I've gotten a lot of criticism over the last few monthes that my 'cheap heat' columns are too negative. Now there may be some truth to that but what do you expect? It's called 'Cheap Heat' for a reason. However I've decided in light of that I wanted to maybe write a series of more positive columns, which I've entitled "Why I love Pro Wrestling." Basically these columns are gonna be stories of how I came to be such a huge mark for wrestling. Be it, favorite angles, favorite wrestlers, shows I attended, and all sorts of other stuff. Some people may like it, some may hate it. Read a bit, if it's not your thing, just pass on these. I'll still be writing the Cheap Heat columns as well. So without further ado, let's get started.
As I've stated many times before, my father got me started watching wrestling when I was VERY young. Even then I still only watched it just when I happened to catch it on tv. It wasn't untill I was about 9 years old when my friend James Atkinson would come to school talking about Continental Wrestling and telling me stories about the Bullet, The Nightmares, and the Richs that I started watching it every week religiously. I watched every minute of wrestling I could find WWF, AWA, World Class, and NWA (which would later become WCW) but I loved Continental and Memphis the best. Wrestling was pretty popular then (late '85/'86) and most of the kids at my school watched it. At recess all the guys would go to the practice field and "wrestle". It was funny cause everyone would pick a wrestler to be and you'd have people fighting over who was gonna be Hulk Hogan, and the rest would be Junk Yard Dog, Andre the Giant, or Roddy Piper. Then you'd have me and James picking Jerry "the King" Lawler and "Bullet" Bob Armstrong, and the other kids would be like "who?" Over time we took to liking the heels, of course we didn't know to call them heels, we were just "bad guys". We would pick to be Austin Idol and Tommy Rich, even going as far as after the infamous "posting" of Jerry Lawler angle to pushing James Steel down on the playground and "posting" him on the swing set pole. We almost got suspended for that one but ended up only getting a paddling and having to apologize (hey, at least he didn't come back and throw a fireball at us)
Wrestling was a huge part of my life as long as I can remember, I never cared about any other "sports" so I watched it all the time and bought every magazine I could get my hands on. My mother said I was "obsessed" with it, I can't tell you how many times I was told, "the world doesn't revolve around that stupid wrestling." I would plan my saturdays around it. She would get so mad cause she'd want me to go somewhere but there would be such a small window of opportunity. On Saturday alone you had. The saturday morning Crockett NWA show at 7:05am, then at 9am you had WWF Wrestling Challenge on the New York station WWOR or whatever, then at 11am you had Memphis on channel 5. You had a window from 12:30 to 4pm then WWF Superstars would come on the local sindicated station. Then at 5:05pm you had World Championship Wrestling til 7:05pm. Then at 10pm Continental Wrestling on the Columbus station. Not to mention the occasional WWF Saturday Night's Main Event. During the week you had either AWA or World Class on ESPN everyday at 3pm when you get home from school which was awesome. On Monday nights at 8pm there was WWF Prime Time Wrestling, AWA on ESPN on Friday nights, as well as an NWA show on Sunday after noons. So there was plenty of wrestling to be had and I watched it all.
The first live show I ever went to was in Columbus, MS. It was a Continental show and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. All the babyfaces would sit out at the gimmick tables before the shows and at intermission and you could buy pictures and ask them dumb shit and they would sit and answer your mark questions. I pretty much knew it was fake but wasn't convinced til one night leaving the show we saw Tom Prichard and Scott Armstrong together at the gas station after just having a "grudge match" three miles down the road at the Lavendar Coliseum. Thank God it wasn't Bill Watts territory or they'd been fired, lol. But I still loved it just the same. As I've also mentioned numerous times, I was always a huge mark for the Nightmares and the one match that I always remember more than any other that I saw live there in Columbus was during their feud after Ken turned on Danny Davis in '88. They had a match where the first person to throw a punch lost. It was a great concept cause there was all this heat after the bloody turn, then re-turn by Wayne and then he goes on tv and says he wants to wrestle Danny, not fight him and demands a match where the first person to throw a punch loses. Great psychology to the match with Wayne just antaganizing the hell out of Davis trying to get him to punch him, while meanwhile Ken is sneaking in punches behind the refs back throughout the match. Wayne insults him and slaps him and does everything he can til at the end Davis snaps and just beats the hell out of Wayne, but the beauty of it is, the crowd is happy cause they seen Davis beat the crap out of Ken Wayne, which is what they paid to see BUT Wayne wins the match cause Davis punched him, so now they have a rematch the next month (which I think was a first blood match) so you've somewhat given the crowd what they want, but you still have somewhere to go with the angle, cause he didn't win, and that folks is great booking.
In the next column we start talking about some more of my all time favorite angles throughout the years. Check back soon.
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