I've a long and chequered past with professional wrestling; a history marked with irregular bouts of obsession, an embarrassing one-off attempt at backyard wrestling (clue: I was the ref) and all too few live events.
I can date my interest back to those heady days in the early 90s when ITV screened both British wrestling and WCW; the former on weekend afternoons, the latter late at night. While Big Daddy passed an agreeable hour or so between A-Team and Air Wolf, I most looked forward to catching up with WCW's meatheads during occasional visit's to my Uncle Les, who would very kindly tape their late-night antics "for the kids" (though I suspect it was as much a treat for him as it was for us). As such, my very earliest pro wrestling memory is of Sting (not the Wallsend warbler) cutting a promo about something or other, and I duly adopted his hairstyle shortly thereafter. Check this guy out!
But such delights were fleeting. I made do through primary school with the odd WWF (as it was then) annual, a pile of trading cards ("The Model" Rick Martel's quote: "Honesty is the best policy!") and tag-team piggy-back fights on lunch breaks. Slim pickings, you might say, but it was enough to stay up to speed; I was the same boy, after all, who had wept for E.T. after reading his story on the back of a Weetabix box. Another year or two would pass before I'd see the actual movie.
So when WWF progressed from redneck mulletry to storylines with genuine edge, I was back in. Want to hear about an octogenarian by the name of Mae West giving birth to a prosthetic hand? You got it. Interested in Stone Cold Steve Austin being sacrificed on a cross, a la Jesus Christ? Right here. Get a kick out of the boss's son being thrown through glass plates by an Olympian? Sorted.
A good friend of mine taped RAW each week (thanks again, James!), conversations in GCSE Maths were littered with spoiler alerts and I even went to a live event when the show rolled into Newcastle's Telewest Arena. Better was to follow: Rebellion 2000 in Sheffield, where we sat a few rows from the front on the TV side for a rare British PPV. In the 11 years that passed between the event and the DVD, we were convinced that we had prominent screen time for the extravaganza's three-hour running time. As it turned out, only one of us got his mug on TV for a blink-and-you-missed-it gurn.
While professional wrestling's appeal has diminished since our last hurrah of a Wrestlemania party a few years back (shortly before Vince McMahon retreated from plotlines), I remain partial to a touch of WWE now and then - I could pick out The Miz in a line-up, describe Zack Ryder's gimmick and name the current US Champion (Italian comic relief Santino Marella) - and last Friday we took in the RAW Tour at Toronto's Ricoh Coliseum. Highlighting superstars included the aforementioned Santino and Miz, R Truth, Chris Jericho, John Cena and Kane. Sadly absent were the likes of Triple H, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Sheamus, Hornswoggle and Christian, as well as Big Boss Man, Eddy Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Earthquake, Yokozuna, Crash Holly, Brian Pillman, British Bulldog, Test, Macho Man Randy Savage and Andre The Giant.
