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June 2021 Wrestling Discussion


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I'm a bit envious of those of you who were around early enough to get into it because of your regional territories. I was born late enough that by the time I was paying attention at about four years old, Portland was not at all a thing I knew about. It would have been cool to get into it on late '70s Portland. People my age in Texas or Louisiana had the chance to get into Gary Hart-booked Dallas or Bill Watts-booked Mid-South if they were watching early in their lives, which is way cooler than basically the way most people my age got into wrestling, which was WWF.

I honestly don't have memories of not watching wrestling, and WWF are my earliest memories, but luckily I had a grandma who was into JCP and so I would watch that too. ESPN also had the AWA when I was young, which is actually how I originally got into The Rockers (my household had cable as did my grandparents' household, so I was a lucky kid). 

As a spinoff, what were everyone's first wrestling figures? My first ones that I remember, which I think I've said before, were AWA figures: Bock, Zbyszko, Michaels, and Jannetty. Had some great tag matches with those teams. 

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I think that one of the things that helped get me so into pro wrestling is that during the formative part of my fandom from 84 onwards on most weekends in Toronto along with the WWF we had NWA, AWA, Montreal International Wrestling and Vancouver All Star Wrestling shows on at various points. 

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My intro to wrestling was...mmm...1990-91 WWF, if I've got my timeline straight. I don't remember the first wrestler I saw. Might've been Bret Hart, might've been Ultimate Warrior. Despite being very young, I was already in to comics and at first glance, thought I was watching a comic book come to life. Probably stereotypical of the time and my age.

As far as my first favorites: Bret (still my all-time favorite, probably will never be replaced), Macho Man, Warrior, Roddy Piper. I was in to The Rockers...super bummed when the barbershop window thing happened. I remember being pretty happy when Mr. Perfect turned face as a kid, though I can't exactly remember why.

My favorite "heel" back then would be the one I would define as being the most convincing to me as a young child, in retrospect: Jake "The Snake" Roberts, no contest. I was terrified of him. Count me among the traumatized when he had the snake bite Macho Man.

First wrestling figures is an interesting one: I can recall having a lot of the Hasbro WWF figures, but I must've picked up an awareness of WCW relatively early too, because at the very least I had the Galoob Sting and (I think) Lex Luger figures from '90. (Edit: this may have been because I stumbled upon the WCW comic book back then, now that I think on it a little more. I had the one where Sting fought Cactus Jack on behalf of a bunch of sick children...or something.)

Edited by Teflon Turtle
Further recollections.
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I don't remember that WCW comic, but I did have like two issues of WWF Battlemania. The one with DiBiase vs. Virgil and the one where Bossman tries to infiltrate the Undertaker's funeral parlor and apparently Paul Bearer is a cannibal, which, uh, what a twist! 

Man, I need to try to track those down. 

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19 hours ago, elizium said:

I'm sure it was Hogan initially...but Demolition and Brutus Beefcake were my dudes.

Thinking about this more and I was reminded of something:

I have absolutely 0 recollection of this, but my parents swear that when I was four years old I would put a towel on my head and run around the house yelling "I am the Iron Sheik!"

So either I was a fan or just a racist kid

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I remember having a couple of wrestlers in amongst my figures of superheroes, mutant turtles, etc. as a young kid. It was possibly Macho and Bulldog, but I think I must have just picked them up because they looked cool, I don’t remember watching wrestling until 98, when I was 9/10. Austin was an obvious early fave, the earliest thing I can remember actually seeing was the Raw segment where Austin faked out going corporate, and I loved that whole Summerslam build of ‘are Kane and Taker in cahoots’.

As I got into it, X Pac became my proper favourite as he had the underdog thing going and was one of the few flyers to be featured around then, I used to love Taka against random cruisers but they were already losing interest in the division by then.

In the UK, TNT would only come on at like 8-9 at night and I just thought of it as a channel that showed old films. I came across Nitro, presumably when flicking during Raw ads (Raw and Nitro used to get shown on a Friday back then) and, because it was the old film channel and I vaguely recognised the likes of Hogan as ‘old’ wrestlers, I genuinely thought it was a rerun of some old wrestling. But I remember seeing a Goldberg video package and being blown away by the spear in particular and telling a friend about this old wrestler I saw who would just dive across the ring to take out his opponents.

Once I saw more I remember thinking the cruisers and DDP were great, but that early perception of WCW being where the old wrestlers went stuck with me for my first few years of fandom and WCW kind of lacked a bit street cred for me.

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2 hours ago, Teflon Turtle said:

one where Sting fought Cactus Jack on behalf of a bunch of sick children...or something.)

Holy crap! What was that crazy bastard Cactus Jack going to do to those poor sick kids? Take them to an amusement park, where they obviously wouldn't be well enough to get on any rides and make fun of them whilst riding the fiercest roller-coaster himself?

...The kids didn't turn on Sting somewhere in there, did they? I mean , I have to ask , right ? 

Edited by Shartnado
Question about Sting
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3 hours ago, nate said:

General board question:

Has anyone ever made the joke that AEW could still technically fit into the "Feds Just  Trying To Make A Buck" section?

According to the Forbes article, they would have been profitable this year but they made an eight figure investment into the video game division

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9 hours ago, christopher.annino said:

Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Flyin Brian, and originally based solely on how cool he looked Jyushin Thunder Liger ?

Man, my friend had satellite and taped Suprebrawl 91 and it was our first peek at WCW and we were all fascinated that there was another wrestling league and it had guys who had disappeared that we knew (Dustin Rhodes!), or guys we'd never seen who looked so huge (El Gigante!) but most of all that there was wrestling in Japan (my friend was part-Japanese so it REALLY blew him away) and even though we were kind of bored of the Flair-Fujinami match, we watched it over and over then bought one of he Apter mags and saw a photo of Jushin Liger and thought he was so incredibly cool. 

In 95, when WCW brought in the NJPW guys for the World Cup, I watched the PPV preview channel over and over, watching for the promo which had Sonny Onoo addressing the NJPW guys in a row ("Jushin? Fly high. Come down hard on WCW!"). This was pre-internet, so eventually I just stopped seeing the ad and how no way of knowing what had happened at the PPV because we couldn't afford them and nobody rented WCW tapes chez nous. I remember buying the tape years later and it being so...mostly boring.

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Shit, @caleyreminded me of something while we're all getting nostalgic... Who else used to listen in on scrambled PPVs to find out what happened? My folks thought wrestling was stupid as hell and would've laughed at the idea of shelling out good money for a show, so I spent many a Sunday night listening in on scramblevision...

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5 minutes ago, christopher.annino said:

Shit, @caleyreminded me of something while we're all getting nostalgic... Who else used to listen in on scrambled PPVs to find out what happened? My folks thought wrestling was stupid as hell and would've laughed at the idea of shelling out good money for a show, so I spent many a Sunday night listening in on scramblevision...

I would do this for every PPV. It got really confusing some nights (The Foley HIAC with JR screaming about him being "Broken in half" and sitting there going "What happened? Tell me what he did JR!") but then every once in a while it would come into reasonably clear picture and you'd get all excited before it went squiggly again.

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38 minutes ago, christopher.annino said:

Shit, @caleyreminded me of something while we're all getting nostalgic... Who else used to listen in on scrambled PPVs to find out what happened? My folks thought wrestling was stupid as hell and would've laughed at the idea of shelling out good money for a show, so I spent many a Sunday night listening in on scramblevision...

I truly believe that Vince's "1, 2 HE GOT HIM...no, he didn't" was to torture all the cheap bastards and kids without enough allowance saved up who were listening via audio only.

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It’s not so bad, he seems sympathetic to Chyna now despite not thinking she was much of a worker. He spends a lot a time on the people surrounding her (the people doing the film before the rights fell to the current team) and how they contributed to the situation.

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1 hour ago, christopher.annino said:

Shit, @caleyreminded me of something while we're all getting nostalgic... Who else used to listen in on scrambled PPVs to find out what happened? My folks thought wrestling was stupid as hell and would've laughed at the idea of shelling out good money for a show, so I spent many a Sunday night listening in on scramblevision...

I'm so old that I remember in the time before cable TV I would listen to a radio show on WHBI at 1 AM to hear the results from the monthly Madison Square Garden show.

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