Unofficial Tex Murphy

I have a dangerous boderline addiction to to wrestling. It started when I was three years old, and only one year since then have I not watched the constant storyline that is wrestling. Actually a wrestling board is the only other message board I visit.

i love the stuff but never seem to be able to keep up. I watch WWE when i can and TNA has finally started showing down here so i get to watch some old favorites there too.

I watched WCW in the glory days. From Starcade 1997 to I'm not sure when. I will still watch an episode of TNA to get that warm memory feeling, but it has been a while even for that. Back in the day I even went to a few live shows. I attended Fall Brawl two years in a row. Good times.

Hey a discussion about wrestling- cool.
I used to be a huge fan in the 90s . a friend of mine and his father had all the videos from the 80s and the early 90s , so that was made me watch wrestling regulary. Then around 2000 I couldn´t watch wrestling anymore in Germany, but it´s back since quite a while and I´m more aware of whats going on again. Despite that I´m finally able to watch the pay per views again-
I´ve seen Wrestlemania 24 and I liked it ( It had some crappy matches like the Mayweather thing and 2 or 3 others) but some really cool matches as well. Flairs last match was awesome, it was really great to watch him go like that and he had a good partner for that match.
I´ve been checking a lot of wrestling stuff on youtube , there´s a lot of very interesting shoot interviews on youtube, there is a canadian show called off the records, where they´re not in character but answer questions about what´s really going on in the business. Very interesting and worth a watch. Despite that I´ve recently watched a round table with Jim Ross, Eric Bishoff, Jerry Lawler,Mick Foley and Michael Hayes discussing the monday night war era between WCW Nitro and RAW. Really interesting
Here´s the link to the first video( First out of 10)-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT21yeas ... re=related
Despite that I checked out a lot of Roddy Piper stuff recently, to me he is really one of the most charismatic and best mic workers Wrestling ever had. Man some of his Piper´s pit episodes are some of the funniest things I´ve ever seen. There are so many classics with him, but here is one where he was his one guest-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8dtIq8Wdho

Wow thanks for the links VonGlower. I love behind the scenes stuff (rereading Mick Foley's books for the upteenth time atm).

I've watched stuff about the Monday night wars before and always found it fascinating. I was a WCW fan during that time so looking back, it is quite incredible.

The Monday Night Wars was the best time to be a wrestling fan in my opinion. Because Ted Turner wanted to put his WCW up against Vince's WWF in the same time-slot on Monday, it made both companies try very hard to get the audience to tune in to their show. I don't think the creativity has ever been the same since.

One of my favorite monday night show ever was back in I think either 2000, or 2001, when Vince bought WCW, and was doing an interview where he gloated about the takeover, and the interview was broadcast simultaneously on two different major networks. That was the most surreal and insane thing I ever saw on wrestling.

As far as the "Monday Night Wars" goes, I think some of the best names in wrestling came from that era. Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, Edge, Christian, The Dudleys, The Hardys ... every week when you tuned in, you knew you were in for an exciting, funny, entertaining show. (The Rock, to me, was the funniest on the mic ever, hands down.)

Before all that, it was the NWA when I started at three, with Magnum T.A., Ric Flair, and company.

To this day, I have a website where I tune in to all the shows I can't watch because I'm usually working, and keep up with WWE and TNA rabidly. Things became faster, more violent, and more storyline oriented, but to me wrestling will always be two guys going into the ring with outrageous persona's and square off against each other to prove who is tougher. It's today's societies' gladiator combat, without all the death, or brutality of the UFC. (Which I don't like, because I'm not interested in seeing people *really* get hurt.)

Definitely. I cop a lot of flak from friends and my folks for enjoying a 'sport' that is part fake and full of drama, but i love the spectacle, the characters and the entertainment. Also, there's some stuff you see in wrestling that i swear you can't get in other forms of athleticism, physically or emotionally (1998 Hell in a Cell is probably an obvious example... again, rereading the Foley books atm).

And then there's just that joy i get out of wrestling (that i assume other fans get too). Watching a good match, a good interview or a good angle makes me happy.

Yeah, to me it´s also a big nostalgic factor involved each time when I watch it.
But I totally agree, the prime of that monday night war was amazing for every wrestling fan.
The whole start of the NWO with Hall and Nash, and how it envolved was one of the greatest things by far I´ve seen in wrestling. At that time WWE coulnd´t compete on that level, but after a while they fought back with an incredible ammount of creativity with the Attitude era ( That was really great by the way), there were so many cool things coming out of that competition, The Rock and Austin becoming Megastars, New Hart Foundation ( A pity they only existed for such a short time), DX, Ministry of darkness, amazing ( and adult) storylines.
I often think its sad that WWE doesen´t have that competition situation anymore , because that´s something that in the end is extremely positive for any fan and the quality of the product, as seen on the monday night war. By the way , you brought up that bizarre Vince/Shane McMahon situation on WWF/WCW after Vince bought the WCW, there was another event that was nearly as bizarre as that, and that showed that the WWF really was going at WCW with a full front attack. I´ll put the link at the end of this posting. ( It´s right on the beginning of the Monday night war Video 9)- It was when DX was presented on Raw "visiting" Mondaynitro, man that was funny as hell and the WCW DIDN`T like that, as you can hear from the consequences that had for Eric Bishoff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxjtZzXo ... re=related

I used to absolutely love watching wrestling. I just can't get into it anymore. I used to watch it when I was young and followed it for a long time..then kinda stopped watching it. But then, in high school, Stone Cold burst onto the scene and I just had to start watching again. And really, I only started watching it because I wanted to see who had the best mic skills. Stone Cold and the Rock have the best mic skills out of any wrestler in the business. They are so damn funny when they get on the mic.

I was always a Fan of Sting, The Warrior, and Rowdy Roddy Piper...

Once WCW folded though, I just couldn't really get into wrestling anywhere else until TNA came out... I watch TNA from time to time... Not on a regular basis like I did WCW though...

WCW only went under because Ted Turner got a Divorce and he had to Liquefy all of his Assets... Turner would have liked anything better than selling to McMahon, but due to the Divorce he didn't have the time to get any other offers... Had nothing to do with WWF being better, because it wasn't... WCW had the NFL begging them to get off of Monday Nights, because it was dragging away from Football Ratings... Monday Nightro ran for 3 hours, killing the time slots for just about anything on any other network...

Spike TV started TNA Wrestling a little while back... It has a lot of the old Favorites from WCW that stated, when WCW closed up shop, That Under No Condition Would They Work For McMahon... Sting being one of the biggest voices in that crowd... He worked for him for a short period at the beginning of his career and he swore that he wasn't gonna do it again... He did a lot of research Verifying that McMahon didn't own and wasn't in any way in connection with TNA before he agreed to come back to Wrestling...

Bafitis wrote:
WCW only went under because Ted Turner got a Divorce and he had to Liquefy all of his Assets... Turner would have liked anything better than selling to McMahon, but due to the Divorce he didn't have the time to get any other offers... Had nothing to do with WWF being better, because it wasn't... WCW had the NFL begging them to get off of Monday Nights, because it was dragging away from Football Ratings... Monday Nightro ran for 3 hours, killing the time slots for just about anything on any other network...

I agree with most of that, but the whole story is it didn't last like that the whole time. I followed the ratings war about the time WCW started crushing WWE on the internet when I was 13 or 14. For a long time WCW was winning the war, and directly crushing the WWE. There was a period in about 1997 when the WWE almost had to go bankrupt.

There was almost a famous line that Tony Schivone used on a Nitro that literally tipped the scales in the WWE's favor, as the numbers clearly showed. During their WCW broadcast, he said that Mick Foley was going to win the other show's World Title. And then he said "That'll put butts in seats" in a sarcastic way, and about half or close to half of the WCW audience flipped over to the WWE product to see the title change. It pulled the WWE out of a ratings slump, and gave them momentum, because they started pulling in more viewers than WCW again. They traded victories back and forth, and towards the end of their days, the WCW product was getting so bad they couldn't even draw enough people for non televised house shows.

But 97 98 99 WCW was some of the best ever. Wrestling was rocking then.

97 and 98 was about when I started watching it again. Stone Cold had made his name in 96 with the King of the Ring and I just started following his character. he's so damn funny. But you're right...WCW was kicking ass big time during those years. Went to a few Nitro tapings and some house shows, and some Raw tapings. Good times. It's always exciting to see fake fighting and chicks in skimpy clothing. lol

I think there was one thing that broke Eric Bishoffs neck in the monday night wars ( As he said himself in those Roundtable videos).
For quite a long time WCW was simply better than WWE, but that turned with the WWE Attitude era, WWE was taking huge risks moving away from family entertainment turning more into adult entertainment ( With things like really violent hell in a cell matches, burried alive matches, DX, the very violent Ministry of darkness). The WCW pay per views had pure Gimmick matches as the mainevents, while the WWE had a lot of brutal and spectacular mainevents that made history. ( Mick Foley-Undertaker, Mick Foley - Triple H etc. etc.)
They adapted some stuff by ECW , Bishoff knew that if he wanted to turn the tide again, he would have to do the same. But the DX invasion on nitro finally broke his neck. Before that he had full freedom and thats also why most of the previous success of WCW/NWO goes hand in hand with the Name of Bishoff. But after that DX/Nitro incident they took the freedom away from him. He knew what he had to do but his hands were tied. Turner wanted WCW to be family entertainment, and so there was no way for Bishoff to jump up on the adult orientated type of wrestling that people obviously wanted to see ( As it was proven by WWE dominating WCW in the ratings). I think that if Bishoffs creative control would have remained, things might have gone down a different way. Even though I don´t think it would have changed the overall winner of that battle in the end.
By the way- Anybody else out there that likes Rob van Dam?
My favorite wrestler out there, always a blast to watch any kind of match with him.

That link was great VanGlower. It really takes me back, and it makes me want to start watching again.

I ain't got nothing to say about Bishoff, I didn't like him at all...

Loved it when Ric Flare kicked his ass in one show... Hilarious...