When Did You Start Watching Wrestling?

Blackjack

Black Belt
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I was in elementary school when I started watching wrestling. We lived in WWF country (unfortunately) although it wasn't as bad when I started watching it as it would get a few years later. The first card I went to had a main event of Pat Patterson defending The IC Championship against Ken Patera. I also went to a card that had Andre The Giant vs. Hulk Hogan and after maybe 10 minutes of wrestling, Hogan was getting beaten pretty badly and after about 10 minutes or so he just ran from the ring and got counted out.

One of the matches I best remember was Don Muraco in a one hour time limit draw vs. the champion, Bob Backlund. That was when WWF was still fairly good. Eventually I stopped watching pro wrestling from around 1983 to 1988. The WWF was getting really goofy and cartoonish and the friend from junior high who went to matches with me (one of our dads would take us to the WWF matches at The Capital Center) also stopped watching it. It was 9th grade and nobody we knew watched wrestling anymore either. The only people in our high school who ever talked about WWF were total losers. I know that much later, during the Monday Night Wars, wrestling was considered somewhat cool to watch but for a while at least, watching pro wrestling was considered far from "cool." I'm describing how it was in The Washington D.C. area when only WWF ran shows here. I don't know how it was if you lived in "Flair country" or if you lived in Dallas, or in the area where Mid-South Wrestling was. I wen to college in Tampa, Florida and they had a little promotion called PWF with Dusty Rhodes. Gordon Solie was the play by play announcer and Diamond Dallas Page was doing color commentary. My roommate watched it and I started watching it too. I even went to one of the shows where Terry Funk beat up Dustin Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes won the PWF Title and that's what got me started watching wrestling again.
 
1996, I believe. I can't remember, to be honest.
 
I dont watch wrestling, I only watch WWE
 
I dont watch wrestling, I only watch WWE
When did you start watching that? I started watching WWF just before the Pilman 9MM gun angle and I hadn't watched it since '83. I watched every single week until around the time when Austin had to quit wrestling. At the time they were using the show as an excuse to show Vince McMahon's family. Vince, Stephanie, Shane, and sometimes even Vince's wife were on WWE TV so I can see what you mean by "I don't watch wrestling . I only watch WWE." It was like a soap opera starring The McMahon family. They had The Undertaker kidnap Stephanie. They had Vince's children beat up Vince in one of their most tasteless angles. They had an angle where Kane was accused of having sex with a corpse. When I started watching in late 1996 Austin was feuding with Pillman and then Austin challenged Bret Hart who was the champion. To go from that to angles about the promoter's son and daughter beating him up and an angle involving necrophilia was enough to prove they weren't interested in airing anything even resembling wrestling.
 
1996, I believe. I can't remember, to be honest.

I think the angle with Brian Pillman pulling a gun on Steve Austin on live TV was in the fall of 96 so if you remember seeing that live, then maybe you did start in 1996...I mentioned that because it was probably the most memorable thing in the WWF from that year in my opinion.
 
I think the angle with Brian Pillman pulling a gun on Steve Austin on live TV was in the fall of 96 so if you remember seeing that live, then maybe you did start in 1996...I mentioned that because it was probably the most memorable thing in the WWF from that year in my opinion.

Haha I definitely remember that. I remember Austin's callout of Bret, too.
 
WWF was right after Vader attacked Gorilla Monsoon. WCW was right after Kevin Nash attacked Bischoff. That was when I started watching regularly anyway.
 
Pedro Morales....Bruno Samartino days...
 
Pedro Morales....Bruno Samartino days...

Cool! What arena did you go to to see the matches? I missed most of that era and my earliest memories of wrestling are of Bruno doing color commentary while Vince did play by play. But I did see Larry Zybyszco attack Bruno with a chair on TV when they were supposed to be having just a friendly match, according to Bruno. He didn't want to hurt his protege, but Larry insisted on the match since he was sick of being in Bruno's shadow. Larry was getting embarrassed in their wrestling match since Bruno was getting the better of him in every exchange, so he got a chair and busted Bruno's head open.
 
I started watching when Bob Backlund had the championship during the early 80s growing up in New Jersey. I remained a really die-hard fan all the way up until around 2000 when ECW folded and WWF bought out WCW.
Essentially once Vince cornered the market I threw in the towel, sad to say.
 
I started watching when Bob Backlund had the championship during the early 80s growing up in New Jersey. I remained a really die-hard fan all the way up until around 2000 when ECW folded and WWF bought out WCW.
Essentially once Vince cornered the market I threw in the towel, sad to say.

When I first read that for a moment I thought you wrote "once Vince cornered the market he threw in the towel" and in a lot of ways that's what happened. Competition was the best thing for wrestling. It forced Vince and the rest of his company to fight to survive. Realistically there's no way that Ted Turner, with all his resources shouldn't have been able to put Vince away once he got serious about it.

After all those years of using his greater resources (having the territory with the largest and most affluent population) to run the other territories out of business, it was nice to see Vince get a taste of his own medicine. At least it was for a little while when Bischoff had a couple good ideas - running Nitro on Mondays and creating The NWO. Those things forced Vince to present a better product. It was the last time he was ever forced to though, and it shows!
 
I was probably 3 or 4 when I started.
 
I was born in 78, so I was the perfect age for the Rock and Wrestling era. I discovered NWA/JCP/WCW flipping through and catching it on TBS back in the day. I discovered the greatness of WCCW around 1986/87 when I visited my grandparents in Florida and they aired episodes on TV. Loved the VonErich Family.
 
When I was 7. Around 87. I watched the rumble that big John stud won about 30 times on bootleg vhs.
 
Watching hogan warriors is one of my first memories. I was four years old. I remember my brother and cousin watching it together. And I had seen a ton of wrestling before that, but that’s the fiRst match I can actually remember.

I would watch wrestling all the time growing up. By the time of WM 9 I was seven years old and I can remember watching that entire ppv and the lead up and everything after that up until now.
 
My dad had a video store and would bring me home wrestling videos all the time. I would binge that shit all the time.
 
I was 4 when I started watching Mid-Atlantic. (My mom and her parents were huge rasslin fans.) Never had cable when I was a kid, so it was basically all Mid-Atlantic/NWA/WCW for me until Saturday Night's Main Event came along.
 
Around 1990. Just came immigrated to Canada (in 1988), was around 6 years old and wrestling and hockey became my two loves.
 
Born in 93 used to always watch with my older brother who had a bunch of older video tapes. First memories are from 98 when I just wanted Kane to destroy everyone.

Some people in my class starting jumping off around 2002, most fans were gone in 2004. I still had a couple of friends that I could talk with about it and people might check out mania or rumble.

When I moved to secondary school in 2006 it seemed like I was the only fan and my friends often made fun of me for it. The rock showing up on raw in 2011 and doing 27 and 28 was the only time during that period people asked me about it with actual interest.
 
Sting vs Jack Victory with Mr. Fuji late 80's or early 90's. I snuck out of bed early one saturday morning to watch cartoons and found WCW Power Hour instead. Snuck out of bed every saturday afterwards then went back to bed and faked that I was asleep until my parents said we could get up. Been hooked ever since
 
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