I miss when I enjoyed wrestling

Let's talk about our wrestling histories. Like what got you into wrestling, what causes/d you to lose interest and did you come back and still watch to this day?

I didn't really get into wrestling during the Hogan or New Gen era. I knew of wrestling, but it was never anything I was super looking into. I was more into cartoons and video games. My uncle was a fan though and gave me his old ring and figures. Those rubber unposable ones. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you do that's a bond we share! Anyways I didn't really start to notice wrestling until 98. Peak Attitude Era it became the most visible to me. I begged Dad for Summerslam that year. He finally gave in for Survivor Series and I was so hooked. Like total mark. I was like in 7th grade gimme a break. It even affected my friendships. I had a 7th grade friend who HATED wrestling and thought it was gay. I got another friend in 8th grade and we were kind of a trio of best friends. This guy was as big of a fan as I was, only he had been watching it longer.

We were military so eventually we all moved apart. And wrestling became uncool. Many embarrassing moments happened during that 2001-03 period where I slowly learned that MOST have moved on and only geeks are still following. I kept that shit locked down from how people took it. Sometimes it'd slip and oh boy. I quietly followed it as a solo viewer until 07 where I was kinda getting bored and just going through the motions. I kept debating giving it up, but I think this was nearing peak PW for me, so wrestling had simply become a part of me.

2008 Bryan Danielson had a dark match with Cade. I knew about indy wrestling. I had seen a match or two, but I was never motivated to try it out. This was before Youtube and the network made following stuff so easy. But something clicked here and I started getting my hands on EVERYTHING. So much wasted cash on DVDs that are in a landfill now. I was obsessed and became one of those Youtube level comment douchebags in regards to superior wrestling. What a douche.

Around 2012 I was just kinda over it all. Indy wasn't doing it for me and I didn't really care about the E. A few years later NXT went from a better shot FCW developmental into this underground "movement" almost. NXT just felt so cool. Despite it just being all the indy guys I had been watching the past 5-6 years, it felt like I was watching something development from the ground up. These were all established workers behind the machine, but it still felt like a big deal.

This lasted a few years of merging my WWE fan with my annoying smark fan. Spoiled NXT fan. Guys started getting called up and I was bored of it again. I stuck around for the Takeover matches and checked out segments for workers I liked, when I could find out what the good shit was from people rating matches and show recaps. It was like anyone checking the paper in the morning. It was more habit than a real enjoyment.

I think by 2017 my fandom was on life support. I still checked in to see who the champs were and top guys. Thanks to still posting with you guys I was connected to the goods. If I didn't post here I'd probably think of wrestling a few times a year. Often forget it existed.

These days it's dead. I rarely go out of my way to watch even the most pimped matches. I know who the top champs are generally, but sometimes have to google (DDG Baker) who is the current ic champ?

I still enjoy the history of things. I think I've been the most active in HOW than I have in my entire PW career. Remembering all the stuff from the past. I don't really look for the future in wrestling. I'm content to relive it through history talk, podcasts and the occasional highlight reel. Future wise I see myself checking out a few matches a year, but the days of watching a full show are long behind me.

Why am I giving you my wrestling fan story? I have no idea. I'm just feeling in the mood to make threads.

Give your bio or just point and laugh. I dunno, suck it. Guess this is what happens when you leave the gummy sanctuary.

I feel like this thread needs to exercise the tag on posters we've had here forever but they never seem to post about wrestling.

Wrote out a lengthy storytime. Hit send. Got an error message. All is lost. fml. 

When that happens you can hit back on your browser to take you to the post. It should autofill itself. At least it does for me.

I started watching wrestling in the late 80's / early 90's. I remember watching saturday afternoon wrestling with my friends, just WWF. WCW was on WGN and we didn't get that channel. I clearly remember events like Undertaker attacking Undertaker and winning the belt at Survivor Series, Macho Man getting bit by Jake's snake, Randy/Elizabeths wedding. I was born in 81, so around grade 3 or 4 is when I started getting into wrestling with my friends. We would watch it on tv in my basement and then do wrestling matches pretending to be our favourites. Climbing bookshelves to do the Macho Man elbow drop, putting each other in the sharpshooter. I used to hate it when one of my friends always had to be Hogan and Hulk up and I wouldn't get to win. We would have sleepovers and rent the ppvs from our local video store. My favourite match for awhile was Bret Hart vs Razor from a Royal Rumble. I even kept watching through the terrible early mid 90's. I also was vaguely familiar with WCW because one friend had WGN and when sleepovers were at his house we would watch WCW saturday night. 

In junior high sometime me and my friends started going to ECCW (Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling) shows when they come to town. ECCW was based out of Vancouver, but would come through the Okanagan. They sold VHS tapes and then I discovered a whole new world. I bought some ECW tapes, found the King of the deathmatch tapes from 1995 and 1996, and started ordering tapes from ecw and got into that hard, but I was always a little bit behind in terms of keeping up. I think it was 1998 that I started seriously tape trading. I was ordering all ECW and WWE ppvs and recording them, and I also had a website set up for tape trading. I had amassed a collection of 500-600 ppvs or shows on VHS and DVD. And was always watching it. 

From 98-2002 I travelled a lot for wrestling shows, always catching the yearly WWE circuit through western canada (Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton), WCW came through and I was so pumped to see Lance Storm in his Team Canada prime in my then hometown. I drove from British Columbia to Chicago to see Novemeber to Remember live in Chicago in 2000. I really enjoyed the WCW product all the way to the end, so when ECW and WCW went out of business, I enjoyed the 2 or so years after in WWE because of all the constant influx of talent, but pretty quickly I think I lost a lot of interest. 

I was big in to TNA at the beginning of their ppv era, 2006-2009 was some really enjoyable times for that product, it felt new and fresh. I think at the time I really lost a lot of interest, and I think around 2010 I sort of stopped paying attention to wrestling altogether. I came back to wwe for awhile during the original brand split, whenever that was. But I don't think that lasted long. Through the lean years of WWE I started to get into NOAH and would order their dvds to watch Kenta and Marafuji, the dates elude me, this was also a period of much drugs and drinking so the memory isn't the best. 

....

I think it was around 2013 or so ECCW in Vancouver (now called Elite Canadian Championship Wrestling) had got big enough in vancouver that they would put on yearly, and later twice a year super shows that seated about 1000 people and this would become one of my many road trips, and that style of wrestling got me excited again. Kyle O'Reilly and El Phantasmo have gone through ECCW. 

Blah Blah blah; WWE boring. It took several years of me feeling utterly bored with the WWE product and watching shows like wrestlemania and just hating the product to finally sotp watching it or even caring what was happening, and then when AEW came around my joy of wrestling. I really enjoy the product, and look forward to the two hours every week, and thats just about the right amount of time for me to spend wtahcing wrestling a week now. I don't understand the whole dweebs comments from people here, I really enjoy it, a lot. 

Also, I've spent 22 years off and on commenting on some obscure wrestling message board on the internet. 

I already covered my wrestling origin story in the "Ask Baker" thread so I won't repeat myself. From 87-95 I'd classify myself as a diehard casual. Meaning I'd watch all the wrestling I could, often jumping through hoops to do so, but I knew nothing about the inner workings of the business, and had some rather odd theories about how things actually worked. Didn't have cable so Superstars/Challenge were my main shows. Worldwide for WCW. I saw every WWF PPV from WM 3 through WM 7 courtesy of my cool middle aged mailman neighbor. Then the PPV well ran dry for a few years with the exception of Summerslam 93 & Survivor Series 93. The popularity of wrestling ebbed and flowed among my peers. It was far more uncool than cool. But I did have a knack for finding fellow wrestling fans. They were my people. I owned 2 or 3 wrestling tapes, 1 or 2 wrestling books, and my beloved WWF LJN rubber figures @ness . I was gimmick loving sports entertainment enthusiast who rooted primarily for the heels and didn't give a hoot about good matches or cool moves.

I always wax nostalgic about 95-96. That's when my fandom levelled up and I went from diehard casual to an obsessed superfan. It all started when I made a bunch of new friends over the summer of '95. Before long I was part of an inseparable clique of 8 wrestling fanatics. Started watching pay per views again beginning at Summerslam '95. Would regularly watch WWF PPVs over the next 8 years. Started watching Raw regularly for the first time. Went to Survivor Series '95. Got into the Apter Mags. Learned the wrestling world was far more vast than I had ever realized. We did house wrestling which was our soft PG version of the more popular backyard wrestling. The LJN figure leagues became huge. My dad used to rib me about going through a second childhood. Between the wrestling obsession and cartoon revival (ExoSquad!) he was not wrong. We rented wrestling tapes every weekend for about 2 years where I caught up on all the pay per views I had missed and revisited the few I had seen in my childhood. We basically spent hours most days either watching, discussing, or participating in our collective favorite hobby. I started to appreciate the figure skating wrestling aspect of the pseudo sport infinitely more than I had before. We were rabidly Team WWF during the MNW with me being the ringleader of the group. In September 96 I discovered a wrestling radio show that I'd listen to most Saturday nights for about a year. I couldn't get enough wrestling content in those days. My all time favorite match was Flair/Funk at Great American Bash '89 with that being my favorite show to rent and also my favorite feud.

1997 was largely more of the same. Finally saw the mythical ECW in the form of the mind blowing Barely Legal PPV. I gulped down that Bret Hart kool aid with all the enthusiasm of a Jonestown cultist and got my first proper part time job that August. The Montreal Screwjob was a gut punch. Worst moment in wrestling history up to that point. Had not one but two new favorite matches- First the Owen/Bulldog Euro Title final. Then the Canadian Stampede 10 Man Tag. And the Michaels/Taker HIAC wasn't far behind those two. Bret/Austin also surpassed Flair/Funk as the GOAT feud in my eyes.

1998 saw more firsts. My family got online via AOL for the first time in February. I spent practically all of my internet time in the AOL wrestling section and started putting my paychecks to good use by purchasing wrestling tapes. Lots of 80s NWA & ECW. I got my license around July and went to my first indie show that October. During the next year I would frequently attend local MCW shows. Sometimes alone, but usually with my cousin. Also went to a few WWF shows. The AE is far from my favorite era of wrestling nowadays, but it was a lot of fun in real time because you finally got to see multiple star vs. star matches every week and because wrestling had finally become cool with the masses again. I worked with probably 50 high school/college kids at any given time and at least half of them were wrestling fans. Raw (and stupid Nitro) were the talk of school/work every Tuesday. Wrestling shirts exploded at school. Wrestling was suddenly the in thing and since I was "the wrestling guy"....

Highlight of 1999 was attending ECW Arena shows. I went to 6 that year beginning in March. Sometimes alone, but usually with my cousin. Unfortunately, I was drifting apart from the rest of my wrestling fan clique by this point. Started following the indies pretty closely in late 98. Our internet access was sporadic in those days. My parents would occasionally let it lapse until a better deal came along. But I finally drifted away from the AOL wrestling community when I did have internet access. My new go to destinations were the Strictly ECW and APW message boards. I would make daily trips to either the college computer room or one of three local libraries when I was without internet access at home. 1wrestling.com was my go to newz site. I was anti-Meltzer and don't think I knew the PW Torch existed yet.

By 2000 I was starting to drift away from my cousin as well. But it was alright. Because I had new work friends now. And wouldn't you know it? A bunch of them were wrestling fans too! So I started watching pay per views with them beginning with this girl's big Wrestlemania party. I had already tired of my local indie MCW and soon turned on ECW while also beginning to get bored of following the indies largely from afar. So I took a deep dive into the 80s territories to get my alternative wrestling fix. Also got into the glorious cheese of WOW. WWF was firing on all cylinders as they blended the sports entertainment of 98-99 with the most consistently good figure skating in ring wrestling the company had ever produced

2001 was more of the same with the only big changes being a new job, a few new additions to my second big wrestling fan clique, and getting hooked on the indies again when I went to an ECWA show featuring a mind blowing Low Ki vs. Christopher Daniels that November.

The next year I would get into ROH in a big way. Bought a lot of ROH taps and went to a bunch of Philly shows in their early years. Always alone. My friends were WWF loving casuals who would attend WWF shows but had little time for alternative wrestling.....until we started ordering TNA shows in 2003. But that was usually just me and this one other guy. We probably ordered about 2/3 of their weekly pay per views that year. Still watched WWF weekly programming. I had a job working nights at a restaurant. We'd watch Raw at work as best we could on Monday nights while I taped Smackdown every week and usually watched it over the weekend. Also ordered most WWE pay per views with my not so new anymore wrestling fan clique. We were all really into Smackdown during the SD 6 Era. We also played the Smackdown video games on just about a daily basis. No Mercy 2003 in Baltimore was the last big stand for this wrestling fan clique. We remained friends for about 3 more years, but the rest of them moved on from wrestling around late 2003.

2004-2005 I had zero real life wrestling fans friends for the first time since 92-93. Ordered my first ever Pay Per Views at home alone in WM 20 and Backlash. Went to a bunch of ROH/Indie shows. Also got into OVW in a big way once Heyman became booker and still followed TNA, though not as closely as I had during the 2003 weekly PPV era. Still watched WWE fairly regularly as well because duh. It's WWE. 

2006-2009 were years of declining interest. I no longer had much time for, or interest in, alternative wrestling. I missed a few more WWE shows with each passing year. Stopped going to live shows after attending about 60 between 98-06. Watched the occasional WWE pay per view at the local sports bar or a day late on Youtube. Did actually start posting on message boards again which I had rarely done after the Strictly ECW/APW days of 99-00. I more or less checked out after WM 25. No longer watched live shows. Would occasionally check out matches of wrestlers I liked on Youtube. But that didn't last too long.

I thought I had finally moved on from my childhood hobby. From about mid 09 through November 2012 I only came back for a month and a half during the RTWM in 2011. Beyond that I didn't watch, or even think about wrestling. I was done....

Until November 2012. Something made me think about ECW one day. I googled ECW and discovered Shinobi's homage to the promotion on the old PW. Joined for the sole purpose of putting him over but stuck around for some reason to become PW's resident wrestling nostalgist. Since then I've come to PW nearly every day, watched a few old matches most weeks, and largely failed to get into any modern wrestling save 2019-20 NWA. 

So this is something I've been wondering about Baker , was there a MNW split in your wrestling clique? You were obviously Team WWF and your boycott of WCW following the events of Clash of the Champions XXXIII are infamous but did that stop others from your group ordering PPVs? Was there a PG Clockwork Orange style beatdown that made them see the light?

@ness what happened in 2001-03? Also when you got into indie wrestling in 2008 what were some of the angles that you were really into.

nazzer I didn't know you were into ECCW as it was going on. That's good stuff, can you remember any highlights from way back when? I'm not sure if you caught it, but Bake ran a mock 1996 Draft where he tried to fit in a few deep cuts and it sparked some discussion about 90s indie wrestling.

Jan 26, 2021 6:19:55 GMT Big Pete said:

So this is something I've been wondering about Baker , was there a MNW split in your wrestling clique? You were obviously Team WWF and your boycott of WCW following the events of Clash of the Champions XXXIII are infamous but did that stop others from your group ordering PPVs? Was there a PG Clockwork Orange style beatdown that made them see the light?

Great question! There was surprisingly little drama. Before I answer we must set the stage with a Storytime!

For the most part my mid-late 90s wrestling fan clique was just like me in that they had grown up as WWF firsters but weren't allergic to non-WWF wrestling the way some people were. Most of us were watching and enjoying 95-96 WCW.....while feeling increasingly guilty about it. Here are their pre 95-96 WCW histories.

The Three Brothers were big fans of early 90s WCW. They were forever going on about the Steiners, "Thushin" Liger, "Al Gontay" (El Gigante), and that time Sid almost killed Brian Pillman in a War Games match. Fwiw War Games 91 was their collective favorite match followed by a Rockers/Brainbusters SNME encounter. 

My best friend Rick only owned one wrestling tape- WCW's January 92 Clash of the Champions. That was my introduction to the awesome Dangerous Alliance.

Cousin went to SuperBrawl 95 in Baltimore as a birthday present. He asked me to go with him. I declined like a jerk since I thought WCW sucked due to being wrestling's retirement home at the time.

Brother was a WCW hater until his dying day. It amused me in later years that he still clung to such antiquated 90s views regarding the long vanquished Evil Empire. He liked NWA, AWA, ECW, SMW, and even Global, but never could stomach WCW.

I don't think Original Baker ever watched much WCW. OG Baker was the most casual of casuals, and only a periphery member of the clique when it came to wrestling anyway. He was more into baseball/courtball, ExoSquad, and apparently being a heartthrob given his luck with the ladies. His big contribution wrestling wise was hosting a lot of afterschool house wrestling in 95-96. Let him do the Smoking Gunns Sidewinder and he was happy as a clam. He also owned only one wrestling tape- a weird old WWF tape with Murdoch & Adonis teaming and Mr. Fuji wrestling(!). Watched it at his house once. In the middle of a match the wrestling cuts out. It's replaced by a dick and some boobs. Somebody had taped over it with porn   I was scarred. Original Baker, red faced. Quarrels tend to arise when you're around the same people day after day for years. Not so with Original Baker. He's one of only two long term friends I ever had that I never had any big arguments with.

Chuck was my mini me. It infuriated the rest of my clique. I found it amusing. Put it this way. If I got into yodeling, Chuck would have instantly went out to buy some Franzl Lang albums and become a fellow yodeling enthusiast. So there's no way Chuck would be watching WCW if I wasn't. And he'd tattle on anybody he caught doing so. The only time I can remember him deviating from my opinions ON ANYTHING was sticking to his guns when it came to being a Shawn Michaels fan. Good for him.
================
Anyway, the rest of my clique largely went along with my anti-WCW stance....at least publicly. They wouldn't dare watch if I was around*. The lectures would be painful enough for the poor lads. "Do you have any idea what you're doing? YOU'RE KILLING WWF!!! Do YOU want to be responsible for that??" There would probably be Flair Chops as well. Though I do imagine they sneaked an occasional peek at the competition when I wasn't around. But I do think they were fellow true believers who mostly bought into the propaganda.

The funny thing is it was all for naught anyway. It wouldn't have mattered even if we did watch Nitro. I didn't understand the way tv ratings were measured in those days. I thought all television sets contributed to the Nielsen Ratings by....magic? It's not like that at all in reality. I've only known one person to ever be a part of the Nielsen Ratings system. Ironically enough it was my wrestling fan Cousin sometime in the early 2010s. 

*I watched Raw at the Three Brothers house most weeks. There was one time early on in my WCW boycott when the Razor Ramon loving middle brother turned on Nitro and refused to budge. I threatened to leave. It was a lot like this...



Luckily for me, the middle brother had a knack for getting under people's skin. He had probably been annoying his brothers the entire day. So the other two took my side and I won this war of wills. There were no big problems after that. You have to understand the others (minus Original Baker who sort of drifted away and Brother who went off wrestling again in '97) were just as into WWF as I was. New habits quickly took root once we got passed those admittedly tough first few weeks. WCW soon fell off our radar. We were WWF People. They didn't want to miss a single second of Raw any more than I did.

As for PPVs, I usually contributed more $$$ than the others. This was actually fair imo since I always watched PPVs and Raw at their houses. I always felt like a bit of a mooch tbh. Though, in hindsight, my house also got plenty of use through wrestling figure leagues, tape rental sleepover weekends, the Superstars-Worldwide block in 95-96, already dated (but still fun!) video gaming, and the biggest draw of all in our ever popular swimming pool. But I still didn't mind paying a little extra for pay per view if the others were short....which they usually were. Point is they probably wouldn't have been able to afford a pay per view without me even if they wanted to. They were a bunch of financial illiterates lol. Now Cousin did have one of those illegal cable boxes which enabled him to watch PPV for free. He also lived like 10 miles away so it's not like I could pay him a surprise visit in those days. He never publicly admitted to watching WCW pay per views and I genuinely don't think he did. As I mentioned earlier, the others largely bought into the "Watching WCW will kill WWF!" propaganda as much as I did. But you never know. 

We were also burned the 3 times we did pay for WCW PPVs- Fall Brawl 95 was meh at best. World War III was even worse since the big WW3 match we were all hyped for turned out to be an impossible to follow mess. And Uncensored 96 was the WOAT. So the others were just as skeptical as I was when it came to ordering more WCW PPVs. We had been burned 3 times and felt jinxed. Plus Chuck's dad's weird work friend who was obsessed with finding out which wrestlers were gay ("Goldust is actually straight, but Lex Luger is a flaming fa**ot!!!") loaned us Great American Bash, BatB, and Hog Wild 96 a day or two after they happened. Maybe he continued feeding the Chuck Family WCW pay per views and the rest of them just never told me about it? But I doubt that given Chuck's status as my loyal lackey. 

Rick did....something (I never did find out what) which caused his mom to send him to reform school in early 1998. He must have only been gone a few months but it felt like years. Things were never quite the same as they had been once he finally did return. But we were still friends. And one Monday in 1999 he called me to come watch Raw at his house. This was rare. Don't think it had ever happened before. But I went to Rick's rather than my making my usual one block Monday night walk to the Three Brothers house. When I walk in Rick is just sitting there watching Nitro BOLD AS BRASS! Even I thought the WCW boycott was kind of silly by this point. So I didn't say anything. But you better I believe I was gritting my teeth, Stannis-style. It was the night the Hardys beat the Acolytes for the tag titles over on Raw. Only thing I remember from the commercial break flipovers to Nitro is the Jersey Triad against (I think) Benoit & Saturn. It was actually a pretty cool match or segment or whatever it was.

The other episode of Nitro I watched during the "boycott" was a late night replay of a Spring 2000 episode when I spent the night at my dad's (another rarity) for reasons I forget. Show was a Russoriffic mess. But Flair beat Jarrett for the WCW Championship. So it wasn't a total loss. Come to think of it, that's probably why I watched this episode in the first place. Chances are I saw the result online and what else was I going to do after midnight at my dad's house?

Big Pete , 20 years ago my only memories of ECCW was what I saw at the 2 or 3 shows I went to a year. The product back then was not very good compared to now. I mean, they had Luther on their roster... They ran a wrestling school in Surrey, and a lot of their roster came through that school, sometimes you saw guys that were good, and sometimes just terrible. I saw Kyle O'Reilly wrestle in his first year in a small show in Vernon, and then I saw him wrestler in Vancouver years later at one of ECCW's biggest shows in what I think is his last indie matches (post ROH and Japan and pre NXT).
Back in the day

SIde note; I am now lost in ECCW's youtube page, check out El Phantasmo vs Kyle O'Reilly from Ballroom Brawl 7 in Vancouver (2017). El P defends the ECCW title vs Mystery Opponent. This was their big show of the year, I was there, shit was lit. El Phantasmo for years was just so great in ECCW and other promotions in western Canada, such a treat to watch but such a shame because you knew we got him so much because he had visa issues and wasn't able to travel. And to see him now be in New Japan and the world raving about him, just awesome. And Kyle, watching the Kid grow up in front of your eyes is just fantastic. 



I don't remember who the owner of ECCW was back in the day, but Michelle Starr prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Michelle_Starr was heavily involved, and at that time it was so very carny / campy. I mean when you went to the shows, you left sort of feeling you knew why the rest of the world thought low of wrestling. One time when we were young we took our sign and marker and mid match made up signs for the opening match heel (you know who the heel is cuz they come out first haha) and we cheered hard for him; later in the traditional show closing battle royal he was now introduced as "Fan Favourite" Randy Taylor - six idiot teenagers changing the gimmick of the wrestler mid show, classic ECCW, for the next 5 years "Fan Favourite" was his gimmick. The entire promotion was carny trash...

BUT - the company kept going even through lean times, and was one of the few promotions running in the area for the longest time. Even when you would go to a show and most of the show was guys that were just not good, you would usually get at least one match with guys that you could tell werre just awesome and tear the house down. Seeing guys come through is awesome. And then ECCW would randomly do things that were randomly surprisingly ahead of their times. They had the NWA Supergirls championship (now the ECCW Womens Championship) started in 2010, first champion was some girl named Rebecca Knox; Nattie Nedihart, Ivory, Nicole Mathews, Tenille Dashwood, Cat Power and now Christina von Eerie have been champs. Seeing Rebecca Knox wrestle back then, she was one of the ones you just knew would be big. 

 the northwest legend Scotty Mac bought the promotion a few years ago (2012), and the promotion has transformed since. It feels like it has sort of become ROH light if you will. Maybe it's only possible because there seems to be more smaller promotions as well now in the area. They now do twice a year major shows in Vancouver, (Ballroom Brawl) and their smaller shows now get full houses (albeit full for small hall;s). The feel of the company is so much different. It now feels like modern professional wrestling. There are still veteran wrestlers, but now the vibe of the company feels almost cutting edge, with hungry young kids trying to make a name for themselves, rather than just the carny shit where broken down old men are wrestling. 

Scotty Mac also comes to Kelowna sometimes for the local crew that do twice a years shows in Kelowna/Vernon at the local Centennial Hall for charity. They pull a full house standing room only crowd (big 600 people). It started out years ago being just ECCW jobbers, and they would bring in one big name every year (Tommy Dreamer, Mick Foley, Jeff Jarrett, Val Venis have been recent ones). Now they fill most of the show with guys from the local Fed, Thrash Wrestling, which is the best bowling alley fed you will ever see. 


The Bollywood Boyz came out of ECCW, El Phantasmo did too, O'Reilly spent a good chunk of time in ECCW. I think NXT's Aaliyah was briefly in ECCW, I swear I saw her in Penticton once, and Chelsea Green was in ECCW for a bit too, can't remember her name. The Voros Twins are current tag champs, and they're gonna make it big one day.

This post took me two ballroom brawl main events (El P vs O'Reilly and El P vs Brian Cage) and one Voros Twins match to write, I probably lost the plot some time ago. 

Thanks for coming to my ted talk, watch ECCW on youtube. 

lol I remember Michelle Starr. He worked the occasional APW show.

nazzer Ever see Tony Kozina live? He was the big Pacific Northwest indie darling back in the day. What about Chance Beckett? He was all set to break out in a big way after the 2003 ECWA Super 8. Booked for ROH and everything. Then he may have had Visa issues and definitely had injury issues that derailed his career. Concussion, I think it was. Was Billy Two Eagles still around and kicking? "Diamond" Timothy Flowers? Moondog Moretti?

Baker,Tony Kozina was a work horse. He reminded me of Benoit in that he was very technically proficient but a charisma vacuum, he was never gonna make it.
Beckett was a weird one, he seemed great and all, like he did cool stuff, very athletic and was obviously working hard; but I swear to god he gave off this vibe like he just snorted a line of coke in the back before he came out. He seemed off in person. Just googled him, his wrestling twitter account went silent in 2013
I've seen Billy Two Eagles, maybe Moretti - these definitely fall into the category of old veteran that I would rather not see.

I can definitely say all the major indies in 2008 were on an emo stable fix. I started first with ROH and that was prime Age of the Fall and even slightly botched faction warfare. I became an instant fan of Steen and liked what I saw from AOF. Chikara at the same time was doing a similar emo stable with Vin Gerard, who got so over with it that he even was booked for PWG for reasons? Even CZW had something going with Sami Callihan and the Switchblade Conspiracy.

Around this time I also got big into women's wrestling. Shimmer was heavily promoted with ROH, even if they barely acknowledged them beyond a match every few DVDs.

I do think WWECW also helped a bit, which was like the precursor to NXT.

I truly bought into the REAL WRESTLING NOT SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT angle.