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Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Raw 1000

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Last night, WWF (I know it’s WWE but it’s still WWF to me, damnit!) aired their 1,000th Monday Night Raw, that started in Jan. of 1993 (which I watched).  Over the past weeks/months, they have been hyping it more than any PPV and last night was a tribute to the main stars of my era (The Attitude Era) mixed in with current and new storylines.

For those of you who care, here is my backstory on the WWF and wrasslin in general.  I started watching WWF around 1992.  My favorite guy was Undertaker and then was Razor Ramon, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart and Diesel.  I had missed the primes of Hogan, Macho and Ric Flair.  I was part of the new generation.  My dad having a cable descrambler, hence getting all the PPVs every year really helped as well (damn I wish I taped those on vhs).  That then morphed into what is now known at the Attitude Era with DX, Stone Cold, Mankind, Rocky, nWo and the Monday Night Wars with WCW.  I probably watched every Monday Night Raw from 93-00/01 (and PPVs) until I became too cool in high school and WWF bought WCW and all that crap.  So I go kind of go  “way” back and it was great to see all the old guys.

My hiatus: When I got my first high school girlfriend, I dumped WWF.  When they bought WCW and the wars were over and the two didn’t face each other, I was done.  Then in college, I maybe watched 10 seconds of it and I didn’t know any of the new guys.  I knew Brock Lesnar and HHH were still doing their thing, and John Cena, a white guy who liked rap and wore jerseys (finally) was the newest big guy, but I was in college and on Monday Nights, if it wasn’t on a tv at the bar, I wasn’t watching it.  I did buy the Hell in the Cell dvds and have gone back and watched those from the mid 2000s but yeah, missed when they went to the PG Era.  Then something happened…

Last summer, I got wind of a WWF guy losing his mind and going off script and basically calling the President of the WWF and all the muscle meat heads a pieces of shit.  It is also known as The Summer of Punk.  At the end of a Monday Night Raw, he took the mic, sat down on the stage, and aired his grievances.  His mic was cut and the show ended.  Nobody had any idea what was going on (this taught me a lesson: if it is meant to be on tv, then it will be on tv).  I was hooked.  Also, living with two boys in elementary school, I had someone to watch it with.  I have been watching it now for over a year, and have bought numerous PPVs, and even though the boys aren’t really into it, I am still watching.  Not as a true fan, who would get really upset if the 1-2-3 kid would take out Tatanka, but was a “grown-up” fan who enjoys good actors that mix athletic ability with mic skills and good promos.  I tend to root for the baddies in order to get the boys rooting harder for their guys.  I get it’s all staged and look for subtleties and what is coming next. 

It’s pretty fun to try to predict who will run out or who will get hit in the face with a chair (NO BLOOD).  None of my real friends watch nor care about WWF, but it’s cool to me to come back to something that was a major part of my childhood.  The question that will come up in the next few years will be if I will let my daughter get into it…stay tuned.

Here is a great post by a 3X Smackoff Champion about the Attitude Era in rasslin…the Golden Age if you will.

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