Wrestling Magazine Memories

[TheShowOff]

 

This was the first wrestling magazine I ever got, so the cover hold a fond place in my heart.

 

I remember reading this:

 

 

in WH Smiths and being blown away, it was the first time I realised there was wrestling outside of WWE and WCW. I remember reading some of the ECW wrestler names and thinking they were proper fucked up. I remember there being an advertisement for an independent wrestling show (a what!?) featuring Doink and Kamala which was mind numbing because I thought the only place they wrestled back then was in my Hasbro federation.

[DannyLad]

Is PWI any good as Powerslam is getting boring.

[TheShowOff]

Chalk and cheese...

[Gagnam Style]

PWI is worse and is very kayfabe, you should get Fighting Spirit magazine, its a bit better then Powerslam, the problems magazines have is the internet publishes the news before the magazines can.

[NorthSeaTiger]

I haven't bought a PWI in years. I was in WHSmith recently and thought I would pick one up.....not at

[WWFE8791]

I haven't bought a PWI in years. I was in WHSmith recently and thought I would pick one up.....not at

[bAzTNM#1]

I remember a few of Apter's magazines hyping a wrestler by the name of "The Gargoyle" a lot in the mid-nineties. He looked proper weird. I thought he had all the makings to get to the top. Didn't hear anything again from him after those few issues in 1995.

[NorthSeaTiger]

I remember a headline that said " Grab your barf bags....It's The Gargoyle". Or something along those lines. Apparently he had a manager and used to get him to blow his nose directly into his mouth Looked a bit like Low Ki actually.

[TheShowOff]

I remember a headline that said " Grab your barf bags....It's The Gargoyle".

 

[King Pitcos]

Is PWI still the same then, with that shit black and white paper, all in-character and three years behind TV? The WWE magazine is pretty bang up-to-date now compared to how it used to be.

[Arch Stanton]

I just wanna know who this Gargoyle bloke was now.

[d-d-d-dAz]

I'd never actually buy WWE magazine, I don't think.

 

When they show snaps of it on TV, it looks like a wrestler-centric rip off of Men's Fitness (which I absolutely would buy) but I imagine its mostly kayfabery and out of date features designed for 12 year olds.

 

Am I wrong?

[TheShowOff]

To be fair, when I was 12, I loved the magazine so much, even though it was a few months out of date, full of cool American offers not available to me and stingy on IYH PPV photos (when we didn't get IYH over here, they were great to look at). WCW Magazine had loads of pictures of their PPV's however. Raw magazine was a lot more "shooty" and was pretty swell as well.

[King Pitcos]

I'd never actually buy WWE magazine, I don't think.

 

When they show snaps of it on TV, it looks like a wrestler-centric rip off of Men's Fitness (which I absolutely would buy)

That's pretty much what it is.

 

but I imagine its mostly kayfabery and out of date features designed for 12 year olds.

 

Am I wrong?

You're wrong on those bits though, I think. Although a wrestling magazine definitely should be aimed mostly at 12 year olds, so it probably is. I dunno, I'll have a look. The only issue I've got to hand is the May 2011 one, which has:

 

-"The Rock Returns" is the cover story, with an interview with him that was done either on the night of that first Raw when he came back, or shortly after. Mostly a fluff piece, but wouldn't be out of place in the old Raw magazine.

-Royal Rumble "by the numbers" thing with a few stats: 10% of Irish people are ginger, Cena's got 18 total Rumble eliminations (up to 2011), 101 years between the introduction of diesel engines and Diesel's debut, and 15 foreign wrestlers in the 2011 Rumble, which is a record.

-Sexy Superfan of the month. Fit bird poses in skimpies and does a quiz on Shawn Michaels. She got 7/10.

-Monthly bit taking the piss out of old gimmicks/looks. This issue has Vinnie Vegas wearing a black and pink tux.

-"My favourite finisher" which must be a monthly thing too. Santino picks Sweet Chin Music.

-Advert for not trying this at home or at school.

-Sheamus interview about being Irish and getting started in wrestling.

-An advert for a Bodypower Expo at the NEC.

-Wade Barrett's five opponents he'd like to batter: Rick Rude, Mr Perfect, Mike Tyson, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte.

-The WWE Power 10 rankings, based on storyline events.

-A double-page spread of rabbits superimposed onto photos of wrestling. Rey Mysterio hitting one with a 619, the Bellas fawning over one, Kofi Kingston fighting one on top of a ladder etc.

-A fluff piece on Melina, with a poster.

-Letters page, calendar of April, with various historical facts and the month's events. Not just wrestling ones though, stuff about baseball, Billy the Kid and a plug for the NOLA Jazz & Heritage Festival.

-Fantasy Warfare: A four-way between Andre The Giant, Bret Hart, Triple H and... The Miz. They pick Miz to pull off a cheap win.

-Competition to win Flex Force figures.

-Advert for One True Saxon clothing, with a bloke sat on the apron of a boxing ring.

-A map of the US showing which states' superstars have the most wins, and an interview with some footballer from the WM2 Battle Royal.

-Reader questions for Edge, where he's mostly in-character, talking about how he murdered Paul Bearer and how to defeat Kane.

-First date do's & don'ts with Alicia Fox, where she gives Zack Ryder a makeover.

-An advert for WWEtoys.co.uk, which is Mark Sloan's place.

-Undertaker/Streak puzzle page with wordsearch, quizzes, match this to that etc.

-A fluff piece on Tough Enough, with a Stone Cold interview in-character.

-A Shawn Michaels interview that veers in and out. Goes from "that's when I made the decision that the following year would be my last" talking about his son growing up, to "I wouldn't have put my career on the line against Undertaker's streak if I wasn't 100-percent ready to accept the consequences" halfway across the same page. Then one question after that he's talking about how his classic matches were a team effort with opponents and the production crew. Mostly it's about him bringing up his kids, and then onto Hall of Fame stuff. Him saying he doesn't know why Randy Savage and Bruno Sammartino weren't in the Hall of Fame.

-Feature asking the best advice wrestlers were ever given. Daniel Bryan's is from Robbie Brookside: "If you feel like you don't want to wrestle anymore -- just stop." Regal's was being told by Pete Roberts to make everything you do in the ring mean something or don't bother doing it. But he also throws in "Never push your granny when she's shaving."

-Fifty previously-unseen photos from the WWE archives.

-A feature on SummerSlam 2008.

-A feature on Stone Cold's career, seems to be aimed at new fans who don't know him.

-Reviews section. Games: WWE All Stars (glorified ad), Dragon Age II, a little feature-ad on an iPad '80s-style joystick, Killzone 3, Lego Star Wars III, Nascar 2011. DVDs: The Chaperone, Faster, The Walking Dead season one, The True Story of WrestleMania. A veiled advert for a projector. Films: Battle Los Angeles, The Lincoln Lawyer, Your Highness, Kill The Irishman. Mr Fuji reviews Signs, War of the Worlds, Independence Day and ET.

-Kayfabe feature on all the big matches, happenings and quotes from January 2011.

-Advert for Shawn Michaels' UK appearance with Amerchandise, and an advert for various mobile rip-off wallpapers/themes etc. Adverts like that were the bread and butter of the arse-end of magazines for a while, but with Internet access and free apps now, that whole industry must be dead.

 

I don't know if I missed it in this issue, but I'm sure the magazine usually has workout tips and page after page of fashion/accessory adverts where Kofi Kingston or Zack Ryder or someone will just model loads of shite. They definitely added loads of that stuff when the mag was first redesigned in 2006, but I always skipped that stuff, as I did when I used to buy Loaded and the like as a youth. Perhaps they had feedback that wrestling fans weren't bothered about that shit and stopped it. Or it might be because the magazine has a specific UK edition now, and all that stuff was for American brands/sites/prices.