Danish Dynamite

Got a long, long way to go before I come close to finishing this, and as was mentioned by others: Changing your mind on the inclusions and ranking is both part of the fun and the point of this. But some who are close to sure things on my list would be (and not in any particular order right now): Randy Savage Stan Hansen Jumbo Tsuruta Terry Funk Ric Flair Bret Hart Jerry Lawler Jack Brisco Harley Race Sgt. Slaughter Kerry Von Erich Ted DiBiase Nick Bockwinkel Tully Blanchard Ricky Steamboat Big Van Vader Andre the Giant Mitsuhara Misawa Steve Austin Tatsumi Fujinami Arn Anderson The Undertaker Curt Hennig Greg Valentine Rick Rude Kurt Angle

Damn. How could I forget!!!! We do have one notable Danish wrestler! The legendary, hall of fame worthy, undeniably awesome, greatest worker of all time and sure thing on most peoples GOAT list: ERIC THE RED!!!!! Gnawed off bone and all!!!! ... Ok, I might be overselling him just a bit. But he was Danish!

Hello everyone. My name is Nikolaj and as my handle (Danish Dynamite) suggests, I'm from Denmark (small country, Northern Europe, part of Scandinavia, connected to Germany). Denmark's got crappy weather, a history of getting our asses kicked by our neighbours and ridiculously high prices. It's lovely. You should all come visit! Famous Danes would include Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, Niels Bohr and Lars Ulrich from Metallica. Also Viggo Mortensen and Scarlett Johansson are both 50% Danish, so together they make 1 famous Dane I guess. I'm 35 years old and got into wrestling in the late 80's. I'd seen Hulk Hogan in Rocky III but otherwise knew nothing about the art (yes, dammit! Art!) until I went on a trip with my parents to New York. Among the He-Man and G.I. Joe toys were WWF action figures. When I found out these guys were real life (or at least the Vince Jr. version of "real life") I immediately sent a mail order for the first VHS tape I could find in the Danish catalogues. That was WrestleMania III. And while I might not have been completely hooked by Orton/Muraco vs. The Can-Am Connection opener, by the time I'd seen Savage vs. Steamboat I was fully on board! Wrestling was not on Danish TV back then and we didn't have the UK channel Sky at my house. So I continued mail ordering VHS tapes and started subscribing to PWI, The Wrestler and any other magazine I could find. The easiest things to get a hold of was WWF stuff, so all my nostalgia and early wrestling love went there, and I can't deny it still has a special place for me. So I guess I tend to rate it higher than some others would and defend it a little stronger than I might do otherwise. But hey, I've defended girlfriends uglier than Vince's product, so I'll stand by it. I did get a hold of some NWA and early WCW tapes though, and I couldn't deny that I more often saw matches of the Savage/Steamboat level on those... Still. Jesse Ventura and Bobby Heenan were on the WWF tapes then, so it still wasn't close... Fast forward through the typical stretch of not watching wrestling (my period was about 93-04), and a friend (thanks, buddy!) pulled me back in. In the years that had passed, something wonderful had happened: The internet had come along, and suddenly I could find a lot of the stuff I'd only been able to read about. Early NWA, WCCW, Mid-South, AWA and eventually the eye opening stuff from Japan. The next quantum leap for me was the podcasts. All the Place 2 Be Nation podcasts. P2B, Titans, GoodWill, Where the Big Boys Play, Pro-Wrestling Super Shows etc. etc. I have been turned on to so much cool and classic stuff that way and am very grateful. And now I look forward to the PWO boards maybe being the next big thing for me. My current taste in wrestling is absolutely eclectic. I haven't gotten into Lucha too much, but that might be my next avenue for exploration. And I still have a long ways to go, before I feel I've fully covered Japan. I also have some blank spots with the US in the years I missed, I'm not totally up to date on the current product and I've seen very little TNA. So there's still so much to see. I look forward to participating in the GOAT threads, because it will challenge me to think hard about my own list. Yeah, my child hood favorite was for a time The Ultimate Warrior, but I probably can't really defend putting him on the GOAT list. I know guys like Stan Hansen, Jumbo Tsuruta and Randy Savage will figure really high for me though. That'll do for an introduction posting. Looking forward to "meeting" you all on the boards. All the very best, Nikolaj