Ken Anderson Recalls Becoming a Wrestling Fan at Age 20

For a lot of the talent in the pro wrestling business, the bug bit early, and they were fans as kids. In a recent conversation with Shane Douglas, however, Ken Anderson revealed that he only really became a fan in 1998, during the Attitude era. He was age 20, and WWE (then WWF) was arguably at its peak of pop cultural penetration.

Anderson, who recently debuted for Wrestling REVOLVER, had tried watching as a kid, but it didn’t quite work out. “When I was really little I watched briefly,” he said. “I remember the cartoon on Saturday was what initially got me into it, and then like Saturday Night’s Main Event would be on I don’t think it was a regular show, right? It was just like every once in a while. And my dad would let me stay up and watch that. And then I just sort of fell off of it, and I fell into the ‘it’s all fake, you know.'”

A friend of his who was a wrestling fan finally forced Anderson to actually watch WWE, and…”so I’m watching and he goes, ‘Watch this. Watch this.’ And I heard this glass break and this guy with a shaved head drove to the ring in a pickup truck and he had a six-pack of beer and he was like, you know, stunner-ing people and and I was like, okay, that guy’s kind of cool.”

Stone Cold Steve Austin was but a gateway for Anderson, who further recalls, “And then my roommates at the time would watch wrestling and so I would, like, ‘Tell me when Stone Cold’s on and I’ll come down and watch it,’ you know. And then I would come down and I would watch and then I’d see the Undertaker, and that guy’s kind of cool too. And then I slowly started getting sucked into [it], and then within weeks I was bought in completely, and I was, like, why did I miss this? Why have I been missing this all these years?”

Anderson would make his professional debut the following year, in 1999. That same year, The Matrix hit theaters, and the name “Mr. Anderson” started to stick.