Remember wrestling in 1996-1997?

This may be a weird way to start blogging, but it's something that's fresh on my mind. Anyone who was a wrestling fan back in 1996 or 1997 will remember that it was like opening a Christmas present every Monday because you never knew what was going to happen. You knew for sure that it would be something you didn't expect & something you'd enjoy greatly, but you weren't sure exactly what. Then on Tuesday you could be talking to a group of 5 people & chances are that 3 out of those 5 people knew exactly what you were talking about. Nowadays, that number has diminished to where you may be the only person who knows what happened. I blame this on many things. First off, the Internet has taken away what guessing game there was in wrestling. Now you know about someone's character turn or someone's debut sometimes a couple months in advance. It's as if someone took those Christmas presents every Monday (and now every Thursday) & ran them through an X-ray machine to show you what you were getting. Next, I blame age. Had I not gotten older & been expected to take on so many responsibilities, I would enjoy wrestling much more. Third, I blame Vince McMahon. While I proclaim him to be a genius, he missed the truck when he bought WCW & decided to make it public. Competition made him even more of a genius & now he is complacent without it. Last, but certainly not least, I blame that section of fans that came into power back in 1998 or so when wrestling was still at its height of popularity. These are the same people that when WCW was bought out, they started to leave the WWF (now WWE) behind. Had they stuck with it even through the tough times, even just to complain to those that would listen week to week about how bad the product is, we may not be in this wallowing pit of despair we're in right now. True, this may only be a lull in the action temporarily and I do see a light ahead in the tunnel, but we're pretty low right now as wrestling fans can go. This makes me even more nostalgic so that when Jason calls me & tells me he found some tapes of old Nitros and Raws, it makes me smile, but can almost bring a tear to my eye to know those times are gone & we may never see those again. Let's hope I'm wrong...

Note: Not all of my blogs will be about wrestling, but they will be about things which I care deeply for. If this doesn't interest you, you may have "taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque", to paraphrase Bugs Bunny.