Here's some old school memories I can recall as a fan growing up.
I met Randy'macho man' Savage at a GNC Store in Skokie, Illinois. he was there because later that night he was going to be wrestling Crush in a falls count anywhere in the building match at the Rosemont Horizon(have no clue what the building is called today).I was working at the time for a place called Schmidt's office Supply company and had to make 'unofficial' stops at the owner's wife's little company. me and my immediate supervisor Mike were going to that show at the Rosemeont Horizon as his sister worked for the group that books all acts in the horizon(wrestling, concerts, etc have to go thru this firm).
So knowing Savage was gonna be there I wrote my schedule out to make sure i was in Skokie right around the time of the appearance. This was when i was still what you would call a 'mark who was getting a clue here, getting a clue there'. This was probably my first real smack at being 'star struck because I was in line in the store and Savage simply walked in the front door and walked right by me. I was shocked by the fact i was taller than him but to me then, he just looked 'massive'.
I felt like jackie gleason in the honeymooners 'ubb ubb ubaa ubba ubba'...i did at the time just get a tape of ICW from 1981 with him on it, so when it became my turn I asked him about the 'miss macho man contest'( which i've put on my facebook profile thanks to youtube).
if you could've seen the look of shock when i asked that, it was priceless. he never broke from his "ooohh yeah' voice, which really is that voice all the time. he asked me how i was able to get it and I just said someone had sent me the tape as a gift.
later that night, i get off work, go home change into other clothes and head back to work to pick up Mike. I did not, and repeat did not want to spend money on over priced beers at the Horizon. so i stopped at a little store and bought these huge cans of Fosters lager that were on sale. on the way to the show Mike and I had a few and we had another stabnding in line and I snuck 2 in by putting them in the inside pockets of my black leather jacket. We weren't searched by security which thank God cause had we, we would've been 86'd as fast as we got in there for trying to sneak beer in there.
This is where I first got the hint about how fans were 'marks'. another match on this show was Ludvig Borga(pic is on this page) against Lex Luger. Needless to say, i wasn't one of the ones who wanted to jump on the "Lex Express" and knew alittle bit about Borga's background(thanks to someone sending me an issue of the wrestling observer, hence, the get a clue here, get a clue there).Mike and I were front row in a corner where they had the 'cage' stacked up for the main event.
I always liked the brawling heel guys anyway, you name them. Hansen, Brody, Dick Slater, Terry Gordy, terry Funk, Mark Lewin, Kevin Sullivan, etc. so Borga was right up there for me and when i started cheering for him, a woman next to me starts bitching me out for not wanting to cheer for Luger. "don't you like america? How can you cheer for a guy like that"? I tried to explain to the woman that it wasn't that i didn't like america, i simply liked Borga more. "Luger's from Chicago, you should cheer for him". I said back to her. "So are the road warriors and the one man gang". mentioned the one man gang and I got "who"? needless to say that was my first example of how some fans don't watch all the wrestling companies that came thru Chicago, some just stick with one company. trying to explain it to the woman was..well...in a word...useless. she had no clue that there was a 5 hour block of wrestling on saturday nights on an independent station right where? in Chicago. "I only watch WWF". sigh...You see what I was dealing with, right?
After that I hid the remaining beers under our seats, i had swiped acouple plastic cups and when security wasn't watching I'd simply pour me another cup. slid another can to Mike and he did the same thing, so to anyone around us, it looked like we had the never ending cups of beer. fuck if i'm gonna walk all the way up the isle, stand in this piss ass long line for a cup of beer that costed 4 bucks.
Savage vs Crush came and it went around the building and I the little mark I was bought a randy savage shirt at the show, the action came by us and randy saw me, pointed at me and said "oohh yeah, watch this", and then bodyslammed crush right on the piled up fencing of the cage. that was the spot of the night, right in front of us.
Mike, on the other hand fell into drunken lust with, of all people, Luna Vachon(who was managing Bam bam Bigelow in a match against Doink the Clown). He was trying to fawn on her before the match started and I made some crack, I think it was something along the lines of her face is so ugly she was on the side of the swing that faced the wall.
needless to say, that got Luna's attention and she started yelling at me as Bigelow's standing in the ring watching. he walked over to where we were and as he was in the ring watching I'm yelling all sorts of stuff at Luna(which is what was meant to happen, she did her job well enough for people to yell at her). I made Bigelow crack up when i said "Luna, you're so ugly that on halloween, you open the door, kids give you candy". security came and did the keep her and I seperated and little did I know then that what i did was what she did every night, just incite some fan at every house show...
I did...wind up buying two of them over priced f'n beers too...but at that point it was worth it as it was a fun time.
Bill Watts's UWF ran the U.I.C. Pavilion one time, it was the same building that Crockett's NWA ran, and since I always went to the NWA shows, I'd get the same front row seat, so same for this show which featured, the sheepherders vs the Lightning Express, and Terry Gordy vs Dr. Death Steve Williams.
Tim Horner and especially Tracey Smothers, just never got over with me. Smothers to this day to me has one of the most, worst promo skills ever. "like a duck on a june bug", "if we can't git along we gotta git it on'. and that jaw jacker elbow off the top buckle, the worst finisher I ever seen. So you can guess who i was cheering for and getting berated by fans around me cause I 'had the nerve to cheer for the bad guys'. I'm sure they really were mad when I was cheering for Gordy and kept yelling for Gordy to get a chair.
Gordy came to our area and nobody would give him a chair, the ring attendant took the 'chair' that was supposed to be used in the match away from the ringside area. So i just upped and tried to handy Gordy my chair...which actually almost got me ejected from the building..I guess (at that time)it was a 'no no' for fans to hand wrestlers weapons. Thank God ECW never ran that building, LOL!
Fans who are indeed total 'marks' can get so mad over the dumbest of things, try to help Gordy out and fans wanted to beat me up for it, LOL.
Since 'marks' seem to be the theme, let's now go to Durham, NH at the whittmore center for a live WWF show. this had Ron Simmons doing the Farooq character against Tony Anthony, who was known as the Dirty White Boy, but was doing the plumber thing in WWF(should've went with his DWB as it would've went farther but as usual McMahon has a habit of flopping on a good thing). The debut of the new blackjacks two nights before their debut on RAW was here too.
This is where the "mark syndrome" comes in. Me,Dave(who I speak about in my indy memories) and kevin were second row, sneaking in behind us were these guys wearing NWO shirts and they had no clue who Tony Anthony was, i did and was wearing my Smokey Mountain Wrestling shirt (which did get Anthony's attention..when I asked him for an autograph after the show he asked how I knew about SMW, etc etc which made for a cool deal). when Simmons comes out these NWO shirt wearing guys start really hammering Ron with wisecracks...Now me at this time being more 'knowledgeable' had promised Dave and kevin i wasn't gonna make the marks look clueless as I did at alot of shows...But Kevin was getting pissed..dave was getting real angry and kevin finally said to me "Bill, get them". I said "are you sure? you get pissed when i do this and I..". "Get them, fuck what i said, just get em".
So I spun around and said "you clowns have, ANY Idea who Farooq is"? the blank looks said it all and went on "you watch WCW but you have no clue that a former WCW World tag team champion and former WCW world champion is indeed you're you're making fun of"!? They actually had no idea as they were part of the 'new craze' of fans because of the monday night wars..So in my usual 'cheerful, pleasant, always willing to help out manner' that I have, I said "before you rip on a guy, get online and do some fucking research you morons, now shut the fuck up".
kevin was cracking up, Dave had this big smile like "yeah Bill showed them up". and when the new blackjacks came out I knew who they were. kevin looked at me and said "ok, don';t fuck with me, just tell me who that is teaming with bradshaw". I looked and I knew. "Barry Windham, he teamed with Mike Rotunda and " and that was all kevin needed. I guess Blackjack lanza who was to be their manager didn't do house shows.
Funny part about that night...of all the people I get a picture taken with(that was printed in the wrestling edge newsletter and i got many cracks on),tracey smothers who was doing the freddie joe floyd character. everyone knew i had a huge dislike for him and he was the only 'picture friendly' guy after the show, go figure.
