I was a teenaged Hulkamaniac.
One of my earliest core memories is seeing Rocky in the drive in. I was 5. Fake fighting+drama really stuck in my brain. That was 50 years ago.
When I was a kid, I really liked going to the movies by myself, for a reason that made sense in my brain at the time, I'd always sit on the left side of the theater (in classrooms, when given the choice, I'd sit on the right side, that was true through law school - business on the right, party on the left) and it's possible the first film I ever saw on my own was Rocky III. I was 11.
And that's how Hulk Hogan got into my algorithm (it was the monoculture, there were like 3 types of kids, I was in the analytical/awkward/wiseguy phylum) and there Hulk Hogan was on Letterman and SNL and MTV, and of course I watched all of those things; and by the time we got to Wrestlemania, I was fully red and yellow. I was 14. That was 40 years ago.
I don't stop things easily, jobs, relationships, I'm a dead ender, but there was an inflection point where I considered leaving wrestling fandom in my childhood.
In the summer of '94, I was about to enter my final year of law school; I went away to undergrad in the fall of '88, and back in the past (I'm from the past, your ways confuse and frighten me) it could be hard to access a world beyond one's immediate reach; I had followed WWF as best I could (TV via a random frat house, PPVs at an area bar; Meltzer when I could get a copy of The National, I always knew what was going on, I bought a ticket for Wrestlemania VIII) but it wasn't a daily passion. And - I had long left the red and yellow; my access point to wrestling was primarily sports (and not say, superheroes) and it was the more athletic wrestlers that I had been gravitating toward for several years. Bret. Hennig. Steamboat.
But as my last year of law school approached, "putting childish things aside" was front of mind and wrestling was definitely in danger of getting rightsized.
And then one day (in the middle of a breakup that I was not navigating well) I went to a video store in Lima, Ohio and picked up the VHS with a giant X on the front. To that point, it contained the two best wrestling matches I had seen (you know what they were, if you do not know what they were you would not be here) and not more than a few weeks later, on the first day of my third year of law school, I received something called an email address and was exposed to the world wide web. I was 24. It was 30 years ago.
Technology doesn't work like this, but in my world, the internet was nothing on Sunday, not a glimmer, not a whisper, and on Monday was a fully realized portal into a new life. The internet is for porn - but for me, using the law library solely (I did not own a computer until I was 30 years old and now it's where my entire career is located) the internet was for wrestling; I could not get enough information - global, historical - there would be message boards and tape trading, and fantasy booking - and a lot of show attendance. I was at Survivor Series '96, I was at the second ECW PPV, the first time I ever experienced the wrestlers' handshake it was with Terry Funk, a New Jack razor blade fell at my feet. I had multiple VCRs running, I had a black box; I had giant stacks of tapes and then DVDs and then hard drive files. I gobbled all of it up.
The time in my full fandom I was most disenchanted with WWF was early in the century. Having now seen what was possible, watching WWF in its imperial hegemony, with every wrestler alive available to them, decide to build around clearly inferior workers. Hunter. And Orton. And John Cena. John Cena? Man, that guy was not, not, not for me - it was just gobsmackingly obvious that this was not a product in which I could remain invested. But also - I couldn't quit. I cant quit things.
So what was I going to do?
I was 35. It was 20 years ago. And what I did was this.
20 years ago today I hit publish on this blog for the first time. Every word, for better or worse, has been written by me (and not by the plagiarism machine which has wormed its way into daily life)
Sometimes, I was looking to be funny or to be shocking or to get clicks. I co-wrote a play that got produced and there was a window where I decided if there was a way to monetize my "voice" I needed to take a few chances in an attempt to get noticed.
For better. And for worse.
But mostly, the Counterfactual just fit in a space in my brain where I needed something to fit.
My life today is not my life from 20 years ago today. Different job. Different house in a different state. I'm married to someone I did not know existed 20 years ago. Today is not yesterday.
Except for this. There has always been this. Pretty much ever day. At least a little bit. For me, in my quiet moments.
I'm 55 years old. I've had all the stuff happen that happens. You know what happens. If it hasn't happened to you yet, it will. I know firsthand it's rare to get to end the story on your own terms.
20 years. 150 PPVs. 40 Wrestlemanias. John Cena retired this past weekend. Hulk Hogan died days before I published my final PPV. It's time to end the story.
The post prior to this was "active" links; the puzzle part of the booking still exists in my head (you can find the card for Survivor Series 2024, I've got a booking sheet filled out through Survivor Series 2025) and either I'll keep doing those things or I won't. And I'll either update those active links or I won't.
But the story is over. The last time is now. Tap, tap, tap.
Okay - there's one backdoor I'm building in.
If....it's Wrestlemania 50....and this platform still exists....and I've remained fully engaged with the booking...
Then I'll come back. One post for the build. One for the show.
That would be 10 years from now. I'd be 65 years old. It would be a heck of a 3 legged parlay.
Thanks for reading. Left to right. Line by line. I appreciate it.
Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.
(now...hit my music...)
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