Squirrel Master
Hank Scorpio
"Then the Squirrel Master came out of left field and told me I'm his bitch!"
Posts: 6,642
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Post by Squirrel Master on Mar 4, 2017 22:24:39 GMT -5
Flipping channels one Saturday morning I came across the Road Warriors brawling with the Fabulous Freebirds in AWA. I liked both teams equally and then th following hour was WWF. The blond bad guy Ken Patera was hilarious with his crazed expression on his face as he crushed that scrub around in his "swinging neckbreaker", refusing to let go. Then I noticed my local video store had all the Coliseum Videos and I was hooked for life.
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BarmPot
AC Slater
Keep on keepin' on
Posts: 120
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Post by BarmPot on Mar 4, 2017 23:01:14 GMT -5
I remember reading an old WWF annual as a kid, seeing Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior and British Bulldog (early 90s I think)
Then my parents got Sky. Dad loves football, brother loves football, cousin loves football. What caught my eye? Kane's debut. I don't hate football and follow my home town team, but Kane battering jobbers is way more entertaining.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2017 0:10:46 GMT -5
Summerslam... 94, I think it was, the one that had Undertaker vs Kama Mustafa.
I dug the Undertaker character, and never looked back.
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Post by Jaws the Shark on Mar 5, 2017 7:44:17 GMT -5
Summerslam... 94, I think it was, the one that had Undertaker vs Kama Mustafa. I dug the Undertaker character, and never looked back. That would've been Summerslam '95; Summerslam '94 was headlined by the wretched Undertaker vs. Undertaker match. For me, it was when I changed schools in the late nineties, around 1998. I had seen bits and pieces of wrestling before, but living in the UK without satellite TV, I had never really had an opportunity to watch it. One of the first friends I made at my new school was really into wrestling, and because I didn't have friends before who liked it, it was a really new and exciting thing for me. I survived on VHS rentals (I remember the first two were The Best Of WrestleMania I-XIV, and The Best of Raw, Vol. 1) until WCW came on free-to-air television here in the summer of 1999, and my parents got a cable TV subscription a while after.
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brody
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,463
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Post by brody on Mar 5, 2017 8:18:47 GMT -5
My baby book says by my third birthday I was an addict. I loved Hulk Hogan and could name JYD, Andre and others.
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Pushed to the Moon
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Tony Schiavone in Disguise
Working myself into a shoot
Posts: 15,819
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Post by Pushed to the Moon on Mar 6, 2017 18:13:31 GMT -5
Early 90s. The Rockers mainly. Hogan and Warrior too I guess.
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Post by crowley1986 on Mar 6, 2017 19:11:55 GMT -5
Wrestlemania 9 - I was in awe of Giant Gonzales, Yoko , Bret and Taker, fell out of interest as I didn't have the channels for a couple of years, mate loaned me WWE Attitude on PS1 and for some odd reason at 13 I thought Bradshaw was the best in it and happened to see him on a Heat on the day of the Rumble 2000
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MiLB Fan
Fry's dog Seymour
Posts: 20,381
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Post by MiLB Fan on Mar 6, 2017 19:48:13 GMT -5
My fandom began in early 1992. In first grade I had a friend named Jake, and any time my dad saw him he always said, "hey it's Jake the Snake." I didn't know who Jake Roberts was, but it just so happened that WWE was coming to town that February. Even though I had no idea who was on the show, I remember writing about it in my first-grade journal. I think I wrote something like, "Hulk Hogan is wrestling Ric Flair. I'll be rooting for The Hulkster." I'm guessing that my dad told me who would be there because again, I hadn't watched wrestling or read about it before then.
But I didn't start following wrestling full-time until that summer, when I bought my first issue of WWE Magazine at Dunham's Discount Sports: the September issue with Papa Shango on the cover. So it wasn't Hogan that got me hooked, it was Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior. I loved the bright, colorful designs on their ring outfits; they looked like something from the future, or a Saturday-morning cartoon.
I watched SummerSlam and that's when I was hooked for good. Even though I didn't know the storylines leading up to the show, I didn't have to. First, you had an open-air stadium with 80,000 people, which is pretty awe-inspiring when you're nine years old. I was just taken in by all these different characters. Whoa, here are two guys riding to the ring on motorcycles and they're wearing face paint and spiked shoulder pads! And whoa, here's this other guy dressed all in black riding on the back of a hearse! And these two big guys throwing these smaller guys around like rag dolls! And, of course, the two guys who grabbed my attention in the first place: Savage and Warrior.
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Post by Ted Sheckler on Mar 7, 2017 4:46:42 GMT -5
I was in like 5th grade so I was 11-12 and it was 2002-2003. My friends would always talk about wrestling every Thursday or Friday morning (RAW aired on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon)
I didn't have cable and this was before streaming was a thing so I had my Uncle who lived an hour away record whatever he could but generally I'd rent the PPV DVD's from a local video store and watch them along with anything else that I could get my hands on (Tons of 98-01 stuff). I rented everything our regular store had to offer and moved to the one about 300 metres down the street, finished with their wrestling stuff and went to another store even further down the road and then I started renting whatever I hadn't seen from stores in the surrounding towns.
What kept me around though? I remember the first show I ever hired was WrestleMania X-7 because The Rock was on the cover who was the only wrestler I really knew. I remember watching the opening match and liking it and then thought the six man was a bit "eh" but the hardcore title match hooked me particularly Raven being thrown through the glass. That made me think "I know all the other stuff isn't real but how do you fake that?"
And here I am 14 years later.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2017 20:03:05 GMT -5
I always thought wrestling was kind of stupid, but would watch it occasionally with my big sister in the 80's.
Then in 1996 a friend showed me ECW because I looked, dressed, and acted like Raven at the time. I fell in love with it, and was soon watching WWF and WCW as well. Due to the timeframe, the current product at the time seemed cooler than what I had seen in the 80's
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Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 7, 2017 22:18:13 GMT -5
I really can't say. I can't remember a time when I wasn't a huge fan. With so many people in my family being so into it, I guess it was inevitable.
Fun fact: years before my parents met (and while my mom's family was still living in Michigan), both of my grandfathers pulled pocket knives and attempted to climb out of a balcony to aid a babyface who was being attacked.
In the case of mom's dad, the victim was Leapin' Larry Chene at (I think) Cobo Hall. I don't know if it was the Sheik causing trouble or not.
In the case of dad's dad, it was in Knoxville and "some bald headed Germans" were doing a number on Lester Welch.
In one of the attacks, a large nail was the weapon of choice, but I can't remember which.
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Post by Slingshot Suplay on Mar 7, 2017 22:58:51 GMT -5
The Dynamite kid. I loved the Bulldogs when I was little but especially dynamite because he was so fast.
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Post by häšhtå.gdālėÿ on Mar 8, 2017 1:51:16 GMT -5
When I was a really young kiddo, my dad took me to Arco Arena to watch The Undertaker. I wish I could say my fandom started there, but I don't remember anything about it except for the story I've heard from my dad. After that, all growing up I was a stubborn child. I always said "Wrestling is stupid. It's fake. Why would I watch this?" And so, I never watched wrestling.
Then one of my friends got Smackdown! for the original PlayStation. I went to his house, and my buds were playing as The Hardy Boys and I thought "Maybe this isn't as stupid as I told myself it is?"
The first wrestling that I watched on my own happened to be Christian turning on Edge, with the one man con-chair-to. I've been watching it more often than not ever since.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2017 1:57:27 GMT -5
I remember liking Strike Force (Rick Martel and Tito Santana) in WWF and the Horsemen, Sting, Funk and Muta in WCW.
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Post by Adam Black on Mar 8, 2017 5:55:45 GMT -5
TV broke and got stuck on a channel that played wrestling all day long. I might be the first Stockholm syndrome fan.
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msc
Dennis Stamp
Posts: 4,445
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Post by msc on Mar 8, 2017 11:43:12 GMT -5
Well, back in 1991, Mum took me to see the Woolsworth Santa, and he was offering kids the option of two gifts: a Hulk Hogan toy or an Undertaker toy. I was five, and chose Undertaker as "he looked cooler". That was my first introduction to wrestling, other than my great-gran talking about it a lot. She was a big fan. Cheered on the British heels too, so a smark of the 1950s!
Much, much later, one of my friends had an N64, and all of his friends would gather in his room each Saturday for GoldenEye tournaments. After a lot of persuasion, Mum saved up and got me and my sister our own N64 in 1998. Now, one weekend - March 99 - I'm at this friends house, and he brings out WWF Warzone, this "awesome new game we have to play". I was hooked within a few goes, especially by the Royal Rumble mode. Friend tells me its based on a TV show which is on Friday nights, "run by Mr McMahon".
So the next Friday, I convince Mum to tape Raw is War. First person to show up on it is The Rock. I know him from the game. He does his typical Rock speech, complete with "this all smells of a load of monkey crap!"
First ad break: Mum (slightly disapproving): You going to watch this? Me: Oh yes!
First match was Owen Hart vs D'lo Brown in a Steel City Street Fight, but my entire sole reference to who was who was WWF Warzone. Case in point, I thought Jeff Jarrett was Bret Hart with a really bad haircut, that Shane McMahon and Vince McMahon were the same person, and that The Brood were made up of the following people: Christian Edge (Edge), The Brood (Christian) and The Acolyte (Gangrel).
Anyhow yeah, if the game didn't nab me, or the Rock/Vince promo, I was sold entirely by the end of one Owen Hart match.
Oh, and D'lo, of course. Always liked D'lo.
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Post by Surfer Sandman on Mar 8, 2017 12:54:55 GMT -5
I was born in 1981. Started watching wrestling with family in 1984 and have followed wrestling since. We mostly watched NWA (later WCW) and WWF and sometimes WCCW, AWA and ECW. NWA/WCW were king in my family until the New Generation era of WWF, which gave way to the Attitude era.
My father is usually a quiet man who grumbles occasionally. Wrestling was his way of working out complex emotions, especially anger. Whenever the 4 Horsemen would cheat, he would go wild and nearly ended up smashing the tv a few times. It was the only time my old man could connect with myself and my brother, the other way being the Atari 2600 we had.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on Mar 8, 2017 13:18:52 GMT -5
I don't really remember... I'd imagine Hogan, being born in 1983 in New York... the WWF was the way one of the earliest non-stuffed toys I remember having is the Rubber Hogan, Piper and Shiek figures as well as the big WWF ring that went with them.
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StuntGranny®
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
Not Actually a Granny
Posts: 16,099
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Post by StuntGranny® on Mar 8, 2017 13:42:39 GMT -5
Hogan and Savage. I don't remember how, but I came across both of them in 1990 and I was really into it. A few years later an older cousin gave me a few of his old NWA tapes and that sealed the deal.
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msc
Dennis Stamp
Posts: 4,445
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Post by msc on Mar 13, 2017 5:18:39 GMT -5
And on that note - today is the 18th anniversary of me watching my first ever wrestling event and match!
It's all Owen Hart's fault really. The goofy genius, he had the first match I ever saw. And The Rock, of course, who was the focus point of that RAW.
In that time, I've watched PPVs convinced my favourites were winning World titles (usually disappointed), seen some great shows, and the fandoms also survived some really awful shows, the whole "Benoit as favourite" thing disappearing overnight at one point in 2007, Mr Perfect dying, the Reign of Terror, Katie fecking Vick, HLA, 3 hour RAWs, and worst of all, continuous attempts to push Billy Gunn.
I mean, he even came back in 2014, when I thought I was safe! You just can't get rid of the random Billy Gunn push sneak appearing like a ninja.
If me and the WWE are both still around in another 18 years - never take anything for granted, I say - I'll probably still be a fan, and it'll still drive me round the bend. Sometimes I think we're destined to do this forever.
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