Has this discussed already? Guess what don't give a shit. I do not care to sift through the feedback pages to look for it as if I don't release my childhood memories my head will explode. This isn't so much feedback as it is rambling; sit back and enjoy.
How did I arrive at this? Well I was trolling the Metal Sludge boards as usual, when someone decided that some pre-recorded Ultimate Warrior pre-Wrestlemania VI ramblings used as a soundboard prank call to the WWE made for the best video on youtube. Whether or not it actually is irrelevant.
Before I read Syd's wrestling article (and this was years ago mind you), there were two things I remembered about Wrestling; the Ultimate Warrior beating Hulk Hogan in the champ vs. champ title match and the Hulk presenting Warrior with his belt and the Royal Rumble from the early nineties where it was down to Hulk, Ric Flair and Sid Justice. Hulk and Ric Flair were going at it with Sid just watching on the side, when suddenly Sid grabs Hulk Hogan and sideswipes him out of the ring. Ric Flair was able to take advantage of this and subsequently sideswiped Justice out of the ring.
I am not a hardcore wrestling fan. My interest in it came solely because of a Jake The Snake WWF action figure which if you rotated his arm, it did an uppercut. I was 7 at the time, so I think this is a perfectly logical way to get into wrestling. I collecting these figures by the fuckload. Unfortunately I never ended up getting the ring (one of many toys deprived from my childhood that I'm still scarred by), but that didn't matter because there was THE ARCADE GAME (the tag team edition?)! I was so pissed that I couldn't play as the Leigon Of Doom (the "final bosses), but I could play as the Demolition guys. Those guys looked like golden gods, despite their colors being black, white, and silver, when I wasn't playing as those guys I was, interchangeably, Big Boss Man, Jake the Snake, Ultimate Warrior, Hogan, and Macho Man. I always liked Boss man the best as a single wrestler. The idea of a cop wrestler intrigued my seven year old mind the most. This guy was the man to me. It bummed me out years later when I was looking at a "top ten douchebag wrestlers list" when I watched a descrption of Boss Man apparently hooking some other wrestlers dad's coffin to a monster truck and dragging it out of the ground and all across a graveyard. Somehow I thought Boss Man wouldn't stoop so low. Boy was I wrong.
This brings us to the actual matches. At the nearby video rental store, and it was here where I found classic Wrestlemanias and Royal Rumbles for rent. I was more used to wrestling matches being about 5 minutes long as a result of the video games, so bringing home the videos and watching matches go on for 25 minutes plus blew my mind. I remember there was one tag team match (the actual contender names escape me) where one tag team stood in the ring and was either singing a song or giving a speech that seemed to last forever so I fast forwarded through it to get to the fight. I was too young to care about "This is where the power lies!" and all that shit. I just wanted to see the match. Turns out that was the match, cos after about however so minutes the other team looked at each other and said "fuck this shit" clocked the other team mid speech, pinned them for a 3 count and won. Looking back, I find it pretty hiliarous.
So how did I get out of wrestling? Well I kind of grew out of it. Call me crazy but despite the fact that Wrestlemania had been going on for years before I was born, featured grown men fighting each other in wacky outfits being cheered by people of all ages, it seemed like it was merely kids entertainment. Hey, I never said a 13-year olds logic was perfect. Well it was that and Doink the Clown. Who the fuck thought this asshole was a good idea? I don't care how great he was in the ring, this was by far the worst idea for a character my inner 7 year old had ever seen. Once I saw him on the roster for the upcoming Super Nintendo WWF game, that was the last straw. I turned my back on wrestling permanently.
Fastforwarding to about 90 minutes ago. This prank call of the "Ultimate Warrior" to the WWE (along with some pictorial evidence that the speech was in fact from before the Hulk Hogan fight), had re-awakened the 7 year old wrestling fan in me. And seeing as the Hogan vs. Warrior fight was right there on youtube, fuck yes I had to watch. I enjoyed it much more now than I ever did before, and I didn't even know Ultimate Warrior would win back then. Combine this with what I remember from Syd's article and I gained an honest newfound respect for Wrestling. Well...the WWF era.
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