Hey, everybody! Reader here.
I just wanted to wish you all a Happy WrestleMania Weekend!
I have been a wrestling fan since I was a kid, and I always get excited this time of year, when World Wrestling Entertainment hosts its biggest event of the year.
My love of pro wrestling started when I was young, and on a random Saturday afternoon, I stumbled across a show from the dingy-looking Stampede Corral in Calgary, featuring all kinds of rowdy characters duking it out in the ring. It featured good guys like Owen Hart, and Bruce Hart and Brian Pillman (the tag team known as “Badd Company,” battling bad guys like Makhan Singh, the Great Gama, Cuban Assassin, the Viet Cong Express, and Jason the Terrible (a clone of Jason Voorhees from “Friday the 13th,” but in wrestler form!), with the action called by the late, great Ed Whalen.
A great match was a “ring-a-ding-dong-dandy.” Something when wrong for a tag-team or a group of villains working over the heroes? A “malfunction at the junction.”
And when the show was over? Ed would always sign off with his catchphrase… If you know, you know.
“In the meantime, and in between time, that’s it. Another edition of the Stampede Wrestling show. Bye-bye, now!”
After that, I was first exposed to WWF action when me and some family were together in Regina while my Grandma was in the hospital, and our Uncle at the time rented us a couple of movies. We talked him into getting us “Friday the 13th,” but a few minutes into the movie, our parents put the kibosh on that.
So, we put in the other take we rented… WrestleMania III, featuring “The Irresistable Force vs. The Immovable Object,” as Hulk Hogan defended the heavyweight championship against the legendary Andre the Giant. It was a spectacle that made WrestleMania the staple that it’s become.
Then, a couple of years later, Global TV arrived in Saskatchewan, and with it came the birth of STV in Saskatoon and Regina, and that meant that every Sunday at noon, we’d get to see “Maple Leaf Wrestling,” the Canadian version of “WWF Superstars of Wrestling.”
The cast of characters grew, and I my brothers and I had our favourites. For me? It was the face-painted, freakishly built Ultimate Warrior, the Hart Foundation, featuring Canada’s own Bret “Hitman” Hart and Jim “the Anvil” Neidhart, and another tag team, Demolition – Ax and Smash, who looked like they swaggered into the ring off the set of Mad Max!
And then WrestleMania VI, at SkyDome in Toronto, featured the Hulkster defending his belt against the Ultimate Warrior, who was the reigning Intercontinental champ. I was a Warrior guy, and was hoping he’d knock off Hogan. We couldn’t get the pay-per view at home, so I was looking for any news I could find on the main event.
The next day, in the sports notes in the Star Phoenix, I found the news I had been looking for… the Ultimate Warrior had dethroned Hulk Hogan to win the Heavyweight title!
Over the years, I stayed a fan, kind of fading in an out, through the Attitude Era, featuring luminaries such as The Rock, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Undertaker, Triple H, Mankind and many more, and to this day, I still follow wrestling, maybe not quite as religiously as I used to, but I still dig it, and catch it when I can.
I’ve been to several WWE live events over the years, in Medicine Hat, Saskatoon, a Monday Night Raw in Calgary in 2001, and the last time I caught it live, in 2018, in Winnipeg, featuring stars such as Samoa Joe, Jeff Hardy, the MIz, A.J. Styles, and the best match of the night, featuring two of the greatest women’s wrestlers of all, Charlotte Flair (daughter of the legendary “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, and one of my all-time faves, Japanese star Asuka!
It was an absolute blast! Anytime I get the opportunity to catch a live event, I’m always glad to do so!
And now it’s WrestleMania Weekend, with some great matchups over the two-night extravaganza!
I probably won’t catch the whole event, but I’ll likely watch some of it while I’m at the farm over the long weekend, especially the Night One main event – the triple threat between Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and my dude, C.M. Punk!
WrestleMania – always a blast! If you’re a fan, enjoy! And if you’ve never experienced it, give it a try – you might be surprised by how much you dig it!
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