First times seeing a new promotion

[FUM]

The first wrestling I ever seen (or at least remember seeing) was WWF. I was 9 years old and my Granda has just got a dodgy NTL box. I was just pressing buttons and landed on Sky Sports with Big Boss Mans head in a noose being hung from Hell in a Cell. Madness really that it had me hooked thinking back.

I hunted every time I went to my Granda’s house from then on and before too long was staying every Friday to watch RAW. I soon discovered I could flick over to WCW - which was on one of the Turner movie channels if I remember correctly - during ad breaks which was my first exposure to that. I’m certain one of the first things I seen on Nitro was Meng in a Hardcore title match but memory is hazy.

[RIDDUM_N_STYLE]

WWE - sometime in 89 as my mum had left the telly on what would become Sky One and one of the weekly shows was on, instantly hooked and still here 36 years on

WCW - through the showings of Worldwide on Granada on a Saturday and the Galoob figures. Didn’t own a VHS until the last run of WB releases (Superstar Series, Best ofs and 99/00 PPVs)

ECW - reading about it in Power Slam plus the mini invasion angle in 97 on Raw, didn’t watch properly till it was on Bravo

TNA - through the Wrestling Channel showing the weekly PPVs on delay then watching regularly when it moved around channels for 3/4 years

AEW - a Day 1 viewer, watched everything through alternate means initially until the ITV deal started, only watch Dynamite and PPVs now

ROH - again through TWC, wanted to own the DVDs but they go for silly money on EBay and I don’t have an adapter for my SCART cable to plug my multi region DVD player to my HDMI only TV

BritWres - dipped in and out of stuff from the likes of PCW, FWA, 1PW, Progress, ICW and TNT, the latter I’ve only had a taste of the past couple of years through them being at Liverpool Comic Con

[Cannibal Man]

CZW was the Ian Rotten/Mad Man Pondo match from 2000 that had them going at each other with scissors. It was on the third volume of the Horrific Moments thing a mate had bought off SST. I think that was the first time I saw light tubes too because it ends with a powerbomb into a pile of them then Sabu moment of lights off-surprise which just turns out to be a then recently fired from ECW Axl Rotten. Pretty soon after that my mate was trading tapes with a bloke in Poland and we'd get them back a few weeks later hoping we'd got something with a deathmatch on. This was probably the year after the clip happened too so we didn't have tons of tournaments to choose from and had no idea what IWA MS was. 

WCW video wise I don't know, i've got a memory of seeing the ITV show once and it being Barry Windham but I learned about it existing from George Napolitano's This Is Wrestling book with a big fuck off image of Lex Luger slamming Ric Flair on the front. Learned a million things from that book but the photos of Muta, Cactus/Abdullah and a few others blew me away, seem to recall there's a beautiful couple of Pillman and Jushin Liger photos in there too. 

ECW was definitely Powerslam and a brief watch of the RAW shows in 1997, I knew to eventualy keep on eye on Bravo but didn't see it til ages later when tape trading happened for me and the Delta releases started happening (Delta first I think). Living Dangerously '99 was the first show I saw in full. I don't think I actually got to tape and keep a full episode of Hardcore TV til 2000 when they were at the arena for RVD dropping the TV title. Quite lucky really because that's a pretty good and hot episode of the show.

 

[davertfnewman]

World of Sport:

- I recall my dad watching it in the mid-eighties, specifically an episode where they'd integrated the WWF footage and had Gene doing an introduction with "the United Kingdom's own Lord Alfred Hayes".

- Didn't watch much more than that, but the next time I remember is my dad calling my mom in because Kendo Nagasaki's mask had gotten ripped off by Rocco accidentally in their match against Dave Taylor and Clive Myers.

 

WWF:

- I got bought a pair of Thumb Wrestlers, so became aware of Hulk Hogan and a guy I thought was called the Iron Shriek.

- My dad brought home a tape of WrestleMania VI in 1990 that he'd borrowed off a guy from work who was planting the seeds of him getting Sky TV.

- We got Sky TV during the Easter school holidays of 1991, last Friday before we went back. I spent all day with Satellite TV Guide or whatever it was called, planning to watch all these shows like Turtles and Transformers and MASK, only for the installation to be completed when the channels that showed them closed down for the night. Disappointed, but ended up channel surfing and came across the episode of Prime Time Wrestling at Gold's Gym promoting the WBF, including Bobby running his mouth and challenging Mike Christian to a posedown, then chickening out by pretending his singlet strap snapped back and hurt his shoulder. Hooked from that point, which saw us watching UK Rampage and that summer really was the summer of Summerslam 1991, which is as good of an event as you'll get.

 

USWA:

- Very briefly saw an episode of it on Screensport and had the "This isn't the WWF!" reaction to it and left Lawler until he came on board the next year.

 

WCW:

- My dad had been taping the late night episodes on ITV, but I saw my first episode of Worldwide on Sky Sports, with the Freebirds, DDP and Big Daddy Dink being dicks to some jobbers, hurting them maliciously and then sarcastically going "Sorry about that!". I remember the likes of Sting, Paul E, Cactus Jack, Bobby Eaton, Lex and his entourage of Race and Hughes, and Tom Zenk seemingly being the guy who got punked at every turn, including his short turn as a referee.

- Next time I saw it was after learning we were getting it on afternoons in the Central region and picking up the Sting's Squadron/Dangerous Alliance double cover version of WCW Magazine from the Merry Hill Centre. First episode was the debut of the new intro and Jesse as commentator, with the first match being Dustin and Barry against DDP and Vinnie Vegas. I dare say that episode, which ended with Vader squashing Marcus Alexander Bagwell and calling out Sting, formed a lot of opinions for UK fans of who the stars were.

 

NJPW:

- The aforementioned Ring Warriors show, with the likes of Eddie Boulder and Oliver Humperdink creating spurious back stories of where he might've seen El Samurai before, especially when he got his mask ripped.

 

ECW:

- Had read about it via Power Slam, but wasn't until the short episodes on Bravo that I saw it. Vividly recall Shane Douglas destroying his mate Cody Michaels in order to draw out Tony Durante, which saw Francine get bumped off a shoulder nudge and then Joel Gertner coming out to do his demeaning ring announcements and pissing off the Pitbull by telling him "Excuse me, you're in my camera shot!" when he was squaring up to him.

[air_raid]

Well, the spirit of the thread excludes my first promotion, the WWF, which is good for the rest of you - if I typed anything more about WrestleMania VI, sub-lent to me by my mate Simon while already on (extended) loan from his sisters video shop, I’d either be repeating the same stories I’ve told numerous times, and/or impinging on my forthcoming review of said tape for my snails pace Mania reviews thread.

The first time I saw WCW was on a Saturday lunch time on ITV in 93. I’d already been aware of “the other wrestling” because deciding early on that Bret Hart was favourite wrestler, but having only seen Hart Foundation tags, other lads at school told me that his finishing move was The Sharpshooter but that he’d stolen it from a bloke called Sting. Going through the WCW results online it’s unclear if it’s a specific episode of Worldwide or whether the show sold to international markets was chopped up bits of a few episodes combined. I believe the first match I saw was The Hollywood Blonds beating two scrubs with what Jesse Ventura called “The Hollywood Bomb” (Rocket Launcher) and taking a photo with the victim “for their agent.” The Body’s presence at least told me where he’d ended up after Mania VI and I was reminded of the playground opinion that by and large, it was viewed as a retirement home for ex WWF. It certainly didn’t help when The Anvil waddled out later to beat some ham n egger with The Million $ Dream, but with Ventura calling it “The Anvilizer” - everything screamed “rip off” at this point. Anvil being there points to May or June of 93 and they were already doing Cactus “lost in Cleveland” and hyping up Beach Blast - Bulldogs washed up here too, I noted - and even though it wasn’t the WWF, I watched a fair few episodes. I saw Paul Orndorff beating someone with a piledriver and on one episode Too Cold and Bagwell won when Scorp hit what Gordon Solie called a “one and a half” from the top rope. In my head it was within a week or two we had Ron Simmons & Ice Train vs Tex Slazenger & Shanghai Pierce (the Godwinns) but in reality it was months. I’d soon come to appreciate guys like Sting, Vader and the Blonds, Flair came back and still had gravitas, and a few of the ex WWF guys still could deliver in the ring, including Rick Rude, who one episode I watched come out as “World Heavyweight Champion” though the belt was suddenly different and I didn’t know they were doing Vader vs Rude since both were baddies. He beat Frankie Lancaster with a reverse suplex instead of The Rude Awakening which I thought was odd - in my child's brain I wondered if some condition of his quitting/being sacked from the WWF meant as well as his music, he wasn't allowed to take The Rude Awakening with him. I remember seeing some right dross - The Equalizer, Charlie Norris, Thunder & Lightning (even though their finish was ace) and The Cole Twins, before either I eventually got bored and stopped watching in favour of checking the football scores on Teletext or something*, or it stopped airing - I forget.

ECW was a different animal altogether - through Apter mags I was already very much aware of the #3 even before they “invaded” Raw in 97 and knew my Pitbulls from my Eliminators and so on. When the crazy-old episodes started up on Bravo, I jumped on the chance. Didn’t hurt that if I asked papa raid to leave the Sky on Bravo so I could watch the wrestling, which would still be on when he went to bed, I could also tape whatever softcore movie Bravo aired thereafter. Hey, I was a teenager! I think the first episode I saw was of Double Jeopardy, where Tommy Dreamer took a nasty sideways fall down a stack of tables at the hands of Underfaker Brian Chainz, and Stevie Richards lost the World title for Raven by getting pinned by Sandman because Raven presumably had something better to do. It became compulsive viewing very quickly because even though the WWF and WCW were putting on a more polished product, I found the all-encompassing storylines crossing over (Dreamer vs Douglas, Dreamer vs Raven, Raven vs Sandman) engrossing and the real music/November Rain video made the whole experience more exciting than the big 2, at least for a bit. For several years they were the only 3 promotions I had access to, like most of us, save 30 second avi files I downloaded of MOVEZ!!1 from other companies for a good few years inspired by reading results and reviews in Power Slam.

Eventually I decided I needed to see more of the world outside the big 3 as was… prompted in no small part by it becoming the big 1 by 2001 and the WWF/WWE product of 2002 going downhill fast. Plus Fin Martin telling me that the best wrestling in the world was happening in small companies or in Japan. I bought six tapes off SiMania which as well as old WCW, included numerous promotions new to me. All Japan was a no brainer, having seen quite a few of the biggest spots of the Musawa vs Kobashi Triple Crown match from 99, so I picked up Complete Edition 99 which starts with Holy Demon Army vs Musawa & Akiyama and ends with Vader, with highlights of every big Triple Crown and tag title match and tournament final of the year ; I was fucking sold. I also 100% needed to get some New Japan in my life so picked up the finals day from the most recent G1 Climax so I could see the apparently miraculously good final between Yuji Nagata and a resurgent Keiji Muto. Also sold, in an instant - as an aside, what a cunt Murakami was. in addition I couldn't stop myself picking up the first two Super J cups to see all the legendary matches (I'd also downloaded clips of over the years) featuring Liger, Sasuke, Ultimo Dragon, Pegasus et al, so technically this would have been my first time seeing WAR as well. I struggle to put my finger on when my first time seeing Noah would have been but the earliest big match I remember buddy, future Japan host and occasional keffer tsve picking up and us watching would have been Musawa vs Kobashi from Navigate For Evolution (March 2003) which though it didn't feel much like watching a new promotion in truth, rocked my socks off and on any given day I could still call my favourite match of all time. ROH represented a bit of a challenge in terms of choosing a tape - I'd known all about Eddy Guerrero working indies and in particular a match he'd had with Low Ki for ICW but as a promotion overall, ROH was getting all the buzz - in the end I chose Night of Appreciation because it had Eddy on it, but of all the indy names with some buzz attached, I decided AJ Styles vs Low Ki sounded like a match I needed to see. It was a great call, being a mark for MOVEZ!1 at the time, the first time I saw AJ do the Cliffhanger (Canadian backbreaker into DDT) I completely lost my mind, and subconsciously probably already decided Styles was destined to be my new favourite wrestler. Overall the show had me on the fence at certain points, especially seeing DHS get monster pops for beating up The Christopher Street Connection - shades of Axl Rotten's "homosexual dance party" line that opened Guilty As Charged 99 - but the show completely won me over by the end. In hindsight, I wish I'd just started with the first show and Dragon vs Daniels vs Ki, and started working my way through in order. By the end of getting through all the tapes I bought, I realised I'd wasted many years of my fandom sticking to just the most well known American feds and there was a world of good wrestling out there I should be watching.

Anything that aired on early TWC others will have already talked about, and my live show adventures to BritWres and other random Nip promotions would be a thread of itself, so I might go into those details at a later date.

* Probably actually just pritt-sticking new additions to my Page 3 collection into my scrapbook, knowing me.

Edited June 10, 2025 by air_raid
Simply Ravishing!