Hello, my name is Matt. I've had a tad bit of trouble getting onto the board but I'm finally here! I also post on the DVDVR board as New Blood.
I'm excited to post here as I've been lurking on this forum for the last couple years. I've learned so much and discovered so much wrestling from you guys by just reading the threads and listening to the various podcasts. I'm really excite to contribute!
My introduction to wrestling was through video games in the mid-90s. One of my aunts ex-husbands had a Playstation and the WWF In Your House game and wrestlers like Undertaker, Goldust and Shawn Michaels fascinate me. I didn't really watch wrestling much other than seeing an odd episode of Superstars and Live Wire after cartoons on the USA Network. I was never a big sports fan so what appealed to me for wrestling were the characters and the angles. I was a big fan of comics and cult films and I would come across the WWF Colosseum Home Videos at my local mom & pop video store so that helped plant the seeds.
It wasn't until the Attitude Era that I became a massive wrestling fan. It was on an episode of Raw in April 1999 where Rock threw Austin off the bridge and then the following Raw in which Rock had a funeral for Austin and then he came to the arena with a monster truck. Believe it or not, that's what cemented me as a wrestling fan. I loved wrestling so much that I found out about other companies like WCW which I also really dug. Finding ECW was a revelation or me and I watched it on TNN every week. From that I found FMW comp tapes/dvds at my local Sam Goodys. When ECW and WCW folded, I was really bummed but began to find out about indies that would come around like ROH which I became incredibly passionate for until 2010 which I felt became stale. I became very jaded about WWE in 2002 with the Katie Vick storyline which my fandom never did totally recover but would watch occasionally.
Since all that, I've really rediscovered my love for wrestling in watching a lot of lucha, territory wrestling and various old puro, British wrestling and whatnot. I used to be a big, big fan of the 5 star/Meltzer way of rating matches until I saw Andre the Giant vs. Stan Hansen from September 81 and that transcended all of that and I think it's in my #1 spot of what I consider wrestling perfection. With that, I was led here and discovered so much more.
I hope this isn't too rambling but I really enjoy this board and looking to be a good part of it.