Anyone that's ever read anything put out there by me is aware that my biggest interests are football and music. But I have to hold my hands up and say I have a guilty pleasure. I've had three periods of my life where I have had a love affair with professional wrestling.
Before you start, I'm very aware that the majority of 29 year old men that are still interested in this form of entertainment should probably have their hard drive examined. I know it's scripted. I know from the outside watching big guys fake fight in daft outfits for the purpose of a soap opera story line is frankly ridiculous. And it is ridiculous. I know it is. The enjoyment I get from it is something I cannot really explain in the same way I have previously explained a masterclass from David Silva or a lyric from Pete Doherty.
Similar to football and music, my awakening to wrestling began in 1994. When I think about my earliest memories, I cannot think much about starting school, but I can remember being sat with my Dad in the Main Stand when City beat Tottenham 5-2 in October 1994. I can remember hearing, "Whatever" by Oasis in December 1994. But first, I can remember Royal Rumble 1994. It was there I saw Yokozuna and many other wrestlers gang up and take out a character that I really took to. The Undertaker. In a time where most wrestlers were larger than life individuals with bright colours and over the top shout-y promos, The Undertaker was dark, mysterious and left the talking to his manager Paul Bearer. This mysteriousness is probably what attracted to me to Slipknot as a 13 year old before they took their masks off.
He was off screen for sometime, and other performers and future Hall Of Famer's Bret Hart and Razor Ramon got me further hooked on to this form of entertainment. The Undertaker returned at Summerslam in August 1994 to have a match versus an imposter Undertaker hired by The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase. For years I believed this to be some of the most fascinating bits of entertainment, only to watch it on the WWE Network awhile back to realise it was in essence crap. But I was young and excited. The Undertaker was my favourite and I looked at him on TV in the same way I would look at Uwe Rosler, Niall Quinn or Keith Curle. My Dad took me to the NEC in Birmingham to watch it. He hated it, but I can still remember the feeling when the lights went off and The Undertaker's spine chilling entrance began. City weren't exactly giving me plenty of thrills in 1995, so this made up for it.
I've always had a good memory when it comes to useless information. I can almost track things in the world/life because I remember who City were playing round that time - maybe not to the same extent but I can almost do that with wrestling too. I stopped watching around 1996 for reasons I'm not sure. History tells me that the WWE was at a low point around this time, as Diesel and Razor Roman, two of the biggest characters of the era defected to rival company WCW. Around this same time, the amount I went to City decreased a lot. Not because we were going into our worst point in over 120 years of history, but because I was playing football myself at a later slot in the day for my local team. As good as my memory is, no wrestling and football have left me with a void in 1997 and 1998.
The 2nd love affair started in early 1999 (ironically as City went on our great run to get into the play offs and then win the final). I'm not sure what it was that got me watching again, but it was different to the show I had stopped watching. And I was hooked. It was a bit odd to see people like The Ringmaster now being Stone Cold Steve Austin, the face of the company. Some young guy called The Rock was a big deal (although no one would have predicted how big Dwayne would become). And my favourite The Undertaker had transformed from an almost Western mortician good guy to a massive goth bad guy in his role as the Lord of Darkness amongst his group - The Ministry.
I won't go into it too deeply on here, but this was during The Attitude Era - a time where WWE had shed it's family entertainment which got a 6 year old Liam hooked into a non-PG product aimed at teenagers and young men. The language and the content went hand in hand for a generation who watched South Park. I was 11 and the WWE was the most exciting thing on TV. And loads of my mates watched it too. When I was younger I was one of the few lucky ones who had Sky TV and I watched it all on my own. But I can remember loads of my mates watching Raw on Friday nights, staying up for Pay Per Views (PPVs) if we were off school. I used to set our VHS for the PPVs that were on during term time and I'd pass the tape round my friends during the next week.
My favourite PPV of all time is Fully Loaded 1999. The card for the night had big personalities and great characters littered throughout it and the main event was the top good guy Steve Austin vs The Undertaker - the top bad guy, in a first blood match. In hindsight, an 11 watching two grown man fighting til someone bleeds isn't probably on, but of course you didn't care at that age.
The Undertaker took a further change after a bit of time off to recover from injuries. His evil massive goth character was in need of a revamp, and in May 2000 at Judgement Day he made his return, now as a Harley Davidson biker character - a character closer to the real life Mark Calloway. He interrupted the last few seconds of a 60 minute Iron Man match between The Rock and the new biggest bad guy, Triple H. He attacked Triple H and his entourage who were beating down The Rock. The Undertaker came down to the ring on a motorbike with Kid Rock's "American Badass" song playing and basically beat up about 7 guys on his own - the sort of situation which is so unlikely to happen in the real world, but it perfectly acceptable in wrestling. Even 17 years later, I don't think I've seen a crowd react to a return to the ring like this (although The Hardyz coming back at Wrestlemania 33 was huge) - if you've never seen it, check it out.
Around 2001/2002 I lost interest again. The Attitude Era effectively ended when they decided to turn Steve Austin into a bad guy at Wrestlemania 17, and the "Invasion" story which happened for the following 6 months is widely considered the worst booking (sorry to use wrestling terminology, I've tried my best to avoid it throughout!) ever in wrestling. I was 13/14, music was becoming more important to me and as I was fortunate to look about 10 years older than I was at the time, I was the guy to turn to to buy alcohol. And sitting round parks drinking £1.89 4 litre cider seemed more interesting than wrestling...
And then we fast forward a lot to January 2014. Someone on my Facebook had shared a post from Mick Foley. Mick was one of my heroes 1999/2000 as Mankind, and his book "Have A Nice Day" was and is a great read, probably the first widespread publication to acknowledge wrestling being fake and gave an insight to every aspect about wrestling. Mick had slated the company for not putting Daniel Bryan in the Royal Rumble - 20 years after I first saw The Undertaker. I found this very interesting - someone so respected slagging off the company that he's always going to be connected with. In football terms it's like reading that Steven Gerrard has called Jurgan Klopp a waste of space, or something. Why has he said this? What's happened? So I did a bit of reading and watched Raw for the first time in 13 years. It was a different show to what I was used to. The language and content was a lot safer, but the athleticism was much improved. Without watching it all the time, I was interested in it again so I stayed up and watched Wrestlemania 30.
I could see Bray Wyatt had a big future in the company, and was really impressed with the three members of The Shield. But for me and many others the stand out moment was Brock Lesnar vs The Undertaker. Yes, him again. 20 years after I first started watching, The Undertaker was still as big and relevant as ever. His career actually started in the WWE in late 1990 and from then to 2014 he had a record of 21 victories to no losses at Wrestlemania - the biggest event of the year. The Streak as it was known had become a centrepiece match of wrestling, as big as a title match. It was thought that it would never end, but at this years event, Brock Lesnar beat The Undertaker. It was shocking, I remember feeling shocked and if you've never seen the faces of people seconds after the 3 count I encourage you to go to Google or YouTube and seek them out.
The mystery of The Undertaker had never gone away either. He spoke more than he did in the early 90's but he was still The Undertaker - he never broke character.
His performances were few in the years since I got back into it, however his appearance at Wrestlemania was always something to look forward to, despite the ending of The Streak. Fans fantasized about dream matches for him vs John Cena or Sting and now in his 50's fans speculated when he would retire.
In the build up to Wrestlemania 33 this last Sunday I scratched my head a bit about what was going to be the headline event for the night. As more matches went past I was thinking "When are they going to put on 'Taker vs Reigns?" About 2 hours into the 5 hour spectacle I wondered if they were going to go on last, and if they did, then would this mean the last match for The Undertaker? Well it looks that way.
As the match went back and forth, gradually Reigns had more control - the hinted at the Stone Cold heel turn (becoming a bad guy) vs The Rock at Wrestlemania 17 with chair shots to the grounded Undertaker and eventually Reigns pinned The Undertaker. Almost 27 years at the top in WWE over.
He took his hat, coat and gloves off and left them in the ring as he made one more walk up the entrance ramp. I wasn't emotional about it (in fact, I was bollocksed, I was on the train to Arsenal away at 10:20am and it was 5am the following morning by this point) but in the days since I've felt quite reflective that one of my first heroes has finally called it a day.
In footballing terms he's like the Buffon of wrestling; always reliable, been on top for decades and very much loved by those that respect everything they have achieved. They've been there through different eras of the sport but still maintain their popularity and relevance - probably a bigger achievement than any award, belt or cup.
Even if I fall out of love with wrestling again, I won't ever forget The Undertaker.
