How much wrestling was on TV when *you* were a kid?

[ohtani's jacket]

I grew up in New Zealand. WWF Superstars began airing in 1988.  We got to see the PPVs on television but we never got to see Saturday Night's Main Event aside from the clips that aired on Superstars. We were several months behind and were bombarded with spoilers in the TV guide, a trashy tabloid named "The Truth," the WWF magazine and the Apter mags. The video stores had a lot of random tapes with non-WWF stuff, and we also knew about the existence of other territories from the Apter magazines but I remember the territorial stuff seeming a bit bush league to me as a kid. The only guys who caught my imagination were guys like Sting or the Road Warriors because of their get-ups and face paint. 

The WWF aired until 1991. It was taken off the air because it was too violent and too many kids were copying the moves. The video shops still ordered the tapes but it was out of sight, out of mind for me. Worldwide began airing on Satellite TV in 1994 and eventually other WWF and WCW syndicated shows began to air as the mid-90s boom took over. Eventually, we had one-hour edited versions of Nitro and RAW, but on the whole, I think our wrestling experience was unique in that it really revolved around PPVs and magazines. I can't imagine too many fans who grew up with spoilers the way we did whether it was in the magazines, on the syndicated shows or later on the internet. We were such a small market, and so far behind when I was a kid (maybe six months or more), that you would literally tune into Worldwide to try to figure out the results of the PPV matches they had spent weeks building to. I used to really love it when they recapped the entire PPV with highlights because we couldn't get WCW tapes from the video store until 1997.