Your first ‘favourite match ever’

[RedTwoster]

We all started watching wrestling at different times, but we’ll all have had that first experience of watching a match and feeling utterly blown away - and there you were, with your first ‘favourite ever match’.

The first show I saw in full was Wrestlemania 18. I enjoyed it, but it’s not where I saw my first favourite ever match - that was at Summerslam 2002 (the second full show I saw) and the match was Triple H vs Shawn Michaels in HBK’s comeback match. The video package beforehand set the scene perfectly for me, and that match itself - with little knowledge as to who either man was - sucked me right in, and for a good while it was the best match I’d seen. The Angle/Lesnar Iron Match came close, but it took a while for that Summerslam match to be dislodged.

So what was it for you? What was your first favourite ever match?

[Frankie Crisp]

Showing my age, but this diamond:

I’d never seen anything like it, having only got into wrestling around the same time. I loved the pantomime of everything I’d seen before but this taught me a whole new appreciation for the craft. Bret was my number one guy as a result of it and I also adored everything Perfect did after, even as a heel which felt odd given I’d usually cheer the goodies and boo the baddies. It’s an absolute masterclass and still holds up to this day.

Honourable mention to Bret Vs. Piper at Mania 8, which I’ll also still never tire off.

Edited June 7 by Frankie Crisp

[Statto]

This one, for me:

I don't actually know for sure if WM6 was the first time I saw wrestling as I definitely remember seeing bits of the Docklands show in late 89 - but that could have been it still doing the rounds 6 months later (my brother bringing home copies taped off Sky borrowed from a mate at school, as was many of our routes in) but it was definitely one of the first, and I fell in love with Demolition straight away. I mean, that promo.

By default, therefore, this became my favourite match. I remember vividly watching just that match (on the commercial copy we had by then) just before bed the night before my birthday to ensure it was the final match I watched before I turned 10. I don't know why I thought that was important, but clearly it was. 

[davertfnewman]

1 hour ago, Frankie Crisp said:

Showing my age, but this diamond:

I’d never seen anything like it, having only got into wrestling around the same time. I loved the pantomime of everything I’d seen before but this taught me a whole new appreciation for the craft. Bret was my number one guy as a result of it and I also adored everything Perfect did after, even as a heel which felt odd given I’d usually cheer the goodies and boo the baddies. It’s an absolute masterclass and still holds up to this day.

Honourable mention to Bret Vs. Piper at Mania 8, which I’ll also still never tire off.

Yeah, probably this for me too. The best match of the first card I saw the full build-up to, becoming a fan in April of 1991. Probably my favourite PPV still as well.

[BarryOVega]

1 hour ago, Frankie Crisp said:

Showing my age, but this diamond:

I’d never seen anything like it, having only got into wrestling around the same time. I loved the pantomime of everything I’d seen before but this taught me a whole new appreciation for the craft. Bret was my number one guy as a result of it and I also adored everything Perfect did after, even as a heel which felt odd given I’d usually cheer the goodies and boo the baddies. It’s an absolute masterclass and still holds up to this day.

Honourable mention to Bret Vs. Piper at Mania 8, which I’ll also still never tire off.

Great match without question but it still annoys me Hebner calls for the bell before Perfect even starts nodding

[air_raid]

My first four tapes were Mania VI then three consecutive Survivors, so my first favourite was Bret vs Shawn from Survivors 92, as Bret became my first favourite wrestler very quickly through those tapes. It was cool to see he had transformed from “one half of The Hart Foundation” to recently-dethroned Intercontinental champ (as I’d read about on trading cards) all the way to the pinnacle. Of course, Shawn had made parallel progression and the match updated my knowledge that he too had got as far as the ICT and earning shots at the big belt. The match itself was the first time I really understood the “story” being told bell to bell, aided no end by a great call from The Brain, and I’d still put it in my top 5 favourites ever.

[d-d-d-dAz]

Bret v Piper and Savage v Flair at Mania VIII.

Per my mum, i'd watched lots of wrestling before that with my cousins and grandad. But Mania VIII is the one that even as a kid stuck out to me as something special, and was the tape I watched the most.

They're probably still my two favourite matches, to be honest.

[Doog]

Started watching wrestling on off in the spring of 1999 and then weekly from SummerSlam 1999, so I'd say The Rock vs Triple H from Backlash 2000 was my first favourite match. Loved every bit of it and remember rushing out to buy the VHS when it came out and watching it back so many times.

Obviously it wasn't the most technically sound match, but it had everything and was the epitome of the attitude era main event style,  crowd were absolutely electric for it as well. As a kid I genuinely thought Austin might not turn up so was out my seat when he did, the Hebner return etc, just brilliant and probably still watch it back a couple times a year now.

[tiger_rick]

Mine is still my favourite. Harts v Demos from SummerSlam 90. Loved everything about it when I first saw it on VHS and I've loved it ever since.

Savage/Warrior is a close second. That's probably the first match I ever saw that I knew was really, really good and the more I watched it, the more I got why. 35 years on, I still haven't seen many matches I think are better. 

[DavidB6937]

Any of the early team Survivor Series matches because I loved seeing those combinations. 

Perfect/Bret as a singles which I still dip into.

And then probably Rumble 92 which is mad to think it's arguably still the best Rumble still.

[davertfnewman]

I think Bret's going to be involved in a lot of these. Have we mentioned SummerSlam '92 yet? WrestleMania X or XIII?

[Joe Blog]

Outlaws vs Mankind from Summerslam 98 for me. I could only ever watch wrestling at my mates and he had three videos. Summerslam 98, wrestlemania 14, fully loaded 98 and Royal Rumble 98.

I loved the Outlaws and thought they were the absolute tits back then. The match itself isn’t anything amazing to be fair but I just thoroughly enjoyed watching it. 
 

Back then because I had such limited exposure to wrestling there was still a lot of air of mystery around characters for me so someone like Kane was amazing to my young mind. When he pops out of the dumpster at the end I thought it was one of the coolest things ever. 
 

I also remember really liking Billy’s yellow gear, I was an odd child. 
 

[Carbomb]

7 hours ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Bret v Piper and Savage v Flair at Mania VIII.

This is it for me too. WMVIII was my first Mania, and those two matches were superb.

I remember also Bret's match with Bam Bam in the final of KOTR93 with a lot of fondness.

[Chico Torres]

It was probably Hogan vs Warrior at WM 6. Prior to that my entire understanding of wrestling was some musky old sport during the dull hours of Saturday afternoon on ITV before good things like The A Team were shown, that took place in grim depressing regional leisure centres with the fat OAP from Tiswas and some uncles in swimming trunks. Then I see this and it’s from the magical place America where all the cool stuff came from and it’s two superheroes in an epic battle in a stadium, and the challenger is some intergalactic muscleman with face paint and the champion was also some strange superhuman being who also (per our 1990 playground equivalent of Dave Meltzer) starred in the aforementioned A Team and had once been in a tag team with BA Baracus himself and had slammed a giant.

So yes that was mind blowing shit to see, and probably stayed as my fave match until the following year when that same otherworldly cosmic superhero put his career on the line against another bearded cocaine maniac and the superhero survived multiple flying elbows by getting power from the heavens and retiring the baddie who then got rid of his wicked witch manager and reunited with the princess.

Finally not long after that, whenever this VHS came out I saw this match and Warrior was forgotten and this became my new favourite:

 

Edited June 8 by Chico Torres

[WrestlingForFun]

Mysterio vs Guerrero Halloween Havoc 97.

Has absolutely everything you need from a pro wrestling match. Story telling is on point with the mask stipulation. Eddie looking ripped, Rey in his Phantom attire. innovative spots - all of which they absolutely nailed. Also one of the few times Bobby Heenan was totally on it in commentary in WCW. 
 

When I was very young Tatanka was my favourite - so my least favourite match was him losing to Borga. Streak was broken.