What do you consider to be your promotion

[Mad Dog]

This is kind of similar to the Dr. Who question of who is your Doctor.

 

When you think of your favorite promotion what is it. What promotion is like going back and visiting old friends when you watch it.

 

I'll start off with WCW. When I became a fan of wrestling in 1997 it was with WCW. I've watched WWE for a long time but it's never been my promotion, it's always just been what's on TV and available to me. WCW is home. Watching some old stuff is like checking in with my buddies Sting, Flair, etc. WWE has never had that same familiar vibe to me.

 

So what would be your promotion?

[El-P]

It's funny because I became a fan via WWF in 1990 and stayed a fan until 1999, only got WCW in 96 (and ECW from 96 about one year and a half later on Bravo once I got satellite channels !), and although my formative years as a fan and a "mark", really, were all about WWF, today I'd always be more inclined to revisit WCW, especially the Nitro years. Which I have done on multiple occasions, while I really never went back to RAW from the same time period (which I loved back then). Probably why I also am going through TNA and never bothered to explore much of the 00's WWE in depths.

 

But I guess if I really had to pick only one. Well. ECW ! ECW ! ECW ! Yeah, I know. But there's something about that promotion that was fascinating to me from the very first time I was able to watch it. The mid 90's feeling is something that will never get old with me. And although I probably won't watch very much of it anymore (Tony "announcing" Barely Legal was the first time in years I had watched ECW since my "global" watch), getting through some of the Legends of ECW roundtables recently reminded me just how much I have loved a lot of this stuff (Francine is so adorable and funny on those too). And yeah, I'm a Raven fan.

[Richeyedwards]

Ajpw easily,I am 19 so going by this board I am incredibly young I started watching Wrestling in around mid 2009 I can remember seeing snippets of it before around my cousin's house but it was background noise. But as for watching stuff as a fan of Wrestling it would be the hbk Vs undertaker match from mania 25. The thing is I was never into wwe, I watched some shows but have never watched a full episode of raw for example (I have watched full segments and large parts of RAWS but have never seen one all the way through). I liked Wrestling but instantly hated what felt like the overproduced feeling of wwe.

 

In mid 2010 I looked up what the internet said was great Wrestling and names that kept appearing the most were, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi and Ric flair. I went on YouTube, and typed in kobashi's name, the first thing that came up was the 2003 noah match Vs misawa, I watched it and fell in love. It was light years ahead of any wwe I had seen on the internet up to that point. From there I went through as much of both men and by proxy Kawada, taue akiyama takayama etc careers as possible. I started watching njpw noah and ajpw when available from 2011 onwards.

 

Because of this way in which I watched 90s ajpw stuff extremely early in my Wrestling fandom compared to most western fans I had seen all of the misawa Vs Kawada matches before I had ever seen Andre Vs Hogan for example.

 

My growing up in Wrestling came through ajpw and it is the promotion I have seen the most of, it was what I watched predominantly through my teenage years and too today. WWE has always felt like the promotion that was the biggest game in town and if I were to talk Wrestling with my friends it would be about wwe but it was never an important part of my childhood like it was for many fans.

[With Coil]

Tom Baker and Paul McGann.

 

WCW. I'd take the Nitro Years over the Attitude Era any day of the week.

[KB8]

WWF. My earliest memory of anything in my life is watching Wrestlemania 6 with my old man, then at some point after that I remember getting an Ultimate Warrior action figure (my cousin got Jim Duggan) and when Michaels put Jannetty through the window I knew I was all in (an interesting jumping on point for a four year old, perhaps). I followed WCW fairly closely from about 1994 - initially on some channel with dubbed German commentary - until the end, but WWF was always my bread and butter. I stopped paying as much attention to it from around 2002-2004 (Eddie's push brought me all the way back back) and I haven't followed it closely in about a decade, but wrestling and football were obsessions for me during my childhood and early teens, and no promotion gives me that sense of visiting old friends like the WWF does. Even hearing commentary from specific periods takes me back to when I'd record Superstars and The Simpsons on Sky 1 every Saturday, or taking turns with a couple friends to record RAW every Friday (we never got it live over here until 2005). I have lots of fond memories of WCW as well, but Schiavone and Goldberg and Sting and the nWo don't hit me with the same wave of nostalgia as JR and Monsoon and Michaels and Austin. If I'm going to fling on a random PPV or house show as background noise, 75% of the time it'll be from the WWF.

[brockobama]

CZW. I have a genuine love for deathmatches and while the promotion truly does do and has done so much more than that, everything they do is covered in this veneer of grime and vulgarity that appeals to some deep layer of my dumb white boy lizard brain. It was so rarely ever good--and I wouldn't argue if you'd say it never was--but that in itself is almost part of the draw. Between the slew of charismatic trash monsters in the locker room over the years or the dozens of dumb, instantly recognizable highspots, it's very much a promotion for the wrestling music video generation and that community was a big part of my early fandom.

[Captain Redneck]

Georgia Championship Wrestling.

[Loss]

I'm a WCW guy by way of Jim Crockett Promotions. Became a hardcore fan in JCPs dying days.

[Matt D]

McGann (Primarily from the audios).

 

1990-92 WWF (give or take two years either way) and 1991-2 WCW. 1991 GWF. 1998 WCW. Those are my nostalgia sweet spots, and 09 WWECW.

 

79-80 Portland. The NWAonDemand run of Houston, 79-81 Memphis. 80s AWA. Those are probably my areas of specialty for older stuff before my time.

 

The modern promotion I associate with the most now is probably CMLL, for good or ill.

[Edwin]

In the 90's, WCW.

 

In the late 90's and early 00's, I got into Japanese (Thanks to the Tokyo Pop FMW VHS and DVDs) and indy wrestling and my promotion was IWA-MS (IWA-MS > ROH) and DDT (DDT > AJPW/NJPW/Noah/Toryumon JAPAN ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

 

In the the late 2000's I stopped following pro-wres. (around a year or so after I registered on here -- 2007) and just got back to following regularly 2 or so years ago and now I would say my promotion is EVOLVE.

 

So my timeline would be:

 

1990's -- WCW

2000's -- IWA-MS & DDT

Now -- EVOLVE

[The Russian Daydream]

Im a (and forever will be) a WCW guy. I really got into wrestling when my parents recorded late night WCW on ITV back in the run-up to Starrcade in 1989. My favourite period as a fan remains, despite its failings, WCW from 1989 through to Hogan arriving in 1994.

[El-P]

People are cheating, so of course, I gotta say, Lucha Underground is my promotion now.

[Mad Dog]

Chikara was also my home promotion for a couple of years. After the Benoit murders, I stopped watching wrestling for several years. I just lost all of my love for it. Then I started paying attention to Chikara during the 12 Large Summit tournament. The light hearted comic book style approach really helped me remember why I loved wrestling.

 

They lost me with the shut down angle but there was a solid 3 year period where I loved Chikara.

[BigBadMick]

Ajpw easily,I am 19 so going by this board I am incredibly young I started watching Wrestling in around mid 2009 I can remember seeing snippets of it before around my cousin's house but it was background noise. But as for watching stuff as a fan of Wrestling it would be the hbk Vs undertaker match from mania 25. The thing is I was never into wwe, I watched some shows but have never watched a full episode of raw for example (I have watched full segments and large parts of RAWS but have never seen one all the way through). I liked Wrestling but instantly hated what felt like the overproduced feeling of wwe.

 

In mid 2010 I looked up what the internet said was great Wrestling and names that kept appearing the most were, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi and Ric flair. I went on YouTube, and typed in kobashi's name, the first thing that came up was the 2003 noah match Vs misawa, I watched it and fell in love. It was light years ahead of any wwe I had seen on the internet up to that point. From there I went through as much of both men and by proxy Kawada, taue akiyama takayama etc careers as possible. I started watching njpw noah and ajpw when available from 2011 onwards.

 

Because of this way in which I watched 90s ajpw stuff extremely early in my Wrestling fandom compared to most western fans I had seen all of the misawa Vs Kawada matches before I had ever seen Andre Vs Hogan for example.

 

My growing up in Wrestling came through ajpw and it is the promotion I have seen the most of, it was what I watched predominantly through my teenage years and too today. WWE has always felt like the promotion that was the biggest game in town and if I were to talk Wrestling with my friends it would be about wwe but it was never an important part of my childhood like it was for many fans.

That's a really interesting and unique way to get into wrestling.

[Blehschmidt]

As a kid I watched all of the WWF and NWA I could. I watched AWA when it was on, I watched Global and World Class when I could catch it. But in the 90's when WCW was running Hogan versus the Dungeon of Doom and WWF was giving us Sparky Plugg.....I discovered ECW. Here I was in high school, grunge was still a thing, I was growing my hair long and smoking cigarettes cause I thought I was fucking cool, and I discovered a wrestling that no one in my stupid little West Virginia town had ever heard of (or so I thought!) So every Saturday night I stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning to watch this crazy ass wrestling on the sports channel out of Pittsburgh. About half the time they didn't bother to show it, and then I'd be super pissed off. I'd tape it and show my buddies. I ordered the EC F'N W t-shirt and thought I was even cooler! Then Barely Legal came around and it was awesome! Then the Sports Channel stopped showing it and I had to follow it on the early days of the internet which was a giant pain in the ass, but I continued buying the PPV's until the end. Now I own most of the TV and all of the PPV's on DVD and I am making my way back through it.

 

So yeah, while today I am a PWG guy....all time, I am an ECW guy, and I probably always will be.

[ohtani's jacket]

Growing up it was the WWF but I don't have any sentimental feelings towards it. My mate who I grew up watching wrestling with likes to listen to podcasts about old WWF shows (what's that popular one by the Irish guys?) He's forever encouraging me to listen to them but I have zero interest.

[brockobama]

(what's that popular one by the Irish guys?)

 

OSW (guess what the acronym is) Reviews

[fxnj]

90's AJPW for me. I started out with WWE on TV, but I was a teenager in the Youtube era so I don't really have the connection of growing up with it as the only thing to watch like others. After I discovered ditch's sites, there wasn't much looking back. The 90's AJPW stuff was simply on a different level than anything else done before or since. I've found myself having a much deeper connection to the characters and stories told in the ring than anything else I've seen. Many manly tears have been shed watching the epics. I've seen all the pimped matches at least several times each and I can still pop a random match in and mark out as hard as I did first time watching it. With most other styles, I tend to go through cycles or getting bored with them, but 90's AJPW is the one promotion I never get tired of watching no matter how much I watch. When I want to remind myself how great wrestling can be or even just want to watch something I know I'll dig I always go for 90's AJPW.

[Coffey]

Early 90's WCW & late 90's ECW are my two.

 

WCW because it's nostalgic for my childhood. ECW because it's nostalgic for my teenager years.

 

Everything after 2000, regardless of promotion, blends together. I graduated high school in 2000. The last 18 years... I can't differentiate one year from the next.

 

I love the sports feel that early 90's WCW provides & Jim Ross and Jesse Ventura is my favorite 2-person commentator duo. ECW, I was a mark for table spots & how they could take someone that I didn't like, or didn't think was that good (Rhino, Mike Awesome, etc.) and make me care about their matches.

 

The Monday Night Wars? Eh, don't really care. But pre-Hogan WCW? That's my shit.

 

If I could just pick one promotion and one five-year span, it would be WCW 1989-1994.

[Strummer]

I grew up on WWF probably because I was in a WWF territory and that's what was available for the most part. Really got into WCW in 96 or so but after starrcade 97 I had a hard time watching their TV. 1998 basically killed WCW for me all together and I had no emotional connection to their product until they folded.

 

loved ECW from 95-97 but not much afterwards

 

And I would say sometime in 1987 or so I was into the AWA as much as WWF probably because of their espn deal but I could tell they were spiraling even as a young kid

[goodhelmet]

Mad Dog, you should edit your title to read Promotions because people can't pick just one.

 

For me... Memphis, all day everyday.

[Laz]

ECW in a landslide. Everything about it - the wild brawls, the music, the aura itself - is still pinnacle shit to me. I can admit that a lot of the matches were bad to mediocre and that its stars existed only within its bubble (with rare exceptions, namely RVD), but it was the product I needed to see as a burgeoning little metalhead who loved Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith and JCVD. It had edge and reveled in it. That's the kind of entertainment I love in general.

 

After that? ROH from 2003-2008. ECW matured and focused on delivering the best in-ring action and storytelling in the country. If their TV deal had come during those peak years then I don't think we get NJPW having as much an impact in the States as they currently do. That's a bit ludicrous to say, admittedly, but the rise in popularity seemed to coincide with ROH's decline in quality.

[Icopro]

Jon Pertwee and WWF. Two of the great loves of my life.

 

The first Doctor Who episode I ever saw was The Five Doctors on my local PBS station at some point in the mid-late 90s. I had no idea what was going on and thought it was hilarious in a "so bad it's good" MST3K kind of way. After that I'd occasionally tune in solely for the lulz.

 

But at some point during the Hartnell era (my PBS station was forever replaying Hartnell through Tom Baker + The Five Doctors on an endless loop) I got over the horrible special effects and bad acting and was like "Holy shit! Doctor Who is actually awesome!" I think it was the comedic historicals that did the trick. Or maybe it was the batshit insane "Daleks plan to turn planet Earth into a giant spaceship" storyline. Or maybe it was watching The Web Planet and understanding what Art was for the first time. But, yeah, I got hooked on Hartnell.

 

I liked Troughton too once the initial shock of having a new Doctor wore off. I was particularly enthralled by The War Games. Thought it was pretty much the greatest thing I had ever seen.

But the great Jon Pertwee was and always will be My Doctor. Color! UNIT! The Delgado Master! Jo Grant! Loved it. Practically every episode had me on the edge of my seat. I was gutted when Jo left and Pertwee regenerated. Long after I stopped watching Hartnell and Troughton reruns I'd still catch the occasional Pertwee episode or pop in a Pertwee era tape to kill some time when I was bored.

 

I never could get into Tom Baker and was actually shocked when I got online and found out he was considered the consensus best Doctor. Nu Who is probably my least favorite show that I ever watched for an extended period of time. I kept waiting for it to live up to the internet hype. It never did. At some point early in Matt Smith's run I realized this was just never gonna be for me and finally gave up on it. It was until January-February of this year that I finally did my first real deep dive into Doctors 5-8. Some of 'em were alright but they've got nothing on Pertwee.

 

Oh yeah, wrestling....

 

Well, the first wrestling I ever watched was WWF in early 1987. I'd watch, and like, other promotions, but WWF was always My Promotion. By mid-late 1995 WWF became my favorite thing in the world. I was a rabid WWF fanatic during the MNW. They were "my team" against the Evil Empire that was WCW.....only I never liked any sports team as much as I liked muh mid-late 90s WWF. As sad as it sounds, my life practically revolved around WWF from about July 95-Wrestlemania 17....and I enjoyed most of the stuff that came before that too, 1993 in particular.

 

Over the past few years 1993 and 95-96 WWF has been my go to wrestling of choice.

[Sean Liska]

I loved ECW as a teenager more than I've ever loved any entertainment product. Insane loyalty to that promotion. Could write a book on it.

 

Then I got older and realized Memphis was ECW 15 years earlier and love it passionately but its not quite the same as actually living through it.

[gordi]

For me it's absolutely Osaka Pro Wrestling. From roughly 2009-2014 I was a regular attendee of their shows and their drinking parties and other events. I'd just moved here, my Japanese was very poor, and I was absolutely clueless about everything, but the fans and the staff and the wrestlers went out of their way to make me feel welcome. It was such an amazing atmosphere. There were people I met there who were among my first friends in Japan, and my best drinking buddies, and for a couple of years Osaka Pro was pretty much my second family.