Your Wrestling Journey.

[Tiarnán]

How did you start? How did your love for wrestling progress over the years? Did you have any rough periods? We've had variations of this before, but they're fun threads.

I very occasionally watched WCW with my brothers in the 90s. I liked Hulk Hogan, but didn't really know him that well at all. I remember a guy called The Wall injuring someone with 'Smiley' in their name. I think he broke his back or something? I forget.

I didn't know WWF existed for a good while, really. I remember my friend telling me about it and explaining to me the whole Undertaker/Kane story. About how Paul Bearer was Kane's dad and how there had been a big fire and stuff. I refused to watch though, because I considered it a poor man's WCW despite the fact that I barely ever watched WCW either.

This continued up until Royal Rumble 2000. My friend and I were in my other friend's house, and he'd recorded it, so we got popcorn and watched our way through it (his dad had taped over the diva/Mae Young part). I decided I liked Triple H because I thought Cactus Jack was the bad guy (I suppose he just looked like someone who should be the villain?) and because Stephanie was really pretty. The Rumble itself was of course the best bit. I remember finding Prince Albert's name funny.

After this I kind of got a little more interested. I'd watch SmackDown from time to time with friends, and would play with their toy wrestlers and ring and titan tron, but I wasn't really invested. Then my brother got a video on The Rock and I kinda loved it. I just thought The Undertaker was so cool. I think he faced The Rock at King of the Ring, and they showed a promo from Sunday Night Heat (?) where he was like, "Rock, your mouth has been writing checks your ass can't handle. Rest...in...PEACE! Hahahahaha." The next PPV I watched was Survivor Series, which my brother recorded. My interest was steadily growing and I decided to get SmackDown 2 with my PS1 for Christmas. I loved it and got to know all the wrestlers, and got really excited about Royal Rumble 2001, which was my first real PPV as a fan. Remember how Steph and HHH were bitching about Trish's purple fur coat? Good times. No Way Out and WrestleMania were amazing too, and I was hooked.

Then the Invasion happened and it all climaxed. I was obsessed. Hurricane became my new favourite, and Mighty Molly joined him. I insisted that I didn't have a crush on Molly, but nobody would believe me. I used to get unbelievably excited when my mum and dad would let me stay up until midnight to watch Raw on Friday nights, because before that I'd usually only be allowed to watch SmackDown on Saturday mornings, which wasn't as exciting. I went to my first of three shows in late 2002, and that was amazing too. It was a SD one. I missed the next year's tour and was all upset because my brother got to go, so my dad bought me Legends of Wrestling II instead. Oh yeah, and 2003-2005 saw my Peep phase.

My interest didn't really start fading until 2006, but I was still major into it and would buy Powerslam magazine every month. I wasn't as majorly into it as I had been though. Thankfully Melina kept me interested/relatively interested for the next half-decade or so, and here we are now. I haven't watched Raw in ages and haven't watched a PPV in about a year.

[Tiarnán]

That was long.

[Mutant Couch]

I saw Shawn Michaels. He was hot. I decided to watch.

[Burke]

I’ve probably covered all this before in the favourite wrestler/matches/first show you ever watched topics and stuff but I’ll put it all together for this one.

My first wresting memories are of watching it when I was really young. The only characters I really remember seeing are Undertaker, Ultimate Warrior, Papa Shango and Macho Man. I’ve since did the math and realised that the only time they were all on the roster at the same time was 1992 so I must have been 4 years old at the time. Since RAW wasn’t around then I have no idea what show it even was I was watching.

Then I didn’t pay any attention for years until around 1998 when people in school started talking about it. I didn’t have Sky Sports at the time though so I had no idea who this Stone Cold person was they were talking about and why they thought it was funny to go around yelling “suck it!” to people. Looking back, I wonder what the teachers must have thought of all those little 10 year old boys doing that. I saw little bits here and there at my friends’ house over the next year or so but I still wasn’t really a big fan. From the little I saw though, I remember liking Sable, Triple H, The Rock and Ken Shamrock (I thought it was funny when he would snap, lol). And I got the WWF Warzone videogame around this time so that helped me get to know a lot of the characters even though I didn’t watch much.

Then Channel 5 started showing WCW. I had no idea it even existed until then. It was really weird at first. I know people always joked about WCW being WWF’s retirement home but my first thought really was “damn, these people are old.” Macho Man looked way different than I remembered him. Hulk Hogan was Hollywood Hogan now. DDP looked like my 50 year old uncle. Ric Flair looked like my grandfather. The only new people I really liked were Goldberg, Scott Steiner and some of the cruiserweights like Rey Mysterio and Kidman. Oh, and Major Gunns. I really liked Major Gunns.

I didn’t really start watching WWF until 2000 when Channel 4 started showing Sunday Night Heat and some PPV’s and then sometime shortly after that I got Sky Sports and could finally watch RAW and SD each week. Royal Rumble 2000 was the first show I remember looking forward to and being able to watch. To this day it’s still one of my favourite PPV’s. I loved the Triple H/Cactus Jack street fight, Miss Kitty’s bubblewrap bikini (we’ll forget Mae Young happened), the tables match (I had never seen one before) and The Rock winning the Rumble. Triple H was my favourite. I loved him and Stephanie running the show. Trish was my favourite diva. I think I had a poster of her up on my wall for like the whole of 2000-2001. I started hating the Dudley’s when they put her through a table, lol. And I loved her first feud with Lita. I also liked The Rock, Chris Jericho, commissioner Mick Foley and Edge and Christian.

2001 was definitely the peak year of my fandom though. Especially WM 17 with Rock vs. Austin. I remember the week leading up to that match everyone in school talking about it almost like it was a real sporting occasion. Then after that I enjoyed the invasion stuff and some of the new people like RVD and Stacy Keibler became favourites of mine. And I remember Trish winning her first Women’s title, Chris Jericho becoming Undisputed champion and HHH returning from injury all happening within like a month of each other and thinking it was awesome. The next year or two had a lot of stuff I loved also like Sable returning and feuding with Torrie/Stephanie, rapping John Cena, Shawn Michaels coming out of retirement and HHH and Trish dominating their divisions.

2004 was where it all went downhill for me. I used to watch RAW every week and SD almost every week until then but around the time JBL was champion I gave up on SD altogether and to this day will now only read the spoilers and watch specific segments featuring people I like (which is basically nothing right now with SD’s awful roster). I still watched RAW most weeks though. And every now and then there would be something exciting like Maryse's emergence in 2008.

These days even though I don't watch as much as I used to there’s still usually one or two things each year I really look forward to like the Royal Rumble and usually at least one big match at WM (Taker-HBK 2 years ago, HHH-Taker last year, Rock-Cena and HHH-Taker this year, probably Cena-Taker next year). Outside of that January-April period though, I have lost all interest. After WM I think I'll pretty much be done until this time next year unless something miraculous happens. There's only really a handful of people left I give a damn about and it's easier to just search out their segments each week than watch the whole show and be bored by 80% of it.

Damn, this was a long post, lol.

[Tiarnán]

2001 really was the most amazing year for wrestling ever, wasn't it? I vividly remember Insurrexion showing one evening UK time and being completely hyped up about it. Half the street must have been in our back garden before hand, cause I remember playing something about dinosaurs (our street was full of kids around me and my brother's age). My mum and dad forced me to stay outside that night because it was really sunny, but I caught the first match (I think it involved Grand Master Sexay and Matt Hardy, or something like that) and watched the rest the next morning. I was so annoyed when Steven Richards ruined the women's match, lol. This was one of the first times a PPV was on Sky Box Office iirc.

Invasion was definitely the best period. I caught the start of it, went on holiday and came back to be informed that Stephanie had bought ECW. Seeing the replay on whichever Raw recap show came after SmackDown on Saturdays made my life happy.

The good old days, when Raw was on Friday nights, SmackDown was on Saturday mornings and most of the PPVs were free.

[Brandon]

Feb 27, 2012 15:10:19 GMT -5 Burke said:

Stacy Keibler

I love that this was literally the first thing my eyes went to in Burke's post. Its like I've subconsciously trained my brain to only take in things that are relevant to me.

Feb 27, 2012 15:27:47 GMT -5 Tiarnán said:

2001 really was the most amazing year for wrestling ever, wasn't it? I vividly remember Insurrexion showing one evening UK time and being completely hyped up about it. I was so annoyed when Steven Richards ruined the women's match, lol.

Ugh. Right? I spent my whole allowance on that tape when I was in middle school because the back advertised Trish Stratus, Lita, Ivory and Jacqueline in a fatal four-way or something. I was so pissed.