"You like wrestling?"

[King Pitcos]

Thought I'd start a thread (although it's probably already been done) of times you've ended up talking to people about wrestling in real life. I don't mean stuff like meeting air_raid to go to some Town Hall show, I mean wrestling entering a conversation by surprise. I recall someone on here wore a CM Punk t-shirt to the cinema and got some plonker screaming "Best in the world!" at them. My favourite involved a CM Punk t-shirt as well, but it wasn't even one of the famous ones. It was this one:

 

 

When you go around wearing wrestling t-shirts, you never know when it's going to happen. And I do go around wearing wrestling t-shirts, because I'm not thirteen anymore, hiding the WWF magazine in my bag before anyone from school sees it and goes "YOU STILL LIKE WRESTLING??"* I was walking down the road to my sister's house in January when a woman of about 40 or 50 with a thick Jamaican accent stopped me and went "You are a fan of de CM Ponk?" and started telling me about how she hates his cheating and how The Rock was going to shut him up and take the belt off him at the Royal Rumble. I agreed and we had a little chat then went our separate ways. She never invited me to hers to watch it though, the bitch.

 

Then a month or so ago, I had the same t-shirt on to work and a guy who is always eager to find common ground with people spotted it. For a couple of hours, he kept doing impressions of wrestlers and asking me to guess them, then he ran out of ideas and just went around doing crotch chops and going "D-Generationnnnn!" Then he found out someone liked Dr Who and started trying to list the different doctors (in order) and types of Dalek.

 

Even if you've got more sense than wearing wrestling tops out of the house, you can still end up collared somehow. I know Frankie Crisp got betrayed by a Raw torrent and a projector once. Share your anecdotes. Even browsing the UKFF if you're at work or have visitors is a risk, but we all know the old "it's just a BNP site" trick to get out of that one.

 

 

 

*I do still get embarrassed sometimes when the women in Argos say "please tell me these aren't for you" or when it's a lovely Saturday girl showing me the selection they've sent down and I have to say "the computer said you had twelve in stock, can you check if there's an Ultimate Warrior, please?"

[LariatTom]

I took a few days off work to go to Oberhausen for 16 Carat and my boss asked what I was planning to do with my days off, so I figured I'd be straight and tell him I was off to watch a wrestling tournament with my brother and catch up with some friends. This then led to our lunch break being spent with him telling me about the glory days of wrestling in Hamburg with the tournaments and summer tents that I'd read about in Jerichos and Hart's books before asking whether I watched the American stuff and him seeing who he could remember from his youth.Turns out Germans weren't a big fan of Hulk Hogan either.Then last year I was watching an episode of Raw on my laptop when a housemate wandered in and figured out what I was watching before telling me how much he used to love it when he was younger and asking what the old guys were up to. It wasn't long until half of the house, some of my friends and a couple of other people we knew were having a PPV party for Extreme Rules.

[d-d-d-dAz]

I MUCH prefer talking to a non fan whose rumbled me about wrestling than I do a wrestling fan who talks in person as they would online. The words 'work rate', 'smark' and 'heel' out of anyone's mouth are horrendous, worst than hearing a parent saying blowjob or jizz or something.

[PowerButchi]

Ha, whenever I've been caught out they've always said something like "Ravishing Rick Rude!!!! Remember him? Cor, he was a lad wasn't he? He still about?"Whenever anyone's ever asked me "Is he still about?" I've always had to reply with "Nah, he's dead mate".

[Ant]

At uni I was caught out when I casually said I was going to WWA.I've also caught someone out - my old manager was boasting about the amount of DVDs he had and fired over a list - in amongst the mainstream lot Beyond the Mat stuck out like a sore thumb.

[JLM]

Ha, yeah, it's terrible how often you have to be the bearer of slightly awkward bad news in that situation. I have a couple of non-fan friends who only ever bring up wrestling with me to ask "So is (insert childhood favourite) dead as well?"

[JNLister]

It came up in conversation last week and a non-fan reacted with "Oh yeah, wrestling. Did you used to watch it back when Chris Jericho was in it?"

[Forrest]

I remember when I came back from holiday last year, I mentioned to someone in work that I'd went to Impact tapings and saw Hulk Hogan, they were astonished because they used to watch Hogan and Flair when they were a kid and couldn't believe Hulk Hogan was still in it.

 

I have a multitude of friends who were into it during the Attitude era that still talk to me about it, because they know I have a vast interest in it. Usually about New Jack, to be honest.

[Your Fight Site]

I find myself having to explain that there

[Magnum]

I'm sure I've told this story on here before, but it's my most relevant experience to this topic.I have always been a well-dressed man. Back when I started going out, places round our way still had dress codes and nightclub bouncers scorned any attempts to get into their club without a collar, and jeans/trainers were a definite no-no. So clubbing in my home town suited me and my fine collection of slacks down to the ground for a few years. For this reason, I was shockingly unprepared for the sartorial practices at my local student union nightclub. I remember the first time I went was with mates who'd started uni a year earlier than me, and being unsure as to how strict the dress code would be, I rocked up in a pair of dress pants and a smart shirt. I knew I wasn't going to fit in when the first two people I saw on the dancefloor that night were wearing an old Liverpool shirt and a full Kappa tracksuit respectively. Anyway, I got progressively sick of making an effort in a club where people essentially seemed to roll up in their pyjamas half the time (and, inevitably, the entire rugby team turned up in drag every other week), so eventually I decided to just join the unwashed hordes and start slumming it when I went there. The culmination of this was wearing a sleeveless 'Just Bring It' t-shirt - I'd worked out uni nightclubs by that point and reckoned I could pass it off as just the right side of 'ironic', should I get rumbled by any lasses (matron). Unfortunately, the first person who clocked it, within minutes of arriving at the place, was an oversized one-armed man, presumably still on the run from murdering Richard Kimble's wife. As a classic self-loathing wrestling fan, I was dismayed to find he was every inch the stereotypical wrestling fan, and our initial 5-minute discussion about WWE wasn't enough for him, as he preceded to follow me around most of the night telling me I looked like Chris Benoit, and worse still he creeped out the lasses in our group by using me as an 'in' to sidle up to them and rest his little T-Rex stump-arm on their shoulders as he was slavering on to them. And of course, he told them that he 'knew' me because he'd got talking to me about wrestling, which made the experience all the better.From that night on, whenever he'd see me in the uni library, the fucker would lumber over and start talking loudly about wrestling. What made it worse was, when I'd try to humour him, he'd make it abundantly clear that, despite being in his mid-30s, he thought wrestling was real - I distinctly remember him loudly questioning my assertion that Triple H wouldn't lose to Kane at No Mercy 2002 on the basis that Kane was 'much taller and stronger'. Needless to say, that t-shirt has made about 2-3 appearances in the decade since.

[Ant]

It came up in conversation last week and a non-fan reacted with "Oh yeah, wrestling. Did you used to watch it back when Chris Jericho was in it?"

Feeling ancient John?

[Sergio Mendacious]

I was commended a few weeks back, as me and the only other definitely hetrosexual guy in the office had a conversation about WWF magazine, and one of the editors told me it was the butchest conversation this office had ever heard.

[Mr Butternut Squash]

Even browsing the UKFF if you're at work or have visitors is a risk, but we all know the old "it's just a BNP site" trick to get out of that one.

I rarely buy merch so I've got nothing interesting to add (there was that time in HMV when I asked the saturday girl where the dvds were and she turned out to be a massive fan to my relief. We had an nice chat and she turned down my marriage proposal) but I just want to say this line made my day .

[The Maestro]

Ha, yeah, it's terrible how often you have to be the bearer of slightly awkward bad news in that situation. I have a couple of non-fan friends who only ever bring up wrestling with me to ask "So is (insert childhood favourite) dead as well?"

When a non-fan asks me "Is so and so still in it?" and I respond with the "No, they're dead" response, it usually follows with me rattling through a list of wrestlers they remember that have passed away. It's something I don't really think about in some ways, because I've watched it for ages (barring the odd couple year gap when I've stopped a couple of times), but to tell someone that hasn't watched it for years that loads of guys they remember are dead feels a little strange. Also, it's surprising that a lot of non-fans that I end up talking to about wrestling remember the most random wrestlers as opposed to the more famous ones. I've heard the likes of Steve Blackman, Crush, Eugene, Tatanka, New Age Outlaws and probably loads more that I can't think of, being some of people's favourites.I was shopping with my girlfriend in town a couple of years ago and I'd bought a wrestling DVD from CEX or somewhere or other. Anyway, we bumped into one of my missus' gay friends and the conversation got onto wrestling after he saw the DVD. He said that he thought John Cena was fit, made some innuendo to wanking and called him "John Semen". I couldn't watch a Cena match the same for a while after that one.

[ShortOrderCook]

It blows my little mind that you lot go out wearing wrestling shirts and expect not to get rumbled. Really, what the fuck are you thinking!? What I tend to notice is, there's a lot more of us at heart than you realise. Not proper still watch it loads and proper bum it types, but those that have stopped watching it because its what you should do when you grow up but really, you can tell they secretly kinda wish they could still watch it, but the laws of life don't allow it. The giveaway with this is whenever wrestling happens to be on the telly in a bar/pub after some real sport has finished. Loads of lads will be having a sly watch.I had a picture of a Macho Man figure holding an Alien toy at gunpoint as my phone wallpaper the other week, it rang and somebody saw it. I'm sure I've had worse situations, but they've usually been when I've been in a room full of the creatures. I actually find its a little more socially acceptable these days and Daz' assessment of a 'casual' asking you about it isn't so bad, which would probably be because of my earlier theory that they actually 'ironically' envy you.