Do you hide being a pro wrestling fan?

[jdw]

Has anyone here gotten into wrestling despite not liking before, say, the age of 12?

 

Growing up, Pro Wrestling was just bad Roller Derby, which I knew was rather quickly. I was a massive sports fan, and Fake Sports wasn't something I cage a shit about.

 

I was 20 in college in 1986 when I first became a fan. JPC on Saturday when baked after a long week of school/studying and partying... Flair and Corny caught my eye, and were wildly entertaining when stoned and/or chilling. Then, as I posted in the other thread, I thought about why those guys specifically were entertaining and good. Hooked, and stayed hooked when I sobered up.

[Childs]

If wrestling comes up, which it does semi-often among the 25-45-year-old sportswriters I work among, I talk about it with some authority. They also know I wrote pieces for the paper when Benoit and Eddy died. But I don't really get into the depth of my interest or the size of my DVD collection. Then again, I also don't talk to casual friends about my collection of old boxing or my devotion to the Drive-by Truckers or my shelves full of non-fiction anthologies. People who know me know that I go deep in all my interests, and that's sufficient for most. My wife, bless her, seems amused by my obsessive/collector tendencies and gives me wide latitude. She knew she married a geek 15 years ago and has never flinched.

[jdw]

A billion "likes" on the last part.

[King Solomon]

I advertise the Hell out of it!

[Guest stanley]

Absolutely not. But I also dont mock others passions. That would be stupid.

[Carnival]

"Who actually watched wrestling in 1994-5?"

 

Ha, I remember going into a video store in 1997 or so and seeing the video for Wrestlemania 11. Shawn Michaels vs Diesel as the main event? Jeez, shit has really gone downhill...

[Loss]

Even stranger, it's difficult to find anyone who was paying close attention in 2003.

[Ricky Jackson]

 

"Who actually watched wrestling in 1994-5?"

 

Ha, I remember going into a video store in 1997 or so and seeing the video for Wrestlemania 11. Shawn Michaels vs Diesel as the main event? Jeez, shit has really gone downhill...

 

 

I watched wrestling during most of the Dark Ages of 92-96, but after that crap Mania I tuned out for a good 6-7 months.

[dawho5]

I started watching wrestling at around 19-20 after ignoring it for my whole life. It can happen. It just sets you back a ways on any kind of understanding of the storytelling aspect of it in my case.

[Superstar Sleeze]

Put me in the friends & family know, but I am very hush hush about it at work camp. Having lived with my family my whole life except my stints away at college there is no way for them not to know. My dad and brother are pretty good natured about it. Whenever, I was at college, they never watched a minute of it, but at soon as I came home my brother would watch with me and my Dad would pop in when he was home (all wrestling is watched DVR style). My dad is more interested in the backstage aspect how people get pushed and what people are making money for the company. My brother prefers character work and promos, but enjoys the wrestling now. We all went to Survivor Series together, my dad has been to Wrestlemania and my brother has to two. Still if I moved out tomorrow, they would never watch another minute of wrestling I would suspect. The women of my family don't mind it and have always loved the luchadores and Jericho. One favorite razz in my household is whenever my sister is watching to ask one another "Are they friends in real life?" because that was her common question when she was a lot younger.

I used to be pretty reserved about it with my friends. People knew I watched, but it never got brought up. I bought a TV solely in college to watch wrestling. I'll never forget the amount of nerves I had when I sent an email to my three freshman year roomates to say you can you use my TV whenever you want except at these times so I can watch wrestling. I took a ton of shit for that, but I lived through it. Again, unless you lived with me, there was no way of you knowing. I do remember as one of my roomates way to razz me in front of this girl from the dorm hall to say I watched Japanese wrestling. She was like "sumo wrestling"? I was like no it is American wrestling, but in Japan. She was like you watch fake sumo wrestling? I just quit explaining after that. She was pretty hot so she had that going for her. Recently, as I have been trying to get this blog off the ground, I decided to post it on facebook and I have gotten minimal feedback, but Im pretty open about it. Other than, I usually don't publish any thoughts on wrestling. The weirdest thing happened this past week when I found out one of my really good friends from high school has started watching wrestling and he wanted the lo-down, but I explained to him it would be like the Federation culturally contaminating a planet that has not achieved the same technological level. He needed to figure it out himself because in my opinion the first 2-3 years of fandom are always the best. I find it so weird because he is 24 with no previous wrestling watching and this is not exactly a conducive period to become a fan in my opinion. There are no strong promos, barely any storylines and a strong focus on wrestling. I am actually shocked that they are making new fans over the age of 10 because it feels like they are just playing it so safe.

 

At my old position in the company, there was a guy was an out and out wrestling fan. We are talking wearing "Funkasaurus" and Zack Ryder shirts to work. He was definitely the epitome of the smart mark that just sucks. Once, I knew he was a fan I made doubly sure that know one find out so I would not have to deal with this moron. I went so far as to not add my co-worker friends on Facebook until I got this new role. He was actually at Survivor Series near me, but thankfully did not see me. He proved himself to be as much of a smart mark ass as I expected. Anyways, I don't have to deal with him anymore. At my new role, there is no reason for it to come anymoreso than my love for Ke$ha and General Hospital. I am the youngest person by far on this team so sports and my love for classic rock and heavy metal make it so that I seem like a well-rounded enough person that we don't need to go into my other passions.

 

If you are ever in a Boston Metro club and see a 24 year old with jet-black huge 80s hair kid in a Dolph Ziggler shirt with bright pink zubaz doing the Alex Wright dance don't be shy. I don't bite...much.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

If wrestling comes up, which it does semi-often among the 25-45-year-old sportswriters I work among, I talk about it with some authority. They also know I wrote pieces for the paper when Benoit and Eddy died. But I don't really get into the depth of my interest or the size of my DVD collection. Then again, I also don't talk to casual friends about my collection of old boxing or my devotion to the Drive-by Truckers or my shelves full of non-fiction anthologies. People who know me know that I go deep in all my interests, and that's sufficient for most. My wife, bless her, seems amused by my obsessive/collector tendencies and gives me wide latitude. She knew she married a geek 15 years ago and has never flinched.

DBT!

[Hollinger.]

I don't really bring it up around normal folks, but being heavily involved with indie wrestling in the area, anyone that's friends with me on Facebook, or follows my Twitter or Instagram or Tumblr, are well aware of it. So I'll occasionally have people ask me questions about it, and for the most part it's met with a "Huh. That's pretty cool. I didn't realize that was a thing people did. Did you bring your lunch today?"

[FedEx227]

Everyone is pretty aware now and I just own it. Yeah, I watch wrestling, yeah I study it, yeah it consumes most of my life. I figure, at this point, I'm 26, if you think it's weird then whatever I don't need to associate with you.

[Ryan Faulconer]

Hopefully I can answer this without writing a novel to explain it.

 

I met the girl who is now my wife when I signed up to plentyoffish back in 2006. I had two back surgeries and I was stuck in the hospital for just over four months in late 2006/early 2007 so I thought I would put my downtime to some use. My profile listed my interests with me listing "lucha libre" as one of the last things on the list. I don't really hide my interest in wrestling but I thought listing that would sound more exotic and less "idiot thinks fake fighting is real". If the girl knew what lucha was I considered it a good thing. If she didn't know what it was there would be none of the patronizing questions that are usually what we as wrestling fans hate the most when talking to non-fans.

 

Anyway - I had just had two back surgeries in five months so my mobility was pretty limited once I got out in February 2007. My first "dates" with this girl were centered around hanging out at my place watching DVDs/sharing my music tastes/showing her my paintings. After a couple of dates she asked me what the 200something VHS tapes were that stuck out in the corner like a pink elephant VHS collection would. I told her about Mexican and Japanese wrestling and then showed her the six man tag from MPro 3/16/96 and probably some lucha - IIRC.

 

Since she is a nurse her only questions were based around how much those moves must hurt and how badly injured those guys must be. She is so sweet and understanding. Over the next few years I began replacing my VHS with DVDs and she never passed a word of judgment over that particular interest of mine. She does wonder where all these DVDs will go if I keep adding to my collection but that is a discussion solved with a bookcase or shelf rather than an indictment over my intelligence like some people who don't "get" or watch wrestling that we are all probably too familiar with. My wife has a bigger problem with Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Robot Chicken but even that she enjoys because she sees how much I enjoy watching them. Her only lingering thoughts (after seeing ATHF) revolve around how she can never look at Santa or the Easter Bunny the same again.

 

When I was in university (95-99) there were plenty of stupid questions and insinuations if the subject of pro wrestling came up. Some of that time was the boom period though and people seemed to have fun watching the crash tv format. When I was younger in the 1980s I dealt with teachers who loathed wrestling and took every opportunity to belittle it and point out the most obvious aspects of what us fans have long since accepted.

 

People who question our sanity for enjoying pro wrestling should really turn the mirror on themselves. When they smugly point out the ridiculousness of pro wrestling I sometimes wonder if they know that their favourite televised or live performances aren't real either. There are probably many examples of actors getting insulted or twitter DEATH THREATS because people can't separate fiction from reality.

 

[NintendoLogic]

"Who actually watched wrestling in 1994-5?"

 

That's actually when I started getting seriously into wrestling. I rented the WWF Royal Rumble Super NES game from Blockbuster, which got me into watching Raw. My stepdad still forbade me from watching wrestling at that point, so I had to do it on the down low. I turned the volume all the way down and sat real close to the TV so I could quickly change the channel whenever my parents entered the room.

 

Anwyay, I'm pretty much in the same boat as a lot of you guys. I don't shout the fact that I'm a fan from the rooftops, but I don't hide or deny it either. If it comes up in the course of a conversation, I'll cop to it. I do, however, make an effort to censor the extent of my fandom. Unless I know that the person I'm talking to is a huge fan, I'll restrict my discussion to WWF/E and maybe WCW. Unfortunately, I have yet to meet anyone in person who comes close to my level of fandom. Of the people I interact with regularly, the only one who follows wrestling is my brother, and he's a dilettante compared to me. Then again, I'm a dilettante compared to a lot of people here.

 

As for how it affects one's chances with the opposite sex (or same sex, as the case may be), my interest in wrestling has come up on a few dates. It's usually been in a roundabout manner, like "What TV shows do you watch?" "To be honest, the only show I watch regularly is Monday Night Raw." This revelation has never led to a bonding moment over our shared love of wrestling, but it's never brought the date to a screeching halt either. Or maybe they were mortified and I just didn't pick up on it, who knows. Anyway, during one of these dates, I got to mentioning Misawa and how he died in the ring. My date said something to the effect of "Well, at least he died doing what he loved." I guess that's one way of looking at it.

[fishbaugh]

I never really hid from it, and in my previous career everyone knew I was a fan. A coworker grew up in Portland and told me about watching a match where Buddy Rose puked between falls and I didn't hesitate to show him the footage when I got it on a comp.

 

However, about 3 years ago I switched careers to a very conservative industry and wanted to keep it a secret as I was worried it may hold back my career prospects. One of my bosses figured it out when I left work early to go to Staples Center, and news quickly spread. People give me a hard time about it, but nobody thinks any differently about me from what I can tell. And when they start to really question me, I just tell them that my great grandfather was a pro wrestler and promoter and that seems to help them get past the cognitive dissonance.

[WrestlingPower]

I'm with Will here, I would never volunteer the info unless I feel like I know the person pretty well. It just leads to more questions. Given that I haven't regularly watched WWE in like 10 years and that's increasingly been seen as the entire scope of what wrestling is, it's just easier to avoid the subject than try to explain. Sometimes I will just say that I watch old 80s stuff on DVD and don't watch the TV stuff. This oversimplifies things so as not to explain about the indies & Japan. Back when I used to go to Japan regularly, I would use that as saying I preferred that over American wrestling but then that would lead to the inevitable questions about if it was sumo. So yeah, it's a lot easier to stay closeted than to begin opening the door to explain just how of a deep niche you are involved in.

 

Edit: on second thought at my old job where I could wear t-shirts to work, I'd routinely wear ROH or PWG shirts or whatever so I wasn't trying to hide anything. Largely I see it as no one's business as I'm a pretty private person but if someone were to ask or know the significance of what was on the shirt I would engage them. I guess it's pretty complex with me as I would wear some wrestling shirts in public that don't openly have like pictures on them but reading wrestling books in public, probably not, and watching wrestling on a laptop in like an airport or on a plane, most definitely not. In fact when a friend of mine & I were sitting together on a plane going to a wrestling convention, I was a bit embarrassed to be sitting by him just blantantly watching CZW on his laptop, but I guess that was mainly just due it being no one's business what I would be watching. I would read an Observer on a laptop on a plane though but I'd be sure to angle it such that no one was really looking at what I am reading.

[Eduardo]

 

"Who actually watched wrestling in 1994-5?"

 

I never publicly said this, but while I had watching wrestling before and had video games of it, the match that hooked me as a weekly professional wrestling watcher was Bret Hart vs Issac Yankem in a cage match (with Jerry Lawler hanging in a shark cage above the ring!).

 

I tend not to talk about it in length, but sometimes it'll naturally come up and I like to listen to people if they have some stories about it. I write a weekly regional music column for a local newspaper, and my editor wanted some cute byline, so my love of wrestling is alluded to there. So I've had random newspaper readers email me about wrestling, some asking questions about Southwest Championship Wrestling. I used to be embarrassed talking about it, and seldom mentioned my enthusiasm for it, but I've gotten older and most people are cool, so I'm pretty open about it now.

 

I casually brought wrestling up to a local community theater director recently at a breakfast, and he started telling me how much he loved going to see Jose Lothario, El Santo and Mil Mascaras matches in South Texas in the 1970's. Like him, some people have cool stories to share, and bring up old names that I hadn't thought much of. It made me a bit curious about wanting to learn more about Lothario.

 

In this region, wrestling seems pretty acceptable. WWE house shows here have been legitimately selling out for the past ten years, according to Meltzer. Lucha Libre is also pretty popular here. I have a friend who's from Mexico City. He usually works a lot with the local artists and he was surprised at how much the local art scene is interested in lucha libre aesthetics.

[Fantastic]

Don't hide it. To be honest, it doesn't really come up among friends and family, and if it does, I don't go into loads of detail unless someone really digs pro wrestling as well.

[flyonthewall2983]

I don't hide it much either. Me and my brother were tandem marks as kids so pretty much all of my family knows. My last girlfriend has become a huge fan (not through me) and the one before that said her father did some construction work for Vince, Sr. so on that front I've never really had to hide it either. I worry more about explaining my taste in complicated rock and jazz music to women.

[CaptCabana]

My thesis in college was on Ethnoviolence and Counter-Culture Terrorism in the World Wrestling Federation from the years 1996-1998.

 

22 pages.

 

So yeah, people know I'm a fan.

 

To the person who asked if anyone started after the age of 12....that's me. Well, AROUND that age. I think I might have been on the down side of 11, it was around Starrcade 90 (why, oh why, did I think the Black Scorpion angle was awesome??)

 

To the person who asked if anyone was watching during 1994 - 95....that was me again. WCW in 94 was actually fantastic until Hogan and his Orange Soul-Glo showed up.

 

I'm very fortunate in that a good many of my friends in the area are, at the least, casual fans. My best friend will get super into Rumble and Mania season, then die down the rest of the year. (I dragged him to a Chikara show in NC with me, though, and he was NOT down with that. Lesson learned.)

 

I've found I can get ANYONE to watch the Rumble with me if you do a Rumble pool, something they can have a rooting interest in.

 

And now, I can show pretty much anyone some PWG highlights and their jaw drops a little. So there's that.

 

So I guess my answer would be I don't exactly bring it up, but I certainly make no attempts to hide it either.

 

I love wrestling. I have since late 1990 and I will continue to do so until I shuffle off this mortal coil.

[CFTV]

I'm pretty open about my love of pro graps. That said I don't fill my FB timeline w/wrestlng like I do w/sports & jamband music since my interest in wrestling is a lot less than the aformentioned other two interests. I have a lot less wrestling friends than I have friends that are fans of teams from Detroit/Michigan or the Grateful Dead/Phish/SCI so it doesn't make a ton of sense to post a great match or angle like it does a song from a concert from the night before. I work w/mostly middle aged women and they know that I have eccentric interests like using all of my vacation time to chase Trey Anastasio and Bobby Weir around the country and they don't care since I bust my ass while I'm there but wrestling rarely ever comes up and if it does they would just say that is Kull being Kull.

[Memphis Mark]

No . I do not hide being a wrestling fan. Now I used to hide it when I worked for Fortune 500 companies .Now I 52 years old and could care less what people think about me.

 

I grew up on Memphis wrestling in the 70's and 80's . The program had monsters rating so watching wrestling was accepted by people . So many people watched the show and enjoyed the product .. A great time in life.

 

However I must add to I only watch wrestling , I do not watch the current WWE or TNA product . Outside of ROH , NJPW Noah and select indys , I usually only watch pre - 2001 footage. In fact I do not anyone in my age group that watches WWE and TNA , they just don't consider it to be wrestling.

[Johnny Guitar]

Even stranger, it's difficult to find anyone who was paying close attention in 2003.

 

I think this was the year that alot of people tuned out for a variety of reasons.

 

The booking was terrible, which alienated alot of fans, both hardcore and casual. Austin retired and The Rock left pretty much for good, which was also a MASSIVE blow.

 

Personally this was the year that I gave up.

[Blazer]

It's not so much an issue now as it was day 15 or 20 years ago. I don't regularly watch the current product or go to shows, so it simply doesn't come up in conversation at work. Have three good buddies that know I like it, and we will make references to old stuff when together. They are fans too. Wife doesn't like it, but she has walked in on me watching some old Prime Time shows and gets a chuckle out of Gorilla and Heenan...she thinks Heenan was trying to dress like Liberace and thinks Gorilla looks hilarious with the tinted glasses and receding permed hair. During baseball season, I watch very little wrestling, but during the offseason I catch up on old discs at night for about an hour a night. I am happy where I am at right now with my fandom. I like focusing on the old stuff that I like. Time is precious, so it's good to not waste it on product I don't appreciate as much.