When did YOU become a fan?

[thesam07]

Thought i'd start a thread to ask "How long have YOu been a wrestling fan?" and "what was the first match you saw?". This has possibly been done infinite times allready, so , let us enjoy number infinite plus one of the "When did YOU become a fan?".


Personally, my "Fandom" and my "First match" were seperate by about 6 years.

The first match i watched was Bam Bam Bigelow and Luna Vachon vs Doink and Dink. I guess it was in 1993, i had no idea who they were, i just walked into the room and saw my cousins watching it and all i thought was "Hey, that's a clown. And thats a midget. And a scary lady and a scary man. Whatever." And walked off.

I then became a fan in mid 1999. Around the time Triple H was in his first WWE title run and was feuding with Steve Austin.

[strykerdarksilence]

I first discovered Wrestling in the late 80`s, Macho Man vs Ted DiBiasie was the first match I saw, and I loved the action, and the over the top characters of Hogan and Warrior etc. Then I fell out of love with it in about `91 when we hit a rough spot financially and didn`t have Sky television to watch it.

Then in `97 a friend let me borrow a video of the AAA/WCW PPV. I saw the Eddie Guerrero/Art Barr tag, and fell in love with wrestling again. Since then I became a buff for the older stuff, catching up from where I left off as well as watching some 70s and 80s NWA tapes. WCW kept my attention until the Attitude era and ECW tapes reached me. Thats about it

[ntb]

I first started watching the WWF sometime in 1992... I can't really remember much from back then except that everything I watched was hosted by either Sean Mooney or Todd Pettingill and I had some Ultimate Warrior pencil crayons.

I kept watching the WWF until late 1993, but then I think I disliked Lex Luger so much I lost interest. Except for the few times when I saw WCW on ITV, I didn't watch any wrestling until the first Raw after WrestleMania XV - that's when I'd say that I became a wrestling fan.

By 2003 I had started to lose interest and I wasn't really watching anything except stuff from my video collection, which I ended up giving away because it was taking up too much space.

I kinda got back into wrestling again in 2006 because of sites like YouTube and DailyMotion, but I didn't sit through an entire show of anything until ECW started up again and TNA was doing the Paparazzi Productions stuff.

Nowadays I'll mostly just read news reports and show recaps, watch any goofy WWE skits I think I'll enjoy and buy the occasional CHIKARA show... I wouldn't really call myself a "fan" anymore.

[itsdavephlegmball]

Late 60s or early 70s. Black and white TV. Ivan Koloff, George Steele, Bulldog Brower, Bruno, Pedro, Andre, and the tag champs were Baron Mikel Scicluna and King Curtis. What's not to love?

[molson5]

My family got a VCR Christmas 1985. My older brother came home with Wrestlemania I on VHS shortly thereafter.

So the first official match I remember seeing is that Mania's opening match - Tito Santana v. The Executioner. My sister and I found WWF on TV shortly after that - which wasn't difficult in New England- there were literally 6 or 7 WWF wrestling shows you could catch a week in that area, even though we only had about 20 channels. We picked up the NYC stations like WPIX and WWOR, which each had their own shows, to go with WFXT, WNDS, and Worcester Channel 27. I remember a lot of times there were two completely different WWF shows on at the same time, and you could flip back and forth. It was a great time and place to be a young wrestling mark.

End old man rant.

[The Hawaiian Hammer!]

Saturday morning, watching WWF with my Grandpa, I must have been about 4 or 5

[Goldenbane]

The first match I ever really sat down and watched all the way was in 1995, when Vader and Ric Flair had a tag team match against two masked jobbers named the conquestedors or something like that. The two jobbers cowered in fear of Vader and Flair...then when the villains go close to start beating on them, the jobbers suddenly became gods and beat the holy hell out of the bad guys. They took off their masks, to reveal that it was Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage the whole time.

[J is Justice]

About 1995. The first match I saw was Crush vs Papa Shango (which was obviously on tape.) I prefered older wrestling when I was small, though (still do.)

[tkmayhem]

Wrestling has always been big in my family, so I've been watching and have been a fan since as long as I can remember. My first memories of watching wrestling would probably be when I was about 3 or 4 years old which would put it somewhere around 90-91-ish. Can't really remember watching a full match from that time but the earliest memory I have is of Undertaker and Paul Bearer putting Kamala(i thnk) into a casket and nailing it shut. And then I got to go to a house show around the same age with a Warrior squash main event . I was a big Warrior mark when I was little.

[Dean-o]

Before he died, my dad insisted that we went to WrestleMania IV together. It makes sense, since it was in Atlantic City, my family's home away from home, and I still have a child size t-shirt from the event, but sadly I do not remember a single thing.

My 1st wrestling memory? Seeing one of those WrestleMania VI hype videos that used to air on WWF Superstars, with Mean Gene running down the card. I became a fulltime fan somewhere in 91 and haven't looked back yet.

["Hollywood" Cactus Matt]

I don't remember the first match I actually saw, but I imagine it would have been on either Superstars on Saturday morning or All-American Wrestling on Sunday afternoon.

I started watching in late-1984/early-1985, when "Hulkamania" was still in its infancy.

[Bishblast]

Well, I was born in Dec of 85, and grew up in the late 80s-late 90s with my Great-Grandmother's neighbors, who were 2 years older and younger than me. They were both wrestling fans, because their parents were, so I was around wrestling ever since I can even remember...

My earliest memories of watching it and being a fan would be when I used to rent the old Coliseum tapes in '93 and '94. Just renting random shows and watching them.

The first time that I started to watch wrestling and actually follow it (as in storylines, and watching routinely) would be watching WCW Saturday Night in late 93. Then I started watching WWF pretty regularly around the time of the beginning stages of the Owen/Bret feud.

Raw is War was something I tried to watch as much as possible, but I didn't get cable until late 96. It was at this time that I became a raving lunatic mark, and never came back.

[Phosphor Glow]

mothersky said:

Well, I was born in Dec of 85, and grew up in the late 80s-late 90s with my Great-Grandmother's neighbors, who were 2 years older and younger than me. They were both wrestling fans, because their parents were, so I was around wrestling ever since I can even remember...

My earliest memories of watching it and being a fan would be when I used to rent the old Coliseum tapes in '93 and '94. Just renting random shows and watching them.

The first time that I started to watch wrestling and actually follow it (as in storylines, and watching routinely) would be watching WCW Saturday Night in late 93. Then I started watching WWF pretty regularly around the time of the beginning stages of the Owen/Bret feud.

Raw is War was something I tried to watch as much as possible, but I didn't get cable until late 96. It was at this time that I became a raving lunatic mark, and never came back.

Yeah, I did the same thing. Random Coliseum tapes was where it was at. I must've rented each one like 10 times, I swear. Along with all the WCW tapes they had.

In any case...I watched matches here and there in the early 90's...not frequently, but i do remember a handful of things happening then...but I wasn't extremely interested at the time, though I do remember Arachniman for whatever reason. I thought I'd imagined that guy until I came upon this site.

In any case...I got into WCW around the time the nWo was formed, and the WWF around the time DX was formed...perhaps a little earlier or later...I don't really remember.

But I remember Stone Cold stunning a heel Santa on a Christmas episode, and that made me a fan for life, pretty much. I dunno why, but I loved the hell out of then.

I then proceeded to watch Nitro and Raw pretty much every week and keep track of damn near every storyline. I dunno how the hell I pulled that off, but I did.

[Professor Chaos]

Sometime between WrestleMania 1 and WrestleMania 2 is when I started watching.

[Deleted]

first match: some type of cage match involving an RKO and the championship... with Evolution... wasn't really paying attention

became a fan after seeing Shelton/HBK at gold rush

[CM Dazz]

'83

[jobberjoe]

I was lucky enough to be watching Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling in the mid to late 70s- I really got into wrestling when Roddy Piper came onto the scene I loved him as a heel and a face- and I just started gettting the Apter mags and following the sport-besides Piper-Ric Flair was there and Steamboat & Wahoo & the Boogie Woogie Man-I hope they do a Crockett promotions DVD- but I doubt that will ever happen

[cxcx]

I was 5 years old. I remember VIVIDLY watching Wrestlemania 4 live on pay-per-view with my Dad and my Uncle Terry. It was all downhill from there.

[danshires]

I seem to remember being about eight at the time (1991), and a friend of mine introducing wrestling to me. He had Sky, and watched it fairly regularly and showed me some trading cards with Hogan and Warrior on them, initially I was interested, but really wasn’t that bothered by it. A couple of weeks later, I remember his older cousin talking to us about it, about the fueds and characters like DiBiase and Jake Roberts – at this point I was hooked.

I started collecting the trading cards, and bought a WWF magazine profiling all the wrestlers to try and learn about them. My mate said his dad would tape Summerslam 91 for us, and we could watch it one afternoon – got to be honest, for an eight year old, I can’t think of a better WWF show at the time to introduce me to wrestling, Hart v Perfect, LOD vs Nasties, Mountie vs Boss Man, Virgil and DiBiase, and the ‘match made in hell’.

Growing up I dipped in and out, firstly in around 94, coming back briefly in 96, and then completely in 98.

[Mike's a Midnight Express Mark]

98-99 Thereabouts.

I used to watch WCW with my family, because it was more "family friendly" than the WWF was at the time. I used to watch RAW with my cousins during the summer, and they got me hooked to the Attitude era WWF. When my parents would go to bed at 9:30, I'd turn the volume down on the TV to six, creep up real close, change the channel on our Dish TV to USA and watch RAW IS WAR until about eleven. That's how I used to be a troublemaker. Watching the bad stuff after mom and dad went to bed. Those were the days.

Some days, especially on holidays from school when I would be over at my grandfather's house, I would find my uncle's old Jim Crockett Promotions tapes and watch those. I would spend most of my summer or spring break doing that. He ended up giving them to me after my grandfather died, and I like to break them out every now and then, just for nostalgic purposes.