who/what made you a fan?

[Throwback]

As a kid I used to HATE wrestling. It used to come on twice in a row on Saturdays here. Once at 12:00pm on one channel and again at 1:00pm on another channel. (it was only an hour long back then)

The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show used to also come on at 12:00pm
So I used to beg my Dad and brother to watch wrestling at 1:00 so I could watch Bugs Bunny at 12:00. Every once in a while I would lose the battle and be forced to miss the cartoon.

However Hulk Hogan's Rock N Wrestling was a cartoon I liked so I did enjoy watch Hulk Hogan promos and matches. So I would ask my bro to tell me when Hogan was going to be on.

Then one day while waiting for Hogan. I saw a Hart Foundation vs Demolition match. I really liked both teams so I started asking my bro to tell me when either of them were coming on. Then week by week I saw more guys I really liked and before long I was buying the toys and magazines and begging my dad to get the PPV's.

So I kinda have 4 things that made me a fan.

1. The fact my family watched it
2. The Hulk Hogan cartoon
3. Hogan Promos
4. Bret Hart

[B'Cup x]

Mankind turning into Cactus jack, January 2000

I had no idea who Cactus jack was, but the way it was sold by everyone involved made me a huge fan

[DeathRay]

The first wrestling related thing i ever watched was Mankind vs Undertaker at King of the Ring 98'. The rest is history...

[ICBM]

There was a book fair at my school when I was a kid. There was a short picture book WWF put out that described guys like Ricky Steamboat, Macho, Jake the Snake, Bundy, hogan and Andre. This thing was selling like crazy and so in keeping up with the other kids I bought it too. After several dozen reads and re-reads I wanted to see these guys. We had the Von erichs down in texas but this was like cartoon characters come to life so when the next saturday night's main event came on I watched it in amazment. After that I started watching World Class everytime it came on(we didn't get cable for a few more months) that enticed me more and I learned the in's and outs of what wrestling matches and angles were. Once we moved into the city and got cable I watched orbabily 15 hours of wrestling every weekend.

[wvmelinafan]

I was a big fan of the A-Team and Mr. T. I was flipping around on the satellite dish and I came upon an interview program with Hogan and Mr. T promoting Wrestlemania. I ended up liking Hogan more than T after the interview and had my mom turn on wrestling wherever we could find it. The first match on the first show I ever watched was Jose Louis Rivera vs. the Magnificent Muraco. A few months later I got to see Hogan vs. Muraco live at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena.

Oh, and in an interesting footnote that I realized years later........the interview show with Hogan and Mr. T that I stumbled upon was the infamous Belzer show where Hogan legit knocked the guy out.

[FinalGwen]

Smackdown 1. Even though I wasn't into wrestling when I first played it, it was so much fun as a game, and I started to get interested in the characters based on what I saw in the game, and what friends who were into wrestling told me. Undertaker and Kane were particularly interesting due to their entrance videos.

[poi zen rana]

My step dad loved wrestling so it was on my TV every week from my earliest memories. The first memories I have of watching wrestling were seeing Sting and Brian Pillman. They were my heroes.

[johnnyk9]

my dad got WM 7 on PPV I was hooked from that point on

[smokey1980]

Flair and Sting.

[ricardob]

I don't even remember when I started watching really. The only thing I can remember is the Hogan and Savage feud starting. I guess 1988. But, I was such a Hulkamaniac. I even wrote him a letter when he got crushed by Earthquake.

[Andrew is Good]

I'd been a fan of WWE since I was born, literally, as my parents were fans while I was younger, and that's how I got into it. So, I don't remember.

However, I do remember first watching/hearing about WCW, ECW, TNA and ROH, so here we go.

WCW: The first WCW match I saw was I think one of the Saturday shows, and Brian Pillman was the first guy I saw, who I thought was pretty good. The NWO angle with Hall and Nash really did hook me, but it got old for me overtime.

ECW: I never watched much ECW, however I first heard of them through the Apter mags, reading stuff on Raven, Tommy Dreamer, The Sandman, Sabu, Cactus Jack and Terry Funk.

TNA: I watched my first TNA match by downloading it at a friend's house. It was the first X-Division match for the newly created X-Division title, featuring AJ Styles, Low Ki, Psichosis and Jerry Lynn. I liked Jerry's work in WWE as he was horribly underused, and that's what got my main interest. It's sad, how when TNA did the Hardcore Justice pay per view, they made Jerry Lynn out to be this ECW guy, when he was a big part of TNA in the beginning. I was also a big supporter of Jerry being ROH World Champion, and he was someone who deserved that title.

ROH: I first heard it while following Raven, as he was one of my favourites who got let go from WWE. Raven started a feud with some bozo, I forget his name. His career probably floundered since then. Anyway, I had watched some ROH shows but what really got me into it was Jimmy Jacobs, and that Jimmy Loves Lacey angle. That was incredible, very topical, very relatable, very interesting. It's funny, a promotion based mostly on in ring work got me hooked with a storyline.

[dlg3000]

Flair, Piper, Wahoo, etc. Mid Atlantic made me a wrestling fan..

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

I had some WWF merchandise bought for me by my grandfather because I watched it with him on occasion, but I didn't seriously become a fan until I was like 7.

My first few favorites were Savage (because he looked crazy and I liked his finisher), Flair (I liked his interviews and how he outsmarted bigger and faster guys) and Undertaker (because he was a zombie). I never had any issue with Hogan, but he was just sort of "there".

[derrtaysouth95]

Jan 3, 2011 9:48:07 GMT -5 DeathRay said:

The first wrestling related thing i ever watched was Mankind vs Undertaker at King of the Ring 98'. The rest is history...

Same here.

I remember it was one of those old recap shows they had back in the late 90's on Saturday mornings and my dad called me into the room and said "hey....watch this". I've been hooked ever since.

Finally getting to fulfill my dream of going to Wrestlemania this year.

The funniest thing about it? My mom didn't want me to watch Power Rangers or take karate because I'd go around hitting people. But wrestling....in a "Hell in a Cell" with thumbtacks & chairs & falling off/through the mesh caging? Well that's okay lol.

[Hassan bin Sober]

I too used to hate wrestling. I was one of these people who hated it because it was fake (though I too did watch the Rock n' Wrestling cartoon when it was on). I didn't start watching wrestling until Spring of 1998. My best friend was a fan and it seemed like everyone else in high school was too. I started to become familiar with the characters and storylines just from hearing other kid's conversations about it.

Then one faithful day I was flipping through the channels and happened upon WCW and Sting was in the ring. At first it was sort of like, "Hey here is that guy everyone is talking about," and I'd poke fun at it and what not but eventually I started getting into it myself. I remember specifically making a point to tune in one Monday night and they were showing clips from one of the PPVs where the ring was set up over a swimming pool. Sting came down from a helicopter. I was hooked. Looking back I was really into comic books at the time and pro wrestling was sort of like super heroes and villains come to life.

[Doctor Of Style]

Wrestlemania III, and all the build up to it. I liked the larger than life characters, Hogan, Andre, Dibiase, Savage & especially Bobby Heenan. The Brain was funny as hell, and any match was worth watching when he was commentating.

[Kash Flagg]

The Ricky Steamboat/ Ric Flair angle of 88-early 89. For me everything about it...from Steamboat's return (as Eddie Gilbert's partner in a tag match against Flair and Barry Windham) to the very end (Flair turns face and Terry Funk piledrives him into a table) was perfect.

[invaderdave]

I don't think there was ever "the" moment for me. However, I'd been an on-and-off fan through the nineties, and come 2000, I started watching a bit more regularly. In the beginning of the year, Foley did his "Cactus Jack metamorphasis" bit, and that's probably the biggest moment in making me a wrestling fan.

[shadowangel]

It was because of my brother he was a bit older, had some wrestling figures, watched wrestling and once "forced" me to watch some wrestling with him. I liked it from the beginning, it was some WWF Wrestling Challenge Show and a short time later WCW started in Germany too, so we got even more wrestling.
My interest in wrestling got bigger with the PPVs back then i even thought that Wrestlemania 9 was fun and then we got Royal Rumble on the Mega Drive (Genesis) and i got more and more of a big fan. I don't even know what fascinated me in the beginning, i guess it was the action, the cartoony characters and just the fun we had watching it.

[NOwave]

ok, this will show how old I am:

Mid-1960's-Memphis, TN. Studio wrestling is televised every Saturday morning, with live shows every Monday night-first at the old Ellis Auditorium, then at the Mid-South Coliseum. Sputnik Monroe, the local champ in the early '60's, passes the torch to the Fabulous Jackie Fargo toward the end of the decade. I start watching as a kid sometime around then.

My dad goes to work for the promotion(then run by the Gulas family) in 1971, primarily as a heel jobber. I watch more closely and basically smarten myself up to the business. New talent, including Jerry Jarrett, Tojo Yamamoto, Bill Dundee, and Jerry(eventually to be known as "The King") Lawler, come into the territory. 1978-Jarrett and Lawler leave the company to create their own local rival organization-something near unheard of in that era of the territories. Gulas, notorious for his miserable payouts and poor business practices in general, appeals to but gets no sympathy or support from other NWA promoters, inc. Sam Muchnick, Bob Geigel, Paul Boesch, and the Funks. The talent(inc. my dad) flees Gulas for the Jarrett/Lawler promotion, which(amazingly) has negotiated a TV deal with a local rival station, almost overnight takes over the dominant spot in town.

The promotion explodes in popularity and financial success from about 1979-1984. Almost every big name star spends time in Memphis, inc. Terry Bollea(pre hulk hogan) Randy Savage, Jesse Ventura, Andre the Giant, Terry Funk, and in his first NWA world heavyweight title run, a cocky young Ric Flair. Andy Kaufman garners some of the first mainstream recognition for wrestling, by feuding with Jerry Lawler. Their appearance on the David Letterman show stuns the traditional wrestling community. My dad retires from the business in 1979, due to illness. He died of cancer later that year.

Heady stuff for a pre-teen thru college age kid. I've been fascinated by the business ever since. The boom of Hulkamania caught me by surprise, and I was fiercely on the side of the NWA. I despised Vince McMahon and his product for some time, but gradually realized that a national takeover of the business was inevitable.

My interest waned in the early 90's, but was revived by the WCW/WWF rivalry. It waned again after the demise of WCW, but perked up with the rise of TNA.

Now, I continue to observe the business with fascination. I wonder if the audience will ever be as large as it was at the height of the territory era, when there a good 750-1000 guys in the U.S. making a reasonable living from wrestling.