Greetings, homeslices.
Today we have a question from QOTD regular, Gavin Lee:
"Here's another question for the blog. I would say the vast majority of visitors to the blog started watching in the 80's and 90's at certain points. My question is what got you all hooked? What was your 1st PPV you watched? My 1st PPV was Survivor Series 1990 and I was hooked on the antics of hogan and warrior I tuned out after wm9 got back into in late 1999 it would be quite interesting to see if member if the blog has continued watching from childhood to present without any relapse?"
For me it was when I was channel surfing when I was 11. It was a Monday night, and I came across this scene of a buff dude with stringy hair, beating the absolute shit out of an announcer dressed like a King. He was swearing up a storm, and security was pulling him back. It was fantastic. Turns out, it was the Raw after the first In Your House, and Bret was pissed at the King. From that moment on I watched every Monday for 5 years. It's funny, during the WWE's worst period, quality wise, is when I fell in love, and absolutely soaked up everything they had to offer.
First PPV I watched was SummerSlam, scrambled. I remember running home because I absolutely had to see Bret vs Yankem and Diesel vs Mabel. I was so stoked for those matches. First PPV my parents actually ordered for me was Survivor Series 1995, and I can't describe the joy I felt. The fact the PPV was unscrambled, every match felt like a main event to me. It was incredible.
Once I got older, around 19 or so, I just fell out of interest in wrestling. I still read the news here and there, but never watched it. It wasn't until WM23 that my interest came back big time. Been that way ever since.
How say you?
Anyone wanting to send in for QOTD, caliberw@hotmail.com is your ticket.
scrublife.wordpress.com - recently updated with Man Movie Encyclopedia articles for Total Recall & Point Break. Str8 Gangster, No Chaser. It's the hotness.
Today we have a question from QOTD regular, Gavin Lee:
"Here's another question for the blog. I would say the vast majority of visitors to the blog started watching in the 80's and 90's at certain points. My question is what got you all hooked? What was your 1st PPV you watched? My 1st PPV was Survivor Series 1990 and I was hooked on the antics of hogan and warrior I tuned out after wm9 got back into in late 1999 it would be quite interesting to see if member if the blog has continued watching from childhood to present without any relapse?"
For me it was when I was channel surfing when I was 11. It was a Monday night, and I came across this scene of a buff dude with stringy hair, beating the absolute shit out of an announcer dressed like a King. He was swearing up a storm, and security was pulling him back. It was fantastic. Turns out, it was the Raw after the first In Your House, and Bret was pissed at the King. From that moment on I watched every Monday for 5 years. It's funny, during the WWE's worst period, quality wise, is when I fell in love, and absolutely soaked up everything they had to offer.
First PPV I watched was SummerSlam, scrambled. I remember running home because I absolutely had to see Bret vs Yankem and Diesel vs Mabel. I was so stoked for those matches. First PPV my parents actually ordered for me was Survivor Series 1995, and I can't describe the joy I felt. The fact the PPV was unscrambled, every match felt like a main event to me. It was incredible.
Once I got older, around 19 or so, I just fell out of interest in wrestling. I still read the news here and there, but never watched it. It wasn't until WM23 that my interest came back big time. Been that way ever since.
How say you?
Anyone wanting to send in for QOTD, caliberw@hotmail.com is your ticket.
scrublife.wordpress.com - recently updated with Man Movie Encyclopedia articles for Total Recall & Point Break. Str8 Gangster, No Chaser. It's the hotness.
I know when i regained my love for wrestling. WrestleWar 91
ReplyDeleteWas about 12 or 13 and was around a friend's house and it happened to be on. Saw the Undertaker's entrance and John Cena battle rap and was instantly intrigued. Went to the local video store and rented out the PPV with the most matches I could find, which was WMXX, and the two main events hooked me until Guerrero and Benoit died.
ReplyDeleteOut of curiosity one day I wanted to watch a Royal Rumble and see how things had changed since i'd stopped watching, this CM Punk guy who I vaguely remembered from before dominated with a bunch of underlings and turned the whole event on its head. This of course lead into MitB and the Summer of Punk and here we are now!
I just mentioned this in another thread: I was a casual fan until the '92 Summerslam buildup hooked me for good. The 'who sold out to Mr. Perfect?' angle and the resulting Ultimate Maniacs stuff was great fun. Back then I thought it was obvious that Perfect and Flair were playing Savage and Warrior and that neither sold out. I think Internet lore says Warrior was supposed to turn but it worked out better to have Flair punk out both to get the title.
ReplyDelete1st PPV I watched was one of the Battlebowls on scramblevision. You kids with your fancy Internet streams, you know nothing about staring at a distorted screen for three hours and trying to convince your parents that you're not clinically insane.
Unfortunately, the very first PPV I watched was when I was 12 years old, and it was the 1997 Survivor Series. I remember that day so vividly as my Dad snuck me into a local watering hole to watch my hero Bret Hart wrestle against Shawn Michaels. I was big into Bret Hart back then and was a fan of both WWF and WCW and watched every wrestling show I could. I had no idea about backstage politics or anything at that time. I remember not really liking the match because they were outside of the ring for a long time, and I remember not understanding the ending because Bret didn't tap and he was in the process of reversing the Sharpshooter. I remember hating Vince with a passion too because of that match.
ReplyDeleteWow, come to think of it, I think that's the day I started looking up wrestling news on the internet, just to see what happened with Bret.
I miss my naive days.
hmmm..
ReplyDeleteWatching the first Superbrawl ppv live tape. Fucking HOOKED off of the Steiners/Sting&Lugar match, which is still my favorite tag match ever. Watched obsessively until around 2001-2002 after WCW folded and the invasion angle bombed.
Started watching again leading up to WM21. Stopped watching RAW around the "guest host" phase and now just watch the ppv's while reading Scott's reviews of the television shows.
It was Royal Rumble 1990 I saw a preview for the show on sky TV and asked my parents if I could watch after much persuasion they agreed, Warrior and Hogan were in the ring alone (I didn't know who either guy was) but all I knew was that I wanted the crazy cool looking dude with face paint, ripped muscles and tassels to kick this weird orange bald looking fella's ass. It ended in a dead heat with the crowd going wild but the weird orange dude would go on and win the Rumble... so from that moment onwards I wanted to see the Warrior destroy Hogan which of course led to the Wrestlemania VI showdown, which basically turned me into a fan for life.
ReplyDeleteThe build up to WM 5 is my oldest memory. Then my folks got freaked out by the Undertaker/Warrior angle and couldn't watch for about year. Been back ever since.
ReplyDeleteFirst PPV was WrestleMania 5, which I am proud to still own on VHS. I didn't watch much when I was in High School, but I knew what was going on. Like everyone else I was watching Nitro more from 96-98. Got back into it big time in college, then went cold turkey after Eddie died, (although to be fair I wasn't watching Smackdown anymore at that point and my interest in Raw had waned after the Hogan/Michaels program.) In 2009 or so started watching old stuff on You Tube and bought a few DVD's of the guys I watched back in the day, (Hogan, Hart, Savage) Watched Triple H vs the Undertaker from WM 27 in July or so of 2011, (fantastic match.) Started keeping track of what was going on through Scott's blog shortly after that. Heard that Taker and Hunter were going to go at it in the cell, turned on Raw one night, saw Cena and Rock cutting a promo on each other, and just like that I was back. Ordered WrestleMania 28.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember the exact moment that hooked me. I remember I started watching frequently a little after WrestleMania 3. I had a friend that used to come over on Saturdays and make me watch it.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I HATED it, probably mostly because I didn't (and don't) being told I NEED to like something. This is likely why I've yet to get into Game of Thrones because people seem to think that, because I'm a nerd, I need to watch it.
But yeah, I don't recall any specific moment that hooked me. I remember wanting blood after the big Hebner clone/brother debacle and Dibiase trying to buy the belt.
I don't remember the first thing because my older brother was a fan and I was watching WWF shows before the age when I can really remember things. But I remember what brought me back into the fold: going to the post-WM14 Raw in Albany with some friends. I was in 8th grade and it was amazing.
ReplyDeleteFucking cosign on GoT. I'm not a fan of fantasy stuff like that in general, and people insisting that I not only watch the show but read the books just don't get me.
ReplyDeleteThis all makes me feel very old. I don't remember one specific thing, but I know it's related to the Von Erich's in the early/mid 80s. I used to love watching their show on Saturday morning. Then, Mid-South, with Jim Ross as the announcer (always a very weak point of WCCW with Marc Lawrance and an older guy whos name I can't remember...Bill something, I think) selling everything and everyone like lives were at stake...and all the realistic angles they ran.
ReplyDeleteI have really vague memories of catching wrestling when I was super young, because I remember thinking Jake the Snake was awesome. But it was around the fall of 92 that I got into following the shows and watching all the time, becaause I had a friend who caught me up on everyone (who I still go to wrestling shows with). I have vague memories of SurSer92 but I think the big one that I got hyped on was the 93 Rumble, and watching Raw right from the beginning got me hooked. Not really one big match or angle, just the whole world of wrestling and learning about all the characters. Perfect timing too, because everything was changing at that time and then I was the perfect age to keep following at the dawn of the Attitude Era.
ReplyDeleteFirst shows I watched were WrestleMania 1 and wwe stuff at the time. Also watched a lot of world class in the early to mid eighties. I was 4.
ReplyDeleteThe first PPV that I watched was the very first SummerSlam. I was 6 at the time and I remember really liking the Hart Foundation and the Ultimate Warrior. I wasn't much of a Hogan fan, even as a young kid. After that, I was hooked. I would beg my parents to buy me the Apter mags at the grocery store and my uncle had a scrambler and would record the PPV's for me and my dad would record SNME. I must have watched the Rockers/Brainbusters 2/3 falls match a thousand times.
ReplyDeleteI've been watching Pay Per Views since the dawn of the PPV era. My grandfather brought home copies of Wrestlemania 1-2 recorded from the Knights of Columbus where he was a member.
ReplyDeleteThe first PPV I watched live was at my great-uncle George's house, Wrestlemania III. The first PPV I ordered at my house was the first Survivor Series. I have every WWF pay-per-view (with the exceptions of SummerSlam 1988 and 1990 - technical difficulties) up until the July 1997 In Your House recorded at my parents' house. I was at SummerSlam 1997 live and then I went away to college and lost access to PPV.
I was also 11 years old and my family had just gotten cable. I started watching the USWA on ESPN every afternoon and WWF Superstars every Saturday morning. It was 2 weeks before WM VII, so I didn't have quite enough time to get super-emotionally invested in the storylines, but seeing the still photos on post-WM editions of Superstars made me understand that something important had happened, which made me interested in the fallout and follow-up. Been watching ever since, with no real hiatus, save for a couple weeks when I first got to college and for a month or so in 2005 when I thought the product was just unbearably bad...
ReplyDeleteI started watching when I was about 8. My brother watched, but the first thing I recall watching on my own was an episode of Saturday Night's Main Event (my parents were pretty lenient about my television watching habits) that featured Uncle Elmer getting married - so that would have been Fall of 1985. Was hooked and of course became a Hulkamaniac.
ReplyDeleteThe first ppv I ever saw was Wrestlemania 2, though not for about a month after the event actually aired. I remember being very bummed that my brother didn't take me with him to see it on closed circuit. The first one I saw live as it aired was Wrestlemania VI.
I stopped watching regularly towards the middle of high school, so around 1994. I started watching again in June 1997. I've told this story before, but one night I was circling around the dial when I came across the end of an episode of Nitro where Macho Man was beating up JJ Dillon. I was immediately intrigued what I was seeing, then tuned in next week to both Nitro and Raw. I've had periods of lapsed viewership since then, but I've at least kept up with what's happening via the internet.
Wrestlemania 8 was my first PPV, when I was 8 years old. Bret, Savage, and Flair tore the house down, and Warrior's insane return at the end.
ReplyDeleteThough if you REALLY want to pin down my fandom, the best place to start would be the SNME that occured after the Rumble, with Sid turning heel on Hogan and the Savage/Jake feud coming to its conclusion.
Exactly. Exactly! I tried watching the first episode and I was so flipping lost. Too many characters and too many alliances (both houses and internal alliances) to keep track of. I hate politics in general and that's pretty much all the show is.
ReplyDeleteI used to watch the cartoon, but not the actual shows. Also I'd see Slaughter on G.I.Joe, so I knew who he was. A friend got me interested in WWF around the time Slaughter turned Iraqi and Hogan was going to take him on.We both thought it was kind of a dumb angle (and we were only 12 BTW) but I knew who both guys were so I was interested. First PPV watched was a VHS of Wrestlemania 7,first PPV i actually ordered was the Rumble that Flair won. Stopped watching post Invasion, and all the gross/insulting angles they were running like Katie Vick and Molly Holly. The Bossman dog thing was really fucked up too. I'm not easily offended but the show eventually became just trash and there was no WCW to turn to. FF to 2012 and this guy at work talking about Rock/Cena, I check out Raw and the first match I see is Bryan/Punk. So of course I get drug back in.
ReplyDeleteFor me, it was kind of a weird start. I was 12, but I hadn't watched any wrestling. My younger brother received Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper action figures (the old rubber LJN ones) for Christmas. I had the Wrestling Album on cassette. I watched Hulk Hogan's Rock N Wrestling. Without even watching a wrestling show. Then in January of 86, for the first time, I saw King Kong Bundy squash Hulk Hogan several times on Saturday Night's Main Event to set up WM2. I saw WM2 on VHS several weeks later. The first live PPV I ever saw was Summerslam 94
ReplyDeleteSummerslam 1996, though it's in a weird way. When I would visit my grandparents, their cable system - instead of scrambling the picture - would instead flip the negative. So I watched the entire thing with the colour messed up. Since everything about WWF at the time was so hardwired into my brain, it was almost as if it was fixing the picture on its own. Saw every match, saw every move.. and was still shocked when Paul Bearer smashed the urn on the Undertaker's head.
ReplyDeletewcw saturday night in the very early 90's. I used to watch the wwf saturday morning shows in the late 80's as part of my cartoon viewing but when I realized there was a two hour wrestling show on saturdays I was fucking hooked
ReplyDeleteIn color negative that had to have looked cool; like a wizenly old Chubby Checker in a white suit smashing a white-suited Hendrix or something.
ReplyDeleteI'm there with you. I might legitimately like GoT if I have found it on my own but I just can't stand it when someone nags me (and by nag I mean mention more than once) to watch something and I have several people, but 1 friend in particular that is ALWAYS after me to watch GoT so I have purposely spite avoided it.
ReplyDeleteI've told the story before but my Dad grew up near Whipper Watson and loved wrestling. By his late teens he was working the Maple Leaf circuit putting together the ring and wrestling in job matches under a mask.
ReplyDeleteHis participation never went beyond that and by the time he was in his early twenties he had gotten a real job and married my Mom, but he remained a lifelong fan who watched religiously.
I was born in 1979 and Mom wouldn't let me watch as a young kid, although Dad and I would certainly try to get around that. I have some vague memories of characters of the time (early to mid 80's), specifically the Iron Sheik for some reason, but never really watched regularly. I do remember Dad whistling at Miss Elizabeth every time that she was on TV, and my Mom rolling her eyes about "that garbage."
When I finally was hooked, and won the battle against Mom though, was in 1987 when Dad rented WM3. I watched that and never really looked back. I've taken a couple of extended breaks - once for a year around WM11 while Michaels and Nash were on top because I had zero use for Diesel and liked Michaels as an IC guy but couldn't buy him on top. Once for about a year in 2001-2002 while I was living off the grid. And now currently, I haven't watched more than 5 minutes of wrestling since WM, maybe less. I might start again if something catches my interest, or if my kid gets into it himself in a couple of years.
Growing up in Denver, the first wrestling on TV I ever saw was AWA, and I remember seeing a brawl between the Fabulous Freebirds and the Road Warriors, followed by a promo stating that the AWA would be in town in a few weeks with a Freebirds/Warriors match as the main event. I remember thinking the Warriors were pretty cool looking, but for some reason the promo made it sound like this was something I NEEDED to see. I didn't go to that show, but I became hooked pretty quickly and remained an AWA fan pretty much up until they folded, since the AWA always had a big monthly show in Denver.
ReplyDeleteNot long after that I saw the first episode of Saturday Night's Main Event, and suddenly as a boy of 11 I knew I was hooked.
I think the first PPV I ever saw was WrestleMania IV.
SummerSlam 91. I'd run into a few episodes of Superstars and Wrestling Challenge that summer following my Saturday morning cartoon watching, and was interested, but not what you'd call hooked. My stepmother's brothers were fairly big wrestling fans, and they'd order SS 91. We were over her brothers' one night, and they told me they'd taped it, and I could watch it if I wanted.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, I did. After Bret-Perfect I was done. It was love. LOD, Hogan, and Virgil-DiBiase helped too.
If you weren't rooting for Rick Martel to win Royal Rumble 91, you don't belong on this blog.
ReplyDeleteBret-Perfect was amazing in that I never really saw Bret as anything more than a tag team wrestler until that match. A really great moment that made me see Hart as a legit contender. That was the power of the IC belt back then.
ReplyDeleteIt's been said before, but DiBiase gave Virgil work for the next 10 years after that match. As well as the Virgilbag.
I really wish they just would have called Mustafa the Iron Shiek. I think that would have made the main event way more interesting. Four World Champs, plus Hogans history with Sheik could have been played up a lot more.
You've been parodying Monsoon/Heenan and your first PPV was SummerSlam 96?
ReplyDeleteBravo! I'm honestly impressed!
First PPV I got was Wrestlemania 6 and I was 9.....then fell out of wrestling between 2002 - 2008/9 - ish and then slowly got back into it.
ReplyDeleteWCCW on ESPN was really my first exposure (I think) to wrestling. I seem to remember them showing the clip of Kerry backsliding Flair to win the title every other episode (at least that's how it seemed to me).
KPLR TV's Wrestling at the Chase. For whatever reason the St. Louis Wrestling Club got AMAZING talent to come through. The Funks, Flair, Race, the Von Erichs, Bockwinkel and way more. NWA, AWA, didn't matter. I was only watching the replays as Vince had taken the old Saturday time slot, but it was amazing. Of course Superstars was big, and NWA Worldwide Wrestling right before the Stooges at midnight on Saturday.
ReplyDeleteAs I kid I would watch the weekly Central States Wrestling program ,Harley Race, Bulldog Bob Brown, and Rufus R. Jones were the big names. It wasn't until cable came along and I started watching the Saturday night show on TBS. The feud that got me hooked was the Magnum T.A. and Tully Blanchard feud ending in the I Quit match at Starrcade 85. Now I knew wrestling was fake, this was the term used in the 80's, but I really thought these guys might kill one another. The killer was having to wait a week to find out who won. I remember how excited I was when Tony and David announced Magnum had won the match.
ReplyDeleteIt's the first one I watched live. I'd been a fan for four years at that point and rented several PPVs on video. That with Challenge gave me a lot of Gorilla/Bobby content.
ReplyDeleteMartel vs. Slaughter at WM VII? lol.... I was four at the time, yes watching live on PPV, and had no idea who I rooted for.
ReplyDeleteWCW '91 wasn't cartoony?
ReplyDeleteI started watching WWF very young at age two in 1989. The WM V build-up + match will forever be my favorite. It was the best storyline in WWF history. Savage as the demented possessive heel. Hogan was the white knight rescuer of Miss Elizabeth. Miss Elizabeth as the representation of females. She's the only women's wrestler in America to make men and women cry with tears of happiness.
ReplyDeleteYou better believe they would have filled the Coliseum with that main event. And Hogan vs Roberts blindfold match, where Hogan just drops legdrops on nobody.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. The 80s were such a turbulent time. I remember being intrigued about the Iran-Contra scandal as I was shitting my diaper.
ReplyDeleteWhat hooked me was the early-era Raw. Savage, Bret, Undertaker, Perfect, The Steiners, HBK, even Doink were all huge parts of my childhood, and I really didn't start watching WCW until Great American Bash '96.
ReplyDeleteIts probably why I loved it. I didnt mean to say I thought the WWF was too cartoony or anything, I just meant the only other wrestling I watched was the WWF syndicated show that came on right after Saturday morning cartoons
ReplyDeleteI really can't remember what hooked me as a kid. I vaguely remember Hogan and Savage teaming up against somebody, Miss Elizabeth got KOed, and Hogan carried her back. Savage got owned, Hogan comes back, and Savage leaves him. That's probably the earliest memory I have, other than Brutus the Barber. Started not caring after a while in the early 90s.
ReplyDeleteI started following again in Jan 07 I think, when my friends got together to order nWo Souled Out. I was laughing at them, "wait, you still watch wrestling? it's for kids". Then I saw Hogan as a heel, and I was hooked again. nWo was the coolest thing ever for when I was 20.
For me, I think it was Austin/Tyson. It was my freshman year of high school and a lot of my friends kept talking about this Stone Cold dude, and also Bret Hart getting screwed, and the nWo, etc. The first thing I remember seeing when my interest was piqued enough to tune in was the Austin/Tyson pull apart brawl. I was hooked.
ReplyDeleteI got into WCW at the same time. I think it was one or another of Jericho's antics that kept me coming back. His conspiracy victim protest in Washington, maybe.
You win the Internet today.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had an elaborate story. I started watching WWF in the mid 80's, I was drawn in by Macho Man and Hogan. I thought Savage was the coolest guy ever. Once I discovered NWA and Ric Flair it was done. Flair is everything I wanted to be both as a boy and now as a man.
ReplyDeleteLex Express was my introduction to the Shenanigans, then sometime in...6th grade I got hooked for good. I blame DX.
ReplyDeleteAlso the dorky Mandkind beating The Rock might have had something to do with it.
ReplyDeleteI was 8 and convinced my parents to order Rumble 1990 and then immediately fell asleep like 40 minutes into it. Somehow went till WM 14 to see another WWE PPV even though I was a die hard watcher of Raw.
ReplyDeleteI started watching in 2008,SBT in brazil,showed started to show wwe matches and there debut was Cena vs HBK wm 23 it turned me in to Cena maniac(thought he was a bad ass and we share the first name),then later in the night the Umaga Last man standing.Today I'm 16,even though the product is bad I still love this business(and proves also my theory,that we are like those hillbilly wives)
ReplyDeleteWhat first got me hooked into wrestling was my dad buying me videotapes of past WrestleMania events and other events. I'm 22 and my first memories are of watching those WrestleMania's. Macho Man vs. Hogan sticks out in my mind as one of the first matches I really remember vividly watching.
ReplyDeleteI think the first time i could say i was a wrestling fan, as i was ten years old, was when i flipped through the channels and saw the four horsemen doing an interview while my cousin was screaming "These guys broke dusty rhodes's leg" and he begged me to keep it on World Championship Wrestling on TBS. Never had heard of dusty or wrestling before, but after seeing dusty rhodes for the 1st time, i knew two things from the get go. 1. i would always be a horseman fan for life and two, I wanted to watch more of the NWA. My first ppv would have to be the Chi-Town Rumble, three great main events in Flair-Steamboat, Rick Steiner vs Mike Rotundo and Windham vs Luger. Although my interest has died a little since the days of the Monday Night Wars ending, i still think of those good ole days with a smile.
ReplyDeleteI was 13 and watched a recording of WrestleMania III. Savage-Steamboat was amazing of course and I was legit pissed off when the Harts cheated to beat the Bulldogs/Tito. Watching them beat the living shit out of Danny Davis was awesome.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was always a wrestling fan and I watched frequently with him. He ordered the 2000 Royal Rumble. The match that got me addicted was Tazz vs Kurt Angle. Looking back now it's obviously Cactus vs Triple H that was the best match, but seeing Tazz choke out Kurt Angle's jackass mouth(my thoughts at the time) is what hooked me on
ReplyDeleteI remember kids in class talking about Austin in mid 1998 but I never checked it out wrestling until 1999. I was channel surfing by myself in the living room and I saw the Road Dogg come out and give his usual intro spiel which had me intrigued and then to top it off, the Rock came out next to face him looking like the coolest motherfucker on the planet to 9 year old me. It was a Raw around Wrestlemania IV.
ReplyDeleteSo from then on I watched religiously, although I only start to clearly remember the storylines starting from around Stephanie being married to HHH. Royal Rumble 2000 is the first truly great PPV that I saw.
Also, after a few months of watching WWF, I watched WCW for the first time. Since we were over a year behind here in NZ, I saw a Nitro from late 1998 and the first match I saw was a cruiserweight match. Both myself and my patient mother who hated me watching it, but allowed me to stay up very late to watch Nitro this one time actually questioned whether WCW was real (!). I also remember Goldberg being in a tag team main event and him being world champion.
WCW from then on appealed to me more conceptually, as it was always presented as being more real, but its content was rather lackluster compared to the WWF by the time I started watching it. Still, for whatever reason I preferred WCW stars. All the wrestling toys I bought were WCW ones. A big turning point for me was the radicals jumping, as I really liked them (especially Benoit) as a child. Scott Hall leaving too basically led to me slowly losing interest in WCW. Plus the total nonsense of Russo storylines. I remember as a fucking 10 year old thinking it was bullshit. I can't remember what show it was, but I believe Dean Malenko came out to help Chris Benoit with a chair, but he took a long time to line up a chair shot, but then SHOCKINGLY struck Beniot in the head instead.
My first show was right after the Royal Rumble where Flair won- I saw some white-haired dude I'd never heard of as the WWF Champion, but all I knew was that my favourite guy ever- The Macho Man- was going to feud with him, and that was all I needed. I was 10 or 11 years old, I think.
ReplyDeleteI'd been a fan of Savage for YEARS, despite never really having seen one of his matches. It's hard to explain what it was like, but I was basically someone who sort of knew the wrestlers' names, but never knew when the shows were on, so I never really got to see them. I still sort of wonder why I never got around to asking my parents to tell me when it was on, but then my mom probably wouldn't have let me watch anyways.
I flipped on an episode of World Class one Saturday afternoon out of curiosity and was treated to a terrific main-event brawl between Kerry von Erich and Chris Adams that ended with Kerry putting both Adams and Gary Hart in claws and the One Man Gang (the biggest man I had ever seen at the time) charging the ring to beat Kerry down. All to insane crowd noise, of course. That pretty much hooked me right there.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Arkansas, so we had a back-to-back loop of Mid-South Wrestling and Memphis Wrestling on Saturday mornings....and I'm totally showing my age here, but the earliest angle I can remember was Jerry Lawler tar-and-feather The Dream Machine on Memphis TV.....and then, Butch Reed (my all-time favorite wrestler) talking about the big ole soupbones that awaited the Junkyard Dog
ReplyDelete