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Tape Trading - the old school WWE Network


The Reverend

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Theoretically, having the WWE Network as a 12 year old kid would've been manna from heaven but 17 years later it's all just too much.

In hindsight, spending 20 quid on a videotape sounds preposterous, but it really was more rewarding getting things piecemeal and left wanting more.

I remember getting Backlash 04 and gorging on the triple threat and Orton/Foley match but now it's just too overwhelming having thousands of matches at the touch of a mouse.

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I used to trade under "British Wrestling Legends",  specialising in the old WOS footage with International tapes for the more adventurous.
I prided myself on a fast, friendly service. It involved lots of 18 hour days (including my day job) & not massive rewards, but it helped me network with similar folk & is a time that i look back on with great fondness :)

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GWI was who I first dealt with back in 1997 after seeing an ad in Powerslam, I think he might have been the only person I bought from but I do remember getting a couple of lists from someone later which came as a little booklet which was around the time of Spring Stampede 2000.

I still have all my GWI video lists as well, loved phoning home on my dinner break at school to see if my videos had arrived. Remember Heatwave 98 arriving and me mysteriously coming down feeling ill on my dinner break and going home :laugh:

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On 18/10/2017 at 11:31 AM, BomberPat said:

Jesus, yeah, I'd never given any thought to the amount of time and effort some of these blokes must have actually put in to making compilations of shit for teenage boys, and only charging pocket money for the privilege. What an odd thing it all was.

Jack Halewood once made me a Scott Hall compilation. It was awesome. 

I used to get tapes off Pick, JFFC, Strongstyle. Mostly I'd just borrow tapes off my cousin as he'd get them from Rob Butcher or Glen Radford, I think. I rang him once a week for about six months waiting for his guy to send Starrcade '98. 

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On 10/16/2017 at 11:48 AM, BomberPat said:

I'd love to know how kids with access to the Network actually use it - because I'm sure if I had it when was a kid I'd have never watched anything else, and would be trying to keep track of anything and everything.

But then, I know a kid who started wrestling training at 16, and he just knew nothing outside of present day WWE. He was utterly obsessed with WWE, his goal in life was to become a wrestler - he's working in the US now - but he hadn't watched anything outside of WWE, hadn't even watched WWE shows from before the time he got into it, so had seen nothing of the Attitude Era or earlier.

I couldn't get my head around how a kid who had his heart set on being a wrestler, who was obsessed with wrestling, had only watched the bare minimum available to them. When I was his age, and younger, I was ordering tapes, I was spending the paycheque from my Saturday job on whatever videos HMV got in their tiny wrestling section, buying all the magazines, using my limited internet time to spend an hour downloading a grainy 30 second clip of an FMW match, just doing everything I could to see more wrestling, and find out more about wrestling. That he had stuff like the Network, or even just YouTube, available to him, yet didn't know about anything that wasn't happening on RAW or Smackdown seemed mad to me.

as a person who hopes to be a wrestler himself after finishing college,what you said is pretty surprising to me tbh. i love watching all kinds and flavors of wrestling. and i wasnt even a kid when i started watching. I was 16(In 2009)

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I used to get stuff from Rob Butcher mainly. The first tapes I ever bought were an amazing Jushin Liger comp, and WCW / NJPW Supershows 1 & 3. I watched them so many times, I think I wore the video tapes out in the end. I was just in awe at discovering all this incredible new stuff.

I rarely got anything from Glen Radford. No particular reason for that. I always meant to, but never did, for some reason.

I also traded with Mark Allsopp from Mansfield. Anyone remember him? I used to travel up to Nottingham on the train when I was about 15 to meet him and we'd trade some tapes.

I ended up becoming friends with Darren Levy, who had a huge collection of all kinds of random stuff, and we ended up swapping some stuff back and forth. We also ended up starting a wrestling promotion together in the late 90s, with another friend who did some tapes, Allan Blackstock, but that's another story :)

I got a few bits and pieces from Rodric Williams in Guernsey - mostly early ECW, as I recall.

I first got in touch with Dean Ayass and Steve Pendle through tape trading, who both also became friends of mine later on.

I'm sure there must be other people I bought from or traded with, but for the life of me I can't think of them at the moment.

I remember meeting up with Darren Levy and Mark Allsopp at the first Sabu show in Walthamstow, in July 1995. I was a massive ECW fan at that time, and most of the stuff I got that day was ECW Arena shows and the latest TV. I basically stayed up for nearly three days straight watching them, by the end of which I was pretty much full-on hallucinating from tiredness. Also, Japanese GONG Magazines! :love:

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On 10/16/2017 at 10:48 AM, BomberPat said:

I'd love to know how kids with access to the Network actually use it - because I'm sure if I had it when was a kid I'd have never watched anything else, and would be trying to keep track of anything and everything.

But then, I know a kid who started wrestling training at 16, and he just knew nothing outside of present day WWE. He was utterly obsessed with WWE, his goal in life was to become a wrestler - he's working in the US now - but he hadn't watched anything outside of WWE, hadn't even watched WWE shows from before the time he got into it, so had seen nothing of the Attitude Era or earlier.

I couldn't get my head around how a kid who had his heart set on being a wrestler, who was obsessed with wrestling, had only watched the bare minimum available to them. When I was his age, and younger, I was ordering tapes, I was spending the paycheque from my Saturday job on whatever videos HMV got in their tiny wrestling section, buying all the magazines, using my limited internet time to spend an hour downloading a grainy 30 second clip of an FMW match, just doing everything I could to see more wrestling, and find out more about wrestling. That he had stuff like the Network, or even just YouTube, available to him, yet didn't know about anything that wasn't happening on RAW or Smackdown seemed mad to me.

Totally agree with this post, i have always dug into "Wrestling's Rich History" & have a saying "How do you know where you are going, if you don't know where you came from?"

On the subject of trading (not videos) I once swapped a HUGE collection of memorabilia for six copies of "Superstars of Wrestling" magazine because it meant i was only issue No.2 off the full set. Then ebay started  & i completed the collection by paying £75 for that last magazine. As Ebay got bigger, those magazines became more common & of the old SOW mags go for about £5 each now, so i did my bollocks in, but that is the beauty of collecting "Peaks & Troughs" :) 

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I remember being dragged to bootsales in my youth but often coming across random tapes (usually WCW) for dirt cheap. I'm guessing its possible people still get rid of them but obviously the network takes the shine off that.

Half of the fun was finding tapes, saving up for them, buying them at shows. That in itself was very rewarding. These days as amazing as The Network is, kids have it all too easy. But I suppose thats life right? Going off topic but I remember having to wait until 6pm just to get on the internet, these days its all accessible via phone. 

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20 hours ago, eugenespeed said:

First tape I ever got was IWAMS KOTDM 2001 from Pick. 

Then got my TNA tapes from Showstapes until he fleeced me. 

Seem to remember a Sharkwrestling as well who had a lovely Jaws jingle at the start of his tapes. 

I used to get all my tapes (and later dvds from shark wrestling). Went through a period of ordering every ROH show and every WWE Ppv that was on Box office. I still have a massive bag full of the discs, must have spent a fortune. If I remember correctly, the guys name was Rupert Finlay?

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