First "smart" thoughts

[Dolph Pigglers]

My first "smart" thought I can remember having was after Shawn Michaels turned on Marty Jannetty.  He had this new attitude which I hated and I was mad that he broke up my favorite tag team.  Flash forward to his first appearance as a heel on Prime Time Wrestling, and he hits the "patented side suplex" on his opponent and wins.  It was the first time I can remember thinking "that's not a finisher...that's not devastating enough to pin Barry Knight!  Why isn't he just using the side kick like he always has!?"

I guess, like everyone else, my "smarkdom" came around the time the internet gave me access to the backstage gossip which changed the way I looked at things.

[j-storm]

Here's an 'anything BUT smart' thought I had as a youngster. I Genuinely thought WCW was nonsense and refused to watch it based on the fact that I had that WCW Nitro ring play-set with the soft / material square cut out in centre and thought that the proper show had a soft square cut out in the middle of the ring too, and that they were all pansy boys. Deary me. 

The one i'm talking about  https://www.youtube.com/embed/-PD9NHuQTls?start=29

 

[garynysmon]

I'd have bloody loved that as a kid.

Still, I imagine most of us of a certain age had this one.

[The Gaffer]

On 8/1/2018 at 7:25 PM, SpursRiot2012 said:

I think I was always slightly smarky. Well, my earliest memories of watching or being aware of wrestling was during Warrior's second (I think) WWF run, and at that time I was a run of the mill kid who thought it was all real. But when I properly got into watching, week-to-week, especially during the Monday Night Wars, I was getting my weekly Raw and Nitro recordings from my cousin, who was a Wrestling Observer subscriber, so pretty early on in my fandom I was real interested in the backstage machinations. To this day, in many ways, I find all the inside, backstage stuff - mainly historically - more interesting than the product.

Same, I was always sort of there. When I first started watching in 2000 I thought Rock and Triple H honestly did despise each other, but that was about it. I also didn't get from the off that wrestlers talked during their matches. 

It was 2003 I started carrying myself like a smark, though. After a few months hiatus after Katie Vick I ended up coming back full time around the period Zach Gowan and Mr. America were making Smackdown a weird place to be. I've never left since, really. When I got back into it again a lot less people were watching but it was still very much a pop cultural thing for people my age. Smackdown was on Sky One on Saturday mornings, all the highlight shows in a row on Sunday mornings. That was the thing, wasn't it? 

I supplemented my watching with Powerslam and immediately took a mental interest in ratings and attendances. I was a mark for everyone needing to get back into wrestling, so I'd actually spot empty seats opposite hard cam on PPV and feel a bit upset. 

In terms of dodgy beliefs my main ones were that a boom was going to happen right after WrestleMania XX and that Paul London should be pushed to the top of the Smackdown card. This is 100% factual. He was my underdog boy I backed when I was an insufferable 12 year old smark. The particular nadir of which was going to see a house show in a TNA t-shirt and shouting 'JOBBERS!' at the Bashams over and over until one of them turned around and gave me a death stare. 

I'm sure we've all got stories on how our young smark selves would have fantasy booked another golden age of wrestling. 

[BomberPat]

It would have been around 2000 for me. I'd stopped watching wrestling as a kid in '97, got back into it in the run-up to Summerslam 2000, after playing the first Smackdown game. There were always kids at school that claimed to have "insider" knowledge about what was going to happen on RAW, but in reality they were either making it up, or - because RAW used to air taped on Friday night - they'd just read the results on WWF.com. It was ages before people seemed to twig that was what was going on - and even then, it never really occurred to me that there were other wrestling websites outside of the official ones, and the idea of looking for actual NEWZ was well beyond me.

I'd say the smark side came when I discovered ECW. I fell for wrestling big time before that, and started buying every magazine, book, video, anything I could get my hands on. I can't remember if it was seeing ECW mentioned in a magazine (might have actually been a Playstation magazine previewing the first game, come to think of it), or if it was in this weird "BIGGEST STARS IN WRESTLING HISTORY" book I bought that, amongst your usual suspects of Rock and Hogan and token old-timers like Gorgeous George and Lou Thesz, had a two page spread on the Dudley Boyz, with a photo of the entire ECW Dudley clan. It's probably a combination of the two that made me check ECW out.

I picked up a few ECW videos from HMV, and a combination of Joey Styles' commentary slagging off the WWF and WCW, and the sheer amount of MOVEZ on display, I went full smark overnight. One of the first ECW shows I watched was Heatwave 2000, in which Rob Van Dam hits Scotty Anton with a gorilla press followed by a standing moonsault, and it blew me away - I doubt I'd ever seen a standing moonsault in the first place, but here was a guy mixing up the high flying moves and the big stereotypical powerhouse stuff, when in the WWF at the time it was a case of never the twain shall meet. I blame that spot, and later RVD/Lynn matches, for sending me down the rabbit hole of thinking that the best wrestlers were the guys with the biggest movesets.

[Supremo]

I remember the first time I read Raw spoilers online, probably around early 1998, I thought a “dark match,” was some type of cool new gimmick match and spent ages trying to figure out how it would work.

[Wretch]

Like most of you, mine was through Powerslam in the late 90s and lasted until about 2007. Those ECW pics were the coolest thing on earth. Of course when I finally got around to watching an ECW tape, I soon realised a decent amount of it looked better in Powerslam. Everything Fin Martin wrote I took as gospel and relayed to my friends. Push the cruisers, HHH's and Undertaker's politicking made them the most evil men on earth, ROH is real wrestling and so forth. Thought that Amazing Red & Low Ki sequence in their 2002 ROH match was the greatest thing on earth. Watched it again last year for the first time in a decade and cringed the whole way through. This one: 

 

During this time I ordered all the tapes and DVDs from CZW, ROH, NOAH,PWG etc. I miss having the passion that I did back then but just grew out of it. Hardly watch anything these days. If I read about something or hear a recommendation on a Podcast that might interest me I'll catch it on YouTube.

When I was at my worst I was just out of my teens. How the fuck do some people get worse as they get older? It's mental to me how some people act like that into their 30s and beyond.

[air_raid]

At least that still looks like they're trying to hit each other. The worst thing about that is the commentary. There are far, FAR worse sequences going on today involving dives, wrestlers having magically synchronized thoughts about what moves to do, and various other acts of twattery unless the others in the match can keep the Bucks reigned in.

[Jazzy G]

Sitting in Manchester GMEX on Saturday March 13th 1993 for the WCW Real Event Tour. The fans are all going wild for Davey Boy Smith as he wrestles Vinnie Vegas, but I'm less enthusiastic. My mum turns to me and asks why I'm not cheering and I answer withwords  to the effect of "I know he's going to win, because he's British and they're wrestling in Britain. I'm saving my voice for Sting". Also during that show Michael PS Hayes wrestled Maxx Payne and spent ages with Payne in the front facelock while the crowd chants for the DDT. Meanwhile I'm thinking "He needs to hit  that DDT or he's going to end  up in the Payne Killer." Which he invariably did.

[cobra_gordo]

Beyond The Mat was the turning point for me. I knew it was all a work by that point but that video turned me into a conspiracy theorist at the time that maybe it was all a fix and that it was a coincidence that cameras were rolling when the screwjob happened. That led to me looking at work rate more and going all "Hogan can't wrestle". Having access to the internet at school around the time that meant I was spending most of my lunch breaks looking on newz sites, e-fedding and trying to get round the schools security settings to look at tits.

[Daaaaaad!]

Even knowing it was fake after becoming a fan in 2001, I don't actually remember getting proper 'smart' thoughts until around 2002. I distinctly remember thinking I hoped that Brock Lesnar would beat The Rock at Summerslam, because he was 'better' and The Rock was annoying because he was always off doing movies.

Of course, that led to the greatest character in the history of the world, 'Hollywood Rock', so I was clearly very wrong.

[SuperBacon]

When Wrestling With Shadows aired on BBC2, which wikipedia says was 1999, so I was 14. I could've sworn it was earlier than that.

Anyhoo, I didn't get the Montreal thing at the time. I was convinced Bret was going to walk back out on Raw the following night, or whenever DX bought the midget Bret out. So, yeah, when that aired. I remember being LIVID with Vince at screwing my hero. Still am tbf.

[Pier Six Brawler]

double post

[Pier Six Brawler]

I remember watching Midnight Express vs Southern Boys and thinking it was an amazing match and the opener (on the VHS at least) and suddenly thinking that WWF wasn't all it was cracked up to be as their PPV undercard matches were generally crap. I always hated Hogan and Warrior and wanted guys like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels to be pushed to the top, when Hogan won the title at WM9 I went into apoplectic shock and felt like shit for days, it was like all the progress that the WWF had made in the past 18 months had been thrown away,

I must have been semi-smart fairly early on because I remember seeing the infamous "We have HERD enough" sign at whatever 1990 WCW PPV it was shown at and recognising that it was a shot at Jim Herd who I'd only seen presenting the Steiners with the Pat O'Connor tag team trophy at Starrcade '90. I think "New Wave Wrestling" magazine was my first taste of smarkdom, it skirted on the edges of kayfabe, and there were semi-shoot interviews (including one with Cornette right as he was forming SMW, which I assume he knocked Jim Hird in), and articles about older wrestlers and wrestling history. I didn't get on the internet or read the Observer until 1999 or so.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

I had "directive 4" in my system like RoboCop in the first one. Where I knew it was all fake, but I had this thing in my brain where if I acknowledged to myself that these things were all bollocks, I'd break down and have to dive out of the window to avoid Ed209. I'd always just get along with it, because you sort of had to. That nWo storyline and Austin vs McMahon would have been shite if you admitted to yourself it was all a big con. It wasnt really until 99 when I'd be all cynical and be like "hey, if it was real Road Dogg would be the champion." It's just natural as you get older.

I do remember for years thinking that even though it might be a bit off, that the wrestlers were the gimmicks in real life. I still have visions of Nailz in his orange jumpsuit getting a paper and 20 bensons from the newsagents. Or Vince phoning Henry Godwinn at his farm and saying "we need you in work on Sunday, there's a hogpen match Gorilla Monsoon's booked you in."