Steenalized

I'm Cullen and I'm from Chicago. I've lived in the city or the suburbs my whole life and started watching wrestling when I was about 5. As I'm now 24, that means I started watching the WWF in about 94 the first time, but really anything before 1996 is very spotty. I was never a WCW fan/watcher, though I remember flipping over to Nitro during the Monday night wars if WWF was on a commercial break. I knew who guys like Sting and Ric Flair were, but Bret Hart and Undertaker were the superstars for me. I don't have a story about liking so-and-so because they were so cool, even though they were a heel. I hated heels. I loved Shawn Michaels around '95, but when he went back to being a heel? Absolutely hated him. I was afraid of Vader, that guy was nasty. I remember watching ECW during this time, presumably on syndication. For whatever reason, 2 Cold Scorpio's string of loser-leaves-town matches at November to Remember 96 stands out to me more than anything I saw of ECW at the time. Around '99-'00 I stopped watching and picked up again in very late '03/early '04. I was a huge fan again, fan ROH and TNA, and started following the indies. I saw a bit of Japanese wrestling but barely any. For a few years I was a huge ROH fan and went to all their Chicago (Ridge) shows, with Punk as my favorite guy. I stopped following regularly around late 2007, but kept tabs on what was going on. Punk's rise to prominence through the "pipe bomb" and MITB '11 brought me back in. I've always been a wrestling fan and even during those times when I wasn't following I'd still watch on occasion or never thought poorly of it, I just focused on other things. I started lurking this board back in about June and now signed up. My favorites include Kevin Steen (thus the name), Minoru Suzuki, Bret Hart, Steve Austin, CM Punk, and Terry Funk.

Or, even more likely, that's what I just said.

More likely the WWE website has some sort of autonomy (or a lack of oversight) and when someone else realized there were a bunch of Punk references they had them edited out.

10-page document? Try 76, and that was back in July http://chikaralives.files.wordpress.com/20...really-dead.pdf

This is one of the few interviews on that site that I have absolutely zero interest in listening to. Glad I'm avoiding it, given what I've heard.

There's a thread on the F4W ProWres board for this (and one for PWG). They're only brief synopses and are kinda slow coming, but it's all I've got to point to so far.

Not any specific thing, but I thought ECW in general must have been real, whereas WWF/WCW weren't so real. I was probably ~8 when I first saw ECW. I also thought the phrase 'no holds barred', which WWF was advertising for some PPV back when I first saw wrestling, meant that there'd be no ropes on the ring. Oh, and I totally bought into the Lex Express and Luger being the only man ever capable of bodyslamming Yokozuna. I saw that on VHS when I was probably 7-8 again. That entire age span is when I knew wrestling wasn't on the level, but they could still get me with a gimmick like that.

Depends on the hit. I think trading chops and purposefully letting the other guy hit you (and then you hit him) is fine when you're doing a "let's see who's manlier" spot, especially early on. People usually don't bump around for chops/slaps like that. If they do, it's probably later on when they're exhausted or when they're coming off the ropes or something like that.

For whatever reason, the WWE hates using managers to talk for their guys who can't. That puts someone like KENTA at a real disadvantage if he did make the jump. Plus, he's Japanese, and I have a hard time thinking they'd sway from their illustrious record there.

I can't imagine him wanting to stay in NXT for an extended time, so that forces the WWE's hand if they really want him. Plus, NJPW's not exactly down at indy level production values. I don't think it'll be a disaster.

This is my dream.