SCHOOL
It all started for me with an argument at recess. You could see the BCTV studios from my elementary school playground. My friend Dave asked if I wanted to go there to watch them tape All Star Wrestling. I scoffed at the suggestion, because that stuff is all fake, you know. Dave, who was bigger and stronger than me even though he is almost exactly one year younger than me, got pretty upset when I said that. He told me I should go sit in the front row and get spattered with blood, then see if I still think it’s all fake. That weekend, I watched my first Episode of All Star Wrestling. It would not be my last.
The big stars of the show were “Canada’s Greatest Athlete” Gene Kiniski and “The Mormon Giant” Don Leo Jonathan. I’d like to say that the action and the stories sucked me in right away but I think it would be more accurate to say that I kept tuning in to try and figure out what was going on. Whatever the reasons, I was hooked and I absolutely hated to miss an episode. A couple of years later, though, my father got memberships at the YMCA for my brother and I, and I had to sacrifice my Saturday wrestling program in favour of swimming, judo, and weightlifting. That was cool by me, I wanted to be big, strong, and fit like the wrestlers on TV.
Looking back at those days on Kayfabe Memories, I can see that Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant, Rick Martel, and Jake Roberts were all on the program in those days, but I guess I missed most of that. By the time I started watching again in the early 1980s the promotion had changed drastically, featuring home grown talent like Rocky Dellesara, Moose Morrowski, Tim Flowers, Ole Olson, Verne Seibert, and Wojo The BC Hulk. Toronto’s Maple Leaf Wrestling was changing too, in the opposite direction. After Frank Tunney died in 1983, his nephew Jack sold out to the WWF, and the program started to use the local talent as jobbers, if at all. Of course, I didn’t know any of that at the time, but I do know that wrestling just wasn’t grabbing my attention the way it had when I was younger. I became more of a casual fan, occasionally catching a show when there was nothing better going on. I started to develop a fondness for the action from Stampede Wrestling, an independent promotion out of Calgary.
My friend Kevin was a more serious fan, he had posters of a bunch of different wrestlers in his room. He was pretty much the only person I knew at the time who ever wanted to talk about wrestling.
THE HULKSTER COMES TO TOWN
After graduating, I got a job in a video store. The job didn’t pay very well, but I got to watch a lot of free movies. I took out a couple of Coliseum Video releases, and I finally got to see what the deal was with all of those wrestlers who were on the posters in Kevin’s room.
In 1986, my friend Glen asked me if I wanted to go and see Hulk Hogan at BC Place Stadium. I figured it might help take my mind off of the pressures of university life. I had no idea that it was going to make fall in love with Pro Wrestling all over again. He show was pure entertainment, as much fun as anything I’d seen or done in years. After that, I took out every wrestling video in the store multiple times.
I started dating a girl who worked at one of the other stores in the chain. Her family was from England, and she was a big fan of the British Bulldogs. Her older brother got me into watching the NWA, and I went out and bought my first issue of Pro Wrestling Illustrated, to try and figure out who the good guys and the bad guys were.
The late 80s were a pretty good time to be a wrestling fan in Canada. In addition to All Star and Stampede, we got WWF, NWA, AWA, and Bill Watts’ UWF on television. I hated to miss anything, so I got a VCR and started taping it all. It’s probably difficult to understand if you weren’t around to see it, but each of those shows had its own distinct personality. WWF had the great production values, NWA had more wrestling action, UWF was hard-hitting and violent, and the AWA had the Road Warriors. Stampede Wrestling had some of the best young workers in the world, but my favourite was the local show. More than a decade after my argument with Dave, I finally attended my first TV taping of All Star Wrestling. It wouldn’t be my last.
OUTSIDE IN
I kept buying occasional Apter magazines, and also a full colour glossy mark rag called Wrestling’s Main Event. Frustrated that none of the magazines ever covered the action from Stampede or All Star, I wrote to the editors of Wrestling’s Main Event, and ended up being offered the position of Western Canadian Correspondent.
The first piece of writing that I ever got paid for was a story on “Big” John Tenta. The second was an interview with “Diamond” Timothy Flowers. I wrote about everyone from Velvet McIntyre to Brian Pillman.
At the time, Kayfabe was still in full effect, and it was pretty difficult for an outsider to get close to “the boys.” Luckily for me, my father knew All Star announcer Ed Karl, and one ‘phone call later I was backstage. Al Tomko, the promoter, allowed me to stick around, probably hoping that I’d give some publicity to his sons, who were being pushed as the promotion’s top faces.
Almost everyone who watches wrestling wonders what it would be like to be part of the show. When I was invited to hang out in the heel dressing room at the Cloverdale Fairgrounds that weekend, I realised that I was a lot closer to finding out than I had ever imagined.
My foot was in the door.
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