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Introduction to the Board as a wrestling fan


soup23

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Hi Guys,

 

I'm Andy, 35, from Northern Ireland. My good friend Brian Elliott of FSM told me about the PWO forums last year and after dipping in and out I'm glad to be finally signed up! My pro wrestling fandom began around '89 watching NWA/WCW on local TV and then while in school got caught up with the WWF wave of popularity in '91.

 

Started watching WCW in '92 and noticed the likes of Jushin Liger, Muta, Hase etc popping up which led to me discovering puro. I'm very grateful to have been part of the tape trading community of the 90's via Rob Butcher's tape service. Kawada v Kobashi 10/93 was my first taste of All-Japan at the end of '93 and for the next 6 or 7 years it was a steady diet of All-Japan, New-Japan, ECW and a variety of other bits and pieces(FMW/Battlarts/IWA/M-Pro and eventually Noah).

 

I did participate in the lengthy but very enjoyable Top All-Japan matches of the 90's project hosted by Ditch. Since then my viewing has been very random and scattered, but I find that works well for me. The GWE project looks like it could be a lot of fun delving into past footage from wrestlers that may have passed me by or that I may have overlooked.

 

Currently I'm working my way through 1992 which has been a ton of fun and I always enjoy listening to podcasts from the likes of Goodhelmet, Loss, Dylan, Johnny and others.

 

If anyone would like to follow me on twitter - @andymcl13 - random tweets on random matches.

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Hey there, Alan4l directed me here for the Greatest Wrestler Ever project. Looking forward to taking part and discussing wrestling with all of you :)

 

My name's Richard, 30 from the UK. I've been a wrestling fan most of my life, but really got into it during the mid-90's with WWF and ECW tapes. I also got into Japanese wrestling a few years later, thanks to a tape trading neighbour, and got hooked on All Japan and deathmatch sleaze like FMW & IWA Japan. I kinda drifted away from wrestling at the turn of the decade, but seeing an ROH show in 2003 brought me back into the fold and, thanks to the internet, I got back into Japanese wrestling with NOAH. Nowadays I mostly watch New Japan & Dragon Gate, plus US and British indies like ROH, PROGRESS, SMASH, AIW, Beyond Wrestling, etc. I've also really enjoy going back and exploring all the eras of wrestling I missed out on and have come to absolutely adore the 80's All Japan style and watching old territory shows like Mid-South, Portland, Memphis, WCCW and so forth.

 

Currently I'm working my way through a huge Best of Buddy Rose set and watching the 1985 year of All Japan & New Japan TV on blu-ray back to back. Follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/SenorLARIATO and I guess I'll close off with a fave five;

 

1. Jumbo Tsuruta

2. Stan Hansen

3. Kenta Kobashi

4. Genichiro Tenryu

5. Dick Murdoch

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  • 2 weeks later...

I haven't done this and I figured I should. I hate talking about myself so I'm going to be brief. I"m Elliott and I've lurked here for a lonnnng time. I got really excited about the GOAT Project and dove back in. I've always really enjoyed this board and think it has been the most interesting wrestling board in...forever? There are a lot of familiar names here that I used to trade with/buy from/or just interact with back on the old a1wrestling Kawada Fan Zone, toa and dvdvr boards. The devastating combination of HHH and College drove me away from really hardcore wrestling fandom but this board helped bring me back. I started off as a typical douchey smart mark who cared about things like execution and moves and nearfalls and any match that ended with a dq was a rip off, etc etc etc. I started to get more into 70s and territorial wrestling in the last 2 years or so before college. With the help of jdw and co I had an awesome Destroyer comp made that I circulated. That comp, a later Johnny Saint one (I seriously emailed Jeff Lynch and asked him to fill a 2hr 40min tape with random Johnny Saint matches and just let me know what the match list was), and BostonIdol's 70s Japan tapes helped me gain a real appreciation for mat work. I've also always really loved lucha.

 

Tapes were expensive obviously but I kind of found a way around it. Any money I made would go to wrestling tapes obviously, but I also had a deal with my mom. Anytime I got an A on a test at school, she would get me a wrestling tape. I had always been an average student who never "lived up to my potential," until that deal. By the end of high school I was an honor roll student who received several academic scholarships and had 100s and 100s of wrestling tapes with everything from Rings to Joshi to 80s Memphis to 90s All Japan etc. :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello everyone.

 

My name is Nikolaj and as my handle (Danish Dynamite) suggests, I'm from Denmark (small country, Northern Europe, part of Scandinavia, connected to Germany). Denmark's got crappy weather, a history of getting our asses kicked by our neighbours and ridiculously high prices. It's lovely. You should all come visit! Famous Danes would include Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, Niels Bohr and Lars Ulrich from Metallica. Also Viggo Mortensen and Scarlett Johansson are both 50% Danish, so together they make 1 famous Dane I guess.

 

I'm 35 years old and got into wrestling in the late 80's. I'd seen Hulk Hogan in Rocky III but otherwise knew nothing about the art (yes, dammit! Art!) until I went on a trip with my parents to New York. Among the He-Man and G.I. Joe toys were WWF action figures. When I found out these guys were real life (or at least the Vince Jr. version of "real life") I immediately sent a mail order for the first VHS tape I could find in the Danish catalogues. That was WrestleMania III. And while I might not have been completely hooked by Orton/Muraco vs. The Can-Am Connection opener, by the time I'd seen Savage vs. Steamboat I was fully on board!

 

Wrestling was not on Danish TV back then and we didn't have the UK channel Sky at my house. So I continued mail ordering VHS tapes and started subscribing to PWI, The Wrestler and any other magazine I could find. The easiest things to get a hold of was WWF stuff, so all my nostalgia and early wrestling love went there, and I can't deny it still has a special place for me. So I guess I tend to rate it higher than some others would and defend it a little stronger than I might do otherwise. But hey, I've defended girlfriends uglier than Vince's product, so I'll stand by it.

 

I did get a hold of some NWA and early WCW tapes though, and I couldn't deny that I more often saw matches of the Savage/Steamboat level on those... Still. Jesse Ventura and Bobby Heenan were on the WWF tapes then, so it still wasn't close...

 

Fast forward through the typical stretch of not watching wrestling (my period was about 93-04), and a friend (thanks, buddy!) pulled me back in. In the years that had passed, something wonderful had happened: The internet had come along, and suddenly I could find a lot of the stuff I'd only been able to read about. Early NWA, WCCW, Mid-South, AWA and eventually the eye opening stuff from Japan.

 

The next quantum leap for me was the podcasts. All the Place 2 Be Nation podcasts. P2B, Titans, GoodWill, Where the Big Boys Play, Pro-Wrestling Super Shows etc. etc. I have been turned on to so much cool and classic stuff that way and am very grateful. And now I look forward to the PWO boards maybe being the next big thing for me.

 

My current taste in wrestling is absolutely eclectic. I haven't gotten into Lucha too much, but that might be my next avenue for exploration. And I still have a long ways to go, before I feel I've fully covered Japan. I also have some blank spots with the US in the years I missed, I'm not totally up to date on the current product and I've seen very little TNA. So there's still so much to see.

 

I look forward to participating in the GOAT threads, because it will challenge me to think hard about my own list. Yeah, my child hood favorite was for a time The Ultimate Warrior, but I probably can't really defend putting him on the GOAT list. I know guys like Stan Hansen, Jumbo Tsuruta and Randy Savage will figure really high for me though.

 

That'll do for an introduction posting. Looking forward to "meeting" you all on the boards.

 

All the very best,

Nikolaj

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

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Hi Nikolaj, welcome to the board and I'm really glad you've joined (this is Parv by the way). Funny enough, I've been looking closely at some of the stats this week and they recently added this feature where it breaks down listens by city. This is from 1st January 2014.

 

stat.png

 

I was like "hmm, who is this guy from Denmark?" And then almost the next day, you joined here. Look forward to reading your opinions on guys in the GWE project.

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hey y'all im a big fan of a lot of these posters and i know some people follow me on twitter (prowrestlingonly, bix, and dylan) and I've been meaning to sign up for a long time. i mostly watch big league US but being from the Philadelphia region I've watched a fair bit of indies over the years. i like the deep discussions from the lurking and see it's a lot better then some places I've been in the past like dvdvr and the f4w board. don't know how much I'll post but if I do please never take me too seriously.

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I'm Brian 28 from Philadelphia. I grew up a huge fan as a young kid on Hogan era WWF but lost interest. Shawn Michaels and Nitro made me a fan for life. Also at the same time ECW was coming up here and soon I became obsessed with that and hooked since. My knowledge or lack of on Japan, Mexico, 80s etc is based solely on reading the observers and keeping up on the names with places like this. My taste in style won't be the same as many but I enjoy reading the critiques and opinions of you guys. Many here will find this absurd but my favorite all time matchup is Tanaka/Mike Awesome.

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Hey i'm Jonathan,i'm 23 and from Ireland,got into wrestling in 1998 watching Raw in a friends house and only really watched WWE until 2007 with the exception of the odd WCW or ECW show during that time.Eventually i got into Japanese stuff and now i enjoy it more then anything else loved the AJ and NJ 80s sets and i'm really trying to watch everything in order from the 90s starting with getting the 1990 yearbook.Found PWO from people on Twitter linking to different threads on here and podcasts featuring Will and the Titans,so i'm going to try and post more but i enjoy reading the different discussions and finding out about new stuff all the time.

 

My top five

1.Genichiro Tenryu

2.Tomohiro Ishii

3.Toshiaki Kawada

4.Daniel Bryan

5.Sami Zayn

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Thank you everyone for the extremely kind welcome on the board! Been busy the last week, so haven't posted here, but I've kept up to date on the podcasts (gotta keep boosting those listening stats for Copenhagen, Parv :D ... Thanks for posting that!). Along with some friends here in Denmark, I'm starting up a podcast. But so far we're sticking to pop culture stuff (mainly film & TV), 'cause we haven't found too many people here who share our passion for wrestling... Besides, most of the wrestling terms and names of holds sound too fucking stupid in Danish...

I'll really start diving in to all the different posts here come this weekend. Can't wait :-)

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Hi everybody. I'm Michael, 35 years old, grew up in Ohio and Virginia and currently live In Toronto, Ontario. I've been lurking on here and dvdr for years. I've been listening to a bunch of PWO/PTBN podcasts lately. Titans of Wrestling(which might be my favourite podcast ever or at least until The Best Show on WFMU returns this year), Goodwill(or Google) Wrestling Podcast and the Pro Wrestling Supershow. Just found out about the AWA viewing party podcasts yesterday, I'm listening to episode 3 as I write this.


I've been a fan since 1985. First time I ever saw wrestling was when I was up way past my bedtime and caught a Prime Time Wrestling with Andre the Giant in a 6 man tag match. I've been hooked ever since. Started buying every magazine I could find and ordering back issues with my allowance almost immediately. I was a huge nerd(still am) and I wrote a wrestling fanzine, with rankings and "articles" which was a supplement(for some reason) in the back of the comic books I drew as a child. I've never shared that with anyone before btw.


The first live event I ever went to was the Great American Bash in Charleston, WV on 7/17/88. Best moment of the night was Ron Garvin knocking out The Mighty Wilbur in 10 seconds and some drunk behind me yelled "Ain't so mighty now, motherfucker!" I had to ask my Uncle, who took me to the show, what that meant and why they hated Wilbur so much. Last show I went to was in 2004 when I was working backstage at a Smackdown house show. I spent about 10 minutes drawing a map on the back of a napkin for Paul Heyman and Rob Van Dam so they could go to a good Chinese restaurant close to their hotel. That was surreal.


I watched WWF, AWA and JCP/WCW obsessively until about 1992, then I discovered girls and punk rock, so it wasn't high on my list of priorities. I found ECW in 1996 late after a night of drinking and got hooked again. Started slowing down again around 2003 after I started consistently hating RAW and watching HHH burying all my favourite wrestlers. I'm not unique, but the Benoit murders/suicide is one of the main reasons I don't watch much current day WWE these days. I'll catch Wrestlemania and any Daniel Bryan or Dean Ambrose matches online but most of my knowledge of the current stuff is thanks to places like this. I spend most of my time watching late 70's WWWF and JCP from 1985-1989.


If anybody is still awake after my introduction, my top 10 wrestlers/managers in no order are


1. Bobby Heenan

2. Jerry Lawler

3. Ric Flair

4. Jimmy Valiant

5. Randy Savage

6. Jim Cornette/Dennis Condrey/Bobby Eaton

7. Nick Bockwinkel

8. Jesse Ventura

9. Bob Backlund

10. Ricky Steamboat

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Hi everybody. I'm Michael, 35 years old, grew up in Ohio and Virginia and currently live In Toronto, Ontario. I've been lurking on here and dvdr for years. I've been listening to a bunch of PWO/PTBN podcasts lately. Titans of Wrestling(which might be my favourite podcast ever or at least until The Best Show on WFMU returns this year), Goodwill(or Google) Wrestling Podcast and the Pro Wrestling Supershow. Just found out about the AWA viewing party podcasts yesterday, I'm listening to episode 3 as I write this.
I've been a fan since 1985. First time I ever saw wrestling was when I was up way past my bedtime and caught a Prime Time Wrestling with Andre the Giant in a 6 man tag match. I've been hooked ever since. Started buying every magazine I could find and ordering back issues with my allowance almost immediately. I was a huge nerd(still am) and I wrote a wrestling fanzine, with rankings and "articles" which was a supplement(for some reason) in the back of the comic books I drew as a child. I've never shared that with anyone before btw.
The first live event I ever went to was the Great American Bash in Charleston, WV on 7/17/88. Best moment of the night was Ron Garvin knocking out The Mighty Wilbur in 10 seconds and some drunk behind me yelled "Ain't so mighty now, motherfucker!" I had to ask my Uncle, who took me to the show, what that meant and why they hated Wilbur so much. Last show I went to was in 2004 when I was working backstage at a Smackdown house show. I spent about 10 minutes drawing a map on the back of a napkin for Paul Heyman and Rob Van Dam so they could go to a good Chinese restaurant close to their hotel. That was surreal.
I watched WWF, AWA and JCP/WCW obsessively until about 1992, then I discovered girls and punk rock, so it wasn't high on my list of priorities. I found ECW in 1996 late after a night of drinking and got hooked again. Started slowing down again around 2003 after I started consistently hating RAW and watching HHH burying all my favourite wrestlers. I'm not unique, but the Benoit murders/suicide is one of the main reasons I don't watch much current day WWE these days. I'll catch Wrestlemania and any Daniel Bryan or Dean Ambrose matches online but most of my knowledge of the current stuff is thanks to places like this. I spend most of my time watching late 70's WWWF and JCP from 1985-1989.
If anybody is still awake after my introduction, my top 10 wrestlers/managers in no order are
1. Bobby Heenan
2. Jerry Lawler
3. Ric Flair
4. Jimmy Valiant
5. Randy Savage
6. Jim Cornette/Dennis Condrey/Bobby Eaton
7. Nick Bockwinkel
8. Jesse Ventura
9. Bob Backlund
10. Ricky Steamboat

 

Johnny, is that you????

 

Welcome aboard

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Hi everybody. I'm Michael, 35 years old, grew up in Ohio and Virginia and currently live In Toronto, Ontario. I've been lurking on here and dvdr for years. I've been listening to a bunch of PWO/PTBN podcasts lately. Titans of Wrestling(which might be my favourite podcast ever or at least until The Best Show on WFMU returns this year), Goodwill(or Google) Wrestling Podcast and the Pro Wrestling Supershow. Just found out about the AWA viewing party podcasts yesterday, I'm listening to episode 3 as I write this.
I've been a fan since 1985. First time I ever saw wrestling was when I was up way past my bedtime and caught a Prime Time Wrestling with Andre the Giant in a 6 man tag match. I've been hooked ever since. Started buying every magazine I could find and ordering back issues with my allowance almost immediately. I was a huge nerd(still am) and I wrote a wrestling fanzine, with rankings and "articles" which was a supplement(for some reason) in the back of the comic books I drew as a child. I've never shared that with anyone before btw.
The first live event I ever went to was the Great American Bash in Charleston, WV on 7/17/88. Best moment of the night was Ron Garvin knocking out The Mighty Wilbur in 10 seconds and some drunk behind me yelled "Ain't so mighty now, motherfucker!" I had to ask my Uncle, who took me to the show, what that meant and why they hated Wilbur so much. Last show I went to was in 2004 when I was working backstage at a Smackdown house show. I spent about 10 minutes drawing a map on the back of a napkin for Paul Heyman and Rob Van Dam so they could go to a good Chinese restaurant close to their hotel. That was surreal.
I watched WWF, AWA and JCP/WCW obsessively until about 1992, then I discovered girls and punk rock, so it wasn't high on my list of priorities. I found ECW in 1996 late after a night of drinking and got hooked again. Started slowing down again around 2003 after I started consistently hating RAW and watching HHH burying all my favourite wrestlers. I'm not unique, but the Benoit murders/suicide is one of the main reasons I don't watch much current day WWE these days. I'll catch Wrestlemania and any Daniel Bryan or Dean Ambrose matches online but most of my knowledge of the current stuff is thanks to places like this. I spend most of my time watching late 70's WWWF and JCP from 1985-1989.
If anybody is still awake after my introduction, my top 10 wrestlers/managers in no order are
1. Bobby Heenan
2. Jerry Lawler
3. Ric Flair
4. Jimmy Valiant
5. Randy Savage
6. Jim Cornette/Dennis Condrey/Bobby Eaton
7. Nick Bockwinkel
8. Jesse Ventura
9. Bob Backlund
10. Ricky Steamboat

 

Johnny, is that you????

 

Welcome aboard

 

Thanks soup23 and Grimmas. I'm not an alias of Johnny, despite my love of the Boogie Woogie Man. Honest.

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Hey everyone,

 

My name is Marc, 31 years old from Boston. Long time lurker of the site, but I figured it's time I contribute to the great discussions you have here. Sounds like a recurring them, but the depth of knowledge here is impressive to say the least. As a married guy with two kids and a job that keeps me busy 10-12 hours a day, I don't always have the time or energy to make a well-researched post and have held back for a long time, not knowing where to jump in. I thought I'd watched a ridiculous amount of wrestling before stumbling on this site almost 5 years ago and realized I've got a lot to catch up on, haha.

 

By way of background, I started watching the WWF in late '88 when I was five. My dad was a casual fan, had on PrimeTime one night and I instantly thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen. Randy Savage (and by proxy Hulk Hogan) became my favorites immediately. Weeks later, the Mega Powers angle hit. I was crushed and couldn't figure out why Randy was being such a dick. I begged my parents to get me WrestleMania V and it was over from then on. We taped it and from there I got every WWF PPV for the next five years, recorded them to VHS and wore out those tapes. I started buying the magazines, and then discovered there were other promotions through PWI. My next door neighbor was 9 years older than me and decided he outgrew it and was going to throw out a bunch of Apter mags from '84-'88, which I scooped up and caught up on all this stuff happening in the NWA, AWA, UWF, Memphis, etc. I was blown away to see guys like The Million Dollar Man, Mr. Perfect and the Red Rooster were stars under there real names in other federations, and there were guys like Ric Flair, Jerry Lawler, Lex Luger and the Road Warriors that looked as impressive as the WWF roster and I wanted to see them all in action. I rented all the old Wrestlemanias, Survivor Series, etc. from the local video store and watched anything I could get my hands on. My earliest NWA memory was seeing a replay of Terry Funk putting a plastic bag over Ric Flair's head when I was six, and my grandmother freaking out thinking it was disgusting that they'd show that on TV.

 

The product got edgier as I got older, so it was hard to "grow out of," something I always thought I would, but I'd always come back. I almost quit watching in '95, but Hart/Michaels at WM 12 and then the NWO angle sucked me back in. By the time I was 14, Stone Cold, DX, the Rock, Mick Foley were big stars, I could tape ECW on the Spanish channel Saturdays at midnight, and wrestling actually became cool for a short spell.

 

As I got older, I watched WWF and WCW through the '90s, and started to lose interest after the Invasion angle when I realized they were never going to do it the right way. By thenI was 18, in college, and had more important things than wrestling going on. I got hooked again in '03, really digging the Angle/Lesnar stuff and seeing some of my favorites like Jericho, Benoit (I know), and Guerrero starting to get main event shots. Triple H started to kill my interest again, though I actually dug Evolution as a Horsemen wannabe faction despite never really getting it right. I was a fan through '05 when I started to tune out. Eddie Guerrero's death was depressing, and by then I thought US wrestling was insulting my intelligence and that the WWE wasn't trying as hard as they were five years prior. I graduated college, got a job, got married and started a family, and thought I was out again. The Benoit thing was almost the nail in the coffin.

 

Had I not discovered 90s All Japan and New Japan when I was in college, I would have stopped watching completely at that point. The Japanese stuff was so new and different that it kept my interest when it waned in the US and I had a whole decade of stuff to catch up on. By now I was a part time fan. Not watching the WWE for almost four years, I bought WM25 purely for nostalgia. It was an underwhelming show (HHH/Orton might have been the worst WM Main Event this side of Taker/Sid), but I was hooked again by Michaels/Taker. Upon rewatch it's a little ridiculous and over-the-top, but at the time, for the WWE, this was the closest I'd seen them come to a quasi-AJPW heavyweight main event and I couldn't believe how much those guys could "go" at their age. I started to think wrestling was a dying art, that once guys like HBK and Undertaker retired, it was over. These new guys didn't seem to understand how to perform. They seemed to be "playing" pro wrestler rather than wrestling, and the booking - trading wins and losses, flopping the belt around, wasn't doing them any favors. With no more territories, guys weren't mastering the art, and with no competition, WWE seemed keen on playing it safe to please sponsors and not put on a great product. Of course, some of these perceptions were not necessarily accurate, but that's how I felt at the time. I got to a point as a fan where I decided there was so much footage of classic wrestling from the 70s-'05 that I could probably spend my limited viewing time watching the legends I'd missed, and reliving memories of the stuff I had seen and that would be it for me as a fan. A crotchety old guy who assumed modern wrestling had nothing to offer.

 

I paid attention online, watched the pimped matches, and kept coming back. CM Punk in '11 and the Daniel Bryan angle last year were some of the highlights and I thought we were on the verge of another boom period this year before Bryan got hurt and they forgot how to book again. The WWE ringwork the past 18 months has been outstanding, the booking inconsistent, and it's been a frustrating yet sometimes rewarding ride nonetheless.

 

So here I am, a grown man in his 30s. posting on a wrestling message board on a Saturday night, reading posts from a bunch of kindred spirits (albeit many whose knowledge far surpasses mine). I discovered this site when compiling a list of the best matches of all time and seeking out stuff I'd never watched. The discussion here is a notch or two (or ten) above any other place on the internets that I've come across. There are some really intelligent, well-researched posts. The level of discourse and analysis here seems better reserved for high art and literature, and I think it's outstanding.

 

I've also dug into the 80's AJPW/NJPW sets, and hope to find enough in the budget to eventually get the rest of them and the 90s yearbooks. Will and Loss - the work you guys have put into these sets and this site is incredible. I discovered the podcasts through here last year too, and really dig what I've heard. You guys are hilarious and insightful. Goodwill Wrestling, Wrestling With the Past, Titans, Where the Big Boys play - Will, Charles, Parv, Johnny, Chad, Stephen, Kelly, Kris - sorry if I'm leaving anyone out - are a riot and the discussion is top notch. I hope to continue to learn and discover new stuff here. Keep up the great work!

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