35 Years As A Wrestling Fan

[Uncle Coaster]

Bringing this thread back to thank everyone for their comments and for sharing their stories.  I enjoyed reading them all.  Also, wanted to point out...

 

 

- 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.

 

- 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 just found out that my childhood neighbor passed away this evening.  RIP, Mrs. Perry.

[ben.]

Sorry to hear about your neighbor Uncle Coaster.

 

This was a great read and all of these have been pretty amazing, it reminds us just why we troll these boards and seek out these matches, etc, etc. I've been watching wrestling since before I could walk. My grandfather had an obsession that he passed onto me. I remember dates by what PPV it was close to or recall why I got into a skill or hobby based on what I saw on a pro wrestling show. For all of the shit that everyone on this board gives each other, it is always awesome to see us reminiscing on why wrestling is so great and why we love it.