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Childhood Misconceptions/Rumours/Urban Legends/Bullshit


BomberPat

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I was discussing how/when I got into wrestling on another forum, and got to thinking about the weirdness of wrestling through the eyes of a child.

I know there will be a fair share of "there were two Kanes" and "the original Ultimate Warrior died and was replaced" stories, and I'm sure this topic must have come up before, but what are some rumours/urban legends you remember being spread around the playground? Or what were things that you just got wrong in your own idiot child head?

As a kid, I watched the WWF, this would be from around 1992 - 96 - my parents and older brothers hated it, so I'd only be able to watch it if I happened to catch it on TV at some point, so I'd only ever see random B-shows and recaps, and probably never had a clue what the ongoing storylines were or anything like that. I never watched WCW at the time, but I was aware that it existed - I must have seen an advert or something. At the same time, my Grandad was an old World of Sport fan, and used to talk at length about "back in his day" and how even though the British stuff was all fake, the American stuff was really fake. My Dad would sarcastically do the same, taking the piss out of my Grandad banging on about Mick McManus and Kendo Nagasaki, to the point that the old names had an almost mythic quality. At some point, I ended up with a VHS of assorted British matches, watched it, and thought it was boring and rubbish. On top of that, I had a few old Beano annuals that referenced Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks a few times.

The stupid misconception I had at the time, though, was that there was the WWF, and then there was WCW. So any wrestling, or wrestlers, I wasn't seeing in the WWF must be in WCW. Hulk Hogan was the most famous wrestler in the world, yet wasn't in the WWF, so he must be in WCW (at least I sort of landed on getting that one right). But I also assumed that all these British blokes must work for WCW too, because people talked about them all the time, but they weren't in the WWF. So, in my head, WCW was the old ITV wrestling, only it had Hulk Hogan in it. I might have even briefly, when I was very young and stupid, thought that meant Hogan must be British.

 

I'm sure I had loads more mad assumptions back then, but that's the big daft one that came to mind.

Later, around June 2000, I got back into wrestling, having stopped watching around 1998. RAW was still on Sky on Friday nights, and there were a couple of lads at school who realised that they could read the results online and then tell everyone at school what was going to happen, like they were Eric Bischoff in short trousers, and come across like they had some kind of insider knowledge. Problem is, as bullshitting kids are wont to do, they got caught up in their own bullshit and enjoyed it too much. So rather than just telling us what was definitely going to happen, they also started making shit up. I think either Ken Shamrock or Shawn Michaels were definitely coming back every week for a year. If I remember correctly, one of these kids' reason for having so much insider knowledge is that they claimed Lita was their aunt.

 

I also assumed, when the Undertaker came back with the biker gimmick, that it was a different bloke from when I first watched. I don't think I ever rationalised at what point the Undertaker would have been replaced, but I just couldn't accept that this fella was the same guy who I saw on TV in the early 90s.

 

Another rumour I remember - probably a variant of the "two Ultimate Warriors" thing - is that Sting had died because his facepaint was toxic.

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No quite a misconception, but the first time I recorded an NWA TV show in the middle of the night because it was advertised as wrestling, I watched a few minutes and decided it was fake. Not as in predetermined, but as in some sort of knockoff that didn't have the real wrestlers in. The worst part is that among the bit I did watch was a highlight package of the rather awesome Great American Bash 89.

Best mixup in our school was when WWF dropped a few guys in later 1988 and they disappeared without explanation and then somebody read an Apter mag about the Adrian Adonis car crash, so it turned into the "well-known fact" that all the missing guys had died in a coach crash and Junk Yard Dog was the driver.

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23 minutes ago, JNLister said:

No quite a misconception, but the first time I recorded an NWA TV show in the middle of the night because it was advertised as wrestling, I watched a few minutes and decided it was fake. Not as in predetermined, but as in some sort of knockoff that didn't have the real wrestlers in. The worst part is that among the bit I did watch was a highlight package of the rather awesome Great American Bash 89.

Best mixup in our school was when WWF dropped a few guys in later 1988 and they disappeared without explanation and then somebody read an Apter mag about the Adrian Adonis car crash, so it turned into the "well-known fact" that all the missing guys had died in a coach crash and Junk Yard Dog was the driver.

Kind of similar to me. I remember picking up a VHS tape of some old territory wrestling in a bargain type shop back when i was around 8-10. I played it but thought it was basically 'leisure center' wrestling which relates to the rubbish i used to watch the local leisure center, and labelled it as the fake stuff. I'm not even sure what territory it was (i have seen the videos listed here at some point though) and the guy listed as Bret Hart on the tape i put down as an imposter at the time...even though it was Bret Hart.

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As kind of the opposite to that, I remember as late as 2001 people at school saying that even though everyone knew wrestling was fake, ECW was definitely still the real thing.

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Regrettably, you can add me to the list of kids who thought World of Sport Wrestling was boring and shit compared to the cartoon world of the WWF. 

I also remember, during that time when Hulk Hogan had signed with WCW and the WWF were filming weekly TV in school gyms, there was a rumour in our school that WCW was on the verge of buying them out completely.

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9 minutes ago, garynysmon said:

WWF were filming weekly TV in school gyms

I've heard this before, but I can't say i ever noticed them in any tiny venues (perhaps their production magic was really that good, or I was too young to catch on). Any idea what sort of time period this would be in? Would love to see some footage of them running in TV in high school gyms!

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I used to be genuinely concerned about how the Hart's had Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas after Owen's heel turn. Like Owen was sitting around at dinner knocking the Turkey leg out of Bret's hand as he was trying to eat.

Also vividly remember saying to my friend at school that I was going to stop watching as I was mad they 'fired' Austin prior to the Bang 3:16 incident.

My little cousin was one of those 'Kane was played by two blokes' types. His main reasoning was that he was standing next to Val Venis and wasn't that much taller than him. My main takeway being at the time "Fuck me I didn't realise Val was such a big fucker." except when he suffered from shrinkage . . . . choppy choppy.  

 

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6 minutes ago, mim731 said:

I've heard this before, but I can't say i ever noticed them in any tiny venues (perhaps their production magic was really that good, or I was too young to catch on). Any idea what sort of time period this would be in? Would love to see some footage of them running in TV in high school gyms!

Danville, Pennsylvania High School. July 1995. One of many between 1994-95.

 

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There's probably a whole thread worth of "bits of wrestling that are definitely actually real, even when the rest of it is fake and gay".

I remember a kid excitedly telling everyone on the mini-bus on the way back from PE that the British Bulldog was coming back, because he saw it on the news. Davey Boy had just died.

 

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