My wrestling viewing history

As Edge and Christian will tell you, since we only got WWF in Canada, I was a Hulkamaniac at the very beginning. I was obviously a fan of Steamboat not only because of his skills but his ethnicity (I recently found out his mother is from Kyoto). I became a Jake Roberts fan afterwards. I’m pretty sure I started watching the WWF some time after the first WrestleMania, maybe even near WrestleMania II, because on TV, I saw Bundy hurting Hogan and Roddy Piper being scared to face Mr. T. Then came Ricky Steamboat vs Randy Savage at WrestleMania III. I began hating Savage (in a good way – for wrestling) after he cheated to win the Intercontinental Belt against Tito Santana, but that ring bell on Steamboat’s throat was scaring me at the time. That match was great. Hogan-Andre at WrestleMania III never seemed special to me, I thought it happened out of the blue and I was wanting to see Hogan beat Paul Orndorff (Yes I watched that cage match at Saturday Night’s Main Event). NWA-WCW I only saw on videotape, but I still remember Ric Flair flying in a helicopter to an outdoor arena facing someone (internet search:Nikita Koloff the very first NWA Great American Bash, 1985) and being in awe. I also remember Magnum T.A. throwing a big dude (internet search:Kamala) off of the top rope with a belly-to-belly suplex (that was INSANE in those days). An internet search reveals that the main event of that show was Dusty Rhodes vs Tully Blanchard in a steel cage, but I have no momory of it. Anyway, after WreslteMania VI and the Warrior win I only watched sparringly, although I remember Bret Hart vs Curt Henning and Bret vs Davey Boy Smith at SummerSlam in the early 90s, and Ric Flair in the WWF. After WMX I stopped watching because Yokozuna was insulting my heritage, and I basically missed Shawn Michaels’ reign. I got back into it when Bret Hart had left after losing at WMXII and Steve Austin was calling him out, now adopting his Stone Cold gimmick. This would be the summer of 1996. I’ve been watching ever since. WCW was not on that often before the Monday night wars, and I only caught everything from the summer of 1996. Before that, the only thing I remember from live TV is Sting and the Black Scorpion which I caught by accident somewhere, perhaps when I was over at a friend’s house who had all the cable channels, or when our family was on vacation in a hotel somewhere in the US. I only watched two ECW shows, both in 1999, and i was unlucky because I was turned off by a plunder match that had no rules. I remember RVD, but even he couldn’t help me get past the fact that this didn’t seem to be a match. Which is unfortunate, because I would have loved to have caught it when Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko and Chris Benoit were there. Anyway, I’m still watching after all the crappy stuff. ROH and TNA are my more recent favourites, in that order.