Psykohurricane: My experience with pro wrestling part two

So, this is the second part of my story and experiences with pro wrestling.

When I last wrote about this, the Monday Night Wars had just started. In Canada, we had a very different experience than fans in the U.S. because Raw and Nitro didn’t air on the same night here. In fact, Nitro didn’t air for a few months before first getting a syndicated slot on Saturdays on our local CTV station, and then switching to Tuesday nights at midnight, with a replay on Wednesday afternoon on TSN when WCW started heating up with the NWO angle. So the back-and-forth flipping between shows that U.S. fans had didn’t really exist here. We watched Raw on Monday and Nitro whenever it aired.

It wasn’t as fun, but we still got to watch everything. One of the biggest moments of my fandom—and an event we still talk about today—is the Montreal Screwjob. I was actually there live at Survivor Series ’97. To say it was surreal is an understatement. We all knew something had happened and that the original finish had changed, but we didn’t know how historic that moment would become. For me, this is where I started gravitating more toward WCW instead of WWE, mostly because I felt that while WCW wasn’t perfect, at least they wouldn’t stoop as low as WWE did by screwing someone as loyal to the company as Bret. Especially after Bret had pretty much stated publicly in an interview before the event that he was willing to drop the belt in Ottawa the night after. So, it rubbed me the wrong way a little bit, but I still watched WWE because it was one of the few options we had since ECW didn’t air in Montreal, and I was still passionate about wrestling.

I stayed interested throughout the entire war, but you could tell that when Bischoff left and Russo took his spot, WCW was on its last legs, and WWE was going to win. That made me sad since I still liked the WCW product more than WWE, and most of my favorite wrestlers were working for WCW. Let’s just say I was disappointed and sad to see it go in 2001.

After WCW closed, I started losing interest in mainstream pro wrestling because WWE’s product was awful. I even stopped watching for a month after the Katie Vick angle.

But a few bright spots appeared in the darkness. First, TNA started in 2003, and I really got into their product to the point where I would skip buying a WWE PPV so I could buy a month’s worth of TNA PPVs. Even though they were only doing weekly PPVs at the time, I really got into their product. It filled the void WCW left after they closed, and I fell in love with wrestling again.

I also started getting into women’s wrestling. While the options were slim in WWE and the only other alternative was the subpar Women’s Extreme Wrestling, I still enjoyed women’s wrestling and watched whatever I could find. One day, I found a Shimmer DVD at my local record store, bought it, and became such a fan that I ended up buying nearly every DVD they released for almost a decade. This was around 2003/2004. Then, another fun thing happened—my local indie promotion started an all-female promotion, and that was awesome. I could now see my favorite female wrestlers live, as many of the wrestlers I watched on Shimmer would also perform at the Femme Fatales shows in Montreal. This was a great period in my life as I got to watch wrestling I loved while keeping up with WWE’s subpar product.

Another highlight was when TNA came to Montreal twice, thanks to a local promoter who had connections with the company and also ran his own indie promotion. This allowed him to bring in TNA talent from time to time. So, while WWE had the monopoly on television, I had plenty of alternatives to feed my passion for wrestling.

Then came 2010, and TNA tried to compete with WWE. That’s when I started falling out of love with TNA for the first time. I still watched because I enjoy a trainwreck, but it made me appreciate WWE more. This lasted until TNA was sold to Anthem. After attending Bound for Glory in Ottawa and being completely bored, I gave up and stopped watching until the pandemic hit in 2020.

By 2016, I was back to watching just one product—WWE—as TNA had become unwatchable. My love for women’s wrestling had faded when Femme Fatales closed, and I wasn’t into ROH because it didn’t offer the same feeling I used to love about wrestling. I stuck around watching WWE mostly because it was something I shared with my dad. If it weren’t for that, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it.

When the pandemic hit, with limited entertainment options, wrestling became my escape again. Even though much of pandemic wrestling was awful, it was still entertainment—and God knows we needed it during that time, especially since my big passion at the time, going to the movies, wasn’t an option.

Fast forward to today, and I’ve rediscovered my passion for wrestling, mostly because my two favorite companies, WWE and TNA, returned to what made me a fan in the first place: compelling characters and long-term storytelling. That’s what drew me in back in the ‘80s—wrestlers who looked like wrestlers and stories that were engaging. That’s also why I never really got into AEW, especially with what AEW has become in recent years. I feel like modern wrestling, especially AEW, has forgotten what made wrestling great and is trying to reinvent it to please a small portion of the audience that doesn’t appreciate traditional pro wrestling or prefers Japanese and Mexican styles over North American wrestling. Maybe that makes me old school, but that’s the kind of fan I am.

So, that’s my story about my 35 years of fandom and why I’m not a huge fan of AEW or modern wrestling. I hope you enjoyed this column.