Stuff That Made You Love Wrestling

[wildknight]

(Let me start off by saying that for purposes of this thread, I'm going to suspend my usual habit of telling people that the stuff they love is stupid, and hope everyone else can do the same. The point here is to talk about the things that made us fall in love with the crazy soap opera world of professional wrestling)

Here are a few of mine. Sentimentality to follow.

Bret Hart
It's safe to say that without Bret Hart, I would not be a wrestling fan today. My brother was the reason I started watching wrestling, and he had lost interest. I was never a Hogan guy, and the feud with Slaughter was a big turn-off for me, which was immediately followed up by The Undertaker, whose gimmick made me think that the WWF thought I was an idiot. I had always been a fan of the colorful tag division and in 1991, seemingly out of nowhere (there was no real weekly TV, no way to get insider news at that time) a former tag guy won the IC title in a match that had all of my friends talking. Mr. Perfect had been a favorite of mine, kind of the guy I loved to hate, and here was Bret Hart, matching him move-for-move to take his title. I immediately took notice, and from then on it was a whirlwind. In 92 I went crazy when he took the WWF Title off of Flair, and there was no looking back. Bret Hart to me was probably what Hogan was to a lot of other people. He was larger than life, a real world super hero not gifted with superhuman size or strength, but with the intelligence and skill to overcome giants and monsters. He didn't shout or threaten, but he didn't back down either. He was confident in who he was and what he was capable of, and I believed in him.

I was legitimately spiteful toward Hogan after the whole Yokozuna fiasco, and my absolute hatred for Michaels was extended by years after the infamous screwjob. IMO, if you want to know how WCW failed despite all of the great talent it had, you need look no further than Hart. His time there is a tale of waste, neglect, and abject failure.

To this day, watching Bret Hart wrestle is one of the things I love best about wrestling.



The Rockers
As a kid who was never, ever "cool" The Rockers were a really big deal to me. Aside from the WWF, the only wrestling on TV in my area was the occasional Saturday show on TBS, which was AWA. That's where I first saw The Rockers. Of course they stood out because AWA TV at that time was stars beating down jobbers, but what did I know? When they showed up in the WWF, I was all over it. I loved the energy, the athleticism, the aerial stuff, and the fact that they always seemed to have genuinely good chemistry. The star of WWF's tag division was fading by that point, but The Rockers were still having great matches every time out it seemed.

When Michaels superkicked Janetty on The Barber Shop, it had the desired effect. Michaels had plenty of heat with me, for a good long time 8)

[Deleted]

High Flyers: I think they give a kind of spice to wrestling. They just seem more entertaining than "i can lift up the world' wrestlers to me. And if even if they botch it looks more funny (see: Sin Botcha). That's why i started watching wrestling (and because at the time there were good storylines...)

[ethanm1834]

What made me fall in love with Wrestling. Honestly as a kid, I didn't fall in love until Shawn Michaels became HBK. I loved his Royal Rumbles where he'd skin the cat. I liked the flair that he had in his promos, the brash cocky attitude. He stood out to me from the big muscle guys, and while I liked Bret Hart my elder brother was more of his fan. Though we both loved the matches between the two of them.

I won't speak of the obvious when it comes to my love of wresting, that being Eddie G.

Edge
Seeing the tears in his eyes when he won the Title after growing up and watching him preform was a special moment. It showed to me that he cared about doing this, and the confirmation was huge to him. Seeing the evolution of Edge from the guy to that would come through the crowd, to the comical 5 seconds of photography, and finally the Rated-R Superstar.

The potential of Today's wrestlers
I like seeing the guys come into the WWE and like Edge, evolve. While now I have a better idea of who will become big time and who won't it is fun to see their careers come out and the changes they need to make to become the guy.

[wildknight]

Mar 20, 2014 10:17:18 GMT -5 ethanm1834 said:

The potential of Today's wrestlers
I like seeing the guys come into the WWE and like Edge, evolve. While now I have a better idea of who will become big time and who won't it is fun to see their careers come out and the changes they need to make to become the guy.

You know, I still feel like even though I'm nostalgic for the past, this is the heart of everything. The anticipation, the sense of never really being able to be sure what's coming next. Watching a guy build from relatively humble beginnings to a World Champion... it's a great ride. Well said man.

[BaneTheDestroyer]

First time I ever watched wrestling, Wrestlemania VI.

Now, I could say that I loved the whole event, but I didn't. In fact, I was just a little kid, so whoever looked cool was my favorite.

Now the whole show was boring for me until Randy Savage came out. I was rooting for Savage. Of course he lost, so I just started hating everything again. At this point, I didn't expect to watch wrestling ever again. Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior started wrestling at the end of the night, and boy was I excited for somebody like Warrior. Now, like I said, I had no idea what the feuds were or anything, but I could see the feud in that match. I didn't need to watch promos or past shows to know that that was a battle of the ages. Like Warrior/Hogan or not, that match was a match that was Warrior's peak in the business. Now some people may think that's it's bad that I saw the peek of his career first and everything went "downhill" (which I don't think it did, but whatever) from there, but I took it more so as a "first impressions can last a lifetime" kind of thing.

One of the reasons I love Goldberg is because he somewhat brought me back to that match. The brute force, mysterious man. Now, if it weren't for Goldberg, I probably wouldn't have watched WCW at all either, so I guess he's the reason I watched WCW.

Now besides those two people (that I still love to see to this day) I watched wrestling so that I could do something with my two older brothers. I loved my bros so much that whatever they did was cool. I remember talking to people about it saying I was not cool since I watched it, and I just told them, "nuh uh, my brothers watch it." My brothers are the ones that sat me down to watch WM VI.

I know this isn't really part of the thread, but the reason I stopped watching it is very similar. My brothers stopped watching wrestling as they grew up. I continued watching wrestling a little longer than them, but it just wasn't the same as waking up every day and going out and creating my own wrestling federation with my bros...getting plastic toys for weapons and pretending to wrestle until one of us got hurt and our mom made us stop. Not having anybody to talk wrestling with all of the time, kind of ruined the fun for me.

[charliebucketsgranpa]

When I first watched wrestling it was something new to me and exciting. I loved learning about each character and what kind of moves they could do and watching the different styles of them all. I also loved how at the time there were so many stories. It seemed as if I cared just as much about the opening match as I did about the main event. Everything and everyone seemed important and it was a whole new world for me.

Nowadays I've kind of learned a lot of the secrets and I can generally predict what will happen for the most part, matches aside from the main event just don't seem as important anymore. I think there is some great talent in the WWE today but WWE is misusing a lot of it.

[TomJohns]

The first match I saw was Rikishi VS Austin in a No Holds Barred match, Seeing the craziness of both the wrestlers and the fans during that PPV got me hooked on wrestling......

But I'd say that it was the early years of the Ruthless Aggression era when I fell in love with it & The older I get and the more I understand/learn about what the wrestlers put their bodies through, the more I love it.

Also, Eddie and Benoit hugging each other at WM20 along with seeing The Undertaker (non-biker) for the very first time, that PPV is oh so special in my wrestling memories 

[charliebucketsgranpa]

I want to make a point for Edge as well. I loved his heel stuff from 05-07. When he won the title the first time I marked out so much. lol. He was the main reason I watched for a while.

[Straight Edge Steve]

I began watching... well literally out of nowhere. My entire family hates "fake wrestling crap". But playing videogames 24/7, you are bound to play a WWE game eventually. And when I did, I liked it. It was SvR 2011. I thought I'd watch the actual show to learn more about it and then I got into it for a few months. I grew out of it very quickly.

Then, out of the blue, exactly this time last year, I decided to check back in on this stuff. So I rented WWE 13. And, following the cycle from last time, I began watching again. As I researched and studied it, I realized that it is a true form of art. And I love art. And at the time I needed something to make me happy, as I could barely make it through each day. Immersing myself into the fantasy world of professional wrestling helped my depression greatly.

Now, a year into watching it, I think I might be a lifetime fan of professional wrestling.

[SoonDragon67]

I started wrestling by playing SvR 09, which I really liked at the time. After I returned it I sort of forgot wrestling existed for a few months, before I started flipping through the channels and happened to land on WWE Hell in a Cell. I had a flashback to SvR 09 and decided to continue watching it. I also happened to be intrigued by the giant cell surrounding the ring. The match was DX vs Legacy. I watched it till the end of the PPV and once again forgot all about it for a while. I started actively watching Raw sometime in either late November or early December of that year.

But that's how I started watching wrestling, not what made me love it. I'm not exactly sure how I became a fan of wrestling, and it was a fairly gradual thing. I'd say it was a combination of many things such as the concept of it all, certain matches that I found entertaining, and old moments in wrestling.

[Straight Edge Steve]

I imagine it was much easier to get into that stuff being 10 years old in 1986. All of your friends would tell you to watch it... or at least that's how Randy Orton described it in the Saturday Night's Main Event DVD.

[Deleted]

As far as I can remember Wrestling has always been in my life. I fell in and out of it as the years went on but always remained a fan. I have a brother almost five years older than me so I imagine that he just always turned it on and I watched too. Mike can attest to the fact that I Liked the Heels from a very young age. He would always ask me how I could root for them. Don't get me wrong I marked out for Hogan and Steamboat and other guys like that too when they weren't up against my favorite heels. But first and foremost I was always a huge Piper fan. Always loved Bobby Heenan and pretty much anyone in his stable. I remember my brother being off at his friends house and I watched Macho Man's WWF debut without him. I was an instant fan. He got home and I couldn't remember his name but I was so excited to tell him all about this crazy new Wrestler. I also remember this little mom and pop video store that had all of the WWF old Coliseum home Videos. My mom would rent them for us. I also remember my mom ordering WrestleMania 2 for us on Pay-per-view which was very new at the time. I remember thinking King Kong Bundy likely killed Hulk Hogan when he splashed him repeatedly and broke his ribs. Lol. Heart Foundation was another team I loved. I'm not ashamed to admit that I also loved The mouth of the South and a lot of his stable as well. Honky Tonk Man. I also Remember watching Jake Roberts WWE debut. Had the snake in the bag, moving all around and then the DDT, how would anyone kick out of that? his first match the ref chased him away so you never got to see Damien but the intrigue was even greater the next time Jake came out. I could go on and on. Great memories.

[iodill8]

I sorta grew up watching wrestling.
When I was about 4, I uses to go to my uncle's house when I had a doctor's appointment.
My cousins always used to watch Smackdown. I myself never watched it though.

Later on, fast forward 2 or 3 years, I always watched my cousins play SvR07. This made me get intrigued with the real-life thing. I eventually started watching WWE and it was pretty crazy. I grew up liking John Cena, but at the time, until he retired, HBK was my favorite. The first Raw I ever watched was the night HBK had to face Rated-RKO in a street fight. I don't remember a specific match.

Also, I grew up playing with the Jakks Pacific action figures (better than Mattel) and reading WWE Magazine. All my friends loved WWE. Eventually, I stopped watching in late 2009 and starting being interested again in........ 2011 or 2012, I think.

It's just not the same.

[miketheratguy]

While Hogan was a major attraction during my childhood, what first got me into wrestling wasn't really any one person or thing. It was the overall athleticism, relative straightforwardness, and sheer majesty of it all.

I first got into the sport in the mid to late 80s. Though I was watching it before Wrestlemania IV, that VHS tape is the first wrestling event that I remember renting. I was just a little kid but had proven my ability to be safely left alone (at least until my older sister came home a couple hours later). My parents were spending an evening out so they took me to the video store and let me choose something to watch on the living room tv, all by myself, which was a big treat back then. I remember heading straight to the wrestling section where- to my delight- ALL FOUR WRESTLEMANIAS were "in", aka available to rent. Even at that young age I was already indoctrinated to the belief that because it's called "Wrestlemania" it must be the best representation of the sport.

It wasn't just that though. I could tell just by looking at the boxes. I never cared much for the look of the first Wrestlemania box, which was just a simple image of Hulk Hogan chumming with Mr. T. The casual nature of the cover didn't appeal to me. The remaining few covers, however, captured my imagination. In those big unwieldy clamshell cases they looked especially important and grand. The Wrestlemania 2 cover was, and is, a personal favorite. Rather than the colorful "FACE TO FACE DRAMA!" images that would come next or the generic "guys standing around and looking at you" collages that adorn the majority of Mania covers today, the cover of Wrestlemania 2 was utterly straightforward.





There was no airbrushing, no smiling John Cena making hand gestures, no Rey Mysterio flying in the air in the background, no flames or fireworks or auras surrounding group shots of participants. This cover was epic in its simplicity. Laid out in the style of a classic boxing card, headed by the majestic original Wrestlemania logo, this cover took itself seriously as all get out. Front and center in huge circles is the main event: Hulk Hogan versus King Kong Bundy in a steel cage match, because that's still a big deal mother fuckers! Bundy's gotta make the heel grimace but here even Hulk Hogan is playing it straight. The other major attractions are listed right there on the cover, making the matches themselves seem just as important as the people appearing in them. The stark black background is the final element that completes the image as something that's being sold to you not as a whimsical spectacle but a legitimate sporting event.

And while of course 80s WWE generally was a whimsical spectacle, in the middle portion of the decade there were still vestiges of this more serious atmosphere. The arenas were darker. The crowds skewed older. The video quality was grainier and the typeface used to display names on the screen was static, bold and capitalized without sound effects or flashy animated backgrounds. Run-ins were infrequent, entrances much less elaborate, theme songs a little less common. If a wrestler took a powder Gorilla Monsoon backed it up with lore, talking about how the wrestler had foolishly forsaken the winner's purse. Corded microphones came down from the ceiling so unknown ring announcers could list the participants' hometown and weight. Wrestlers walked through black curtains and along carpeted steps to get to the ring. Belts looked tasteful and rich with prestige.

There was ritual to the whole thing. Ceremony. "Commitment", if that makes any sense. As a kid, it was epic. It wasn't just the fact that kayfabe still existed and I was still young enough to fall for it, it was the fact that they actively presented the product in a way that asked you to believe that this was a real sporting event with real reasons for battling. It was competition, not exhibition. At least that's what they wanted you to think.

No, I don't forget that this was the Rock 'N Wrestling era. I don't forget that there were cartoons and equally cartoonish personalities. The 80s and early 90s were undoubtedly some of the most cartoonish years in wrestling history. But before the decade started drawing to a close there was still some of that old-fashioned atmosphere left. It wasn't yet all goofery and bombast, there was still formality and importance in the air. While I loved Hulk Hogan as a kid and he undoubtedly helped to keep me excited about wrestling, he wasn't what originally got me into it. What got me into it was the belief that wrestling was a big deal, to be taken as seriously as the participants seemed to take it. It was "real", at least in the sense that they still wanted me to think that it was. The world of "sports-entertainment" can still be great today, and I'm sure that there are times when it totally is. But as far as presentation goes, it's become so much more about entertainment and all but forgotten the actual "sport". And that original balance- that display of athletic combat that has always been larger than life but which at the time was delivered with just a little less ostentation and a little more tradition- is what made me a fan.

[miketheratguy]

Mar 20, 2014 9:35:05 GMT -5 wildknight said:

(Let me start off by saying that for purposes of this thread, I'm going to suspend my usual habit of telling people that the stuff they love is stupid, and hope everyone else can do the same. The point here is to talk about the things that made us fall in love with the crazy soap opera world of professional wrestling)

Here are a few of mine. Sentimentality to follow.

Bret Hart...

The Rockers...

While I wasn't particularly into Bret at first (I started watching in the mid 80s when he was still a heel and as Howard said, I was way more into the faces back then), he made the 90s for me. Bret is to this day one of my top ten (probably top five) favorite wrestlers of all time. And I LOVED watching The Rockers. They were phenomenal. The sheer athleticism and choreography of their teamwork was light years beyond what I'd seen before. I had the privilege of seeing Bret and The Rockers many times in person since they always seemed to comprise the upper-midcard of every show that we went to see in Milwaukee's Bradley Center back in the early 90s.

[wildknight]

I've got a picture of me with Marty Jannetty from a local show a few years ago. He was a very cool guy, I told him that The Rockers were my favorite tag team growing up when I was going through the autograph line, and he made a point of finding me after he was done and getting a picture with me, then talked a bit about WWF back in the day and stuff. He was very honest about the fact that he really screwed up a promising career with personal demons, and went out of his way to say how great Michaels had become since turning his life around. There were guys that I interviewed professionally that didn't give me as much time or information as he did LOL

[miketheratguy]

It's a real shame that Marty went down the path that he did, he always struck me as a down to Earth guy and obviously a hell of a great performer. If I recall correctly he was even the Rocker that they were planning to give the big singles push to before changing their mind and going with Shawn (at the same time that Marty's partying became an issue). It's nice to hear that he appreciates his fans.

Man, I miss that tag team. Can't say I recall ever seeing a poor Rockers match.

[Deleted]

I watched a really good shoot interview with Jannetty. Seemed like a very humble guy. It is a shame that he squandered his talent the way he did. Gotta wonder how he may have turned out. What kind of mike skills he might have had had he turned heel? What gimmick would they have cooked up for him?

[wildknight]

One of the funniest comments I ever heard was from another fan during Jannetty's match at CLASH... "With all of the coke Michaels was using, can you imagine what Jannetty had to do to be the one that was a bigger mess?"

[miketheratguy]

Poor guy is kind of slurry and mumbly but in the shoot that I saw his head was on straight at least, he told some amusing stories.