A wrestling fan in Philly

I’ve always been a huge wrestling fan. Ever since I was a little kid, I can remember being enthralled by the larger than life characters presented in pro wrestling. I can vividly remember seeing The Ultimate Warrior for the first time and having my tiny mind blown. He seemed like an utter maniac – he would run, no, sprint to the ring with his face painted in bright colors with matching tights, tassels waving wildly as he jumped into the ring and started to frantically shake the ropes up and down. From the very first time I saw Ultimate Warrior, I knew that there was something special about professional wrestling.

Since then, I’ve had a sort of “love/hate” relationship with WWE/WWF. I grew up watching WWF when I could but fell out of watching mainstream wrestling in the early 2000s, focusing instead on the independent wrestling scene. Eventually, my friends and I fell out of attending our local indy fed (CZW) and for a few years, I hardly followed wrestling at all. Over the past two years, however, I’ve started watching WWE regularly again, mainly thanks to guys like C.M. Punk, Daniel Bryan and Antonio Cesaro appearing on TV more frequently.

As a kid, my mom was very against me watching pro wrestling (she probably figured I didn’t need any new tricks in my hyper-active kid arsenal) but I still managed to watch bits of it where I could. Like many people my age, I got into WWF heavily during the Attitude Era (the late 90s) and also started watching ECW at the time. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how lucky I was to be able to watch ECW on TV before it was on TNN. I still remember the local access channel it was on, too – Channel 48 WGTW (channel 18 if you had cable).

Around the start of the Ruthless Aggression era, I fell out of watching WWE programming. I can’t remember what drove me away from the WWE – or if there was any one specific reason at all. I think I was just kind of burnt out on the product. I remember watching the wars the Dudleys, Hardys and Edge/Christian would have over the tag belts as well as RVD’s initial run in WWE but after that I just kinda stopped watching.

But pro wrestling still had its hooks in me. Eventually, by accident if I recall, I discovered CZW (Combat Zone Wrestling) on the same channel ECW had been on and was pulled into the exciting, funny, genuine, weird and sometimes nauseating world of independent wrestling. Every month, myself and two friends from high school would go to Viking Hall, the old ECW Arena (which became the New Alhambra Arena, which became The Asylum Arena then sat empty for years but is making a comeback), and watch as guys I’d never even heard of put on shows that rivaled the excitement of anything WWE was producing.

Even now, 10 years later, I’m still a huge fan of the independent wrestling scene and, in the past year, have gotten back into watching WWE. In the past year alone I’ve been to numerous indy wrestling shows (sometimes multiple in one day), a taping of WWE Raw, WWE’s Money In The Bank Pay-Per-View, bought tons of indy DVDs as well as subscribed to numerous online streaming services so I can watch wrestling anywhere, even if I don’t have a DVD player handy (Wrestling Is, Ring of Honor Ringside and I subscribed to Hulu solely to watch NXT).

I guess, what I’m trying to say is, I’m a huge pro wrestling fan – a mark in other words. I love watching it, I love discovering it, I love talking about it and discussing it. With this blog, I’m going to have fun with my love of pro wrestling – as in, not be super cynical about particular shows, or matches or wrestlers. Believe me, I’ve spent plenty of time being a Debbie Downer wrestling fan but that’s not what the sport is all about. It’s about having fun – both wrestlers in the ring and fans watching. Because if you’re not going to have fun with wrestling and would rather spend all your time complaining about wrestling – why watch at all?

And it’s that love for the sport which is why I started this blog – to give a platform to all the wrestling-related stuff that runs through my mind like the Ultimate Warrior sprinting to the ring. I promise to be more coherent than a Warrior promo, though.