Johnny Sorrow Posted June 4, 2011 Report Share Posted June 4, 2011 I posted this at DVDVR and I wanted to see some memories from folks here who don't frequent the place as much. I was thinking about the days when the "Apter Mags" and the "Wrestling All Stars" group were at their peak. I LOVED the mags back then and they introduced me to so many guys and promotions that I couldn't see at the time. What are some of your favorite memories from the mags glory days? Who was the guy who you couldn't wait to see based solely on pics or stories? Who was your favorite fake reporter? What wrestlers were you super psyched to see based on the mags but were disappointed with when you did see them? What was your favorite storyline that only existed in the magazine world? I remember getting a "Wrestling All Stars" mag when I was 13 and they always listed Carlos Colon as one of the World Champions. I saw those pics of him all bloody and then him posing with that cool one strap white singlet and thinking, "This guy is AWESOME." I wanted to see World Class so bad from the mags, and when we got it on Philly 57 in 1985 I went nuts, and it didn't disappoint. I remember reading about rookie Bam Bam Bigelow and being totally sold on him. Matt Brock, crusty old rasslin' reporter who didn't exist but I thought he did was killer. I remember the mags trying to create a story about a secret alliance between all the heels in every promotion, led by Skandor Akbar and Sheik Adnan El Kaissey called something like "Operation 2000" or something like that where they had some sinister plan to take over wrestling and the Road Warriors were their first targets, as they were the strongest line of defense for America. I also became the biggest Hacksaw Duggan fan in the world without ever having seen him thanks to the mags. I also always thought that Rick Martel was a total equal to Flair and Hogan because he was AWA Champ and the mags told me he was. I sorta remembered him from his WWF days tagging with my hero Tony Garea when I was really young, and he looked like a World Champ to me. (I also got to be there live when Hansen beat him for the AWA Belt, but that's another story.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted June 4, 2011 Report Share Posted June 4, 2011 My longest lasting memory was in the letters section of (I think) PWI during Brother Love's run in the WWF. The person writing the letter was SO ANGRY at Brother Love's antics that he wrote "That preacher will be the downfall of the Federation if he keeps his garbage up!" Now long after I figured out about wrestling, I still thought the Apter mags were on the up and up. That letter was when I realized perhaps some of them were "enhanced" a little. Funny enough, I listened to an interview with Apter on WOL or some similar outlet where someone asked him about the letters, and he said for the most part about 75% were actual fan letters and the rest were plants to get someone over as a heel or face to the readers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cox Posted June 4, 2011 Report Share Posted June 4, 2011 When I was like 14 or 15, Inside Wrestling ran a Q&A question I had sent for somebody, I think Shane Douglas, so I can confirm that at least in one instance, a letter they ran was legit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khawk20 Posted June 4, 2011 Report Share Posted June 4, 2011 I loved the Apter Mags for the news and columns. Apter's news reports were a big deal in a pre-internet world when you lived in a smaller area with limited wrestling on your tv. Before we got the big C-band satellite in 85-86-ish, I relied on those mags to know what was going on. The articles I usually didn't pay too much attention to. Favourite catch-all phrase the Apter mags used to use: "It was a _________ display of wrestling ______." That came up probably in every one of their mags before 1990. "It was a savage display of wrestling fury.", "It was a magnificent display of wrestling science", etc. Shit, I bet when they audtioned writers this was a test question, to see how they would fill the blanks in. The Letter pages I would read, but I always wondered if some of the names that seemed to be in the letter section each month were the real people or the made-up ones. The name "Stephen Caruso" rings a bell as one of those always-got-their-letters-in-the-mag guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blehschmidt Posted June 4, 2011 Report Share Posted June 4, 2011 "Al Perez Fiddles, While World Class Burns" is the headline that has stuck in my head for years and years for no particular reason! I also had letter printed once, so I can confirm they weren't all bullshit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted June 4, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 4, 2011 Ha, that reminds me. A pal of mine and his friend went to some small card at a High School gym and sent in the results to "Arena Report" in Sports Review Wrestling. They included their names as a match and they printed it. It was something like "Maniac" Mark Spanner defeated "Awful" Alfie Stern. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted June 4, 2011 Report Share Posted June 4, 2011 Trying to remember if it was The Wrester or Inside Wrestling that ran the section on up and coming indy guys in the early 90's? That was a cool feature at the time for someone who was inbetween being a habitual Apter Mag fan and an Internet Wrestling Geek I'm not going to lie though. I always flipped straight to the rankings and the arena reports then read the rest cover to cover. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strummer Posted June 4, 2011 Report Share Posted June 4, 2011 I still remember the front cover with Kamala having Hogan's head on his spear. Scared the shit out of me as a 7 year old http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kt6pk9oN...a1wcao1_400.jpg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artDDP Posted June 20, 2011 Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 Goddamn I loved those things. I would buy a whole stack at Walden Books as often as I could, and all the little digest mags because they often reprinted articles I had missed. I think I really grew to love the Apter mags because as a young boy I was really sick of the Ultimate Warrior and Hulk Hogan and they were often very negative towards both. I remember from about the summer of 1994 to when the NWO thing finally happened they were running a series of articles pushing that Sting was going to turn on WCW because of their protection of Hogan. There was also a spring 1995 story of Jimmy Hart giving Apter a floppy disk full of Hogan's journals and it revealed that Hogan pretty much thought everyone in WCW sucked and he didn't want to be associated with them. He called Renegade a "parasite", I remember. One 1995 issue of The Wrestler had a professional wrestling rulebook bound inside the magazine. I remembered cherishing this for some stupid reason. Also, I had two letters printed in PWI. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted June 20, 2011 Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 I remember buying a Wrestling magazine in Spring 1998 in our largest magazine shop. It didnt seem to have been distributed elsewhere and I recall it only lasting a couple of issues. Too the very best of my knowledge it wasnt apart of the PWI family but it was American. It had an extensive news section covering WWF, WCW etc to Memphis to CWA in Germany to even some African promotions. The news section was very dirtsheety however from what I remember the rest of the magazine was kayfabe. All I remember about the rest of the magazine was that it was primarily in black and white, a full page photograph of Kevin Lawler (still odd to me) and a big ad advertising the original WWF action figure line. Ring any bells? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeCampbell Posted June 20, 2011 Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 I had a letter printed in the "You Asked Us" column of "The Wrestler" when I was fifteen. I'd asked JJ Dillon why Hall and Giant weren't stripped of the WCW Tag Titles for failure to defend them, when Flair had been stripped of the U.S. Title for that reason (hey, I was still a total mark). "JJ Dillon" replied that he didn't recall the particulars of the Flair situation, but that Scott Hall hadn't exactly been in condition to perform (this was late '98 when he came out on Nitro drunk every week) and it was unfair to the Giant. My favorite of those mags is still the Wrestling 83, Wrestling 84, Wrestling 85, etc. quaterly mags. My uncle had given me a couple of them in the early '90s and I'd gotten a few more back issues of them from the forms in other mags. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ButchReedMark Posted June 20, 2011 Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 I remember buying a Wrestling magazine in Spring 1998 in our largest magazine shop. It didnt seem to have been distributed elsewhere and I recall it only lasting a couple of issues. Too the very best of my knowledge it wasnt apart of the PWI family but it was American. It had an extensive news section covering WWF, WCW etc to Memphis to CWA in Germany to even some African promotions. The news section was very dirtsheety however from what I remember the rest of the magazine was kayfabe. All I remember about the rest of the magazine was that it was primarily in black and white, a full page photograph of Kevin Lawler (still odd to me) and a big ad advertising the original WWF action figure line. Ring any bells? I bought a magazine that sounds similar around the same time called "New Wave Wrestling" from WHSmiths. It'd publish the "real name" of the Wrestler after their gimmicked name. Henceforth I thought The Rock was really called Duane Glasteau for about 2 years. It had a large write up on Danie Brits in it as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted June 20, 2011 Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 Bingo This is the exact issue I bought: http://www.amazon.com/NEW-WAVE-WRESTLING-M...715&sr=1-12 It had a longer run prior than I thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rzombie1988 Posted June 20, 2011 Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 My favorite of those mags is still the Wrestling 83, Wrestling 84, Wrestling 85, etc. quaterly mags. My uncle had given me a couple of them in the early '90s and I'd gotten a few more back issues of them from the forms in other mags.These are my favorite. I wish I could get some more of these. They are quite underrated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted June 20, 2011 Report Share Posted June 20, 2011 You bought it for the Nicole Bass feature I'm sure, rovert. Yeah, I think I bought one of those mags too once. The PWI almanac was a great find as a British mark. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMFabianoRPL Posted June 23, 2011 Report Share Posted June 23, 2011 The wackiest letters I remember being written to Apter: - The one that proclaimed Typhoon as the greatest wrestler at the time. - The one where someone said Stan Hansen's Triple Crown meant less than the U.S. title because he beat "a bunch of nobodies like Mitsuhara Misawa" - Anything Harry Simon wrote, knowing his intentions now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted June 23, 2011 Report Share Posted June 23, 2011 At least when I read New Wave, all of their ads were for stuff they sold: Old merchandise & VHS releases, etc. I dunno if they ever took outside ads but it struck me as odd and I don't remember much else about the magazine. Where they hell did the "Dwayne Glastieu" rumors come from, anyway? That wasn't even Rocky Johnson's real name before he and Ata became U.S. citizens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted June 23, 2011 Report Share Posted June 23, 2011 I remember Luger beating Misawa in their 900 number tournament, 88% to 12%, with comments from some guy in Cedar Rapids, IA about how Luger would destroy Misawa. I wasn't really watching Japanese wrestling at that point in my life, so it didn't bug me like it would have a few years later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cross Face Chicken Wing Posted June 24, 2011 Report Share Posted June 24, 2011 My parents would sporadically buy me PWI or something similar right around the time when I started to think that girls were hot instead of full of cooties. I remember many of these magazines advertising nude womens wrestling videos in the back, complete with descriptions and pictures (albeit with a black bar across the naughty parts). These mags really heped me grow into the male chauvinist pig that I am today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khawk20 Posted June 24, 2011 Report Share Posted June 24, 2011 - Anything Harry Simon wrote, knowing his intentions now. Can you elaborate for me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted June 24, 2011 Report Share Posted June 24, 2011 This shit fucked me up as a kid.... http://ringpsychology.files.wordpress.com/...w=355&h=480 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artDDP Posted June 25, 2011 Report Share Posted June 25, 2011 I remember when I was around 11 or 12 starting to wonder why London Publishing had so many damn monthly magazines and why weren't they all available at one bookstore? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted June 25, 2011 Report Share Posted June 25, 2011 PWI, Wrestler, and Inside Wrestling were all monthly for sure...I think Sports Review Wrestling might have been as well. The rest were all quarterlies or short runs, IIRC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted June 25, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 25, 2011 PWI, Wrestler, and Inside Wrestling were all monthly for sure...I think Sports Review Wrestling might have been as well. The rest were all quarterlies or short runs, IIRC. Exactly. Those were the big four. Sports Review Wrestling was always the "red headed step child" of the line, but I remember it being my favorite one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted June 27, 2011 Report Share Posted June 27, 2011 Someone in the States satisfy my curiousness what issue of PWI is on US newstands currently? Over here it is the post Mania issue. Are we behind or is that just the production schedule. I also saw the Wrestler and Inside Wrestling as a double magazine this morning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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