Introduction to the Board as a wrestling fan

[soup23]

We are getting a lot of new blood around here lately which is great. I just read two posts from Toby in the New Japan juniors page that was very insightful.

 

However, I think it might be worthwhile if the newbies and maybe some "vets" on the board give a little frame of reference of where we are as a wrestling fan. I know this always help me when reading through the discussions in knowing what the general opinion of each poster going in is. I don't need a life story but hopefully this thread can be a good starting point to plunge into the world that is PWO.

 

I will start.

 

My name is Chad and am 26 years old. I am born and raised in the southeastern United States which coincides to my preferences structurally in a match. Since my age is reflected though, I missed out on the territory scene of the 80's and was predominantly a WWF fan for most of my childhood. Since then I have embraced all wrestling promotions and enjoy really good old NWA matches as much as I do new lucha stuff.

 

All time favorite matches:

1. 6/9/95 All Japan Misawa/Kobashi vs. Taue/Kawada

2. Clash 6 Flair vs. Steamboat

3. El Dandy vs. El Satanico 12/14/90

 

All time favorite wrestlers:

1. Ric Flair

2. Mitsuharu Misawa

3. Vader

[goodhelmet]

I moved this to feedback.

[ohtani's jacket]

Man, I totally thought this was going to be about how we were introduced to the board. I was going to reminisce about when it was called New Millenium Blues and we were young and could talk about things other than pro-wrestling, and Will's Spurs were still winning championships. Actually, this is the 8th year of coming here and I think the thing I admire most about Will and Loss is that when things like the yearbooks were just a pipe dream they actually saw them through not like the thousands of abandoned projects that make up the web.

[BrickHithouse]

James, 35, spent all my life in rural KS and the sprawling metropolis of Wichita.

 

Can remember watching as early as '82, World Class on satellite and what must have been Central States TV, but no vivid memories.

 

WWF syndies and the Cartoon hit around here in 1985 and I was hopelessly hooked right away, and turned up a notch in 1989 by keeping detailed notebooks of all TV results, match times, and feuds going on in WWF and JCP (to a lesser extent).

 

Lost interest the minute Hogan returned in early '93, quit following cold turkey and got hooked again in '96 after hearing about the Hogan heel turn. What actually hooked me was flipping over to WWF and seeing that my favorites from the early 90's were now WWF headliners (Austin, Cactus, Bret).

 

Quit paying close attention in late 1998 and have been in and out ever since.

 

Total WWF guy, but if I want to sit down and watch wrestling purely for in-ring, it's All Japan. Generally tend to like everything I've seen from everywhere, though, and aim to see it all eventually.

[Ricky Jackson]

Well, off comes the mask...

 

I'm Kelly, 35, born in Saskatchewan, raised in Calgary, live in Vancouver.

 

Stumbled upon wrestling during the hype for Mania 2 and within months I was pretty hardcore for a 8-9 year old, watching everything I could (WWF, Stampede, AWA), collecting the mags and LJN WWF dolls, and proudly wearing a Roddy Piper shirt around school. My favorite time as a wrestling fan was the early-90s when I was in high school and wrestling was extremely uncool, but me and my closest friends still loved it. We went to a bowling alley/casino (the Silver Dollar Action Centre) to watch WWF PPVs on closed circuit, attended local shows together (Rocky Mountain Wrestling), and had a backyard wrestling thing going on (I was "Mr. Excellence" Ricky Jackson). Late-90s I followed WWF and WCW of course, but also bought several ECW tapes from RF. By 2001 I was pretty much done with wrestling. Got back into it in 2005 when I moved to the west coast and fell into the habit of watching Raw with my roommate. Around 2007 I started getting into the history of wrestling pretty heavy, became friends with a guy who had a sub to the Observer, and started to watch old Japan and lots of territory stuff. Discovered PWO totally by accident--I was reading a review of a random 93 WCW PPV on the 411 site, a poster in the comments section mentioned this site, I checked it out, and I instantly gave my wife another reason to bitch about me wasting time on wrestling.

 

I was raised a WWF guy, but I'm into all sorts of wrestling, mostly pre-90s stuff. Love Memphis, old Japan, and anything from the 70s and early 80s. There is tons of stuff I plan on watching, but I often find it hard to motivate myself to watch a substantial amount of wrestling alone. I love watching wrestling with fellow fans and other people, and right now I only know one other wrestling fan where I live, and I only see him once in a blue moon these days. I do have a plan to really commit myself to watching a lot of the pimped stuff from this board and other stuff like 1970s Portland, starting today actually.

 

This board is really fun and very humbling. In "real life" I've always been the wrestling expert, the biggest fan in any group. Here, I'm just another guy who has watched a lot of WWF.

 

Favorite wrestlers:

 

Savage, Flair, Bret Hart (just because I'm Canadian ), Steamboat, Santana, Piper, Backlund, Dusty Rhodes, Lawler, Jake Roberts and many others.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

Hello. My name is Cross Face Chicken Wing, and I'm a wrestling addict.

 

I'm 31 and my first memory of wrestling was my dad renting the family a VCR and getting us Wrestlemania III. I was hooked through about mid-1995, mostly on WWF because that's all we got on network TV growing up in small-town Minnesota. I do remember watching some AWA on Sunday mornings and going to a live AWA event where Wahoo McDaniel was supposed to face Manny Fernandez. Unfortunately, the Raging Bull's flight was "cancelled," so Wahoo chopped the hell out of Pat Tanaka for 7 minutes instead.

 

I checked out of the wrestling world for a bit, but came back around 1997 thanks to buzz among my friends about the NWO and Hogan vs. Sting. I got into VHS tape trading, often swapping Metallica concerts for wrestling videos. I was mainly into old-school NWA because I didn't get to see it growing up and loved the product. I checked out for a bit again around 2001 or 02, but came back around a few years later.

 

PWO means I likely will never check out of wrestling again. The business of wrestling fascinates me, and there's always some discussion on the busiess aspect of wrestling going on here. The comp-makers that float around the boards also ensure that I will never run out of fresh old-school footage to add to my collection and watch.

[JerryvonKramer]

I am also known as Parv. I am 30, from the UK, originally from South Wales but now living just outside London in England.

 

I didn't discover wrestling until I was 8 in 1990, but when I did was absolutely captivated by it. My parents did not have satellite TV so I mainly had to depend on WWF VHS tapes or catching shows at friends' houses. Around late 1991, I found they were showing WCW Worldwide at around 2 or 3am on Thursday nights so I'd set the VCR to tape them and sometimes even stay up to watch -- caught the whole Dangerous Alliance angle and Flair coming back in 93, but there was no way to get the PPVs.

 

I was always a heel fan through and through. I cheered heels and hated the faces. This possibly because heels were usually intelligent characters and faces were guys like Jim Duggan. Little Parv was never going to root for a guy like Jim Duggan, he meant nothing to me. "Look at the snot hanging out of his nose!" I know, Jesse, what are these idiots cheering for?

 

After a bit of a dip in 95, I more or less stayed on board through the Monday Night Wars which was made easier by the fact my parents got satellite AND, for whatever reason, we got all PPVs for free in the UK. Followed things pretty much until about 2005/6. By then most of the things that had got me into wrestling in the first place had been eroded to the point where the presentation was actively annoying me and I couldn't watch it anymore. This remains my view now -- I'm sure there are great wrestlers active today, but the presentation on WWE TV, scripted promos and all the rest of it, is something I can't tolerate.

 

I've been through spells of being a purely "ironic" fan, liking wrestling mainly for its kitsch value and collecting Coliseum Home Videos in order to watch dodgy Dino Bravo matches and be mildly amused by Sean Mooney skits. I discovered PWO through the Good Will Wrestling podcast when I got in touch with Will to buy the Mid-South Set and then discovered this place and through that a whole world of footage and a community that at one point I could never have even dreamed existed. I remain chiefly interested in the 80s and early 90s and, for the past couple of years, have been generally trying to see as much as I can from that period.

 

All time favorite matches:

1. Flair vs. Steamboat, Clash 6

2. Tully Blanchard vs. Magnum TA, Starrcade 85

3. Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu Yoshiaki Yatsu (1/28/86)

 

All time favorite wrestlers:

1. Ric Flair

2. Ted DiBiase

3. Arn Anderson or Irwin R. Shyster Jumbo Tsuruta

[Exposer]

People outside of this board call me Devon. I'm unfortunately related to this guy named Dylan ( ). I'm 20 years old and currently studying Communications at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (It's okay I guess). I was born in Charleston, South Carolina but grew up here in the Chatt area.

 

My wrestling obsession started in January 2000, around the time many others here started to fall back. My first wrestling memories are a really cool Ric Flair poster on that Dylan guy's bedroom wall and the episode of RAW in early '98 where Taker came back from the grave to challenge Kane.

 

What got me into wrestling though was the Royal Rumble 2000. This Dylan guy use to tape PPV's and lended Royal Rumble 2000 a few days after it aired to my Dad. I remember not being allowed in my parents room because the Miss Royal Rumble Contest was going on and Mae Young was exposing her breasts. I had no clue why I was being banned from the room so my curiosity peaked. I ended up watching the entire Rumble match with my parents which was a blast and vividly remember my Mom dancing along with Rikishi when he and Too Cool were doing their shtick in the middle of the Rumble.

 

After that I progressively started to watch RAW every week and by early March 2000 I was in for good. Sometimes, said Dylan guy would come over and turn on some shitty programming called WCW Nitro. I would pitch fits and complain every time he did. Oddly enough, I began watching Thunder religiously after WCW Thunder was the first live wrestling show I'd ever been too (boy that's frightening to think about).

 

I've watched extremely steadily ever since and only backed off during football season of '05 and '06. I enjoy watching old footage. It's a lot of fun to continue learning about wrestling and its history. From '01 to '04 I used to go to a southern indy fed on a regular basis called UEW (Ultimate Extreme Wrestling). I've been to so many other shows since then. They're a lot of fun too. The year I participated in the WWF Smarkschoice poll reeled me in big time and then the following year's WCW poll sealed the deal on my exploration of older wrestling.

 

I just think it's a little odd that I became a wrestling fan partially due to a senior citizen exposing their breast.

 

My favorite matches are:

 

1. War Games 1994

 

2. Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk (Empty Arena)

 

3. Any number of other great matches

 

My favorite wrestlers are Terry Funk, Buddy Rose, Negro Casas, Genechiro Tenryu, Mark Henry, Rey Mysterio, and Chris Jericho was my favorite when I was little.

[Zenjo]

I'm David, 32 years old from England. Looking for an 18 ye... No sorry wrong forum.

 

I have vague memories of watching the odd World of Sport episode in the late 80's before British wrestling disappeared off the air. I first became a fan in 1991 though when I started getting WWF videos and magazines. Plus I would go to the live events whenever they toured over here. WCW Worldwide began airing at around that time so I became a fan of that to. By mid 94 I'd lost interest and watched nothing for the next 3 years. That was until September 1997 after I finally convinced my parents to get satellite TV. I started to watch Raw and Nitro every week and was hooked.

 

That was enough for me until 2001/2002 when I started to get tired of the WWE. I wanted more workrate and less BS. But I had no wrestling knowledge outside of it, and wasn't aware of the alternatives. It was a decade ago this month that I got my 1st taste of Japanese wrestling. A horrible VQ comp off eBay, but it didn't matter. Within a year I'd stopped watching WWE entirely as I started buying tapes of all the Puroresu classics that I could find. It was a great match binge. Over the next 5 years I watched hundreds of DVD as I filled out my viewing of the promotions I liked best. AJW quickly became my favourite and has remained that way. I followed the current scene in Japan as well, but that got worse by the year and I haven't seen that much since 2007.

 

I never stopped watching but my viewing had certainly dipped in recent years. Then 18 months ago I discovered Goodhelmets comps. With the 80's sets and the Yearbooks my interest was revitalised. From now on I may go through periods without wrestling, but I know I'll keep on coming back to it. With the yearbooks they'll always be things I want to watch. If they keep coming out then that's my viewing sorted for the rest of the decade.

[Boon]

I'm Tony, I live just outside London and im 26. I've been a wrestling fan since 1992. The way I got into wrestling was thought my dad who was a big World Of Sport fan and we just got Sky just before the boom in the UK (summer 1992). Wrestling would be held monthly at Centre Halls in my small town of Woking thought out the 70s and 80s that my dad would attend, stories he has told would imply him and his mates would be work rate fans rather than Big Daddy fans. We still sit and watch WOS to this day and have a laugh and joke.

 

I would regiously watch WWF at the weekends, Mania (Saturday at mid day), Superstars (5pm Saturday), Challenge (12 on Sunday) and AAW (5pm Sunday). This would be routine from mid 1992 until early 1995 when less and less people watch at school and I played football more and more. I would recorded as much as I could, and label all my PPVs with dates and cards etc. We didn't have a LP VCR so I recorded everything in SP, to have them tapes now, the quality would be awesome.

 

Early 1996 I stumbled across Nitro on Cartoon Network and saw some similar faces and started watching again full time only this time not recording as much. I moved to a new estate in mid 1997 where there were kids who watched Raw weekly and all the PPVs, from there it was non stop. Started secondary school in 98 and everyone watched, wrestling exploded in the UK. You would walk thought town and all the market stalls would be selling posters and t shirts.

 

Because I had recorded so much as a kid I would have alot of stuff people wanted to watch so I started trading my own recordings for Silver Vision tapes. I believe I actually trader tapes via a mate of mine with Mark Sloan, he wanted all the wrestlemanias and I had a live recording of Wrestlemania 9. It wouldn't be unusal to finish school and walk home with 5-6 tapes in my bag from swapping tapes. I even had recordings of ECW from Bravo that no one would want to trade?

 

Thought the next decade I watched everything I could find on TV, but interest was soon lost with my friends. I started following Ring Of Honor in 2005 via the Wrestling Channel and I was hooked more than ever. Started trading full time in 2009, and was introduce to this website by another trader Magnum Milano and I believe this is the best website on the net for my needs.

[TobyNotJason]

Very much enjoy reading these. I sort of introduced myself in the other thread, but that was more "how I found this board", so here's my "wrestling origin" story.

 

I'm Toby. Not Jason. I'm old, but I don't look it. I grew up in the same rich Minneapolis suburb Ric Flair did. Legit. Gordon Solie just name-dropped it on some 1985 Florida TV I was watching (not in reference to Flair - he was being coy). I'm pretty sure his parents lived like a mile away. I wasn't allowed to watch much TV other than the Dukes of Hazzard and live sports until 1985.

 

My first wrestling memory was this neighbor kid giving me this retrospective play-by-play of this amazing wrestling thing he'd seen where there was gonna be a giant "battle royal" (WHOA! THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!) and the last guy to arrive for it had pulled up in this limo and you just saw his giant hand at first as he got out and then it was this dude HULK HOGAN who was SUPER AWESOME. That's how the kid told it to me, anyway. Thinking about it now, I think it must have an AWA thing... I feel like I was sufficiently young when this happened that it would've been before he jumped back to WWF. I never really figured it out. Maybe he made it up. Kids do that.

 

But I spent MONTHS thinking about how cool the stuff the neighbor kid had told me was and wondering how I, too, could see this "pro wrestling" that sounded so magical.

 

Anyway, sometime in 1985 the barriers slipped enough and I'd occasionally be able to catch a WWF syndie. Snuka and Steamboat were my instant favorites. I mean, they were all fast and did cool stuff from the top rope, while a lot of these guys were sooooo slow. At first I liked Hogan, but then I kind of didn't. By the time they showed the highlights of Muraco/Bundy destroying him I thought that was cool, I remember. (And wondered what this "Saturday Night's Main Event" thing was.) I went mental for the British Bulldogs when they came in. But even as a 10 year old, I was like "wait, how can this Terry Funk guy be branding that dude if there's no heat source for his branding iron, and also, wouldn't they arrest him if he were burning the flesh of another man?" (On rewatch now I realized they don't actually sell that he's legit branding people, but they create a kind of gray area such that the kid-me thought BRANDING FOR REALZ was what they were selling, and I didn't buy it.)

 

I watched replays of Wrestlemania 2 ad nauseum. People shit on that PPV and I STILL love it. I can watch Randy Savage run in fear of George Steele all. day. long. I loved Steele at the time. Now I realize it was (mostly) Savage making that shit so entertaining (and it IS entertaining, no matter what people say), but I can still watch all the Steele/Savage stuff and be totally content.

 

By 1986, though, I'd found Crockett's TBS show and Mr. Flair and the four fucking horsemen. At some point I figured out he was from my 'burb and that sealed my fandom. I started to really hate Hogan. I had like 3 wrestling magazines that I read over and over and over and over and over and I cannot tell you how much they fueled my imagination. Florida!?!?!? Memphis!?!?!? Wha.....? My favorite toy was the pro wrestling USA he-man dudes. I had the freebirds, martel/flair, roadies, longriders, the high flyers... I think jim garvin. I feel like a couple more. I had the AWA ring. I had this blood make up stuff I would put on them when the "bled" and kept a notebook full of results and champions. I was a pretty good booker for age 11. I knew dude's couldn't bleed every match and I knew you sometimes had to give a little push to guys you didn't like to make it mean something when other dude's killed them. (Buddy Roberts and Greg Gagne jump out at me. I'd put my TV belt on them.)

 

By late 86/early 87 I could watch what I wanted and I consumed everything I possibly could. I watched WCCW and thought it was great. Crockett's syndicated programs was the stuff of dreams, but why did they always HAVE TO GO, TONY!?!??!?!

 

My dad knew a guy who occasionally did ring announcing, and the only times I got to go to matches was when that dude would hook my dad up with tickets. I saw a WWF Met Center card Dec 28, 1985 (I just figured this out thanks to historyofwwe) that had a wild Steamboat/Muraco brawl that led to a return match. The ring announcer announced the return match and the stips and said he had the signed contract "here in his hands". I got the "signed contract" from my dad's friend. Which was in fact a sheet of paper stating word-for-word what the ring announcer's announcement had said, with Steamboat and Muraco's signatures. Hmmm....

 

I got to go to a WWF card at the St. Paul Civic Center that had a Savage/Steamboat cage match on it. I made a sign for Savage that had some bikini-clad Elizabeth pictures on it from a non-WWF wrestling magazine. Risque, I know. I was pretty much a heel fan by that point. Thanks to my dad's friend I got to meet Savage and Elizabeth backstage before the card. It was funny, because they legit had their own dressing room, totally away from everything else (I assume, since there was no one around at all). In light of all the Savage-crazy-jealousy stories, it adds up. I remember the dude was cool to me and Elizabeth was super nice. They signed my sign.

 

Anyway, try as I might, I could never find my way to a Crockett show. They'd bring cards that were just STUPID loaded and all I'd ever get was a "we'll see". I became a *HUGE* UWF mark when that popped up in late 86 or early 87 and tried everything I could think of to beg my way to their '87 show at the Met Center (and I think a wrestlingclassics forum informs me we would have been 1st or 2nd row if we'd gone because NO ONE showed up), but I was skunked again.

 

I did get my parents to spring for the AWA Christmas 86 PPV with The Rockers vs. Rose/Summers, and that was incredible. I can tell you, they absolutely did not make it any clearer than mud that the belts were not on line. Verne, you magnificent bastard. I still have the DVD transfer off my original tape. As a giant Dusty mark I did manage to beg as a late XMas present the Bunkhouse Stampede PPV. I was so stoked. Besides Flair, I was probably the biggest mark for Jim Ross of all people. Dude could sell me ANYTHING in 1987 and 1988. By WM 3 I was barely interested in WWF stuff at all, although Savage/Steamboat captivated me. I wanted Andre to win but knew that wouldn't happen. I spent a LOT of time thinking about the "NWA"'s production values and hoping/wishing they'd improve, because even though I liked it fine as is, I knew the dark arenas and primitive graphics were why all the kids at school only cared about the WWF.

 

I drifted out a bit in late 88/89 as I got closer to high school but Flair/Steamboat sucked me back a little. I saw their Clash stuff, and then Flair v. Funk at the Clash was probably my last childhood hurrah before I stopped watching altogether, just before high school.

 

Greatest Wrestling Fan Moment: One day in 1991 I had just gotten my driver's license and went to this nerd store in Dinkytown by the U of MN to sell some nerd games. (D&D, wargames, etc.) I walked past a bar called Fowl Play. This was a jocks-get-drunk-and-fall-down-then-try-to-get-date-rapey kinda place that no one who's over 22 really had a reason to go to. So I'm walking past one of the open doorways (it was a fine summer-ish day) carrying my box of nerdery and I look up at the man on the pay phone in the door and keep walking and then stop dead as my brain catches up with my feet and I just kinda of slowly walk backwards and look up at the man on the pay phone in the door way and say "You're Ric Flair," because it was. He said "yes I am." I said "cool". Then I went and sold my nerd games. But that was kind of great, and in retrospect I can't imagine how it was in that bar that afternoon: 40 year old Flair, about to jump to WWF, knocking 'em down with 18 year olds with fake IDs. I wonder if nudity ensued? (I checked at the time and neither company was in town, so I think this was literally in the middle of The Jump.)

 

Renaissance/Smarky Period: In 1994 and 1995 I kept having conversations at punk rock shows about wrestling, and when I accidentally happened on some dude named The Crippler destroying some dude with a table on a TV show on Midwest Sports Channel that was definitely not WWF or WCW in 1995 I reached out to the dudes I'd talk about it with and within weeks we had a regular "date" for watching ECW. I jumped into the Monday Night Wars on like the 3rd week of Nitro and preferred WCW for the cruisers and Horsemen stuff until WWF started to get sneaky good. I stuck with it obsessively and accumulated way more tapes than I could afford via Lynch/Barnett/McAdams/Socha until the botched Invasion and went cold turkey until a 2007-ish binge, which resulted only in watching everything mid-south and the 1985 season of WWF All-Star Wrestling. I found this place because I decided to finally start watching the rest of the DVDs I splurged on in 2007-ish.

 

So anyway, I like everything, as long as it's well done. I've been watching Memphis lately and even though the stuff I have is heavy on the promos/angles, there's enough work for me to be super pumped on Dundee and Lawler.

 

I like the Fantastics more than most people. I LOVE Buddy Landell. LOVE. I enjoy watching Kobashi sweat.

 

Proudest Achievement:

There's an episode of Nitro from the Target Center where my buddy and I are in Lucha masks and I have him in the Torture Rack pretty much center screen right behind the ring for a good little while.

 

Anyway, I have no illusions that I'm going to become a regular contributor, but this board is fantastic and the debates/discussions I've pored over thus far are frigging marvelous.

[MojoJsyn]

I'm Jay, 33 year old wrestling fan from southern Ohio.

 

I started watching wrestling around the birth of Hulkamania. Loved Hulk and the Road Warriors as a kid. My fandom grew around two events, the Dusty spike in the eye and Mania 4.

 

Around 89/90 my WWF viewing dwindled and started to really love WCW. Stopped watching in late 94 early 95. Only caught a show here and there til the summer of 97. Started back watching Stone Cold and WWF since when I quit watching Stunning Steve was one of my favorites. Loved the Monday Night Wars.

 

To this day my fandom is still there. Love being a fan nowadays with all the available footage out there and especially on youtube.

 

Don't have a favorite match or wrestler that I could pinpoint and say this one is my absolute favorite.

 

My favorite wrestlers in no order are Eddie Guerrero, Steve Austin, and Ric Flair.

 

Some of my favorite matches are War Games 92, Flair/Steamboat Clash 6, Austin/Bret Mania 13, Austin/Bret SS.

[thebrainfollower]

I'm Rob, 33 year old fan from North Central MA.

 

The earliest memory I have of wrestling is my dad and I watching a match on TV. I THINK it was WWF and featured two long haired blond guys, one in green the other yellow and my dad commenting that this was a better match than was typical for TV. I would guess Hogan vs. Valentine except that was never on the tv show. Timeframe would have been late 84 so maybe Windham took on somebody?

 

I got into it via the Rock and Wrestling cartoon and my earliest memory I can place is watching the replay of the Bulldogs beating Valentine and Beefcake at WM 2. That's what hooked me as a fan, as I have vivid memories of the Savage-Steamboat injury angle and Andre-Hogan confrontation at Piper's Pit. I was a hardcore WWF fan and stayed that way for a long time. We didn't get cable until 1993, and I was not allowed to watch SNME as it was on too late so my only viewings were Superstars and Challenge as well as the Main Event shows. We went to a few random house shows in Worcester and Fitchburg until my dad's arthritis kicked in and times got tough for us.

 

We did have a Betamax VCR and my local store had all the PPV's up to Royal Rumble 89 and a bunch of random tapes (oddly enough the ones Jerry Von Kramer wanted the most, Macho Madness and Best of the WWF 17 we had 2 copies in Beta and 3 in VHS). They also had one WCW tape Starrcade 90 so I might be the only wrestling fan whose first Ric Flair match watched was him as someone other than Ric Flair.

 

I stayed a fan through the dark ages as my friends left. In the summer of 93 we got cable and a VHS VCR. Allowed me to catch up on tons of PPV's and even a few JCP tapes. I would watch WCW Saturday night ever now and then but stayed a diehard WWF fan until Bobby Heenan (check out my user name) came to WCW then I watched both regularly. Stayed a fan throughout the Monday night wars and only stopped paying attention around 2002. But I was and am such a huge Trish Stratus mark I stayed watching Raw until she retired mostly to watch her segments. Not just her look but the fact that someone who looked like that actually cared enough to become a very good wrestler overall as opposed to say Stacy and Torrie.

 

I started going online in the fall of 98 at college and discovered Scott Keith and various other online people like CRZ who definitely had an impact on my opinions as a fan.

 

My favorite wrestlers to watch are probably Arn Anderson, Ricky Steamboat, Bret Hart, Undertaker and Trish Stratus. I would argue the best of all time for me to watch are Flair, Bockwinkel and Lawler. I think there is, and should be, a huge distinction between what you consider the best and what you consider your favorites. I watch Raw every now and then if my friends are watching it and catch the occasional PPV but nothing keeps me interested. I did one indy show as a heel commentator and busted out every Heenan, Ventura and Cornette remark I could. Funny thing is it got so much heat the promoter came to me halfway and asked me to end the show getting laid out by the babyface champion, which I did, doing a 360 off a headbutt.

 

 

My two favorite matches are Royal Rumble 92 and Warrior-Savage at WM VII.

[PeteF3]

Okay...

 

Peter, 30, from Columbus, Ohio. My father was a longtime wrestling fan so I was exposed to it right from the start. My first wrestling memory would either be the Piper/Snuka coconut attack (which was pretty scary to a two-year old) or the Jesse Ventura/Ivan Putski arm wrestling match--whichever came first. This all came with the rise of WWF nationalism and the Rock 'n Wrestling Era, and in hindsight I regret not coming along a few years earlier when Columbus was part of the Georgia Championship Wrestling circuit. As it was, as a child I was fully in favor of the glitz and showmanship of the WWF over the "bad wrestling," which was just about everything else.

 

Still, knowledge of a wrestling world beyond the WWF crept in. I liked the AWA action figures as much or more than my extensive WWF LJN collection, so I had passing knowledge of what was going on there. Certain guys still drew my attention--Flair, the Road Warriors, Abdullah the Butcher. I plowed through books my dad had like George Napolitano's Pictorial History of Wrestling and Roberta Morgan's Main Event, so I had knowledge of a pre-Hogan WWF world of guys like Backlund and Billy Graham. My fandom start waning in 1989--after Hogan thoroughly vanquished Savage at WrestleMania 5 I found little reason to invest more time in the WWF, and Zeus was not enough to bring me back. Then we got the Warrior/Hogan build to WrestleMania--I ordered WM because it was WM but truthfully my thoughts in the Yearbook threads are very much the same as what I was thinking watching the buildup promos at the time. This general souring on the WWF came at a time when I got hooked on the Apter magazines, and suddenly I was reading about some of the craziest shit I'd ever heard of: a dude named Jerry Lawler who wins and loses his belt every other week and throws FIRE(??). The Moondogs wreaking havoc on the city of Memphis and throwing battery acid into people's eyes? Everyone talking about what this Bill Watts guy was doing to WCW? I was becoming a Memphis fan without even seeing their product and becoming a WCW watcher the more old WWF favorites like Steamboat and Rude turned up on its programming. This type of urban-legend wrestling would continue to fascinate me through the rise of ECW in the mid-to-late '90s.

 

I continued to stick with the WWF more or less out of habit and a few odd angles that I really got into, like the Backlund heel turn. But 1994 and '95 were lean, lean years. I'd seen my first Japanese wrestling at a gathering of fans in 1994 (Hansen vs. Misawa...don't know the date, just that Misawa went over and Hansen worked over his elbow with a briefcase at one point) but wasn't hooked in by it yet. The Monday Night Wars finally made wrestling a must-watch again, and that's where I spent almost every Monday night for the next 4 years until I went off to college. It was then that wrestling ceased to be a must-watch and outside of a few brief flings, it's remained that way. I follow what's happening and will check out the stuff that's pimped, but I generally agree with Parv that the WWE presentation is so formulaic and stilted that I find it hard to sit through it for any appreciable length of time, regardless of the actual wrestling talent level which I'm sure objectively blows the 1989-90 product out of the water.

 

Post-college finally gave me the opportunity to start buying shit online and I was finally watching this talked-about Japanese (and later, British) stuff for myself. I'm now at the point where I honestly don't need a strong weekly show anymore, as there's simply too much good shit that's new to me even if it's far from new. That includes 99% of the lucha that's ever been recorded, most of the joshi that's ever been recorded, and the territorial finds on these Yearbooks and '80s sets. I'll be set for a good long while.

 

Favorite matches:

- Hart vs. Austin, I Quit

- Andre the Giant vs. Killer Khan, 4/1/82

- Flair vs. Steamboat + post-match attack, Music City Showdown

- Jumbo vs. Tenryu, 6/5/89

- Billy Robinson vs. Giant Baba, 1976

 

Favorite wrestlers: Flair, Jumbo, Austin, Billy Robinson, Terry Funk, Stan Hansen, Bobby Eaton, Mitsuharu Misawa.

[voicesinmyhead08]

Hello, my name is Dustin and I am the older brother of the exposer (Devon) and another younger brother of the infamous Dylan Waco both of whom contribute regularly to this board. I am 23 years old and live in the Chattanooga area, I just recently graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (psychology). Being a younger brother of Dylan got me familiar with wrestling throughout most of my life. My earliest memories of wrestling were when Dylan would send me on sandwich runs (because he didn't want to miss any wrestling), and he would call me into the room when the Undertaker was wrestling.

 

My true interest in wrestling sparked in January 2000 during the same rumble that Devon discussed earlier in his above introduction. After about a month or so I watched every Raw and any wrestling show I could consistently for around 8 or 9 years. When I went to college, I moved into the dorms and I didn't watch as much wrestling. In 2011 I got a night shift job at a warehouse (which I am still working at currently), and combined with school I fell out of watching wrestling almost entirely.

 

Since graduating in December I have slowly gotten back into wrestling, and I am once again rekindling my obsession. As of right now Dylan and Devon both have me beat in the wrestling obsession, however I hope to regain my prior status and explore as well as analyze many different wrestlers and promotion. I am excited about joining this board because I feel there will be a lot of good conversation and wrestling knowledge being exchanged.

 

Favorite wrestlers: Terry Funk, Ric Flair, Steve Austin, Randy Orton (some weird obsession, not really sure why)

[Negro Suave]

Hi I am the Negro Suave, also known as Captain Justice Garrison, but ultimately was born as Gerard (Just "G" for short) and I'm 31. I'm from a lot of places, I was born in Brooklyn, NY, lived in Queens, for a while, lived in manhattan for a spell, I spent the longest time in central jersey, ended up back in queens and now I live in philadelphia. Yes it's confusing but really I'm used to moving around.

 

I've been a fan of wrestling since the first time I saw it in summer day camp when I was six years old. My world was completely WWF, I grew up being a huge fan of the Rockers, Demolition, Legion of Doom, Brutus the Barber Beefcake (ironically I wasnt a huge fan of Hogan), to the point I was banned from watching wrestling for a few months because I thought that Mart Janetty "deserved" to get super kicked through the barbershop window.

 

I learned of WCW and began to watch that, and some CMLL whenever i was at my grandparents house (Domincan/Puerto Rican so spanish language channels were always on) and It was a fateful night that I happened upon MSG showing the ECW show and I was hooked there.

 

Like many of us I dreamed of being a professional wrestler, I had friends that were abotu it to and we wrestled in our backyards (Was a film class project even) I eventually found myself a wrestling school and started training. I've been in the biz since 2001 and I am not looking at hanging up the boots anytime soon.

 

Actually happened upon this board because fo a nother person i had met Cox who had been doing the webshow for one of the promotions i work for. When i noted that Goodhelmet was an admin here I was excited to join in on the conversation.

 

My Favorite Wrestlers are Shawn Micheals, Johnny Saint, Demolition, Chris Jerhico, Bret Hart, and Butch Reed. I also like a lot of the modern crop of wrestlers but I've known a few of them for quite sometime and I'm just happy to have seen them make it (Charlie Haas, Antonio Cesaro, Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, Low Ki, Jay Lethal just to name a few)

[Jimmy Redman]

Hey, I'm Stacey, 22 years old, from Sydney, Australia. To add a layer of confusion I am actually a girl, even though I obviously have a male kayfabe name.

 

I began watching WWE in very late 2003, my first memories are basically Steve Austin assembling his Survivor Series team, John Cena rapping at Vince in the ring, Kane giving Biker Taker his eulogy, that kind of thing. I found my way to the internet about 12 months later, and I've been a wrestling tragic ever since.

 

I'm someone who watches WWE religiously and am a WWE fan, and predominantly a modern WWE fan at that. I think that kind of puts me at odds with a lot of hardcore fans, particularly a lot of people on here who have the childhood background and/or extensive viewing in other eras and styles that I simply do not. My good ol' days are 2004.

 

Having said that, I dabble in loads of non-WWE stuff as well. Last year, for example, I went on what I liked to think of as a sort of severely condensed 80s Project where I binged on any and all pimped 80s matches I could find, basically everything that I missed out on not being 20 years older, and introduced myself to loads of cool stuff like PR, World of Sport, Demolition, and my new favourite wrestler Stan Hansen.

 

My favourite wrestler is John Cena. I was a teenage girl in the 00s, what can I say. Other favourites are Trish Stratus, Shawn Michaels, Rey Mysterio, Mark Henry. And now, increasingly, Stan Hansen.

 

My two favourite matches are Cena vs Umaga LMS and Team Austin vs Team Bischoff at Survivor Series 2003.

 

I've been reading this board for quite a long time because I really love the general way that wrestling is viewed, dissected and discussed on here, and I feel I have a similar outlook even though I come from a much more modern perspective.

[Jetlag]

My name's Sebastian, I'm from germany and I'm 19 years old and from germany. I've been fascinated with wrestling ever since I was kid, first discovering it through a WCW game for the N64. Broadcast situation at that time wasn't great so I never got to watch a lot of wrestling. I tried to keep up watching Smackdown (my favourites being Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio and John Cena) until it was moved to a horrendous time slot (thursday midnight). I discovered wrestling on the internet and started scouring the earth for wrestling, sifting through all kinds of stuff, getting all kinds of tapes from german tape traders and finally discovering japanese wrestling that was largely available online, even at that time. I've been watching all sorts of wrestling and wrestling related stuff ever since.

 

Currently my main occupation has been finding footage of german/austrian wrestling from the 80s, first because I was simply curious about what was going on in my home territory at that time, but then I discovered some of that stuff is really, really good. Right now my favourite wrestling styles would be Lucha Libre, Shootstyle and quasi shootstyle (a few things that the Segunda Caida blog did a great job getting me hooked on), altough I can get into nearly all kinds of 'rasslin.

 

I'm a pretty analytical person and I'm studying german language and literary studies aswell as maths in order to become a teacher for secondary schools. I guess that explains why I like to dissect and talk about wrestling matches aswell as reading other people's analysis. That stuff is largely uncovered in a scientific sense. Besides all that seeeerious jazz I mostly hang out with stoners, radical leftists and check out concerts on a regular basis.

[Zenjo]

Currently my main occupation has been finding footage of german/austrian wrestling from the 80s, first because I was simply curious about what was going on in my home territory at that time, but then I discovered some of that stuff is really, really good.

I know there's a DVDR 80's Europe set planned for sometime later this decade! I can't remember seeing German or Austrian wrestling from the period discussed much if at all. So it's definitely an untapped area. Any recommendations you could make in the 80's Project Forum over there would certainly be useful down the line.

[tylerj19]

I'm Tyler and I'm 23. I grew up in the southeast, and was hooked on wrestling for as long as I can remember, thanks to my grandmother. I grew up watching late 80's-early 90's NWA/WCW and mostly Coliseum Home Video stuff from the WWF. I was a WCW guy during the Monday Night Wars, and kept up with the WWE after they ended until about 2004, when I started to drift away. I'll still tune in every now and then, but I prefer to watch older stuff for the most part. I'm trying to broaden my horizons and watch some other promotions, especially AJPW and NJPW.

 

My favorites wrestlers are, in no particular order: Ric Flair, Randy Savage, Arn Anderson, Demolition, and Mr. Perfect.

[Smack2k]

Name is Brian...35 years old...Pittsburgh, PA

 

My wrestling fandom had three stages within a year...

 

Stage 1 - Late 1985 / Early 1986 - Discovered it on TV and of course Hulk Hogan and the rest...Saw WM2 on PPV and became really into it...I have a soft spot for Bundy / Hogan in the cage, so when I see it bashed, I dont see the hate..

 

Stage 2 - September 1986 - Rose / Somers vs. Midnight Rockers - Blood Bath - I became a BIG AWA fan in early 86 watching it on ESPN. It was becoming my favorite promotion of what I got on TV (WWF / AWA / Crockett / WCCW). Then this match happened and I was hooked on wrestling...By the end of this, my mom had to come in and tell me shut up as it was late (I was 8) and I was yelling at the TV (ESPN had AWA TV on late some nights) and HATED Rose and Somers after that for a LONG time...

 

Stage 3 - December 31, 1986 - Bockwinkel vs Hennig - The 60 Min Draw - I know this was taped in Nov, but fuck that, this was from New Year's Eve 1986 and always will be...this is the match that made me completely Obsessed with wrestling and everything about it, and became my de facto #1 thing to want to watch, play with, think about...etc....Best Match EVER? Yeah, I think so...although I am sure I will find better matches in Japan and other places, they will never top this.

 

Since then, I was hooked until mid 1995, when I was 17 and the product just didnt seem fun anymore to me, and partying and other things were. Looking back now, I missed some good wrestling but in a terrible era for angles / characters, etc...I went to Penn State in the Fall of 1996 and became friends with a dude on the other side of my dorm. About a week into school (early September 1996), I went over to hang out and saw his roomate watching Nitro and looked COMPLETELY DIFFERENT? I asked him what was going on and he told me all about the Hogan turn, NWO formation and the rest. Right there, I got hooked again, in a matter of an hour, I was back in 100% and loved it...By November, I was also back into WWF and used to love to watch both shows Monday nights. From there, the years went on and I have been a fan ever since, watching and collecting everything I could. I stopped really watching weekly WWE TV in 2003 and havent really been hooked on it since. I am still obsessed with teh territories and finding things I havent seen or watching things 4 or 5 times that I have seen. Just recently, I have finally discovered wrestling outside the US (mostly Canada / Japan / Puerto Rico) and have become really hooked again and basically get to start over with my fandom learning all about these three places and watching a SHIT TON of stuff I have never seen..

 

So I guess its come full circle now...and with a 2 1/2 year old just starting to want to watch it with me, the cycle looks to be starting again!

[Lee]

Hi all, I'm Lee, 29 from the North East of England. Long-time lurker, finally signed up when DVDVR went down again.

 

Being English, my story is pretty similar to a lot of the other guys here, the cliffs notes being thus:

 

Early Days

 

Arse-end of World of Sport

 

Early 90s Boom

 

WWF on Sky - WCW on ITV - Apter Mags/Superstars of Wrestling/PowerSlam - Coliseum Videos - Hasbros and Galoobs - Merlin sticker albums - New Japan on Eurosport - Gladiators takes over as the hot new thing on the playground - mid 90s slump

 

Late 90s Resurgence

 

Nitro hits TNT - German satellite TV with DSF carrying everything - ECW on Bravo - underground tape trading and Japanese imports - those incredible Friday nights - getting online and becoming deeply immersed in the behind the scenes stuff

 

2000s

 

DVDs making trading so much easier - YouTube and torrents making trading largely pointless - training for a time until other commitments took over - working UK indies in various roles - realising a dream when I did live commentary for a card... and having portions of that card later broadcast on TV

 

---

 

I'm basically just as addicted to the business as I was when I first discovered as a child, and unlike a lot of folks I know who are still fans, I never actually had that period where fell out of it. Here in the UK, for most that would have been after SummerSlam '92 and before the rise of Steve Austin and the nWo, but I was just as hardcore a fan then as ever, always fantasy booking, reading magazines, collecting action figures, etc. I watch just about anything, all promotions and all eras, but my affinity lies with what got me into wrestling, late 80s and early 90s WWF and WCW, though Friday nights here in 1998 and 1999 were amazing with the amount of stuff we had on TV.

 

I'm kind of sad that I trained to wrestle but never had a match, and at 29 I feel like that window is probably behind me since I got deeply out of shape, but I do make a few pennies from a series of Coliseum Video guide books I co-write. I'm not making a living but hell, I get to watch and write about pro wrestling, and it nets me a little bit of pocket money on the side, so that can't be bad. In fact, now that I think about it, I could just post one of my author bios from those books so here goes:

 

His name is Lee Maughan and his idea of a romantic date with the girl he'd been lusting after for 18 months was a trip to the cinema to see Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, which, believe it or not, was her choice. The jammy bastard. Actually, it was the last date they went on together, though clearly that was all down to her projectile vomiting into an empty pick n' mix bag after Randy the Ram had shoved his hand into a meat thresher at the deli, and not, as common sense would have you believe, because he's a wrestling obsessed nerd with a tramp's beard.

 

Wrestling has always been a major part of Lee's life, and he has had the honour of being asked to conduct in-depth Q&A sessions with such industry luminaries as Ric Flair, Bret Hart and Eric Bischoff, although none of them ever actually happened. He was also once contacted about being used as a colour commentator alongside Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler for an independent card in the UK. That one didn't happen either, but he did at least realise a life-long ambition when he was invited to provided live, ringside commentary at an event in November, 2007 for matches which later aired both nationally and internationally on digital television station TWC Fight. An immensely proud achievement in his life, albeit one he's still never actually seen, as nobody he knew even subscribed to the one cable provider in the country that actually carried the damn channel. Oh, and he once had a question printed in Power Slam, but they got his name wrong.

 

He was once told by highly respected veteran Tracy Smothers that he'd one day make himself a very rich man from the pro wrestling industry. It is perhaps Lee's single greatest regret that he never thought to ask Smothers how exactly to go about achieving such goals, and despite having already contributed to no less than three volumes of The Complete WWF Video Guide, he remains a veritable wrestling pauper, his most prized industry payoff being an authentic Scotty Flamingo-autographed Polaroid picture, even though his friends insisted on putting him off when the snap was taken, and he looks like a total dingus in it.

www.HistoryOfWrestling.info is where to go for info on my Coliseum Video/Monday Night RAW guide book series, paperbacks and Kindle versions available! That's the other thing about me I guess, expect me to intermittently shill those books every now and then! (I promise not to be overbearing about it okay? Okay.)

[W2BTD]

I'm Joe, long time lurker both here & over at DVDVR. Some of you may or may not recognize my handle from various other boards around the internet.

 

My tastes in wrestling differ greatly from most here, but that's why I come here. I enjoy different perspectives on things, and love reading people's positive takes on things that I personally think are terrible, like Jerry Blackwell or Jerry Lawler or Black Terry or southern tag team wrasslin' or wacky lucha matches. I'm never offended by alternate opinions, and often learn something or even gain appreciate for different things when I read the posts here.

 

I'm in my mid 30's and my favorite eras of wrestling are early 90's All Japan, NOAH until it fell to pieces, ROH '05-'08, current New Japan, ECW glory days, & Dragon Gate from any period. I try to follow lucha even though I almost never enjoy it, don't like deathmatches/garbage wrestling, and generally dislike most modern WWE stuff (Attitude Era-now) although they are really having an amazing year in 2013. I'm sure some of that is vomit inducing to some of you, but I told you my tastes are a bit different from most of you and I wasn't kidding.

 

I probably won't post much. I saw a few threads that I felt like I could contribute positively to, and I have some stuff to shill in the appropriate sub forum, so I finally signed up.

[TheMike520]

Hi everyone..... my name is Mike and I'm 30 years old. I have been a wrestling fan since I started watching in 1992 and enjoy anything from WWF/E, NWA/WCW and ECW. I pay attention to TNA but really can't bring myself to watch it on a regular basis. I don't get ROH in my area but that's probably for the best.... my obsessiveness would cause me to have to watch every show they ever had and I don't have the time or patience for that anymore. BrickHithouse sent me here and I look forward to discussions with everyone!

[stomperspc]

I am Paul - 29 years old from Baltimore. I lurked here for a while and at DVDVR for a really, really long time.

 

I've been a wrestling fan the majority of my life. I was primarily a WCW fan and preferred WCW to WWF until the bitter end. I replaced WCW with US indies (ROH specifically) in the early 2000's and attended a lot of live shows around that time. I watched WWE during that time but never in the same way that I followed WCW. Somewhere in the 2008/2009 timeframe my wrestling watching slowly faded out until reaching the point where I wasn't really watching anything anymore - current or otherwise.

 

I started watching WWE regularly again during the summer of 2011 and slowly dipped back into my collection here and there.

 

Sometime earlier this year I was bit by the pro wrestling bug again. I watch more current wrestling and a wider variety of wrestling than I probably ever have before. I cannot pinpoint exactly what has spurred my interest again, but I've really had a desire to watch as much different pro wrestling from as many different places as I can.

 

In term of historical stuff, like I said WCW was my gateway into pro wrestling so JCP/WCW as always held a special place in my heart. I am not too discriminating however (at least I don't think I am) and have watched quite a bit historically from the mid-1980's on, be it WWF, other US territories/promotions, Puro, or Lucha. The best way to describe my breadth of wrestling knowledge is if something has been heavily hyped or discussed from like 1986 on, there is a very good chance I have seen it. Anything below that line is more hit or miss in regard to whether or not I have seen it.

 

Currently, I am trying to watch as many different 2013 matches as I can. You Tube is a real life changer. I am watching as much different US & British indie stuff as I can get around to, but that's a herculean task and there is a lot of junk out there to wade through. I'm trying to catch anything hyped out of Japan but NJPW is getting most of my attention on that front. Lucha is probably my weakest spot historically, but I find myself really into it now (specifically CMLL), which I didn't quite expect. I am aware of what is going on in TNA but I wouldn't really say I follow them.

 

In addition to 2013 watching, I went through the 1990 yearbook and I am now working my way through 1997. I am loving every minute of 1997 so far.