Andre, Pro Wrestling and Me - Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing/Lower Middle Class Wrestling Fan

As some of you may know, I grew up w/ a very small pot to piss in. I had two parents with Masters' degrees, but their chosen fields and a nasty divorce left very little money around, and led to yours truly being forced into an Army ROTC scholarship to pay for college. That went...less than optimally.

But I did have cable TV, at least when mom paid the bill. And I had pro wrestling. From third grade to tenth grade, I was a FREAKISHLY huge fan of pro wrestling. I watched everything available on the telly. WWF would air a few times a week. WCCW would air late Saturday night, from 10-11, which my dad would let me stay up and watch. AWA would air Saturday morning. NWA would air early Saturday evening. And don't get me started on stumbling into WWF's Saturday Night Main Event specials that occasionally aired in place of SNL. Holy shit, that blew my mind. I remember that as the time that they rolled out King Kong Bundy as a world class heel.

I mean to say that I was INTO it. I ordered back issues of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. I bought a VCR copy of Lords of the Ring: Superstars and Superbouts (which somehow made it down to William & Mary). I bought fake blood and used it on my three WWF figures (Sheik, Volkoff and Hogan, which I kept and handed down to my kids). And I also played some weird dice game with wrestling, where you had a sheet for each wrestler and would roll to do "moves" to take down your opponent. We all loved having the Great Kabuki, b/c if you rolled 12, he would spit his colorful spray and you would win. So yeah, I was into it. Once I started liking girl's boobies more than Dusty Rhodes' boobies, or at least started getting opportunities to touch girl's boobies, my passion faded. But it was a big run for this guy.

I also made it to my share of pro wrestling events. My dad could not afford premier pro sports events frequently. We would cut coupons off of quarts of Tuscan milk boxes to get cheap Nets or Devils seats. But pro wrestling was more affordable. My first Yankees game in the Bronx wasn't until June 1990 and my first Knicks game at MSG wasn't until early 1991, but wrestling options were around, and generally more affordable.

The first wrestling event I ever saw was at Freehold High School. I think I was in the third grade. The headliner was Pat Patterson, who I didn't know at the time. I think there were 1-2 more "stars" there too. I remember liking it a lot. My second show was at Convention Hall in Asbury Park. There was a decent showing of stars there. The Iron Sheik was there, and my Iranian dad (who I realized in retrospect was a sneaky fan of celeb sightings) worked it hard to get me and him (but mostly him) backstage to meet the Sheik, who was from Tehran, like my dad. Security would not let us go backstage, but did legitimately go to look for the Sheik. While the Sheik did not come out, Salvatore Bellomo did. That was my childhood in a nutshell. It's like the Christmas when I wanted Mike Tyson's Punchout, and my mom got me Ring King.

But I digress. The main event of the evening that night was Greg Valentine vs. Andre the Giant. My dad let me run to the area where the wrestlers come out so I could get close. Valentine came out first. He was smug as hell, a classic heel in a fancy gown. And then Andre came out. The crowd went wild.  This was back when he still had the wild afro and wore the trunks w/o the shoulder strap. I got up to the barrier and he walked right in front of me, from right to left. The flashes illuminated his body as he stoically ambled to the ring. I touched his back as he passed me, patting him once. I still remember it. He was a real live superhero to me.

The third wrestling show of my life was when the AWA and NWA did some joint tour. I remember little b/c my dad bought the very worst seats in the Brendan Byrne arena. I remember that Ric Martel and Magnum TA both won separate matches. I brought my Kodak Disc to take pics. That went about as well as my tenure as an ROTC cadet.

So you can see why I am so pumped for this Andre doc. He was a legend I got to see up close and personal one time. As a famous football player once said: CAN'T WAIT.