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Dolfan Watches Every Wrestlemania On Lockdown


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Thank you Dolfan. This thread has been a great read and a one of the consistent ways I’ve been able to take my mind of the virus over the past year. Also I’m sorry you’ve been impacted so much by it. 
The past year has been stressful for us all. As someone who works in public health and holds an advanced degree in it as well, this year has been frustrating as well, watching as basic public health measures are undermined, ignored or mocked. Having outlets like his has been great for my mind. 
I and my immediate family as well as some extended, contracted the virus in December, we were exceeding careful but through contact with medical services were exposed, I’m lucky that none of us got the worst of it and no one had to be hospitalized. 
I want to just say to everyone please don’t start relaxing things now because the vaccine rollout has improved. The spread can still go up and the more it spreads the more chance it will have to mutate. The isolation sucks even for an introverted homebody like me but keeping it up for longer is really important.

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thank you for this, @Dolfan in NYC. My sympathies for what this pandemic has brought to your family and friends. I know your writings have brought me joy, memories, and reflection.

I hope this thread lives on, with March Madness and the Sleaze Thread, amongst others, as a legacy of this board. And come what may, i appreciate what you've done here.

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Thank you so much for doing this.  It's been very fun reading your take on all the WMs and your writing style painted one helluva picture in describing everything that happened.  As for the virus I'm fortunate that I got the vaccine and thankfully my family all got their first dose recently.  Second one's in a couple weeks for them but once my wife's able to get it then I'll be a lot more at ease.  Of course we'll all still take precautions and everything but I fear that many will not do the same thing once they get it.  Or there will be those that won't get it at all which is something I'd rather not get into here.

But I know it was a quick match but what happened during Drew/Brock was largely irrelevant.  All that mattered was the post-match celebration that should have been in front of a packed stadium.  He's said in interviews that while it sucked nobody was there he had to find some way to connect with them.  So between waving at the corner camera and the celebration on the second rope he wanted to do everything he could to make the best of it.  He also said that he waited until after the show aired to take the belt out of storage and let it sink in that he's champ which was nice.  So while I always liked Drew I liked him that much more for how he carried himself through this crazy time.  Poor guy really deserves to be in front of crowds and I hope he's able to get a big win in front one once possible.

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I've been, all told, "lucky" in the pandemic. A few family members have gotten symptomatic Covid, and a few friends tested positive without symptoms, but nobody I know was hospitalized or died. I'm an "essential" worker so I didn't lose my job, and though my hours got real short during the brief period the country really took everything seriously, the expanded unemployment benefits were a lifesaver.

I miss hanging out with my friends. It was WrestleMania last year that I first really felt that, not going to Travis's house to drink and watch Mania the way we do nearly every year for over a decade. I miss simple things like being able to go to a store in the middle of the night when nobody is there. 

But I've been lucky, and now I'm just desperately hoping that can hold up for however much longer this nightmare continues.

Edited by Brian Fowler
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36 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

66 pages. Does this make it the longest thread in board history? 

Not quite. Just for fun, I had a look at what's archived in the comic book movie+TV folder. If we're just going by pages, there are a few threads over seventy pages in just that section alone. There's an absurdly long one that went 173 pages. 

 

Edited by John from Cincinnati
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I doubt I've ever even visited the game folder. Of course, I stopped playing games around the time of Doom II and the first Playstation. I was always terrible at games, with ones I've beaten I think I can count on one hand (Castlevania, Kirby on Gameboy, cheated the shit out of those two Dooms and Wolfenstein 3D, Sonic 1 and 2, almost beat Operation C on Gameboy but died on the last level. I never even beat Mario). 

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Dolfan, I wanted to add my thanks for this.  Best I can remember, I've never seen any full match from any Wrestlemania, and I've never seen a bunch of the WWF/E folks from the last 20 years wrestle at all (I know I've never seen a Cena match, and I don't think I've ever seen a full Rock match, for example).  Despite that I read and enjoyed the whole thing.  A lot of it got read in my son's room at night while trying to get him to go to sleep, and helped me to stay awake till he was out.  Good stuff.

Edited by Robert C
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I promised Dolfan that I would put these on the main site as to not lose them.

I say this so folks can hold me accountable as I continue to hate wrestling and do nothing

@Curt McGirtyou sweet, sweet summer child

There are 2 posts in this very folder within a half dozen threads of this one that are above 100 pages (Not from the Now and Old School Questions)

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The sleaze thread went 100 pages, before it got locked. But 70 pages of that was people saying they created an account just to say that they liked the thread.

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On 3/3/2021 at 12:01 PM, Robert C said:

Dolfan, I wanted to add my thanks for this.  Best I can remember, I've never seen any full match from any Wrestlemania, and I've never seen a bunch of the WWF/E folks from the last 20 years wrestle at all (I know I've never seen a Cena match, and I don't think I've ever seen a full Rock match, for example). 

you've never seen any full match from any WrestleMania?

i literally can't even comprehend how that is possible. what do you watch? how did you dive into wrestling when your fandom turned full blown? how have you avoided Hogan/Andre?

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8 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

I've never seen Hogan/Andre. Never had the need considering the playing of its major beats on TV for years. 

Oddly enough first time seeing it we had to do a sports writing piece on it in middle school because the teacher was a wrestling fan.  So it was neat to do that even though my journalistic skills were subpar at best.  If not for that I likely have gone quite a while before ever wanting to see it in full.

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I haven't seen Hogan vs Andre. I've seen the slam... I've seen it edited so Hogan doesn't exist and Andre is getting slammed by thin air.

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2 hours ago, twiztor said:

you've never seen any full match from any WrestleMania?

i literally can't even comprehend how that is possible. what do you watch? how did you dive into wrestling when your fandom turned full blown? how have you avoided Hogan/Andre?

(Warning before reading - my memory is pretty hazy on a lot of this, so it's quite possible I've got some of it wrong.  Mostly it was a very long time ago.  I'm old and didn't spend as much of the time period I'm describing sober as I probably should've)

As far as seeing a full Wrestlemania match - not that I know of.  It's possible, but I certainly don't remember it.  The only time I watched WWF, as it was at the time, on a regular basis was roughly 1990-1992.  Before that I doubt I'd seen a dozen hours of their programming total, mostly due to lack of opportunity (parents didn't have cable).  I'm not sure I've seen a dozen hours since, mainly due to lack of interest.  I don't have anything against em, I just don't feel like watching for whatever reason.  The last WWE match I saw was Bryan/Orton on Raw maybe seven years ago.  I remember liking it, but I haven't watched since.  Those two, and Goldberg if he's still around, might be the only folks on their current roster I've seen wrestle a full match.  (Googled it.  Mysterio's still around?  I did not know that.  Yeah, I've seen a bunch of his matches.)  I really dunno why I haven't watched them outside of that time in the early 90s, though part of it is that I've watched next to zero television over the last ten years or so.

Also, I'm REALLY cheap.  Irrationally so.  PPVs cost money to watch, so even when I was watching a lot of wrestling I never saw the PPVs.  The only time I can remember watching any PPV was one time when a couple buddies and I rented some old ones from a knockoff Sam's Club type place.  Don't remember what they were, but I'm pretty dang sure none of em was a Wrestlemania.  The only thing I do remember was Kevin Sullivan being on one of the shows.  And maybe the Road Warriors.  Of course I've seen the big Andre gets slammed thing from WM3 a few places over the years, but never the whole match.

What I have watched is all over the place.  First I remember watching was roughly around 1980 - whatever showed up on one of the three stations we got in central Texas at about midnight Saturday night.  Could've been more than one promotion over the next few years.  I remember a few of the folks on the shows.  Scott Casey had the belt for a good while, I think.  I remember Matt Borne, Manny Fernandez, the Mongolian Stomper, the Grapplers, and a skinny Eric Embry.  I remember seeing at least one Flair interview, but never saw him wrestle back then, I think.  A quick Google search says that at least some of that was Southwest.  I know I saw a decent amount of World Class at some point too.

I took a few years mostly off, then watched a bunch of stuff in the early 90s, not just WWF.  Watched a fair amount of WCWSN.  Watched whatever was on ESPN back then - GWF I guess?  I know there was something else I watched on a lower tier sports channel, but don't remember what it was.

Took a few more years off, then watched a lot from maybe 1995-2000.  Mostly WCW at that point - Nitro, Thunder, Worldwide and to a lesser extent WCWSN.  I also watched WOW and a little ECW.  That's how I wound up here, reading Dean's stuff on RSPWM starting in the summer of 1997.  Eventually just slowly lost interest.  I think I had mostly wound down watching before WCW went under, though I did watch the last show. 

After that I just haven't watched much.  I've seen a few random things here and there.  Seen a bit of ROH occasionally.  Saw a little bit of old AWA.  Watched some old stuff I hadn't seen online, but never really any WWF/E.  That's about it.  I'm kinda curious about AEW, but not enough to actually turn on the TV, apparently.

So to tie this back to Dolfan's stuff, I read this with just almost zero foreknowledge.  I knew a few things - the aforementioned Hogan/Andre thing, Hart/Austin from WM 13 (I've seen the last minute or so of that somewhere along the line), Eddie and Benoit winning at WM 30, though I haven't seen that, and the existence of Taker's streak - that's about it.  It's been a fun read.

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  • 9 months later...

As some of you may know, I got breakthrough COVID last week.  I don't know how/where/when I was exposed, but thankfully it was very mild.  I got a monoclonal antibody treatment almost immediately and about a day later, to quote the Oracle in The Matrix I felt "right as rain."  That being said, I did have to go into a 10 day isolation, because I was still contagious.  

So... I looked at my exercise bike - unused since I finished writing - and I thought to myself... well, you know there is one more WrestleMania you haven't done...  

 

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5 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

As some of you may know, I got breakthrough COVID last week.  I don't know how/where/when I was exposed, but thankfully it was very mild.  I got a monoclonal antibody treatment almost immediately and about a day later, to quote the Oracle in The Matrix I felt "right as rain."  That being said, I did have to go into a 10 day isolation, because I was still contagious.  

So... I looked at my exercise bike - unused since I finished writing - and I thought to myself... well, you know there is one more WrestleMania you haven't done...  

 

And a new one coming each year, so you're going to have to give a ride per year anyway, if you want to keep the list finished.

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