Back in my day....

orestes

Wrestlemania season tends to bring back some old fans to watching wrestling, and after a bit of messing about in this weeks Raw thread I though it might be a good idea for some of us old grumpy gits to show the kids how lucky they have it these days. I'm not just talking about the recent product, I'm talking about the lengths that we had to go to just to get our wrestling fix back in the day.

It wasn't always just a matter of jumping on your laptop and connecting to the internet to have all of your wrestling needs met at the click of a mouse, or using yer fancy apps to watch what is going on during the ad breaks. Hell, we didn't even get to watch the show at all, we listened to it after Sky went off the air on the fuzzy screen, had to wait in line to watch the single tape of a pay-per-view that was doing the rounds in the school yard, speed-read magazines in Easons, and that was just to keep up with WWF (this was before your new-fangled WWE nonsense). Keeping up with WCW and ECW took serious effort.

So, who else has stories or memories of trying to watch PPVs on Channel 4 after their folks went to bed? When a spoiler was someone in school telling you the result of a match, not someone forgetting to put it in a thread title? Nicking your cousins imported Japan tapes (almost everyone seems to have had a cousin who got cool wrestling sh1t for some reason) and then spending hours on Eurosport? When nobody knew what kayfabe was?

Being a wrestling fan used to take serious work dammit, bloody whippersnappers don't know how lucky they have it these days. And stop kicking that damned ball against my wall you little ruffians :mad:

RUSTEDCORE

poor you..not knowing how to get around the fuzz

gimmick

It wasn't even that long agao really. I remember having to avoid websites and sky sports for 2 weeks before Survivor Series 2002 as I didn't want the first ever Elimination Chamber match to be spoiled on me.

PPVs were watched on video tape on Monday night after we chipped in for the only fella we knew with Sky Sports to order and record it.

orestes

gimmick wrote: »

It wasn't even that long agao really..

I know, that's the scary part. I'm not even 30 and I'm already old

DEFTLEFTHAND

When I was getting into WWF all the ppvs were free on Sky sports, even WM was, there was no box office at all. The Rumble was still on Channel 4. I'd tape RAW on the Friday night and SD on Saturday morning for a mate in school.

I started watching Nitro when cartoon network went off the air on Friday nights, that was my introduction to wrestling, I could never watch WCW ppvs though, was that even possible to do in Ireland in the mid/late 90s?

The internet was certainly gaining momentum in those years but it was still a foreign concept to me. :P

RUSTEDCORE

dx where great but we had weird crap like wrestling vampires and val venis

Loughc

RUSTEDCORE wrote: »

dx where great but we had weird crap like wrestling vampires and val venis

If you are referring to the Brood, they were not crap! :mad: I loved that gimmick.


@DEFTLEFTHAND I don't recall being able to see a wCw PPV on any channel back in the day either :-/

Mr.Saturn

I recall they used to sell ad-space on Sky One teletext to a hotline that'd tell you what'd happened on PPVs and RAW, but used to draw it with juicy headlines that've now become staples of lower-end IWC sites. Tags such as 'big return on RAW/PPV' generally turned out to be a forgotten midcarder who'd fill in on a show. Yes, I called once. It cost around £2.50 a minute. A fact the operator took at least 40 seconds to tell you. Of course, at which point you'd slam down the receiver, and they'd be £2 richer. Being 9 and reading the fine print on the ad didn't seem to mesh.

This, naturally, must've been some machination to bleed Irish fans with basic cables, or 'the pipe' as it more commonly known, as I don't recall such a service being offered in England, nor do I recall Sky One ever being available as part of a basic cable pack in the UK.

Actually, the fan section on said teletext was a fun preamble to what I'd later witness on the bowels on the interwebs.

8k2q1gfcz9s5d4

Im luckly enough in that my dad is also into wrestling! From as early as I can remember (around 1988/1989) dad would bring home a wrestling VHS on a sat night of a WWF ppv. The PPV could be 3/4 years old, but me and my brothers didnt care! As a 4 year old, I was a massive Hulk Hogan fan!

We were very lucky, and got sky in 1995. I have been watching raw since then. Raw in 95 was so different to now. Superstars was shown on a saturday evening on sky 1. Both were 1 hour shows.

We also got some german sports channels, which showed a lot of WCW stuff to. I remember when the monday night wars started, it was the golden age of wrestling! both WCW and WWF had great rosters then, and great storylines. When I was in 5th and 6th class, I looked forward to friday evenings a lot, as raw and nitro were on at the same time on Sky Sports and TNT. Constant switching back and forth! Towards the end of the wars, I used to just switch over to WCW for the goldberg squash match, then back to WWF!

I remember in the mid 1990s, all WWF PPVs were on sky sports at midnight. I used to go to bed early, get up at 12, and watch the first hour. It would be repeated at 3pm the next day, so when I came home from school, I would watch the rest.

As for the modern WWE product, I really don't like to comment too much on it. I grew up in the golden era of attitude and the monday night wars, being a kid back then was amazing. The storylines were like an over 18s film, and lots of bloody matches. I was lucky enough to be allowed to watch the first hell in a cell match live! When kane's music hit, I was literally speechless. I just don't think an 10 year old would react the same way to a modern story line.

CastorTroy

I didn't even have Sky. No cable up in Donegal. So would get the PPVs taped from a friend of the family. Still have pretty much all of those tapes somewhere. Then think about Wrestlemania 10 or 11 was the last I saw of WWF until Channel 4 started showing Heat(including the debut of Lita when she and Essa rios first appeared).

Then there was World of Sport on UTV with Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks.

Then UTV started showing NWA which changed to WCW later on.

krudler

Been watching since the late 80's since sky first starting showing Superstars on Saturday mornings then a longer version on Saturday nights if I remember right, the odd Saturday Nights Main event too, ppvs were usually watched in someone else's house, once the interweb started becoming more popular would read the Raw results (or avoid them) on wwf.com as sky didn't show Raw live back then it was on Friday nights.

I miss the late 90's/early 00's boom, where seeing a Stone Cold tshirt in a nightclub wasn't strange and people used to be glued to Raw if pubs had it on of a friday night.

GTR63

RUSTEDCORE wrote: »

dx where great but we had weird crap like wrestling vampires and val venis

DrumSteve

Remember Vader fighting Jushin Thunder Liger on eurosport, actually a lot of Japanese stuff on that was awesome.

Also staying up to watch the In Your House PPVs.

Remember i broke the rumble 00 tape that was floating around the class, i was like the third guy to get it which meant there was like 10 other guys after me...

was a wcw friday night guy most of my childhood, nitro followed by thunder, had to watch it in my nans as my dad wouldn let me watch wrestling at home.

hours playing with my hasbro figures (still have them)


me and my cousin started our own protection agency, the okpa (okeeffe) and used to protect guys against bullies....one guy beat up a small geeky guy in the class, we procedded to trap the bully and 3d'd him into a big pile of Sh!te ... he deserved it....got a princely sum of 50c each to.

Angron

I fondly remember having to figure out what channel on this little grey box thing we had would play a show/ppv, made all the more difficult by it being in German, which nobody in the house spoke a word of. There was no logical timing for it either, so it was more or less guesswork as to what night it'd be on what channel.

I remember...

listening to the scrambled sky sports channels on the old cablelink decoder boxes for Raw on a Friday and PPVs.

When I finally got Sky Sports in channel 4 got some of the PPVS and their coverage was **** as other have explained already.

When it came to the PPVs - I would record them on the VHS player and get up at 6AM and watch the main matches before school because at some stage of the day someone was going to spoil it for you.

Paying £32 for an ECW VHS in HMV. I don't know how young some people on here are but videos were **** towards DVDs. Even if you bought a brand new VHS there was still a chance that the picture would be **** on it.

buying No Mercy for the N64 for £65

Also remember getting given out to in school because I wore in a Stone Cold cap I had. It had a picture of a skull on it with 2 middle fingers each side

Ando's Saggy Bottom

Up until about 02 I had to rely on people taping PPV's for me.

Also remember desperately listening to scrambled channels. "Watched" the entire Summerslam from Wembley in 92 that way. Also remember trying to find wrestling info and news on telestext. I was a smark before I ever knew it.

Mr.Saturn

I remember picking up the 'Best of WCW' VHS in HMV Picadilly for a paltry £2. This was odd, as the said video was only ever meant to be available to subscribers of WCW magazine. Granted, this was in August 2001, 5 months after its demise, so it was possible the shop'd sold the magazine at some stage, and the VHSs were redeemable, so they must've been lying around somewhere, going unloved. Still, WWE owned the library, so it shouldn't have been on sale anyways.

Fantastic compilation. Some matches got the butcher treatment, but I recall first seeing Flair/Vader Starrcade '93 on there, so it worked out a more than brilliant investment.

I also got a WM17 VHS in the same purchase. The tape was warped, sticking a static line at the base of the picture, but I still watched it all the way through. Returned it for a replacement, and did it again. Ah, the rabid fanaticism of youth.

Joe24

This thread does bring back some memories, many of them similar to others already posted.

We were lucky enough to have sky sports back in the late 90s and early 2000s. But it was only on one TV. Every Friday night myself and my brother would be praying that our Dad would be going to bed early so we could watch raw.

Thing is, if he having an early night, it probably meant he was working on the Saturday morning which meant either myself, my brother or both of us would have to go help out. This of course meant missing smackdown on sky one. Disaster!

Worst case scenario was when we would miss both raw and smackdown, which seemed to happen a lot more than it really did. I think the auld lad knew we were well into it.

Getting up to press record on the video for the PPVs was always a challenge but knowing the results for school the next morning was essential. There was always the (very small) chance that nobody of the 4 or 5 in our class who watched wrestling would have watched/taped the PPV the night before, in which case you would be holding all the information.

God what it would be to 12 years old again.

starviewadams

Didn't get Sky in til the start of 2002,so Raw and PPV's were listened to on the scrambled channels,and occasionaly the TV would be free so I'd get to watch Smackdown on Sky 1 on a Saturday morning.Family used to go to mass on Sundays so I'd get to watch Metal/Livewire and Superstars on Sky 1 and then Heat on Channel 4.

Used to buy the months old PPV VHS' from our local video shop if the auld biddy working there allowed me to that was,you'd swear she thought wrestling was hardcore porn or something.

Got to watch Nitro occasionaly when I'd stay with my cousins up in Donegal,he could somehow pick up TNT through his roof aerial.

Was great when we finally got Sky Digital in and I could actually see Raw (and the PPV's until most went onto Sky Box Office!)was cool when he got a chipped cable box in 2006/7 and I got to see the SBO PPV's for free,didn't last long unfortunately!

Now I have no Sky again,so I either stream Raw and the PPV's,or just download them the next day.

Ruudi_Mentari

Created better characters, if not finer wrestlers but some sort of longhaired vampiric roid raging redneck blowout toward the end of last century suggested wrestling needed cleaning up... and thus much hair was cut, and chests waxed and safety precautions ushered in but I am glad to see the back of the clowns. and the bogeymen

I think the paradox about wrestling is it captivated peoples attention most when the actual wrestling was at it's worst... these big, intense juiced up to the nines characters that demanded not just mean gene listen but that we did too.

Mr.Nice Guy

I'm another who used to listen to the scrambled channel. I have a vivid recollection of remembering Hardcore Holly's return on Raw from injury in 2000 that way.

Anyone recall watching Metal on Sunday morning? You'd sit through a recap of the Raw and SD stuff you'd seen before and get matches like Headbanger Mosh vs a jobber, and, if you were lucky, maybe a main event of Scotty 2 Hotty vs Funaki.

DM_7

Summerslam 92

next door neighbour was able to record it on video. Nice one. But my uncle was over from England, they bought the sun and the ****ing paper had the result printed in it.

chopperbyrne

In 1992, I used my dads old stereo, which had a built in mic, to record the audio feed from the scrambled Sky Sports for the Royal Rumble and listened to it the next morning.

It proved Heenans genius as even without visuals that match is amazing.

Liam McPoyle

I used to watch WCW every Saturday afternoon on UTV.

They also showed it for two hours at stupid o'clock during the week too. I remember many times sneaking out of bed to set the video to record, no sky plus then.This would have been late 80s/early 90s.

I also remember getting to see wrestling live in the mid 80s in Mayo somewhere.

Main event was Giant Haystacks vs The Mighty Chang.

Haystacks won and took Changs belt,poor oul Chang started crying afterwards.

Poor 6 year old me was heartbroken for him.

Chang


Haystacks.


Good times.

grames_bond

Watching WCW on a friday evening just after cartoon network turned into TNT! (If that tied in with an episode of Johnny Bravo I was f*cking sorted! )

Forget about getting tapes - Having to wait until the following saturday to watch "the bottom line" to find out what happened in the PPV from the stills they show was my way of getting results!

Sky's teletext wrestling page (the original dirtsheet ) to find out anything

Man these young whippersnappers don't know how lucky they have it!!

brinty

God guys i must be older than all of you on here cos i remember the early days back in the 80's where there was no Sky at all and all ye had was VHS that was 3 or 4 years old but ye thought was brand new!!! This was the when the only way would get the PPV's (when there were only 4) was in your local video shop and you'd pray to god the tape wasn't absolutely banjaxed...ye had to wind both spindles in opposite directions to try and remove the creases in the tape and blow into all the gaps to get the dust and static out...then sky came in and ye got superstars and stuff...remember a friend having sky and we'd always rush home on a monday afternoon to watch the previous nights PPV on re run(no one in my school was that into it)

So many great memories but none will top the morning as a 10 or 11 year old my brother had gotten summerslam 88I got out of bed bleary eyed and came down the stairs and he put on the dvd...and Liz whipped off the bottom of her dress...everything changed that day

Melion

What a great thread

Omackeral

My girlfriend used to record the ppvs live for me circa 2000 back when I was in school. She would set her alarm for 4am and sneak down stairs to remove the tape from the VCR. At the same time I'd be sneaking out of my sitting room window and racing across the local park to get to her porch door where she'd be waiting with a kiss and the event on tape. Nice times.

Used to watch the event til it was school time and then toddle off to class wrecked but safe in the knowledge there'd be no spoilers! My folks never knew

Turtyturd

That SKY text page brings back memories, with the misleading hotline headlines, and peoples theories of how 'HBK was going to be reveled as the Higher Power'...and 'Test was going to join DX'.


I also remember how difficult it was to get merchandise back then. The only place I can remember being able to get t-shirts (and Video's to a lesser extent) was in Virgin Megastore on the quays, and even at that the majority of them would be stuff like Road Dogg t-shirts and you would have to check regularly and be very luck to get t-shirts of people like Rock and Austin. Worked out well though cos I managed to get a Rock American Football jersey, and a DX t-shirt, still bought the sh*tty ones too purely on the basis they were WWF merchandise. I think Forbidden Planet started doing merchandise too when it's popularity really exploded.

grames_bond

T-Shirt print in blanch (and then eventually in stephens green) where the only places I could get merch.....

great times!

Turtyturd

grames_bond wrote: »

T-Shirt print in blanch (and then eventually in stephens green) where the only places I could get merch.....

great times!

Yeah there was one in the Ilac too...one wash and you don't know what it was supposed to be.:D

grames_bond

And they only ever had the FRONT of the Austion 3:16 shirt - never the skull for the back - even though it was on the wall!!

They kept saying to me "but if you wear a jacket over it - no one will ever know" :pac:

eh i dunno

Remember having to record main events on a 3 hour vhs tape and hope the show didnt go over 3 hours. Would then watch it the next day and even my dad and sister would watch it.

WCW on a saturday afternoons in that crazy Disneyworld spinning ring.

Paying mad money for WWF magazines, didnt mind paying mad money for Raw magazine tho as it had some hot Sunny posters in it.

Remember the WWF poster mags. One huge poster folded up every month..super glossy.

Saturday mornings watching Mania with Todd Pettingill.

Nailz frightening the shoite out of me. One ugly looking man

Anyone remember an old WWF mag where Ric Flair imposed himself on Randy Savage to make it look like he was having an affair with Liz. Great times.

gimmick

Of course another thing was having to wait until Friday to see Raw, which for me anyway, was completely MUST SEE back then as afterall "anything can happen on Raw". And it usually did.

eh i dunno

eh i dunno wrote: »

Remember having to record main events on a 3 hour vhs tape and hope the show didnt go over 3 hours.

That reminds me. Not knowing that Wrestlemania 2000 was going to be 4 hours (or around 3 hours, 45 mins) and the tape turning off after 3 hours. The main event was spoiled for me at school (Vince turning on the Rock).

It was from then on that I sat up for Wrestlemania each year

Aiel

I also remember when the PPV's were all free on Sky and staying up after Raw on a FrIday night to watch VHS tapes.
I always remember a funny incident as a kid where i went into a video shop with a friend and his dad and my friend seen what he thought were Wrestling Tapes(nearly naked people on the front cover) and he quickly pointed them out to his Dad saying he loved watching them sort of tapes,only to realise he was pointing at the Porno tapes.I never laughed so hard:).
I remember a Fighting magazine on sale in the pre internet mid 90's every month that had a small column with WWF Gossip in it saying who was leaving,coming in the near future.

sonmi_451

my first memories of wrestling was watching the vignettes that aired every week for the debut of razor ramon , i was like 12 and thought he was the man i still watch raw every week , i think ill always be a wrestling fan

Melion

Rajahwwf.com was my most visited site.

Efeds taking up hours of my day 3/4 times a week.

Skytext pg 252 I think it was.

Ando's Saggy Bottom

brinty wrote: »

God guys i must be older than all of you on here cos i remember the early days back in the 80's where there was no Sky at all and all ye had was VHS that was 3 or 4 years old but ye thought was brand new!!! This was the when the only way would get the PPV's (when there were only 4) was in your local video shop and you'd pray to god the tape wasn't absolutely banjaxed...ye had to wind both spindles in opposite directions to try and remove the creases in the tape and blow into all the gaps to get the dust and static out...then sky came in and ye got superstars and stuff...remember a friend having sky and we'd always rush home on a monday afternoon to watch the previous nights PPV on re run(no one in my school was that into it)

So many great memories but none will top the morning as a 10 or 11 year old my brother had gotten summerslam 88I got out of bed bleary eyed and came down the stairs and he put on the dvd...and Liz whipped off the bottom of her dress...everything changed that day

Yes! Remember renting PPV's in Xtravision as well. We even got to watch Mania 6 on video in school one Friday afternoon. It was the greatest schoolday ever, though the poor De La Sale brother that was teaching us mustnt have known what to make of it all.

Ando's Saggy Bottom

sonmi_451 wrote: »

my first memories of wrestling was watching the vignettes that aired every week for the debut of razor ramon , i was like 12 and thought he was the man i still watch raw every week , i think ill always be a wrestling fan

The one where he pushed the young fella into the fountain was the greatest thing I had ever seen up till that point.

briany

Ray Sweet Laser wrote: »

We also got some german sports channels, which showed a lot of WCW stuff to. I remember when the monday night wars started, it was the golden age of wrestling! both WCW and WWF had great rosters then, and great storylines. When I was in 5th and 6th class, I looked forward to friday evenings a lot, as raw and nitro were on at the same time on Sky Sports and TNT. Constant switching back and forth! Towards the end of the wars, I used to just switch over to WCW for the goldberg squash match, then back to WWF!

That was ZDF I think that showed WCW and ECW. It was a strange channel that I seem to recall had random wrestling and random pornography late at night.

grames_bond

My dad having to tell the person in Virgin that I was old enough to buy the 16's rated Valentines Day Massacre VHS Tape was a memory that is as vivid as the day is long!!

8k2q1gfcz9s5d4

briany wrote: »

That was ZDF I think that showed WCW and ECW. It was a strange channel that I seem to recall had random wrestling and random pornography late at night.

yea that was it! sports channel by day, porn channel by night!

Ando's Saggy Bottom

Ray Sweet Laser wrote: »

yea that was it! sports channel by day, porn channel by night!

The perfect business model really!

ebbsy

Back in my day:

Brainbusters
Demolition
Hart Foundation



Now...????????

GTR63

Ray Sweet Laser wrote: »

yea that was it! sports channel by day, porn channel by night!

Didn't that happen with TWC too.
Remember taping all of the Raw's and ppvs religiously and rewatching them after the den, lost the most of them when we moved house but have a mountain of them still up in my loft.

gerrybbadd

Ah the auld scrambled channels. That brings me back. I have vague memories of watching wrestling around the time hbk put Marty through the barber shop windows, then we lost Sky for a while. When we got it back, I didn't seek out wrestling, but I stumbled upon Sunny bent over the apron with the Body Donnas! Haven't looked back since.

8k2q1gfcz9s5d4

aw, Sunny! I remember the feud between The Bodydonnas and The Godwinns so well.

Poor Sunny

starviewadams

Used to get merch sent over off my uncle in Canada a few times a year,the DX hockey jersey and a naff Rikishi t-shirt stick in my mind.Discovered Forbidden Planet in beside my old bus stop on Aston Quay in 2000 or so and got the HHH 'I am the game' shirt and a few Jericho ones.Remember they used to have tonnes of the orange Tazz 13 shirts,whoever was ordering stock severely overstimated his popularity in Ireland!

Discovered Foley's first book in our local crappy bookshop when I was 12 or 13,finished it in about a week and had no idea who most of the people in the book he mentioned were.

Turtyturd

Melion wrote: »

Efeds taking up hours of my day 3/4 times a week.

Are they still going?