Introduction to the Board as a wrestling fan

[tigerpride]

Sounds good

[CarpetCrawler]

Howdy everybody!! I've known about this board for a few years now and have lurked it on and off since about 2010/2011. I registered for an account awhile back but I was having a hard time getting it authenticated so it was deleted. Decided to register again since it's a little easier now.

 

I've had wrestling in my blood all my life, I grew up in New York and my Dad was a big fan so from the getgo I knew that it was pre-determined and that the lead announcer for so many of the shows for the WWF was also in-fact the owner of the company. I stopped watching the new stuff regularly in 2003/2004 due to a distaste for it. While I've had spurts where I pay attention for brief periods of time (Bray Wyatt has kept my attention in the past few months, but none of the rest of the product) nothing has interested me enough to make me want to care anymore to follow regularly. Any really good matches or angles that happen in recent times I'll just go out of my way to watch after it's happened!! Old stuff I watch at a pretty decent rate though. I'm a big fan of pop culture which probably helps. Big on video games and television as well. Love the 8-bit era of gaming; proud owner of both an NES and a Famicom!! I'm also starting to partake in video game speedrunning.

 

Probably will mostly be lurking, but I look forward to interacting with you all.

[Gus_McCrae]

Hi I'm Gus,

 

I'm not sure how to describe what has been a complex life long interest in only a few words. I'd say it's an addiction, but the negative connotation isn't appropriate. I was hooked for the first time at the age of 10, and was a dedicated viewer for about 20 years. In late 2008, they lost me for the time. Likely more due to my life than waning interest.

 

I almost came back after Punks pipe bomb promo, but the lack of coherent follow through lost me. However, the quality of the Daniel Bryant saga really has me hooked again. I think it's possible that the wwe has really worked the 'net over the last year in maybe the greatest escalation of all time.

 

I've been more exposed to most of the US. majors 86 to 08 and the earlier better known regionals, plus the better independent stuff from 02 to 08.

 

I'd say my favorite match of all time was Steamboat and Dustin versus Arn and Larry from the clash.

 

I plan on spending my viewing time for the next little while watching some 90's all Japan and using the Network to fill in the gaps during my 08 to mid 13 dark period. WWE PPV recommendations from that period would be greatly appreciated.

[Matt D]

I plan on spending my viewing time for the next little while watching some 90's all Japan and using the Network to fill in the gaps during my 08 to mid 13 dark period. WWE PPV recommendations from that period would be greatly appreciated.

Is 08-10 ECW on the network?

[slackermillionaire]

 

I plan on spending my viewing time for the next little while watching some 90's all Japan and using the Network to fill in the gaps during my 08 to mid 13 dark period. WWE PPV recommendations from that period would be greatly appreciated.

Is 08-10 ECW on the network?

 

No but I think they are on Hulu. I hope WWE get everything that is on Hulu Plus on the network in the next month or so.

[funkdoc]

sup yall, a friend told me about this place very recently and i've been devouring a bunch of the big threads here in my spare time. heard about your new registration system and figured i'll give it a go!

 

i'm in my late 20s, started watching WWF in mid-92. loved bret's whole Respectful Fighting Champion deal, was scared to death of papa shango & nailz. went to a house show late that year, watched summerslam & survivor series. stayed in it for a bit after that...was REALLY into the johnny b. badd-maxx payne feud for some reason, and even saw the beach blast mini-movie when i was way too young to appreciate the brilliance. drifted away after that (vaguely remembered leslie nielsen in the WWF but not why he was there), got back into it around king of the ring 98, was on the internet by then and discovered the world of smarks. i was the exact target age for attitude era, so i was all-in up until 03 - best live show memory was being at the nitro when they started the WHO DROVE THE HUMMER angle that never got paid off. HHH's reign of terror and katie vick in particular turned me away, and i haven't been a regular fan since (though i'll watch royal rumble & wrestlemania sometimes).

 

today i just tend to appreciate the earnest silliness of earlier times, and am fascinated with the evolution of what people consider good & bad wrestling. i especially dig the willingness to question conventional wisdom - i'm a sports fan who grew up on the likes of bill james, so the meltzer worship always struck me as a major blind spot with this community. i also read way, way too much scott keith in those days, so i appreciate this place in more ways than one!

 

have way too many interests outside of wrestling, which is why i'm not sure i'll ever delve into puro or lucha as much as i may like. have gone to fighting game tournaments for 10+ years, gotten a bunch of speedrun records and done live speedruns for charity, enjoy a rather wide variety of music (likely going from skinny puppy to french house in the same session), work at an autism research center (hoping to go into neuroscience research), still keep up with my cleveland browns (though i've given up on anything meaningful until haslam goes to prison), love me some hiking/biking/swimming, and recently discovered euro board games (power grid supremacy!!!!!!!)

 

see yall around =)

[NintendoLogic]

funkdoc, don't you post on SRK (or used to) as Josh the Funkdoc? I'm BarrelO over there. I haven't been a regular poster in forever, though.

[(BP)]

I'm Ben. My younger brother got me into WWF and WCW in 97' when I was 10. I started watching because of the crash TV aspect, and stuck around through the 00's because of an attachment to the attitude era guys. In the last five years I've become less casual in my viewership, and thanks to lurking here and DVDR, I've discovered a lot of great Lucha, Puro, NWA, AWA, and early 90's WCW. I live in a hub for indy wrestling (Jersey/Philadelphia), but I follow it minimally. My favorite wrestler was Shawn Michaels at one point, but I've definitely outgrown a lot of his stuff. I really look forward to talking with you guys.

[Kronos]

I just realized that I am coming up on 6 years since I joined this board, which makes me a lightweight compared to you NMB guys. Still, that's a crazy long time -- even if I don't stop in very often these days. I go in my phases of watching rasslin. And when I do start watching it, I tend to come here to read about it.

[WIG]

Hello all, I’m Adam from WV and i started watching sometime during the hype up for WrestleMania VII(also the first ppv i had ever seen). From the beginning I liked the guys that I thought were more fun like the rockers, heart foundation, and macho man over guys like Hogan and warrior. I think early nitro is what changed me, seeing Eddie , benoit, and sabu. After searching and getting a few ECW tapes it was over for me. The dominoes fell fast as I discovered all the stuff from japan. Mostly hardcore stuff and the big all japan matches at first until I discovered the DVDVR board that guided me through my obsession. Today I watch most everything but I still have a soft spot for 95-96 M-Pro, 2001-2002 US indies, and early 90’s WCW tv.

[Parts Unknown]

Hello, name is Tom, from Australia, been a wrestling fan for nearly 30 years. Favourite promotions: JCP/WCW, World Class, 90s AJPW, RINGS, UWF/I, PRIDE, early Pancrase. Been lurking around on the boards, decided to finally sign up and join the discussions.

[BillThompson]

Hey, I'm Bill, 32 years old from scenic and thankfully very farm intensive Rochelle, Illinois. I'm a paramedic, and while I am a lifelong wrestling fan I pretty much gave the sport up sometime between 2002-2004, not sure exactly when. I just recently got back into the sport and was directed to this board through some people mentioning it over at DVDVR. I'm a pretty mellow guy now, I used to be a dick in a lot of my online excursions, but age and mellowing out in general have led me to being more of a lurker who enjoys reading what others have to say and only chiming in every now and then. Either way, looks like a great board.

[yunro]

Longtime lurker, first time poster. My name is Joel, 43, born and raised in Erie, Pa so grew up with the WWF, remember seeing Bob Backlund as champion at a few house shows, and also got to see the Iron Shiek defend the WWF title against Sal Bellomo during his month as champion.

 

Loved the Apter mags, even had a subscription to PWI and Inside Wrestling, best time of the month when they showed up in the mail.

 

Does anyone else remember the Superstar Wrestling Game, each wrestler had their own card and you rolled dice to decide the moves, my friends and I played that for hours on end.

 

Got cable when I was about 12, and with that was able to start watching Georgia Championship Wrestling and it transition to World Championship Wrestling. Could never figure out why their tours wouldn't come to my town, since they had a loop in Ohio, of course at that age didn't know anything about how the territory system worked. I so wanted to see Tommy Rich battle Buzz Sawyer in person.

 

Lost interest when I went off to college, but got back into during the Monday Night Wars. That is also when I started following wrestling on the internet and discovered Japanese wrestling and became a huge fan of All Japan, building a whole library of videotapes, getting them from Jeff Lynch and other people online. Enjoying the WWE network and am hoping they will begin posting more of their 70 and 80's MSG et al shows as I still fondly remember those days.

 

Been following ever since, probably more as a casual fan then anything. Enjoy reading the conversations hear and am amazed at the amount of knowledge a lot of the posters here have. Hope to try and contribute what I can to some of the threads.

 

 

[stoepfer]

Greetings all,

 

My name is Shane Toepfer and I'm yet another lifelong wrestling fan and longtime lurker (more on that in a bit). I grew up in New Orleans and have been living in the metropolitan Atlanta area for the past 15 years. My first wrestling memory is of switching through channels on a Saturday morning in 1988/1989 (ish) and seeing Demolition on my screen. From there, I went and rented WrestleMania IV, and quickly found my life revolving around the antics of my favorite WWF performers. While I watched on television, my passion was finding tapes at local video stores of various promotions and watching them over and over again, which has remained a vital part of my wrestling fandom to this day as I love to explore the archive of previous wrestling content. In those early days of fandom I remember watching lots of JCP, WCCW, and even Glow to round out my wrestling infatuation.

 

Of course I grew out of wrestling in the mid-90s as WWF moved towards a more cartoonish conception of wrestling and WCW featured Hogan against a menagerie of characters, moving away from the grittiness I liked. I was also entering high school, so I abandoned wrestling for a period of time to indulge in music from a variety of genres/eras, leaving my previous pursuits to an era I was no longer part of. And like many others, when wrestling boomed in popularity in the late 90s I found myself intrigued again, and started to dabble. It wasn't until Mick Foley's first book, however, that I really was as inspired by wrestling as I had been in my youth, and that book inspired me to write a research paper on wrestling for one of my college classes. That project pushed my life in the current direction it is now, where I have studied wrestling fans and earned a Ph.D. in studying media audiences, often using wrestling fandom as a case study for comprehending the larger media landscape.

 

I currently teach at Kennesaw State University and am still a huge wrestling fan. I have spent the majority of the past decade lurking on various message forums learning about the ways wrestling fans evaluate and engage wrestling texts, rarely directly engaging any wrestling fans. As enlightening as this is, it is often a solitary experience so I am determined to start participating more, as my schedule permits at least.

 

My fandom of wrestling itself went into decline during the past decade and was actually saved by Ring of Honor during the promotion's glory period of 2003-2006, and more recently by my exploration of Japanese pro wrestling like AJPW in the 90s. I have recently started to watch all of NJPW's big shows starting in 2010, and am thoroughly enjoying the product: I watch them slowly and view each show twice so catching up is a bit of a predicament. But given my history of enjoying shows in the archive and my meticulous nature of wanting to watch in order, I am content being five years behind when it comes to this product.

 

I look forward to being part of this forum, and in particular can't say enough great things about the yearbooks.

 

Shane

[donsem43]

My name is Don. I've been an on/off wrestling fan for 25+ years now. I use to post at Smarkschoice and Chris Coey's board whenever those boards were popular.

 

Decided to try this place because I've wasted some weekend afternoons sifting threw the match archives and I might be able to add something to them.

[BigBadMick]

Hello, I'm Mick Murphy from Newry, Northern Ireland. I'm 36, a fan since 1990-91. Started with WWF, then through Power Slam magazine (I'd love to get talking more about that sometime..) I ventured into tape trading in the mid-90s and covered a lot of the pimped stuff around then. Probably leaned more on WWF during attitude era but have been filling the blanks gradually since then. Never stopped watching entirely, but new to boards etc. I've been lurking on the site since the start of last year.

[zep81]

Hello guys,

 

Been a wrestling fan since around 1988. Took a break in around 2005 'till around 2009, been back since. Mainly a WWF/E bloke but also liked WCW and just now started to try and 'get into' classic Japan stuff.

 

Thanks.

[tholzerman]

Name's TH. I curate The Wrestling Blog. I became a wrestling fan at a young age, but my first vivid, cemented wrestling fan memory was WrestleMania VII when Macho Man reunited with Miss Elizabeth. I've been off and on over the years, with my strongest years of fandom coming in the early '90s, the Stone Cold/Attitude Era through 2002, and actually right now. My favorite promotions ever are Chikara and the original ECW, and I was a WWF/E kid growing up. My favorite wrestlers all time are Bryan Danielson, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, ACH, Rachel Summerlyn, Sara del Rey, and of course, Steve Austin.

 

Outside of wrestling, I like American football, unhealthy food, corgis, Doge, and various iterations of White People Music (rock 'n roll). Pleased to be here. I promise I won't be too awful.

[Bird Crusher]

Hello all. My name is Dustin and I've been a wrestling fan since 1990. The build to Wrestlemania VI is what hooked me and I've been watching on and off since. The first PPV I ever watched live was Royal Rumble 1991 and I was shocked and crushed when Savage cost Warrior the title. I've been primarily a WWF/E fan, and am just starting getting watching into other territories and older WWF. I found out about this board through the wonderful placetobenation.com podcasts, and am happy to find people with which to intelligently discuss pro wrestling. Big shoutout to the Titans Of Wrestling guys. I wanna smoke pot and watch wrestling with Johnny Sorrow. Johnny, you are my Tony Garea of podcasting.

[Matt D]

He's more like the Buzzkill of podcasts.

 

[Johnny Sorrow]

Brad Armstrong as a hippie was something I loved but in typical WCW fashion they call him "Buzzkill". A Buzzkill is the exact opposite of what a Deadhead should be.

[TheTagRope]

Hey all,

 

My name's Ryan, I'm 21 years old and I recently stumbled across the board's Twitter account and have been lurking around here for a few days. Some of discussions generated have been incredibly engrossing and interesting to read, I don't think I've seen such a level of 'intelligence' (think that's an accurate way to describe it) in online pro wrestling discussion in sometime, so I just had to sign up.

 

In terms of my own wrestling fandom, I've been a fan for around fourteen years now ever since the advent of WWF replays on terrestrial television in the UK. Would say I'm very much a child of the Federation, only really dipping into WCW in the last few years and especially recently with the launch of the Network. But hey, back in 2000 there wasn't really a whole lot of WCW to enjoy. Outside of that I enjoy a spot of PWG and revisiting the golden age of AJPW, you can also find me in attendance at most PCW shows up in Preston.

 

I'm currently in the process of producing the second issue of my very own professional wrestling magazine, The Tag Rope. You can check out the first issue over at http://tagropeblog.wordpress.com/2014/04/12/the-tag-rope-issue-1/, and look out for the second issue which features an interview with 'The King of Old School' Steve Corino. Right now I'm looking for contributors and writers for the second issue, if this is something you'd be interested in, please don't hesitate to drop me a message.

 

Outside of that, I'm looking forward to joining the community, so happy grappling all!

[FightingOkra]

Hey guys, my name is Alex. I'm 31, from South Carolina and like many others have lurked here for a little while between this and an old account I no longer use. I discovered the board after getting the '96 set. Loss's gigantic 883 favorite matches thread combined with trying to build a complete 2014 MOTY list led to me getting back into the board. I need to get into more discussions than just reviewing matches but I am very critical of my writing. Though I am not as well written as Loss or MattD but I can take my place as a firey redneck poster.

 

I got into wrestling in 1989 with WWF Superstars episodes that came on after the Muppet Babies. My first memories involved falling in love with The Rockers and Ultimate Warrior. After renting WM5 from the video store I was completely hooked and had to watch every tape any video store had. I smartened up to the business by reading Scott Keith's Rants (sigh) and around 2006 I discovered the DVDVR message board (Brisco). It was there where I started expanding my wrestling horizons of what good wrestling was. A Flair/Steamboat technical clinic is not the only measuring stick for great wrestling, two fat men punching each other in the face can be considered great pro wrestling as well.

 

I am looking forward to being more active here and learning more about the pro wres.

[The Man in Blak]

So...some of the long-term members of the community might remember me, but my name is Steve and I was a founding admin of NMB, which was the message board that served as the initial "home" for the community that would eventually become PWO. Even at the time when NMB was active, I wasn't actually following wrestling at all -- I had mostly been turned off of wrestling by the Katie Vick angle, among other things. With the introduction of the WWE Network, though, I've jumped back into wrestling for the first time in around ten years.

 

I got into wrestling as a kid in the mid-80s, renting every Coliseum Video release I could find for early WWF PPVs. I jumped into online fandom for wrestling in the mid-90s, bouncing around a couple of different communities before settling into the Rantsylvania/Smarks/TSM group, which ended up spinning off the crew that eventually ended up here. My exposure to Puro is a bit limited and it's one of the things I'm interested in potentially fleshing out here. Beyond that, I'm looking forward to revisiting some of these classic North America matches through the Network and other means and bringing a new (and older) pair of eyes to them.

[SevenKeys]

Hey guys , Luke from australia . Long time lurker and appreciator of the work done on this site. Started as a fan in the late 90's through til around 2004/05 then had a 8 year or so hiatus . Recently with the help of some excellent podcasts im getting into watching some of the older 70's and 80's library . Really enjoying WCCW , JCP and World of sports. As of late iv gotten hooked on watching some '93/94 ECW aswell.