My history: Pro wrestling

Are you tired of reading my life story yet? I'm starting to think it might be coming off vain, my posting all this stuff about myself. But I thought it was important that I establish my love for these topics before I start writing about current events related to them. You all don't have to read them, obviously. But if you are, I thank you, and I promise there's only a few more. Then I'll get on to what I actually started this blog for.

Anyways, wrestling! I know what some of you may be thinking immediately. "You know that's fake, right?" Let me get this straight, first. I didn't watch wrestling in the '80s. I missed out on Hulkamania and all of that. Much like how I didn't get into comics until my early teens, I was too busy with video games to care about wrestling until the early '90s. By this time, the wrestling business had basically given up on the idea of trying to convince people it was a real sport. Instead, they were marketing it as the truth, that wrestling was a scripted show just like any other on TV, that just happened to be performed by very talented stuntmen/actors in front of a live audience. That said, it has always bothered the hell out of me whenever anyone asks me, "You know that's fake, right?" What kind of idiot still thinks wrestling is real? No one but the most backwards, ignorant people have thought that for almost 20 years now! So when people ask me if I know wrestling's fake, I just ask them if they know their favorite show is fake. "Hey, you know 24's not real, right? I mean, it's scripted, they're not actually doing that stuff." I usually get a pretty good reaction from that. It's ironic, too, because in wrestling they really are doing the stuff you see. They're just pulling their punches to avoid seriously hurting each other.

Sorry about that little rant. It always comes with the territory when discussing wrestling. Moving on. Like I said, it wasn't until late '93 that I got into wrestling. I started watching WWF because of some friends, and really got into it. I followed it religiously all through the '90s. I also watched WCW during the late '90s (who didn't want to see the nWo?), but WWF was my favorite. I've always especially liked The Undertaker.

Once WCW and ECW collapsed, though, and were bought by Vince McMahon, and the WWF was forced to change its name to WWE, things went downhill real quick for me. With no competition, WWE's product became pretty terrible. And knowing, since I followed all the behind the scene news on the internet, that Triple H - who used to be one of my favorite wrestlers in his D-Generation X days - had married into the McMahon family just made it too hard to watch. I couldn't stand seeing Vince's son-in-law being given the title over and over again over more deserving wrestlers. So for a long time I stopped watching wrestling.

Then TNA came along. I was so happy to have an alternative to WWE! I've been a TNA fan ever since, though there are still times that I'll stop watching for a few months if the product becomes stupid to me. Like I think it might be about to get now. But that's for another post.

I've been to a number of old WWF house shows, and one TV taping for the old WWF Challenge show on Saturday mornings. I also had the privilege of attending WrestleMania XI in Hartford, CT. On top of that, I've been to a few local shows for WWE developmental leagues, and at those shows I got to meet and have my picture taken with Kevin Nash, Kane, Big Show, and Jim Cornette.