probably heard of:

 

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By the end of 2005, I had started to drift away from watching WWE (yet again) in favour of MMA and puroresu. I still got together with some old wrestling friends to watch the occasional PPV, often at Verne's place... but I found watching great matches on DVD and going to local indy shows was just way more fun for me than sitting through stuff like the xenophobic Hassan storyline, or the rise of Heidenreich. 

 

I also visited Japan for the first time in '05, and had the thrill of seeing legends like Fujinami, Liger, Choshu, Muto, Kensuke, Tenryu, Koshinaka, Kobashi, and - a particular thrill for me - Misawa, live and in person. It was awesome. Japanese crowds were amazing. The atmosphere, the action, and the experience were everything I'd hoped for. 

 

I ended up moving to Japan and becoming a regular at Osaka Pro shows and seeing many more legends and favourites (from Dump Matsumoto to Fujiwara to Kawada) live and in person. I even became drinking buddies with some of the Osaka Pro guys, and also friends with Jumbo Tsuruta's son Yuji.  The experience of being a gaijin fan of Japanese wrestling has been way better than I ever could have imagined.

 

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386948_10151595268465358_2012207640_n.jp

 

I rarely watch wrestling on TV or DVD or on my computer these days. I get most of my fill from live shows.The rise of Bryan Danielson, though... like the rise of Bret and the rise of Benoit... that has managed to drag me back in. Watching WrestleMania and the subsequent RAW were mind-blowing. It's great to see a genuinely good person reach the very top of the mountain. 

 

Thanks so much for sharing your story, Uncle Coaster! I hope you don't mind me sharing mine on your thread. Thinking about how wrestling has given so many of us an escape, and outlet, and a hobby over so many years is making me kind of misty, to be honest.   

 

.

 

I'm still proud to say I'm a wrestling fan, and I don't hide it. I'm not embarrassed to wear my Macho Man shirt in public. I'm not scared to admit to new people I meet that I love "the business". It's always been there for me.

 
Damn straight, brother!
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I was born in 1987, in Mexico. My first recollection of wrestling was watching EMLL on Saturday nights at my grandparents house who lived next door; the whole early 90s crew of Cien Caras, Konnan, Perro Aguayo, Los Infernales, Rayo, Los Intocables, Atlantis, Emilo Charles, Norman Smiley. I have two older brothers, the oldest was super into Pierroth and the next one really liked Mascara Sagrada; I got really into Vampiro based on his rockstar looks and the beatings he would take. We used to buy lots of really cool lucha magazines around that time.

 

Then along came the Blue Panther-Love Machine feud and it was the hottest thing we've ever seen; Around this time we went to our first show, in the few months after the mask vs. mask match. The show featured an unmasked Art Barr along with Pirata Morgan, Masakre, Norman Smiley and a few fading stars of the time like El Faraon and Supremo mixed with some locals. It was a blast and I bought my first mask, a pink and golden Dos Caras one that I regret not hanging on to to this day, would've made an awesome add to the collection I have today.

 

The subsequent years with the rise of AAA were amazing, Top to bottom everyone was a really hard worker, from the young stars to the main eventers to the crafty opening match veterans. I got really into Psicosis around this time, he was just a pinball bumping from bell to bell. Los Gringos Locos were a heat machine, I couldn't believe how such a nice guy like Eddy (thats how it was spelled at the time) became such a dick influenced by that damn Love Machine, who we used to cheer for.

 

We used to get UWA on Saturday at noon, but I couldn't wrap my head around the fact it looked "dirty" and "cheap" meaning the lower production values; for some reason I despised Gran Hamada because he seemed so vanilla. On the other hand, the Villanos, Dr Wagner Jr. and Dos Caras made it worth, with the monster heels like The Headhunters, Bam Bam Bigelow and Kokina being just perfect.

 

 

On the american side of things we used to get All-American Wrestling and Superstars on Sunday mornings. I was really into the character of The Undertaker, my brothers liked The Ultimate Warrior, The Rockers, High Energy and Bret Hart. When Shawn Michaels turned heel he became my new favorite, I went trough saving a few allowances from mowning the lawn to buy his Hasbro figure. As the 90's progressed I sort of drifted away from lucha to just american wrestling; a kid in the neighborhood had one of those illegal cable hook ups, so we spent the mid 90s watching PPV at his house. I was aware of WCW trough the Apter mags, but just started watching PPVs after the nWo thing kicked, around early 97. I remember my brother cried after the Montreal Screwjob, Bret was his favorite and he swore to become a WCW only fan after he saw him write the letters in the air, of course he didn't kept that promise.

 

The rise of Steve Austin and the Monday Night Wars were great, watching every PPV at the neighbours house, marking out for Wrestlemania XIV and then, by November 1998 we stopped getting the USA Network, so that meant no more Raw. The late 90's were a rough time for lucha with cable only time slots and all of them late at night. This is when I started using the internet for wrestling news and stuff, watching a little ECW when avalible.

 

In the early 2000 we got back Raw and Jakked trough a Mexican cable network, concidentially, the Radicalz jumping was the first episode we got. By the time Invasion and the roster split began I was the only one of my brothers and of the kids from the block who kept watching. The internet made me expand my tastes with Puro and Indy around that time. I remember reading a news item on the first ROH show, saying the backers hope it would fill the void ECW left and stuff of that nature. For the next 6-7 years I invested most of my wrestling time in Puro and Indy, digging out the whole 90s in puro and becoming amazed. It's really amazing how ring quiality in WWE has been so constant, I can say, without a doubt, that it is the style I can always get in without getting bored.

 

Times became better for lucha around 2002 with better timeslots and newer stars. The rise of Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero as top players was super fun to watch, to this day they are my favorite tag team. The CMLL roster at the time was so so deep, Hijo Del Santo, L.A. Park, Shocker, Dr. Wagner, Negro Casas, Hijo del Perro Aguayo,  Black Warrior and the rise of Mistico, Averno and a whole new crew; from that time on I've been religiously following.

 

The Wrestlemania XX ending was great, because I emotionally invested in those guys for the past decade or so; I dind't it was something that could be repeated, and along came Daniel Bryan and Wrestlemania XXX, awesome moment.

 

The Benoit situation was a low point, and it made me drift away from american wrestling for about a year, surely and slowly I got into it again but I just recently, in the last year of so, made myself go trough matches involving him again. Sometimes is like nothing happened but sometimes an expression or something the announcers say about his intensity/agression makes me cringe.

 

In 2011 I watched a WWE live show for the first time, and even if it starts some controersy, I must say that C.M. Punk is the best wrestler I've seen live since Art Barr; everything he did, even at a house show, seemed to be perfectly timed and with the proupopse of engaging the crowd into the match.

 

 

I watched New Japan go trough the hardest times of the company, and seeing it healthy and being critycally aclaimed makes me feel realy satisified as a fan. I've never felt like I've seen the end of an era as much as I did the night Kenta Kobashi retired, I shed a tear of joy at the end of the match beacuse it made me realize that after being a fan for so long I am really grateful for all the people that have entertained me over the years. As someone mentioned above, besides the four neccesities, the thing that has been a constant in my life is wrestling, and that makes me say that for me wrestling is the most important of the unimportant things.

 

Recently, speaking with my older brother, who now lives across the country we made a mental list of all the people we've seen live: Art Barr, Atlantis, Los Intocables, Los Brazos, Villano III (who signed a suede vintge 80's style mask for me, my personal favorite of the whole collection), Benoit, Jericho, Eddie, Dos Caras, Alberto del Rio, Blue Panther, C.M. Punk, Canek, Dolph Ziggler, Rey Jr., Psicosis, Jack Evans, Hijo Del Santo, Ultimo Dragon, Super Crazy, Tajiri, Dr. Wagner Jr., Mistico, Ultimo Guerrero, Averno, Satanico, El Dandy, Daniel Bryan, Abismo Negro, RVD, amongst others I'd say it has been a pretty good run.

 

Just in closing, I want to say this is and exciting time to be a wrestling fan, after a little over 20 years following it, WWE and Lucha are still my favorites, with Puro and Indy stuff taking a little bit of a backseat to them, but still check them out from time to time. As long as acts like The Shield, Titan, Kazuchika Okada, The Wyatts, etc, keep surfacing this amazingly fun form of entertainment is gonna have a whole lot of healthy years ahead. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read.

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