Was listening to a Mikey Whipwreck interview last week where he talked about being at the first Raw taping. He went to other early Raw tapings as well. And that got me to thinking about other wrestlers who were at famous (and not so famous) shows. Now I am making a list. Going to exclude wrestling family members for the sake of brevity...

-Foley, Dreamer, and Bubba were at MSG when Snuka leaped off the Cage onto Muraco
-There was a picture going around a couple years ago of Colt Cabana at Nobi's favorite show ECW Anarchy Rulz '99
-Glacier was a regular at WCW Saturday Night tapings in the early 90s
-Cornette was a regular at the weekly Louisville shows promoted by the Memphis territory
-Bruce Prichard was a regular at Paul Boesch's Houston shows
-Edge was at Wrestlemania VI and Lance Storm attended Wrestlemania IV
-Stevie Richards decided to become a pro wrestler when he saw the Midnight Express beat Arn & Tully for the NWA tag titles live in 1988 Philadelphia 
-D'Lo & Reckless Youth saw Ron Simmons win the WCW Championship from Vader in Baltimore
-Great Khali was discovered in the crowd when he attended an APW show 
-A young Steve Austin regularly saw World Class live at the Sportatorium

*That's enough for now.

More. Got most of these from TheHistoryOfWWE site.

-Dreamer returns as he and Little Guido were at the first Wrestlemania
-RVD was at Wrestlemania III!
-Lance Storm was at Wrestlemanias V & VI in addition to IV while fellow superfan Kanyon attended 'Manias V, VI & VII
-Steve Corino attended Summerslam 1990 in Philadelphia
-Spike Dudley was at Royal Rumble 92
-Nigel McGuinness attended Summerslam 92 in London
-Francine was at the 7/19/93 Raw taping in NYC headlined by HBK/Marty
-Colt Cabana returns. He and ring announcer Justin Roberts went to Wrestlemania 13 in Chicago
-Chris Sabin went to the 6/23/97 Raw taping in Detroit
-Kofi Kingston was at Wrestlemania XIV in Boston
-John Cena went to the 11/29/99 Raw taping in Los Angeles
-Steve Corino was also at the 1988 Philly show where the Midnight Express beat Arn & Tully for the NWA Tag Titles
-Former NWA Powerrr mastermind Dave Lagana was at Halloween Havocs 89 & 92 in Philly
-Blue Meanie also attended Halloween Havoc 92
-Matt Hardy was at WCW Superbrawl III in 1993 North Carolina
-Stacy Keibler was at a Baltimore Nitro in 1997. Probably the 12/29 show.
-Jim Cornette's wife Stacey was at Wrestlemania IX and the 4/8/95 ECW Arena show
-Tony Khan saw ECW at The Arena at least once. I think it was Cyberslam 2/17/96.
-Matt Striker and his smoking hot girlfriend watched the 2003 CHIKARA Grand World Grand Prix from the crowd. Source: Me.

I like that RVD was there, makes it fitting him and Lynn was the modern day (at the time) Savage Steamboat. I'm sure a few hold the moniker but that's one I think of. Did Unbreakable influence the 2000s? Has there been a modern match to hit that mark as a generational influence. Guess you won't know until the 2030s?

No wrestlers at WrestleMania X. Maybe that was supposed to be me. Should have went to Funk University after high school, man.

Oct 23, 2024 2:23:04 GMT Kilgore said:

Should have went to Funk University after high school, man.

You and me both, brother. 

Oct 23, 2024 2:22:41 GMT @ness said:

I like that RVD was there, makes it fitting him and Lynn was the modern day (at the time) Savage Steamboat. I'm sure a few hold the moniker but that's one I think of. Did Unbreakable influence the 2000s? Has there been a modern match to hit that mark as a generational influence. Guess you won't know until the 2030s?

I don't know if it was WrestleMania 3 (it might have been!), but it was a Detroit event of that era that Kevin Nash attended, sitting by the wrestler's entrance to the ring, and when Hogan came out, Kevin Nash now standing with everyone else, saw that he was a full head taller than Hogan, actually looking down at the top of his balding head, and the big man thought to himself, “I can make money doing this.” Which I find oddly endearing. 

Oct 23, 2024 2:22:41 GMT @ness said:

1. Did Unbreakable influence the 2000s?
2. Has there been a modern match to hit that mark as a generational influence. 

1. I think it's likely. It pains me that I even know who he is, but didn't Will Ospreay call that match an influence on him? I don't even know how I know this!
2. lol you know you're old when your first thought is "the HBK/Razor Ladder Match!" 2nd thought? The TLC matches. Not much more modern!

Remember reading somewhere that Seth Rollins was influenced by the RVD/Lynn matches so there ya go.

Oct 23, 2024 2:18:23 GMT Baker said:

More. Got most of these from TheHistoryOfWWE site.

-Dreamer returns as he and Little Guido were at the first Wrestlemania
-RVD was at Wrestlemania III!
-Lance Storm was at Wrestlemanias V & VI in addition to IV while fellow superfan Kanyon attended 'Manias V, VI & VII
-Steve Corino attended Summerslam 1990 in Philadelphia
-Spike Dudley was at Royal Rumble 92
-Nigel McGuinness attended Summerslam 92 in London
-Francine was at the 7/19/93 Raw taping in NYC headlined by HBK/Marty
-Colt Cabana returns. He and ring announcer Justin Roberts went to Wrestlemania 13 in Chicago
-Chris Sabin went to the 6/23/97 Raw taping in Detroit
-Kofi Kingston was at Wrestlemania XIV in Boston
-John Cena went to the 11/29/99 Raw taping in Los Angeles
-Steve Corino was also at the 1988 Philly show where the Midnight Express beat Arn & Tully for the NWA Tag Titles
-Former NWA Powerrr mastermind Dave Lagana was at Halloween Havocs 89 & 92 in Philly
-Blue Meanie also attended Halloween Havoc 92
-Matt Hardy was at WCW Superbrawl III in 1993 North Carolina
-Stacy Keibler was at a Baltimore Nitro in 1997. Probably the 12/29 show.
-Jim Cornette's wife Stacey was at Wrestlemania IX and the 4/8/95 ECW Arena show
-Tony Khan saw ECW at The Arena at least once. I think it was Cyberslam 2/17/96.
-Matt Striker and his smoking hot girlfriend watched the 2003 CHIKARA Grand World Grand Prix from the crowd. Source: Me.

Paul E conning Vince Sr. to get a press pass to go to all those MSG shows in the 70's and 80's. He was also at Wrestlemania I.

Arn Anderson at GCW tapings as a high schooler when he still looked 45.

Undertaker also went to the Sportatorium iirc to watch the Von Erichs.

Sting at a WWF LA Sports Arena house show in the summer of 1985 which inspired him to get in the business.

Remembered I had Chris Jericho's first book in ebook format, so I hit the old search function with a "Winnipeg" knowing he definitely saw events there as a child. Was charmed to be reminded Winnipeg was an AWA town when Jericho first started attending shows. His "first" event seems to be an amalgamation of many, but it is still a fun read.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}

Eventually, my dad took me to the matches at the Winnipeg Arena. The old barn was big and dark and I was so excited when we got to our seats. All of my eight-year-old dreams and thoughts of what seeing wrestling would be like in person were about to be realized! Only the lights above the ring were illuminated, creating a mystical atmosphere, accentuated by the thick clouds of cigarette smoke that hung in the air underneath the lights. The place was packed. I had never before experienced such a range of emotions from a group of people watching the same event. There was cheering, booing, taunting, happiness, anger, elation, and disappointment.

All of the wrestlers seemed larger than life and I had a list of favorites. The High Flyers: a good-guy tag team made up of Jumpin’ Jimmy Brunzell and Greg Gagne, who was AWA promoter Verne Gagne’s son. I watched their match with intense concentration, cheering them on, begging for Greg to make the tag to Jimmy after being beaten on for what seemed like an hour and absolutely exploding off my seat when he finally did. King Tonga, a 300-pound Islander, who had a huge scar on his arm that was apparently caused by a shark attack on his native island...a shark that the King was forced to kill with his bare hands! Jerry Blackwell was a short, disgustingly obese guy the crowd tortured by chanting “Fatwell” during his match. After he threatened to “slap the shit out” of me when I yelled at him timidly as he passed by me on his way to the ring, I joined in the chant with extra vim and vigor (what the hell does vim mean anyway?). Then there was Baron Von Raschke, a bald, strange-looking dude who resembled one of the mutants from The Hills Have Eyes and spoke in a thick, hard-to-place Eastern European accent. But he was a Winnipeg favorite and I went nuts for him as he paraded around in his black tights and red cape, threatening to administer his devastating finishing move, the Claw, to his hapless opponent.

There was also Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin, who was accompanied to the ring by his valet, Precious, an attractive blonde in a tight spandex shirt and hot pants. I was shocked when the crowd began to chant “Show Your Tits!” I was double-shocked when the crowd began to chant “Asshole!” at Garvin when he covered Precious with his jacket. I sat there thinking, “You can’t say tits and you sure as heck can’t say asshole! When my dad hears that, he is not going to be happy.” But he just laughed it off. That’s when I figured out that the normal rules of conduct for a hockey or football game didn’t apply at the wrestling matches. I liked this rowdy crowd.

At the intermission, the company would sell tickets for the next month’s card and my dad and I always bought them. The ring announcer, Mean Gene Okerlund, would say “Get your tickets now...doncha dare miss it!” and we didn’t. Wrestling became me and my dad’s thing. No matter what was going on, we always knew that once a month, we’d be able to spend time together at the matches.

Chris Jericho also attended WrestleMania 2 ... at a closed circuit event in Winnipeg, which he described as:

Meanwhile, wrestling was becoming a bigger part of my life. I missed the original WrestleMania, the WWF’s version of the Super Bowl, but when it was time for WrestleMania 2 I took the bus down to the Winnipeg Arena and watched the show on closed circuit television, the archaic version of PPV. You paid for a ticket, which gave you the privilege of going to the Arena to watch the damn thing on a giant out-of-focus movie screen.

Skimming the early chapters, I found the following random passages interesting:

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}

Then one month when I went to the AWA show, I was surprised when the ring announcer welcomed us to the debut of a new wrestling league at the Winnipeg Arena. With no warning, the AWA had been replaced by the World Wrestling Federation. Vince McMahon, the head honcho of this new company, had muscled his way into taking over the Winnipeg wrestling scene, replacing Gagne’s show with his own. It didn’t take long to realize that the WWF show was all that the AWA was and a whole lot more. These guys had glitzier names—like Jake the Snake, Macho Man Savage, and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat—and they were huge, massively built muscleheads who were the complete opposites of the skinny or beer-bellied athletes the AWA was offering. But the real kicker came when the WWF’s new champion walked through the curtain on his way to the ring: Hulk Hogan was back! If the Hulkster was down with the new boss, then so was I. I instantly turned traitor on the AWA and embraced my new favorite wrestling league.

---

I was a model WWF fan, the perfect sheep that could be manipulated into liking or hating whoever the TV show told me to. I was a huge fan of all the good guys and I hated all the bad guys. Before each match, I made my way down through the crowd to boo them as they came to the ring. I antagonized the Honky Tonk Man so much once, that he said to me in his thick Southern accent, “Shut up, kid, or I’ll slap your face!” This time I was no timid amateur like I was when Fatwell threatened me. This time I challenged Honky Tonk to a fight.

---

In 1986, Winnipeg started getting broadcasts of Stampede Wrestling out of Calgary. This new company looked cheap and was broadcast out of a livestock field house but the wrestling was off the charts. It was fast, hard-hitting, action-packed, and completely ahead of its time. It was a melting pot of styles, exciting to watch, and I realized that the WWF wasn’t the only game in town.

There were a couple of other wrestling shows on the tube as well, and I watched them all. We had the local WFWA based out of Winnipeg, the UWF based out of Oklahoma, and the IWA based out of Montreal. The IWA featured all these guys with thick French accents who could hardly speak English and the show was even cheaper-looking than Stampede. But they had some great characters. There was a guy called Floyd Creachman who managed the Man of 1,000 Holds, Leo Burke. Creachman was doing an interview and said that Burke was the Man of 1,002 Holds, to which the interviewer butted in, “But I thought he was the Man of 1,000 Holds?” Creachman deadpanned, “He learned two more.” That to me was the greatest line ever—a line so good I ripped it off a decade later.

---

Then came the day when my life’s path became written in stone. I was watching my weekly dose of Stampede Wrestling when a music video of Bryan Adams’s “Hearts on Fire” began to air. But instead of featuring clips of a pockmarked, greasy-haired rock star, the video featured clips of a blond-haired, solidly built wrestler performing the most mind-blowing, acrobatic moves I had ever seen...and I was completely blown away. The video continued and I watched in total astonishment as this guy who couldn’t have been more than five years older than me executed moonsaults, back flips off the top rope, back flips off other wrestlers’ backs, and the grand finale where he grabbed a guy’s hand, leaped straight to the top rope, sat down on the top rope and flipped onto his feet, only to throw the other wrestler halfway across the ring! I was always more into the high-flying guys in the WWF like the British Bulldogs and Randy Savage, but they didn’t have anybody there who could do this type of stuff. When the video ended, the name that appeared on the screen was Owen Hart, and he instantly became my new hero. He was the youngest son of the promoter of Stampede, Stu Hart, and the brother of another one of my WWF faves, Bret “The Hitman” Hart. When I saw Owen do his thing, I was struck by a feeling of desire so strong that it might as well have been a bolt of lightning sent straight from the heavens above. I didn’t just want to be a wrestler... I had to be a wrestler.

Owen wasn’t 6 foot 8 and 300 pounds like most of the wrestlers in the WWF seemed to be. He was my height and had the kind of muscle that I could have if I trained hard and ate right. Plus, Calgary was in my universe. It was a city I’d been to and seen with my own eyes. It wasn’t like the faraway places where the WWF toured, places I couldn’t just get on a bus and visit. I decided that somehow, someway, I was going to go to Calgary and have Owen Hart teach me how to wrestle.

Also, was shocked to be reminded that Jericho didn't know wrestling was a work until he attended wrestling school as an adult, so not the sharpest mind of his generation.

Oct 23, 2024 5:10:18 GMT Kilgore said:

Also, was shocked to be reminded that Jericho didn't know wrestling was a work until he attended wrestling school as an adult

Way more common than you'd think. I'm not even shocked anymore when I hear this from old wrestlers because I must have heard it a dozen times at this point. There were wrestlers who STILL didn't know it was worked AFTER they made it through wrestling school! How wild is that? Wish I could remember details. R. Garvin & Sullivan might be two of them? Maybe Al Snow as well? And Arn? Modest? Might look into it later. Though Jericho did train a decade or more after most of the others. But, yeah, this is way more common than you'd think.
==============
Funny you bring up Jericho watching Wrestlemania 2 on closed circuit and going to that WWF house show because both were mentioned on TheHistoryOfWWE. I just skipped them for the sake of brevity. Remember they also mentioned Dolph Ziggler going to a Cleveland house show. Back to work now that you've triggered the completest in me. Thanks a lot...

-Super fan Kanyon is back again. He was at MSG on 1/23/84 when Hogan ushered in wrestling's modern era by beating Iron Sheik for the WWF Championship.
-RVD also returns as his first live wrestling experience was a 12/4/85 WWF house show in his hometown of Battle Creek, MI headlined by Steamboat vs. Muraco
-Colt Cabana makes it 3 repeat attendees in a row as he attended the 12/13/85 WWF house show in Chicago headlined by Hogan & Orndorff vs. Piper & Orton
-Dolph Ziggler was at the 5/8/87 Richfield, OH WWF house show headlined by Hogan pinning Harley Race
-Jericho saw Warrior squash Andre in 20 seconds and Duggan beat Savage by DQ at WWF's 10/21/89 house show in Winnipeg. 
-Couldn't confirm, but I remember hearing future WCW commentator Scott Hudson joined Glacier in attending early 90s WCW Center Stage tapings. A quick perusal of his history reveals he was living in Georgia during that time so I'm trusting my memory.

Oct 23, 2024 22:54:12 GMT Baker said:

Oct 23, 2024 5:10:18 GMT Kilgore said:

Also, was shocked to be reminded that Jericho didn't know wrestling was a work until he attended wrestling school as an adult

Way more common than you'd think. I'm not even shocked anymore when I hear this from old wrestlers because I must have heard it a dozen times at this point. There were wrestlers who STILL didn't know it was worked AFTER they made it through wrestling school! How wild is that? Wish I could remember details. R. Garvin & Sullivan might be two of them? Maybe Al Snow as well? And Arn? Might look into it later. Though Jericho did train a decade or more after most of the others. But, yeah, this is way more common than you'd think.

Oh absolutely, my shock was that Jericho was Class of 1990. 1990! Come on, man. 

Few more while I have some time to kill...

-Afa & Sika went to Roy Shire shows in San Francisco where the two Peter Maivia super fans were constantly fighting in defense of their hero. They won those fights. Often against the heel wrestlers. Tired of fighting these two Wild Samoans, they were soon smartened up and trained. The rest is history.
-JBL is another one who watched the Von Erichs at the Sportatorium. There's a chance Taker, Austin & JBL all saw the same show live. How cool is that?
-Hogan went to Eddie Graham's Florida shows where he became a huge fan of Dusty Rhodes and Superstar Graham.
-Not bothering with all the names since I forget most of the details anyway, but a lot of the early CZW wrestlers had been ECW Arena regulars.
-Big Show went to an 80s NWA house show in SC where he was in awe of Arn Anderson.

If it counts at the time local wrestler and Booker T student Bryan Keith was at Lucha Underground's Houston Show in 10/30/2016. I know because I was there too and sat not to far from him.