Love and miss the VHS era. Technology has mostly been progress, so it's not like "Tapes were better!" I just miss the ritual of taping things: researching when something was airing, knowing I often only had one shot at taping whatever it was or I'd never see it again, marking the tape, archiving them. This physical thing was in my hands, seeing the actual tape in the cartridge windows, not the abstraction of a digital file. I feel like something is truly being lost in the cloud/streaming era, the lack of a unique thing being yours. Not even talking from an ownership perspective (like how Amazon/Apple can just delete a digital file that you "bought"), although that's significant, but these were inexpensive items that made you who you are, things that helped you connect with other people (You have x? I have y! We should hang out!) There has to be something psychologically damaging to more and more things becoming abstract files you can stream (until you can't because bean counters can take them away for a myriad of reasons any time they want, and they do) and not physical things that are ours. While the slice of everything gets smaller for most people in this world, most people don't even get the simple little pleasure of looking at a shelf with their favorite stuff on it anymore.

Kilgore speaking my language. Now I just want to tell VHS stories. Maybe later...

Neo Zeed it's time bruddahs. Time to wax nostalgically about vhs wrestling tape rentals.

Aug 2, 2023 1:05:43 GMT Baker said:

Kilgore speaking my language. Now I just want to tell VHS stories. Maybe later...

Do it.

Aug 2, 2023 1:54:14 GMT @ness said:

Neo Zeed it's time bruddahs. Time to wax nostalgically about vhs wrestling tape rentals.

That's right.

Man I'm pretty in love with the technology. I feel like VHS/VCR tech was forced out by corporate motives and that it was too soon for the format to die. I will never forget the day I walked into Movie Gallery in Atlanta TX and overnight they trashed every single VHS tape they had. They had the richest library of movies on VHS, one of the best in the area. I walked in and one day it was all gone. I asked the worker what they did with all the tapes and he told me they just threw them in the dumpster, I wanted to choke the retard with a kata-hajime. Had I known that hundreds upon hundreds of one of the greatest collections of movies I had ever seen was all in the dumpster I would have dug all that shit out and packed my closets full of them. They had a lot of great stuff that was just never on DVD or you can't even find it now.

It was just stupid. Literally overnight all of a sudden this video store cut it's inventory in half. Shelves were empty, DVD's were spread out on the shelves with like 2 feet in between each movie. And there was nothing to watch. You would go in there and chances of just walking out with nothing were pretty high.

Movies are weird though. The thing is nobody watches anything old. When I worked at Blockbuster and Hollywood Video in high school in Houston it was like going to film school(recently read an article saying that and I'm stealing it because it was fucking true). But I must have been the only person in all of West Houston renting from the old movie section. Nobody rented old movies. That was why there were 47 copies of Drumline taking up like a whole wall of the New Release section.

But man, I had 5 free rentals a week working at Blockbuster and was exposed to so much amazing art, watching the classics and having access to movies that would have never happened had I not worked there.

But you can trace my love of the tech back further than that. My grandma married a pretty cool guy when I was about 5(he was best friends with Don Henley from the Eagles in high school, my granda used money that Henley had sent him to buy us several Christmas/birthday/school clothes growing up, there is a picture of one of my cousins as an infant in a pile of like $10,000 cash that Henley sent him once).

So my grandma lived a few blocks over from us in a trailer and one of the rooms in the guy's trailer was shelved out, all 4 walls, and each wall was stacked from floor to ceiling with Polaroid blank VHS tapes. Each tape had 3 movies on it, all taped off of the guys' HUGE fucking satellite dish he had. So probably close to 1,000 movies, and this was 1989-90-91 so you can imagine probably every movie from the 1980's was there. We grew up with stacks of those tapes in our house all the time. Some of the classics from that era that are priceless to me Snake Eater 1-2, Ghostbusters, Return Of The Living Dead 2, Friday The 13th part 5-6, we wore those fucking tapes OUT. Another one The Brain was only just recently finally released on Blu-Ray by Shout Factory like 3 years ago. It took that long. I started to wonder if that was a real movie or if my memory imagined it like Mandella Effect shit.

But I don't think VHS really needed to be forced out the way it was in 2002-2003, I think the whole format still had wheels for years to come. They were just developing HDVHS tapes that had 1080P picture. To me the VHS tape was like a lot of other really cool 90's things it was like the shit was forced out when it really didn't have to be. There are several advantages of the VHS tape over even modern day tech, for starters I can watch it if my internet goes out, which is actually quite often here in the country. Also the sound is far and away better than any DVD or Blu Ray. There is no comparison the sound/music is so full compared to DVD mixes and modern day formats you constantly work the volume for talking/music/sound through a movie.

It's also great for storage. I have a limited amount of room on my laptop. I haven't gotten into the cloud stuff yet or the external hard drive because really I don't have to. I have a VCR and a backup in the closet if that one goes out. It's pretty easy to record a 3-4 hour football game to a tape to have it for later(just recently recorded Texans upset over the Dolphins from 2003, Andre Johnson first game). Lots of videos get taken down from Youtube and are gone forever. I know the NFL used to have a Netflix style app with tons of old NFL Films stuff, full games, hundreds of Team Yearbook episodes then without warning one day they just closed it down. What they replaced it with is nothing at all like that. A lot of those Team Yearbooks they had on there I haven't been able to find anywhere since they killed it(including all the Texans yearbook tapes). There was a Pride FC highlight video that was the best I had ever seen that was taken down off of Youtube and never found it since. So if I had it on tape? Wouldn't that be better?

The HDMI to RCA adapter gave the VCR and tapes new life. I've got some pretty sweet compilations put together on 6 hour tapes. My recent recording I got every episode of NFL Primetime from 1999 on 2 tapes, too sweet. I've been thinking about putting a 6 hour tape of cartoons together to throw on in the mornings for my son. I know Disney Plus freezes up A LOT and he fucking freaks when his movie fuck up.

Wrestling and UFC tapes were where it was at. I couldn't afford the ECW tapes out of the merch catalog so I would buy the $20 tapes out of the RF Video ads in magazines. Each tape would have like 4 episodes of Hardcore TV on there but he would falsely advertise matches that wouldn't be on the tape or would only be highlights. I remember being so let down when I bought the tape from January 98 he advertised the Sandman vs Sabu Stairway To Hell match like the full match was on the tape but it was only the smallest of highlight clips. Fucker.

This is coming home to daddy

Aug 2, 2023 21:08:25 GMT Neo Zeed said:

So my grandma lived a few blocks over from us in a trailer and one of the rooms in the guy's trailer was shelved out, all 4 walls, and each wall was stacked from floor to ceiling with Polaroid blank VHS tapes. Each tape had 3 movies on it, all taped off of the guys' HUGE fucking satellite dish he had. So probably close to 1,000 movies, and this was 1989-90-91 so you can imagine probably every movie from the 1980's was there. We grew up with stacks of those tapes in our house all the time. Some of the classics from that era that are priceless to me Snake Eater 1-2, Ghostbusters, Return Of The Living Dead 2, Friday The 13th part 5-6, we wore those fucking tapes OUT. Another one The Brain was only just recently finally released on Blu-Ray by Shout Factory like 3 years ago. It took that long. I started to wonder if that was a real movie or if my memory imagined it like Mandella Effect shit.

The coolest part, he had every tape with a 3 digit number with the stickers that came with the blank tape. He had a notebook that logged every movie he had with the number for the tape if you wanted to find it. This was all 1980's shit and just remembering it now reminds me of his place was like the most 1980's house ever. His stereo system took up a full wall. Too rad. 

My favorite wrestling tape would have to be UFC 2! Life changing. I remember on commentary for UFC 3 they mention that UFC 2 was a huge hit rental like top rental on Billboard or something when it came out. There was a Billboard Chart for movie rentals I need to find this now. 

Streaming has really led to a mass delusion that the availability of films has never been higher when it's actually the lowest it has been in a few decades. As Neo Zeed alluded to, only a fraction of what was available on VHS became available on DVD, and only a fraction of what was available on DVD became available on Blu-ray, and only a fraction of what became available on Blu-ray is currently available on streaming platforms. We're witnessing the slow decline of viewable movies (in legal ways). It will only get worse as the conglomeration of America continues its uninterrupted march forward and libraries get consolidated into the hands of fewer corporations. For example, Disney owns the 20th Century Fox Library and makes very few of them available on the Disney+ app because it's the fucking Disney app, it doesn't make sense to have many adult themed movies next to Marvel television shows*. As for the rest of the streaming apps, they have their own tape libraries, many of which sit on shelves, and will never be streamed because they only have so much bandwidth and they couldn't possibly stream everything, so they stream mostly recent films with a select few "classics" while the rest rots away. It's like an even worst Blockbuster situation, where walls are filled with new releases with very few old films. This graph is a few years old now, but very little has changed.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}

A large percentage of the history of movies in unavailable to watch now.

The GOAT Martin Scorsese has been the most vocal dissenting voice about the current state of availability of movies and wrote a beautiful essay about it where he says, "As recently as fifteen years ago, the term “content” was heard only when people were discussing the cinema on a serious level, and it was contrasted with and measured against “form.” Then, gradually, it was used more and more by the people who took over media companies, most of whom knew nothing about the history of the art form, or even cared enough to think that they should. “Content” became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode. It was linked, of course, not to the theatrical experience but to home viewing, on the streaming platforms that have come to overtake the moviegoing experience, just as Amazon overtook physical stores

...

We can’t depend on the movie business, such as it is, to take care of cinema. In the movie business, which is now the mass visual entertainment business, the emphasis is always on the word “business,” and value is always determined by the amount of money to be made from any given property—in that sense, everything from Sunrise to La Strada to 2001 is now pretty much wrung dry and ready for the “Art Film” swim lane on a streaming platform. Those of us who know the cinema and its history have to share our love and our knowledge with as many people as possible. And we have to make it crystal clear to the current legal owners of these films that they amount to much, much more than mere property to be exploited and then locked away. They are among the greatest treasures of our culture, and they must be treated accordingly."

Get their asses, Little Marty.

*A rather insane footnote to this all: Disney, because of their insane protection of what they own, often won't allow old 35mm prints to be screened at reparatory movie theaters, whose entire thing is screening old movies. This was something they used to just put up with, assume they'll never be able to show Bambi again, or some shit, but now that Disney owns the libraries of many classic studios, that means a large percentage of the most famous movies ever made are either no longer available to be screened at all, or such a huge pain in the ass to get clearance that it's often not even worth attempting to jump through hoops to make it happen.

On a much lighter note, I will wax nostalgic about my own history of VHS later. The current state just drives me insane to think about and I had to get that off my chest.

Kilgore making a slightly different version of the above post years ago was a real eye opener for me.

Aug 2, 2023 23:11:26 GMT Baker said:

Kilgore making a slightly different version of the above post years ago was a real eye opener for me.

And it's only gotten worse since, unfortunately. Time Warner/HBO has since merged with Discovery, and so HBO Max, which was the "best" at streaming older movies, has been changed to Max, and a lot of the older stuff is now replaced by, like, Naked and Afraid episodes. They also recently gutted Turner Classic Movies, leaving only 20 employees left, so the last highly curated programming of any kind in America, that just happens to show old movies, is on its last legs.

Broke the recent discussion off into this ancient thread. Epic post, or more likely series of posts, incoming...

I was an only child of divorced, working (and very irresponsible) parents which meant I was home alone, pretty much always, and had the television all to myself. I became a pop culture junkie at a very early age. Too young. Kids at school would be talking about normal kids stuff and I'd want to talk about Apocalypse Now, which I had just watched on Bravo, back when it was "The Film and Arts Network."

This is where my tape obsession began. There was just so many things I wanted to see and not enough time (or pesky school) getting in the way. Every local Sunday Newspaper would have their version of the TV Guide and I would go directly to the back which had an A-Z guide of every movie being shown that week, with the airings (and channel) listed on the bottom. I would read who the stars were, the synopsis and decide if this was something I had to see. I would make a list, see if any of those movies clashed with similar airtimes and plot my plan of attack on taping them all.

The television was in the middle of one of those gigantic '80s/90s entertainment centers in my mom's apartment, ones that had little doors and cubbies for storage up top and on the bottom, and huge shelves for stereo equipment on the side. I would stick Post-It notes on the doors that read things like "Tuesday, 4:15 HBO True Lies," "Wednesday 5:15 HBO Airheads," "Mon-Fri, 3:00 Bravo Twin Peaks" and so on. This way, every time I approached the TV I would be reminded if there was something I had to tape. As my tastes broadened, and more channels emerged, this only increased (a lot of movies airing on IFC were taped in the near future, which was a commercial free independent movie offshoot of Bravo).

One Christmas, I asked both of my parents, separately, as they were divorced, for a VCR. This was my dastardly plan to get two, so I could stack them in my bedroom and dub video rentals, too. The weekend trip to the good video store, and then Blockbuster after they put the good video store out of business, with my dad, usually meant whatever we rented, I would later make a copy of. Most VHS before the late '90s had zero copyright protection embedded, so it was only on occasion that my (harmless) attempt at piracy would be foiled by a scrambled copy.

Speaking of piracy, my dad loves boxing, and boxing PPVs were/are expensive. He discovered that the pricey one time lump sum of buying a "hot box," aka a "scrambler," aka a "descrambler," would quickly pay for itself in money saved by never having to pay for pay per view again. This meant all the new releases on PPV were at my fingertips every weekend. I remember one weekend in particular had Casino and Heat both airing on PPV, and it's pretty fucking rare you watch and tape two stone cold classics in the span of one day, but you bet your ass that's what I did.

In the interest of this message board, that also meant every wrestling pay per view, every big boxing event, and UFC 3 (the first to become available in New York) to UFC 8 (until they stopped airing in New York for years).

My wrestling taping habits began pretty normal, just the pay per views. I didn't start taping ECW until 1997, which is a slight regret. That only began because I finally met someone who wanted to see it, but he wasn't allowed to stay up to 2 am on Fridays, so I'd tape them to show him. Eventually, by 1998, I had a very esoteric ECW TV collection that weren't full episodes, merely the aspects of the show that interested me at the time. A sort of Best Of Hardcore TV as I watched it in real time. This was simply because I taped too much stuff and had to make the blank VHS's count.

As my wrestling tape collection increased, I started to rent some older events that I was fond of to make copies of in my bedroom. By WrestleMania 17, I had every WrestleMania on VHS except WM4, with only WM2 and WM5 as store bought tapes (gifts from mom boyfriends), the rest I had either taped live, or rented, or borrowed, and copied.

I would always have a "temporary tape" in rotation, a tape that I'd use to constantly tape stuff over. Every morning before school, I'd watch the previous night's David Letterman, which I would then tape over the next night. That was for stuff I wanted to see, couldn't watch live, but didn't feel the need to save. I'd always have a Music Videos tape, too, which was just the most random assembly of my favorite music videos at the time. (Every couple weeks there's a prompt on Twitter, which only exists for impressions, very cynical stuff, asking "What did you do when you were bored before social media?" and 9 out of 10 times, I think I just watched music videos). A lot of MTV programming made it to tapes (Beavis and Butt-head compilations, Dead at 21, Real World Marathons, Oddities, The State, VMA/Movie Awards every year, I could go on and on)

All of the tapes were in EP or SLP, meaning the slowest setting to get the most on tapes, but at the worst clarity. I taped too much stuff to worry about clarity, I wanted those sweet 6 hours worth of time. Until TDX came out with 8 hour tapes! I bought a label maker and all my tapes would be meticulously marked with those kind of labels. Eventually I upgraded to Avery Rectangle Labels once my mom got a printer for work. They fit perfectly on the front of VHS and I would copy and paste the logos of movies onto the label for some snazzy looking bootlegs.

Wrestling tapes were fairly well planned out just because it was mostly being taped in a real time order, but movie tapes were pretty chaotic. Occasionally I'd have things like Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction/From Dusk 'Til Dawn on one tape, but mostly it was a mishmash of movies that had no right being together, which was absolutely part of the charm, especially when going somewhere else. You'd bring a tape with a movie that someone wanted to see, then there would two more with absolutely no connection to it, but you'd probably watch them, too. 

My wrestling collection was catalogued, a series of printouts kept in a folder (cheaper than buying a binder). Movies were not, but I sort of just remembered everything I had, and what tape they were on, and where that tape was (some were at my mom's apartment, some at my dad's).

So many connections were made with tapes. I remember a kid in school named Justin had a store bought WrestleMania 6, which I didn't have on tape, and was never at Blockbuster because too much time had passed and new releases had pushed it out of rotation. Obviously, I had something he wanted to see in my gigantic addiction of taping wrestling, so we swapped tapes for a day, I made a copy of WrestleMania 6 for myself, and he watched whatever he had wanted to see and we were friends for the rest of school. Movies were the same. I had taped some pretty obscure shit off IFC, can't remember how many tapes I brought over to someone's house because they always wanted to see that movie and a bond is created forever.

I tend to be a sentimental person, as I think we all are here. VHS getting pushed out for DVD hurt me. It was just this thing that brought me so much joy, I took it insanely personal. I was in denial, at first. LaserDiscs didn't replace VHS, DVDs will fail too, I thought. But seeing the VHS section of video stores become smaller and smaller, and the DVD section become bigger and bigger, it could no longer be denied.

I watched my first DVD in October 2001. I remember it was Donnie Brasco at some kid's house I didn't know particularly well, but he was like, "You've never seen a DVD? Let me show you." It was immediately obvious VHS was done. The clarity of not only image, but also sound. The audio commentaries, the extra features, buying a DVD was not just buying a movie, it was buying days worth documents to that movie.

DVDs were better, but they were also worse. It took the singular nature of YOUR movie, the movie YOU taped, you sought out and curated with other movies, and archived it. DVDs were a sort of homogenous document that everyone that wanted it could get. And it eliminated the culture of recording stuff off TV because you couldn't, really. DVR's became a thing, but it was still this sort of abstract recording on a hard drive that would almost always fail eventually. It wasn't a cartridge that you put into a device, and could see the amount of tape it occupied, and had to coordinate what else you could fit on that tape. Something is truly lost by this abstraction.

Gonna stop it here or else I can ramble all night. 

^What a post. Even more relatable than The Sandlot. Nodded along to these bits in particular...

Aug 3, 2023 0:58:49 GMT Kilgore said:

There was just so many things I wanted to see and not enough time (or pesky school) getting in the way. Every local Sunday Newspaper would have their version of the TV Guide

I had a very esoteric ECW TV collection that weren't full episodes, merely the aspects of the show that interested me at the time. A sort of Best Of Hardcore TV as I watched it in real time. This was simply because I taped too much stuff and had to make the blank VHS's count.

I would always have a "temporary tape" in rotation, a tape that I'd use to constantly tape stuff over. 

All of the tapes were in EP or SLP, meaning the slowest setting to get the most on tapes, but at the worst clarity. I taped too much stuff to worry about clarity, I wanted those sweet 6 hours worth of time. Until TDX came out with 8 hour tapes! I bought a label maker and all my tapes would be meticulously marked 

Wrestling tapes were fairly well planned out just because it was mostly being taped in a real time order, but movie tapes were pretty chaotic.

So many connections were made with tapes.

I tend to be a sentimental person, as I think we all are here. VHS getting pushed out for DVD hurt me.

DVDs were better, but they were also worse. It took the singular nature of YOUR movie, the movie YOU taped, you sought out and curated with other movies, and archived it. DVDs were a sort of homogenous document that everyone that wanted it could get. And it eliminated the culture of recording stuff off TV because you couldn't, really. 

Yes. God, yes.

I hit the Sports section of the Sunday paper first. Then it was TV Guide pamphlet time. Searching for anything cool that would be on that week....good times. For me that meant a special emphasis on wrestling and sports. I couldn't mark it because my mom went through it with a highlighter of her own. I had to remember.

Our big movie channel was WNUV 54. They played movies weeknights from 8-10, maybe 8-11. Discovered some real gems there like the Rocky series, Cool Hand Luke, and many, many others.

The weekly TV Guide pamphlet even led to my short-lived movie snob phase where I became obsessed with watching/renting all the TV Guide endorsed **** movies. My brother was more populist than me in those days so he tended to pooh pooh my snobbery. Still, I discovered some real gems during this phase. My brother even liked some of them!  

I'd often torture myself by checking out the cable listings as well. ESPN was a dream come true and In Search Of... was amazing in theory. My parents would never get cable "because we'd never do anything other than watch cable." That's not true in my brother's case. He still would have done other stuff. But they were 100% right about me. I'd have become a shut-in watching cable 24/7. ESPN alone would have been enough for me. Bowling Green vs. Ball State football? Hell yeah! Hawaii vs. Air Force in some late night WAC Basketball action? Sign me up! I did hate SportsCenter tho. To this day I have no idea how goofball Chris Berman and his litany of inane catchphrases ever got over.  

My WWF Superstars collection circa 95-96 was similar to Kilgore's ECW Hardcore TV collection. Tapes were expensive/hard to get (you have keep in mind I had no real income and my primary mode of transportation was my feet) so I'd just keep the best bits (I got really good at cutting stuff off at just the right time). That meant lots of Goldust and The Dean. One tape I do remember keeping for a while was the episode around Christmas 95 with Xanta Klaus & Buddy Landel squashes. Actually, that was the week I was punished for beating up my brother so I probably just kept it for that one week and watched it over and over. See Also: IYH December 95.

The one episode I never, ever taped over was the last syndicated Superstars episode in September 96. With a tear in my eye, that was my version of Leper Messiah 's The Last Nitro. End of an era which marked the official conclusion of the Saturday morning wrestling I had grown up on. A thing I thought would last forever. Wrestling would no longer be the extension of Saturday morning cartoons I had always viewed it as. We were now entering a brave new world. In truth we had already been in the Monday Night Era for a year, but I still held on to The Old Way. Now there was no more denying it. Not gonna lie. I feel like my childhood died that day. It's either that or an incident a year earlier that I'll get to in a minute.

I had a lot of temporary tapes in rotation. Most of my tapes were used over and over again. There was very little I kept prior to 98. And much of what I did keep was family favorite type Important stuff I'd be crucified for taping over. Anyway, wrestling keepers include the aforementioned final syndicated Superstars, a few 95-96 Superstars highlights (mostly Goldust & The Dean), an awesome 1988 Rumble/Main Event tape* I got from my buddy Matt The IRS Fan in a trade circa 1994ish, the two commercial tapes I owned prior to 98 (one AWA & one NWA), and....that's about it. I did have a 96 Worldwide episode with a Brad Armstrong/Mr. JL match (or maybe just that match?) and some AWF shows for a while, but I eventually taped over all that stuff.
EDIT: And the Lawler/Al Jackson match where "The King" commentates his own match like a boss.

Non-wrestling keepers included the final Orioles game at venerable Memorial Stadium, the game where Cal broke Gehrig's record, and possibly the game where Cal tied the record (I was there!). Also had The Stand taped off tv for a long while. Possibly The Natural, Star Wars and the Rockys as well? But we eventually got the commercial versions of all those. I knew better than to tape over all these (not that I would have anyway!). My brother and/or dad would have killed me if I had.

Oh, and I had one episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys on tape for years. It was one of the Atalanta episodes. Also had the epic three part A Serpent Coils The Earth Conan The Adventurer finale and the even more epic five part Fall of the Neo-Sapien Empire Exosquad season finale + the next/last episode. Still think those two finales running back to back is the single greatest block of television the world has ever seen. And I will hear no arguments. 

OK, now I gotta rant for a minute. I started taping Exosquad late in its run. Heck, I came to Exosquad late in its run. Anyway, stupid school was about to start up again, and the timing was just off, so my plan was to tape every single Exosquad episode so I could relive the epic Terrans vs. Neos war whenever I wanted to in tape form for years to come. This is September 95. I'd have spent every penny I had on blank tapes for this project. Or begged my parents if need be. I'd have given a toe. You want a toe? I got one. Take it. Just give me tapes! It was A Big Deal. So I have this sweet plan to tape the best show in the business so I can watch it for eternity and come home to see I taped...

Bananas In Pajamas. WTF?! Yes, this was a real thing. Even worse, it's exactly what it sounds like. Did I tape the wrong channel? Did they switch the timeslot? Why does this exist? Has the whole world gone mad? What is going on here? Well, it turns out they replaced Exosquad, the 11/10 masterpiece, with some sub-Barney hogwash called Bananas In Pajamas. Worst. Day. Ever. Even the tragic final syndicated Superstars episode pales in comparison to this gut punch.

*This tape featured the Hogan/Andre Main Event title change with the twin referees, which was my favorite match from February 88-Late 95 (with the runner up for much of that time being Slaughter/Warrior from the 91 Rumble), and the epic Dino Bravo bench press angle at the 88 Rumble. You better believe I watched the heck outta this one. Whatever I gave up to get this tape from Matt was worth it. 

8 hour tapes were a godsend. That's what I used for Smackdown from 99-03ish. I didn't care about quality either. I just wanted the content. Hell, nowadays I miss that slightly underwater sound quality you got from a well-watched VHS. If you're not watching wrestling with Gary Michael Cappetta sounding like he's shouting the intros from underwater then you're not really watching wrestling. Planned on taping every episode I could of Doctor Who as well in the early 2000s but I didn't get very far with that one.

Meticulous labeling came much later. Up to 98-99 it was a crapshoot aside from those handful of permanent tapes I mentioned. Half the reason I didn't bother much with labeling is because I knew I was just going to tape over it soon anyway. 

You did make friends with tapes. Or become closer with the friends you already had. To this day I still associate certain people with particular movies or tapes. Adam with Falling Down & Bloodsport. His dad with Shawshank Redemption. Matt The IRS Fan with Why Not & History of the World. Rick with the January 92 Clash of Champions. Jensen with Wayne's World, Forrest Gump, Alive, and something called Squirm (don't ask). Gus with ECW Barely Legal. The Three Brothers dad with Slap Shot & Roadhouse. For my brother it was our Pennsylvania cousins with Big Trouble In Little China. I can keep going. And I'm sure it goes both ways with old acquaintances to this day associating me with this or that particular movie. Actually, I know this to be true.

I held out with VHS for as long as I could. I was still buying wrestling tapes on VHS up to 04 or 05. Movies probably til 03 or so. To this day I still have a lot of my old VHS tapes. And I would have even more if my brother hadn’t taken a bunch of them like 18 years ago. 

Another cool thing was the suspense of ordering a tape. Running home to check that mailbox and then getting all giddy when your tape finally arrives. On a similar note, imagine you're me being forced to sit through stupid school with Gus' tape of Barely Legal RIGHT THERE in my backpack. Longest. Day. Ever. And you know what? I'm pretty sure I had baseball practice/game immediately after school that day! Giving myself the ol' Barry Horowitz pat on the back for having the willpower to not immediately ditch school and go home to watch it, consequences be damned. Though I probably did ditch baseball that day lol.

I never made the most use of my two VCRs. Always wanted to, but never quite got around to it. We had a main VCR in the family room and another in the basement. The basement VCR couldn't record stuff, but you could still watch tapes down there. Not sure why I never combined the two. Later on I would get a tv with a built in VCR for my bedroom upstairs. That's where I taped most of those Smackdown episodes. 

*More later?

Oh man, Baker , the star ratings in the TV guide pamphlet! Forgot about those, but that really was persuasive. A **** rating for a movie I never heard of, which was most made before, like, 1993, was almost guaranteed to make a Post-It Note.

You've also reminded me of taped sports. My grandfather taped Super Bowl XXV, the Giants vs. Bills one, as we were huge Giants fans. It is absolutely insane for me to think about him taping something, no idea how he pulled that off. But this was before I was taping stuff, I was still too young. Anyway, it was a formerly blank VHS in a hard clear shell, and as he'd come to my dad's apartment every Sunday to watch football, on the bye week before the Super Bowl, he'd always bring that Giants Super Bowl tape to fill out the programming void. When he moved into a nursing home, I got the tape. And when I finally got rid of my VHS collection, that tape is one of the few that remains.

Storytime from my end.

Getting in to wrestling in 1998, when going to a video store, besides looking through video games to rent, the "special interest" section became the other spot I'd check, for wrestling tapes Probably also why I got into MMA as well. The Family Video in my town was where I'd rent the first WrestleMania, and it was an original copy on VHS, meaning it had Hogan entering to "Eye of the Tiger" (along with JYD coming out to "Another One Bites the Dust" and Wyndham and Rotunda entering to "Born in the U.S.A.").

The Blockbuster in my town had a tape that had Sting and Sid on the cover, with "Terror Rules the Ring" or something on it. I was thinking maybe it was going to be a compilation of a feud they had in WCW or something, but then I found out after renting it, it was Halloween Havoc 1990. I remember thinking "they should have just put Halloween Havoc 1990 on it", but I guess the reputation it got might have hurt it. I still liked the event, along with a lot of the early 90s WCW PPVs (the storylines and gimmicks may have been bleh, but the in ring product was always great).

A local chain called Frese's Video was my go to though, having a huge amount of the WCW PPVs, from the early 90s through the nWo years. And they also had a big amount of the WWF Coliseum video comps, as well as PPVs (including the UK only events like One Night Only, Capital Carnage, Rebellion, ect). It was how first saw WCW Beach Blast 1992, and many of the IYH WWF events.

While it is cool having a lot of this stuff on streaming, it was always funny going on the search for something I hadn't seen. Finding a rarity was like 🥹.😂

In terms of the wrestling stuff I personally taped, I had a few PPVs, when my dad would buy the PPV and we watched it at his place. A lot of times, we'd go over to a friend of his who bought every PPV, but in terms of the ones my dad bought at his place, I ended up with copies of No Mercy 1999, WrestleMania 17, and Invasion from WWF from what I can remember. I don't think I ever got a recording of a WCW event, as usually we saw those over at his friend's house, and the one time I remember him buying a WCW event, I think it was "Superbrawl 2001", and I didn't end up recording it. I do remember my dad's friend being shocked by Sid's leg injury, even though he had bought WCW Sin, just because (I guess) the live broadcast cut to a different camera angle when the injury occurred, leaving most in the dark for a bit.

Besides the last Nitro, I did have a copy of the time Harley Race's indie company (WLW) ran a show in my town. They had a syndicated show on CGEM (a TV channel in Quincy, IL), so it was nice having a copy of event from my town. I also taped a few episodes of ECW on TNN (my area didn't get Hardcore TV, so I had to suffice), and each episode still had the last 5 minutes of Monster Jam before ECW would come on, and the commercials that aired too.

I do like seeing the commercials on old TV tapings of anything. With ECW on TNN, seeing ads for a NASCAR race on TNN (back in the odd time of NASCAR races being broadcast on multiple different channels), as well as all of the old collect call numbers (1-800 Collect, 1-800 Call-ATT, 10-10-220, ect) , has a little weird nostalgia feel, for me. Though, 8 years ago, I remember being shocked that 1-800 Collect was still in business, and then I had to explain to an 18 year old what a collect call was. Moments to make one feel old.😂

The Havoc 90 was one of the GOAT tape covers for sure.

Aug 3, 2023 4:04:57 GMT Kilgore said:

Oh man, Baker , the star ratings in the TV guide pamphlet! Forgot about those, but that really was persuasive. A **** rating for a movie I never heard of, which was most made before, like, 1993, was almost guaranteed to make a Post-It Note.

You've also reminded me of taped sports. 

Yes! So glad somebody else remembers those TV Guide pamphlet star ratings. I took them way too seriously for a while. Some of their choices may have been odd? Anybody still putting over The World According To Garp nowadays? Do people still love Stalag 17 the way TV Guide and Thomas Magnum did? I genuinely don't know the answer to these questions. Watched both back in the day because FOUR STARS but all I remember about either some 30 years later is the tangentially related Magnum thing and Robin Williams being Garp.

You arbitrarily mentioning 1993 reminded me of my brother's big problem with most TV Guide endorsed **** movies- they skewed old and my brother couldn't do old movies. Well, he could go back to the Butch & Sundance/Sting/Cool Hand Luke era, but anything black & white....forget about it. I had no such qualms. Citizen Kane ftw.

You also reminded me that I don't recall taping stuff on my own until 1995 (when I went all in on it) and I'm trying to figure out why. Did I not know how to? Was doing so frowned upon? Did I simply not have any tapes to use? I do not know the answer to these questions. But I did not know not to use any of the Important tapes with labels. I did some dumb stuff but even I knew better than to do two things- 1. Call a wrestling hotline. 2. Tape over an Important (labeled) tape. 

Your Giants/Bills Super Bowl ritual is very pure and wholesome. It also reminded me of an oddball sporting event I had on tape for a while- a random Kansas/Syracuse NCAA Basketball tournament game. Why? Well, I often picked Kansas to win it all in my March Madness bracket. This is a terrible idea btw. I got burned all the time, including this year (assuming I did pick them in my bracket). BUT they were always a high seed and I was loyal to them since it was Danny Manning leading the Jayhawks to the championship that hooked me on College Basketball in the first place. Or maybe I was really into Big John Wallace pulling a Manning by leading the otherwise mediocre Orangemen to the Finals? Or maybe I just wanted to keep JB Riefsnyder's (sic?) immortal Spread Eagle in perpetuity since it soon became one of my two big signature playground basketball moves (with the other being "The Scoop"). Just checked and the date was 3/24/96. One day after Lawler/Al Jackson (Lawler calls his own match!) which also made the semi-permanent tape.

SPECIAL UPDATE WITH CRAIG DeGEORGE Baker: In an earlier post in this thread I mentioned a Greg's Video being one of the four video stores I frequented. Well, a few years ago my mom ran into Greg himself. He was working at an Ace Hardware. She only saw him the one time so I can only assume Greg of Greg's Video fame did not last long as an Ace Hardware employee. Here's hoping he opened up a new video store somewhere.

Another thing I finally figured out is why I didn't rent more wrestling tapes prior to 1995. Now I know it was because I didn't have a backer. See, we went to the video store as a family most weekends. Therefore we had to reach a consensus. Either we'd all agree on a movie to watch together or my parents would get their movie, my brother and I would get ours, or some other combination of 2 & 2. As I was the only wrestling fan in the family from roughly WM 7 to Summerslam 95 I did not have anybody backing me. I can see it now...."Come on! This one has Ludvig Borga. LUDVIG BORGA! Please." *sad, pouty, begging face* During the summer of 95 my brother had come around. Plus cousin and/or Rick were usually with us. Brother kind of had to come around given the neighborhood wrestling boom. He was always more of a trend hopper than I was (how else to explain his whole Pog phase?) so he wouldn't want to feel left out whereas I wouldn't have cared. For a long time I thought he only came back to wrestling to fit in but in later years I became convinced he was a true, blue, bona fide fan....just not as hardcore as myself and most of the others.

Told this story once on the old PW but don't think I ever brought it to this one. Uncensored 96 was the white elephant of tapes. We ordered it at my friend Chuck's place. It was an instant flop, unanimously loathed by all who saw it. Keep in mind this was before we had an Internet or Observer telling us how to think. Even then we knew this show sucked. Chuck actually taped the PPVs he ordered unlike my stupid Cousin or the dumb Three Brothers. Naturally the taper gets to keep the tape. Only Chuck didn't want it. But nobody else did either. So it became a thing to sneak the Uncensored 96 tape into other people's houses on your visits so they'd be stuck with it. This game of hot potato went on for a pretty long time. It was always a punch to the gut when that bad penny would turn up by your snacks or video games or among your books or what have you. 

Chuck was also a big reason why I taped AWF shows. He was our lone Shawn Michaels fan. He was also weirdly into AWF whereas the rest of us watched it more ironically, or just in a "yay! more wrestling!" kind of way. He couldn't push himself to stay up til 3 a.m. and was banned from spending the night at my house because he once puked on the floor after consuming Doritos & chocolate milk and sleeping upside down. Then he left in the middle of the night without telling anybody, his puddle of puke just sitting there on the floor. Straight up ghosted us in the middle of the night after leaving an unwelcome present behind. That was not a fun morning. Rarely I had I seen my dad so angry. Chuck was a strange one. My parents didn’t like him. Brother didn't care much for him either. Nobody really did other than me. But Chuck was my boy. He was basically my flunky...the Stevie to my Raven, the Patti to my Lana. He was like a mini-me doing what I did, liking the same things, spouting my catchphrases. The others saw him as an insufferable ass kisser while I LIKED him for that very reason. Anyway, I'd bring the previous night's AWF tape over to watch at his house on Sunday mornings. USA also aired a WWF show (Superstars? Live Wire? Action Zone?) and the immortal Exosquad may have still been on, making it a killer block of television if so. Good times.

Aug 5, 2023 1:43:20 GMT Baker said:

Aug 3, 2023 4:04:57 GMT Kilgore said:

Oh man, Baker , the star ratings in the TV guide pamphlet! Forgot about those, but that really was persuasive. A **** rating for a movie I never heard of, which was most made before, like, 1993, was almost guaranteed to make a Post-It Note.

You've also reminded me of taped sports. 

Yes! So glad somebody else remembers those TV Guide pamphlet star ratings. I took them way too seriously for a while. Some of their choices may have been odd? Anybody still putting over The World According To Garp nowadays? Do people still love Stalag 17 the way TV Guide and Thomas Magnum did? I genuinely don't know the answer to these questions. Watched both back in the day because FOUR STARS but all I remember about either some 30 years later is the tangentially related Magnum thing and Robin Williams being Garp.

You arbitrarily mentioning 1993 reminded me of my brother's big problem with most TV Guide endorsed **** movies- they skewed old and my brother couldn't do old movies. Well, he could go back to the Butch & Sundance/Sting/Cool Hand Luke era, but anything black & white....forget about it. I had no such qualms. Citizen Kane ftw.

I remember one Friday night I was hanging out with a friend that called himself The Mauler, just started calling himself that one day, and we all obliged. "I'm hanging out with The Mauler tonight, you want to come by?" Anyway, The World According To Garp was on a movie channel, neither of us had seen it, and we made it into verb.

"So are we Garping tonight?"
"Yeah, fuck it. Let's Garp. Let's get fucking Garped out of our minds."

And ... it was fine. Kind of the trial run of sad and serious Robin Williams performances (which I liked more than his comedic persona, actually). It's really that perfect sort of middlebrow movie that a TV Guide pamphlet would rate ****, but would immediately be forgotten by pop culture at large, aka 75% of Best Picture Oscar Nominated movies 1980-Present. 

A lot of kids had that aversion to B&W movies which is why I am more forgiving than most at Ted Turner's colorization period. He just wanted your brother watching some classics!

B&W never bothered me for two reasons:

1. Sony Watchman, was B&W, which my mom owned, and I would steal from her to watch Cheers reruns under the covers after bedtime. 

2. My dad had an old rotary dial television in his bedroom that was B&W. It was the only room with air conditioner, so sometimes I'd watch TV in his bedroom in the cold air and I just got used to B&W images. 

This all really prepped me to become a fan of old B&W movies (and also how every sitcom in the '90s inexplicably had a single hardboiled style episode for no reason).

Garping with The Mauler....classic.

Another TV Guide rating I remember is Scarface, a favorite of every suburban gangster I ever knew, and I knew many, only receiving a measly *

Most of my favorites were *** according to TV Guide.

I'm another member of the B&W Bedroom TV Club which is why B&W never bothered me. Had one for a few years in the 90s. Watched so much Superstars on that tv you might as well call it The Papa Shango TV. Also saw the famous Duke/Kentucky Christian Laettner Game on that tv. Plus basically everything else I watched during the early-mid 90s.

My mom had a tiny B&W in the kitchen. It was bigger than the one in your pic, but still real small- only a few inches. She'd watch Good Morning America while getting us ready for school, which basically meant popping a Pop Tart, or perhaps filling up a bowl of cereal.

My parents room had the best tv in the house during the early 90s. It was in the basement before that. I'd spend a lot of time in my parents room "doing my homework" after school. In reality I was making use of cool channels like DC 50 (wrestling every night at 6 pm!) that I couldn't get on any of the other television sets. Well, that and it was the only place where I could really get some peace and quiet. No VCR tho. Still, they must have thought I was the most studious boy in America with all the time I spent "doing my homework" in that room. Oh, I also practiced wrestling moves on pillows in there. Once in a blue moon I'd even get my brother in to be my guinea pig. Couldn't do any wrestling stuff in my/our room what with the bunk bed.

Aug 5, 2023 3:51:52 GMT Baker said:

Garping with The Mauler....classic.

Another TV Guide rating I remember is Scarface, a favorite of every suburban gangster I ever knew, and I knew many, only receiving a measly *

Most of my favorites were *** according to TV Guide.

I'm another member of the B&W Bedroom TV Club which is why B&W never bothered me. Had one for a few years in the 90s. Watched so much Superstars on that tv you might as well call it The Papa Shango TV. Also saw the famous Duke/Kentucky Christian Laettner Game on that tv. Plus basically everything else I watched during the early-mid 90s.

My mom had a tiny B&W in the kitchen. It was bigger than the one in your pic, but still real small- only a few inches. She'd watch Good Morning America while getting us ready for school, which basically meant popping a Pop Tart, or perhaps filling up a bowl of cereal.

My parents room had the best tv in the house during the early 90s. It was in the basement before that. I'd spend a lot of time in my parents room "doing my homework" after school. In reality I was making use of cool channels like DC 50 (wrestling every night at 6 pm!) that I couldn't get on any of the other television sets. Well, that and it was the only place where I could really get some peace and quiet. No VCR tho. Still, they must have thought I was the most studious boy in America with all the time I spent "doing my homework" in that room. Oh, I also practiced wrestling moves on pillows in there. Once in a blue moon I'd even get my brother in to be my guinea pig. Couldn't do any wrestling stuff in my/our room what with the bunk bed.

I was blown away by Scarface when I discovered it as a teen and couldn't understand that it was hated by critics. I never had any interest in being a gangster or selling drugs but fell in love with Pacino and his movies. Watching it now it's easy to understand why it was panned by critics. I think Pacino was coming off of Cruising? It's mind blowing that Pacino would star in such a bizarre movie he had fallen pretty hard from The Godfather. So much of the acting in Scarface is so hilariously cartoonish watching it now, a bunch of Italians trying to talk like Cubans it's pretty cringe. I've reached the point where it's like Shawshank I've seen it so many times that just don't look at it like an all time great film anymore it's more unintentional comedy that makes me love it so.  

I never minded B&W movies/pictures. Some hated the lack of color, but it just gave me the ability to imagine what it looked like with color. Plus, B&W always made a lot of venues look bigger than they were. Really, I don't think the iconic Y.A. Tittle photo would have hit as hard if it were in color.



Back to some wrestling tapes discussion, I always remember seeing a lot of the "Too Hit for TV" comps by wrestling tapes. Occasionally, I'd rent one of those, as my mom didn't care, since she knew I had already saw Faces of Death when her brother was watching it once (in school, they'd warn us about a disturbing movie we were about to watch, that we'd have to sign a permission slip for, as though half the class hadn't already saw Faces of Death.😂) On one of those comps, I saw my first matches from Puerto Rico. One of the matches was Kamala vs. Invader #1, a bloodbath to fit the gruesomeness. The other was the infamous Manny Fernandez vs Invader #3 match, with Invader #3 puking up "blood" after the knee drop.

I also got some episodes of GWF from IVP Videos years ago, and they luckily had to commercials on them as well. It was fun seeing a commercial for a Reds vs Pirates games, one for Jeno's Pizza Rolls (before they'd be rebranded to Totino's), and local commercials as well. The local stuff was advertising things in the Mackinac Island area of Michigan, which makes me want to maybe visit it one day. Seems like a nice, quiet, relaxing place.😁

Since Leper Messiah got us back on track I'll wrap this up with one last post about actual wrestling tapes next time I'm here. But first there is one more diversion I need to get out of my system. Kilgore Rates Movies is an idea with great potential so I want to him to comment on these TV Guide endorsed ****ers...

Hud
The Bank Dick (bonus question: great title or greatest title?)

For the record I never watched The Bank Dick and failed to make it through Hud. Maybe I suffered from a tiny bit of Brother Syndrome after all?

Aug 5, 2023 23:27:37 GMT Baker said:

Since Leper Messiah got us back on track I'll wrap this up with one last post about actual wrestling tapes next time I'm here. But first there is one more diversion I need to get out of my system. Kilgore Rates Movies is an idea with great potential so I want to him to comment on these TV Guide endorsed ****ers...

Hud
The Bank Dick (bonus question: great title or greatest title?)

Never saw The Bank Dick, not a WC Fields guy.

Hud is not quite a masterpiece, but great. Ritt/Newman teamed up again for Hombre, which isn't quite as good, but still rocks.

I want you all to take a little trip with me.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}

Aug 5, 2023 23:59:36 GMT Kilgore said:

I want you all to take a little trip with me.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}

Post of the fucking year. 1.75 rental, get one free. I remember older movies were $1 to rent at a lot of places and keep them for 5 days. How anyone thinks streaming is better than that is fucking brain dead stupid to me. Can't tell you how many times I go to look for an old movie and it's nowhere to be found, sometimes not even available to rent, if it is it's over $5 for 24 hour access for a 30 year old movie. How is this better again? Several times I pay the $5 and start the movie and don't even get to finish it before I lose access after the 24 hours is up, knowing they have the tech to be able to tell if you watched the full movie. Huge downgrade from video stores, sorry. 

Keep looking at this hoss. This gotta be one of the hardest pics ever taken. A cowboy video store. Dude has the Betamax prominently on display because it's higher quality than VHS and he's trying to make it work. You know he was selling it hard. "I'll tell you what, buddy. Rent Car Wash on Beta and I'll throw in a free Stetson. Now you can't beat that." This could be Neo Zeed in another life.

Aug 5, 2023 23:59:36 GMT Kilgore said:

I want you all to take a little trip with me.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}

My brother and/or friends acquired (could you rent it?) Faces of Death one weekend. I refused to watch it. "You guys are sick!"

One for Neo Zeed . We rented one or two UFC tapes. One was main evented by Severn & Shamrock circling each other for 20(?) minutes. The other (assuming it wasn't on the undercard of Severn/Shamrock) featured a big fat guy vs. a little skinny guy with the little skinny guy winning after bloodying the big fat guy's nose. Please tell me this happened irl and was not just some bizarre fever dream.
=================
We left off five years ago with the wrestling rental well running dry in 1997. But I still had a craving for more wrestling. So I was forced to look elsewhere. Ordered my first tapes in late 97-early 98 from local wrestling hotline guy Tim Rowe. They were Best of the NWA Volumes 2 & 3 and an August 1995 Jim Cornette shoot interview. The NWA tapes were good because 80s NWA. They might as well have been titled Best of Flair & the Midnight Express featuring the Horsemen. But it was the Cornette shoot I found most fascinating. The shoot interview is such a part of wrestling culture nowadays that it's hard to imagine before it. But to watch a wrestling figure break kayfabe for hours was mindblowing to me in 1997. I could not say the same for most of my colleagues who were bored out of their minds by Cornette talking. 

I got online a few months later in February 98. This was a gamechanger. Wasn't long before I was ordering tapes online. Pretty sure the first one I got was The Best of ECW. It was not great! Mostly 94 stuff with a smattering of 95 and way too much Public Enemy in general. But I stuck with it. Cool thing is there were always people giving recommendations or pimping their wares in the AOL chatroom. Before long I was getting an ECW white box tape or two with every paycheck and 80s NWA tapes with about every other paycheck. Weirdly, given my lifelong WWF fanaticism, I did not get many WWF tapes. This is because I had already seen most of the major WWF shows. One had to be selective. It's not like I was drowning in dimes with the minimum wage job I started in August 97. One WWF tape I did order during this period was KOTR 98 like a day after watching it live because I knew it was an instant classic destined to go down in history. A few months after getting online I also took my first foray into the world of Japanese wrestling with a comp tape literally called Intro To Puroresu and the 1994 Super J Cup. Duh. Every Japanese wrestling noob of that era started with either the 94 J Cup or the 1995 IWA King of Deathmatch tournament. 1996 ECW tapes in particular were my go to in 98-99. Then I started picking up a tape, shirt, or both when I went to ECW Arena shows in 99-00. Remember getting Born To Wired at one of these shows based on a chance conversation in the pre-show line. I had somehow never heard of the famous Sabu/Funk barbed wire match before that line conversation. That show was a win, but individual wrestler Best Ofs were a crapshoot. For example, Best of Taz Volume Whatever from RF Video was one of the worst tapes I ever got. 80% of it was Taz squashing Lance & Spike around the horn in the same 2 minute match. Later on I'd get Best ofs for Christopher Daniels & Steve Corino.

Getting back to the whole selectivity thing, comp tapes were where it was at. You got the most bang for your buck that way. And the cool thing is there were some people who were really into making these. They took pride in making the perfect comp. A lot of them were real keen on pimping their favorite wrestlers and matches so they'd give you cool recommendations. Sometimes they'd even throw in a little extra at the end if there was still a bit of room on the tape. Like Best of NWA Volume 3 had a bunch of Ric Flair "Real World Champion" segments from his 1991 WWF run. A Best of 90s WWF tape I got threw a Razor vs. JJ/Roadie IYH handicap match in at the end. Etc.

By 2000-01 I had moved on from ECW & NWA to the 80s Territories. A bloke named John McAdam was my go to territory tape guy. His webmaster was a young fella named Tony Khan. Memphis was my favorite of these territories, but I also checked out a good amount of Mid South/UWF and SMW. Oh, at some point before this I got a Best of Jerry Lawler tape from a guy named George Mayfield at the ECW Arena and was blown away by my boy The King. Then I got another Best of Lawler. Also got a Top 10 Matches of the 80s & a Top 10 Matches of the 90s tape from Mr. McAdam. Plus cult favorite The Legendary Battles of Survival Tobita around this time.

Also in late 2000-early 2001 I got the undisputed King of the Comp Tape- a 5(?) Volume Best WWF Matches of the 90s set and a smaller Best WCW Matches of the 90s set. Both were based on DVDVR polls. The WWF one had approximately 81 matches receive a vote and I got something like 73 of those on tape. Basically every worthwhile "**** match" of my favorite era. I was a bit more selective with WCW, but that was still probably a 3 volume set.

Also also around that same time I got a custom made Best of 2000 WWF two taper and a year later I had my same comp guy make me a Best of 2001 WWF set. 

One night/week I brought a bunch of these tapes to my noob wrestling fan friend's house to expose him to the best of the best. PW will be happy to know he took to your collective favorite wrestler, Bret Hart, right away. But PW will be upset to discover he didn't like ECW "because the ring was too bouncy and their annoying fans never shut up." And I was hit with a brick when he didn't like the NWA, brusquely dismissing it as "the era before pants." All in all he took to the old WWF stuff far more than the ECW or NWA stuff.

By 2002 I was all about those US Indies. A little ECWA & IWA-Mid South and a whole lot of ROH. I'd get a CZW or Indie comp here and there, but I was mainly an ROH collector over the next few years. Until late 2005 when I switched allegiances to OVW after getting a few months of their glorious tv. Then I mostly stopped bothering. Oh, btw I stuck with sweet, sweet VHS for as long as possible. Wasn't til 05 that I held my nose and started transitioning to yucky DVD.

Got a few WWE tapes/DVDs around that time as well- Rise and Fall of ECW, One Night Stand, the Horsemen one, the Flair one, the Bret one, and I think another Flair one? 

Then Youtube became a thing and I didn't see the need to spend money on wrestling tapes anymore.

EDIT: Two other tapes I picked up along the way were WCW Spring Stampede 99 at a Blockbuster downsizing sale and TNA Turning Point 2004. Both turned out to be great purchases while Turning Point is the only TNA show I had on video.

There is a little retro shop in the nearest city to me that I've posted about on PW a lot. They recently started selling vinyl records and VHS tapes. I scored Buried Alive tape it has been the ultimate score this year, it was a made for TV USA Network original movie from like 1990. It was on one of those blank Polaroid VHS tapes that we wore out back when I was little and I was never able to find it all these years until just a few months ago in that shop:



I had no idea it was ever even released commercially so imagine the feeling stumbling upon that tape. Definitely not something that was ever released on DVD or streaming. So awesome. They also had Faces Of Death tapes. While I have no desire to try to watch those the tapes themselves hold substantial nostalgia power, even if just for the box art.

Baker's one lone time to try to rent a UFC tape being UFC IX the worst one ever makes me sad. I'm sorry bubba.

Yes that fight happened at UFC IX the same tape as Shamrock vs Severn II aka "The Detroit Dance". It was Mark Hall vs Koji Kitao. I randomly ran into Mark Hall wearing his own 1996 Mark Hall shirt at the Toyota Center concession stand at the Bellator event I went to in 2016. He was standing in front of me in line for drinks and I marked out for the shirt, I tapped on the guys shoulder to give him props for it and low and behold it was the man himself. I could tell it meant a lot to him that I recognized him, I made such a big deal out it and I could tell it really made his night. Really nice guy and that was so awesome to me, always kinda liked him he was the giant killer watched the dude in those tapes when we were kids. Would have been like running into a lesser known pro wrestler that nobody remembered but you really dug back in the day.