The XeroSpin #1 – Introduction

Hello and welcome to The XeroSpin. This is just the first of a series of wrestling columns I intend on writing exclusively for TPWW.net. I’m going to start off simply here (it’s honestly cliché) and give you an idea of what kind of fan I am and a little history of my love for professional wrestling.

My love of “the business” began when I was about 8 years old, in late 1996. I honestly can’t remember much about what I watched in 96 and early 97, all I can remember is that I was a WCW fan, and more-so an nWo fan. I was a huge mark for Hollywood Hogan in particular. For a child like me, with no real knowledge of the business, Hogan seemed to radiate something to me that made me think he was the coolest dude ever, brother. In fact, because of my love of the Hulkster I’d rent old tapes with Hogan just to see him. One of my favorites was a tape recapping the Hogan/Piper feud from the WWF. Hogan is what opened my eyes to the WWF and wrestling in general. Today, I could care less about that orange fuck, but I would never deny his iMPACT (get it?) on the industry.

I remained a WCW fan (though I was aware of the WWF and watched it very little) until around the time I went to my first live wrestling event. I live in central New Jersey, so naturally my first show was at the Mecca of Sports and Entertainment, Madison Square Garden. I went with my grandfather and cousins. It was a blast and solidified my love for wrestling.

The show I went to was a week before WrestleMania 13, March 16, 1997. This happened to be the final televised MSG house show, and aired on the MSG Network. Recently, in fact, it aired on MSG Classics, and it was a hell of a trip for me to watch it. Honestly, I don’t remember much about it live, but I know it was amazing to me. Psycho Sid was the champion and facing Bret Hart in a cage in what I now realize was the dark main event. It also featured a casket match between Vader and The Undertaker, culminating in Mankind popping out of the casket and applying the Mandible Claw on Taker. Another match on the card was as a match up I’d again see live about a year and half later with the added stipulation of it being a Ladder Match, Rocky Maivia vs. Hunter Hearst Helmsley for the IC Title. For a first show, I don’t think I did too badly.

So I continued watching wrestling and discussing it with friends. I’d normally watch RAW until I fell asleep, so I was pretty disappointed when I’d miss main events and whatnot. I remedied this by taping every WWF RAW and (normally) watching it the next morning before school. Not only did this keep me in the loop (more than my friends in some cases), but an unforeseen bonus was that I’m now sitting on a vast majority of WWF’s TV shows on tapes dating from 1997 through 2004, when I got a DVR. I must have hundreds of tapes featuring both RAWs and SmackDown!s from one of the greatest eras in wrestling history.

One of the only regrets of my early years as a fan was not watching WCW fully. Normally I’d just watch the first hour of Nitro then watch RAW exclusively. But I did follow WCW through to the end as much as I could. I’d watch parts of Nitro, Thunder, WCW Saturday Night, WCW World Wide… If it had wrestling on it, and I knew about, I watched it.

In fact, one day I was channel surfing at 4PM in the afternoon and came across one of the most messed up yet intriguing things I’d ever seen in my life – this old guy was entangled in barbed wire with this scarred maniac. Yeah, I was watching highlights of the Barbed Wire match between Terry Funk and Sabu at 4 in the afternoon. That was a thing about ECW, if you didn’t know of the promotion, you either stumbled across it at the oddest time slot possible or never watched it. That was another regret, never really following ECW until the TNN era.

My second show was the first of MANY Pay Per Views I would attend, SummerSlam 1997 in the Continental Airlines Arena. I remember this was a sort of “graduation” present from my grandparents. They told me they got me the tickets at Denny’s. Honestly, that felt like the greatest thing in my life up until that point. My second show was the WWF’s third-largest show of the year. I remember it well, and I had an awesome time.

Live events for me are like no other experiences. I could go to the shittiest show ever, featuring Giant Silva in what amounts to a Gauntlet Squash Match (this is not a match I’ve made up, this is being featured on an Indy show around here soon), and I would have a blast. There’s just something about being there live, whether in a tiny High School gym or a 20,000+ arena, that’s amazing. It’s almost indescribable.

As it stands, I’ve attended about 13 WWF/E pay per views (two in the past year in fact), as well as countless RAWs, SmackDown!s, SuperShows and house shows. I’ve only been to two indy shows and never to any other promotion, which is ridiculous considering where I live. Some of my highlights include WrestleMania 20, Royal Rumble 2000, Survivor Series and SummerSlam 2002, BOTH times Triple H returned from his quad injuries (SummerSlam 2007 and the 2002 RAW), and the list just goes on. I’ve seen many title changes, and that may not really matter in the long run to most “smarks”, but I can say that I’ve seen the WWF or World Heavyweight title change hands about 5 times. I have also seen countless great matches, including one of my all time favorites, Cactus vs Hunter, live. I feel I’ve been apart of history.

Now, if you haven’t picked up on it, I’m a WWE fan. Well, in reality, I like to refer to myself as a “professional wrestling fan”, because I do watch other promotions, admittedly not enough and I’m trying to remedy that, and I do enjoy a vast array of styles. Some people watch for the “entertainment”, some people watch for the “wrestling”, some people watch just to bitch and moan. Me? I do it for all those reasons and more. I can enjoy an Attitude Era-style, skit-heavy show just as much as I can enjoy a great wrestling event, such as the Super J Cup 1994. Hardcore, mat-based, high-flying or power matches. If the match is good, I will watch it. I do have a strong dislike for “spot monkey” matches, but if the match tells a story, has psychology and you’re not just flipping for the sake of flipping or blasting each other with chairs just because it’s a “cool spot”, I can and do enjoy them.

Another aspect of my fandom you must have picked by now is the fact that I’m a “smark”. And yes, I do readily admit that the “mark” aspect is and will always be there. To paraphrase Shane Douglas from the Forever Hardcore shoot DVD, I’m a smart mark, and the operative word there is “mark”. I do not admit that I know everything about the business, in fact I will admit that I know very little when compared to someone truly in the industry, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t form conclusions from a combination of “dirt sheet” news and rumors and what happens on my TV. As far as I’m concerned, outside of obvious injuries, everything is a work until proven otherwise. There are a lot of things people in the business claim were shoots, but I don’t buy.

This is the one piece of advice I want you to come out of this introductory column with. Do not believe everything you see written on the dirt sheets or tabloids. Do not believe everything that comes from a wrestler’s shoot, website or Twitter account. Take that information, and along with your own research or observations, come to your own conclusion. Also, if you want to complain about aspects of the industry, and believe me, there are a lot of things to complain about today, at least have the decency to see the other side of the argument and realize there’s a difference between opinion and fact.

People say Kayfabe is dead. I say Kayfabe is alive and well and those people don’t realize how much easier it is to work fans, marks and smarks alike, in this day and age.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to e-mail me at xero@tpww.net.