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.
No comments:
Post a Comment