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The Caliber Winfield Super Terrific Wrestling Hour

May 3, 2017 | Posted by Caliber Winfield

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Greetings, all.

Hope all is well with you funky cats.

Can anyone explain why the hell the Randy vs Bray isn’t for the WWE title? And why Jinder is in the running? I mean…what the hell. Here’s to hoping the House of Horrors makes up for the terrible match at WM.

If there’s any questions you guys wanna ask and have featured here in the opening, feel free to ask them in the comments section, or hit me up via email, [email protected].

Alright, let’s get into it, head back to the Monday Night Wars, and the glorious experiences of a young Caliber Winfield.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with the first two issues, I broke into the business via WWE, and my loyalty to the company, for better, or for worse, was always solid. As the Monday Night Wars began, despite my love for the nWo, Raw always came first.

I remember being so damn jealous that Nitro was 2 hours, and was overcome with joy when Raw began at 8:57pm, instead of 9. That meant I was getting a WHOLE 3 minutes more of action, baby. And to the 11 year old Caliber, that was grand.

Once Diesel & Razor left, the guy who took their place as my favorite was Psycho Sid. I was never much into guys like Bret or Shawn as a kid, because who cared about match quality? I wanted to see dudes get powerbombed, dammit. The week before WrestleMania 13, I started a fandom with a wrestler that can only happen when you’re a kid, and that wrestler was Stone Cold Steve Austin. I just thought there was something cool about the guy. By the time Summerslam 1997 rolled around, my love for the Texas Rattlesnake was off to the races, and I was foaming at the mouth to see him deliver Stunners to all the officials. A lot of you kids today may not know this, but Stone Cold’s anti-authority deal started slowly. First it was giving a Stunner to Jim Ross, and then Sgt. Slaughter, which is one of my all time favorites. That’s actually when I realized wrestling was catching on, because that following Tuesday a kid came up and said “Did you see Austin deliver the Stunner to Slaughter? That was awesome!”. Keep in mind this was one of the same kids who use to give me shit for liking wrestling. But now it was becoming the rage.

The first big sign that wrestling was becoming huge was when I was at the mall and a sporting goods store was selling Stone Cold & DX t-shirts. I lost my mind, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, sure, now a days there’s so much wrestling merch it’s insane. But back then? There was NOTHING. You only got shirts at events. And you never saw people in wrestling merch.

Stone Cold vs The Rock was awesome, even if you didn’t get much in the way of matches, due to his neck. But you still had The Rock getting paged “316” and Stone Cold throwing the belt into the river. Then you had Austin driving his truck into the match, and handing out Stunners on top of it, which was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Now, once we were into 1998/1999, my friends, my school, we were divided. Everyone was a fan of both, but you were either a Rock fan, or a Stone Cold fan. It was like Hogan/Warrior back in the day. The Rock was truly the personification of cool, and all the dudes who dug him at my school grew those exact sideburns. I always dug the Rock, but when he was heel. I wasn’t much for him as a babyface, because he couldn’t be his full potential. Now when he went Hollywood in 2003, that was fucking magic.

Eventually Raw went to 2 hours, and I was as happy as happy can be. When WrestleMania 14 came around, I was in full blown love with the WWE. The Undertaker vs Kane match was a bout that I looked forward to more than almost any match before. They had such a fantastic build up, with ‘Taker refusing to hit Kane, until he flips his shit. I’d never seen a build like that, and having Kane come out and squash people, that was awesome. Having Stone Cold win the title was one of my happiest moments as a young wrestling fan, because he was a guy that I got in on the ground floor with and followed, back when the WWE title was a big fucking deal. There was none of this ’11 time champion’ crap, except for a guy like Flair, guys didn’t win it within weeks of debuting, it really meant something.

As much as I dug Shawn & Hunter’s version of DX, I was so stoked to have X-Pac come back, as well as the New Age Outlaws join up. That’s always been my favorite version of DX, and the one that worked the best.

As I said before, wrestling was basically dead, and it sprung back to life in 1998. I remember before the boom really hit, I was at a restaurant with my family, and I of course had my Stone Cold hat and Austin 3:16 shirt on, when the chef came out to the table and said “I’m sorry sir, we can’t serve you, and that’s the bottom line, because Stone Cold said so”. I popped like a motherfucker for that, because NOBODY watched wrestling, let alone a stranger just walking up and sharing the bond. Wearing that same merch to school had me protested by a group of Christians there, because they thought my shirt was blasphemous, as the name Austin was related to me, and they had no idea about Stone Cold, so they thought I had the shirts made up myself. You best believe I played along.

People can say what they want about the Finger Poke of Doom, but January 4th, 1999 was one of the most exciting nights in my history as a fan. I had Nitro on in one room, and Raw on in the living room. All of my friends, myself included, were big Mick Foley fans, and news about him winning the title was released a week prior. Despite that, my friends and I couldn’t believe it, and we watched the match, not really sure if what we heard was true. So, I kept running back and forth between the rooms, as I’d shout out what was going on to them, and vice versa. I remember jumping in excitement over the nWo getting back together, and the room exploding when Mick won. That was a hell of a night.

I stayed with wrestling for quite a few years, and didn’t really stop being loyal until a little after 2002. While I’m clearly a lifelong fan, nothing will ever replace, or top the experience of being a wrestling fan during the late 90’s. It was just so much fucking fun. Especially as a 15 year old, because you were exactly who they were catering to. Of course, if you go back now, there’s a ton of bad shit in the Attitude Era, but at 15, it was pure gold, baby. For those who weren’t there to experience it, I honestly can’t tell you how popular it was. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something as popular as wrestling was at one point. It was EVERYWHERE. I remember one night coming home from a friend’s house, and Raw had just started. Driving through my neighborhood you could see into plenty of living rooms, and I’ll never forget this. Of the 7 I could see into, 5 were watching Raw. That’s how over the whole thing was.

What a fucking blast.

Samoa Joe [C] vs Shinsuke Nakamura
Man, Joe has really come into his own. He was always of the bad ass persona, but with age, he’s perfected it, and you truly believe it. He gets on Shin real hard, and believable as fuck. Once Shin goes for the comeback, you believe it, because he’s all knees, punches, and kicks, and I love how Joe keeps cutting him off, putting him down with something hard, only for Nak to keep it up. They have a great finishing sequence that has you buying into the near-falls hook, line, and sinker. This was a great match, very hard fought, and old school in it’s simplicity.
Shinsuke wins the NXT Championship from Samoa Joe at 21:16 with a running knee | ****1/4

Any questions, comments, drunk-ramblings, feel free to send them my way, I always dig hearing from you, the beautiful people.
Twitter: @CaliberWinfield
Instagram: @CaliberWinfield
I post almost daily with workout related stuff to help you cats out, along with what’s coming down the pike via the MME, and general pop culture from the 80s and 90s that I can’t seem to let go of.
Email:[email protected]
If you just can’t wait until next week, you can also find me at these fine places:
The Man Movie Encyclopedia: The Hall of Burly – Vol. 1 – A collection of the first 19 MME articles written for 411. You get all the classics like Commando, Robocop, and Die Hard, not to mention bad-assery such as Point Break and They Live. Beyond that, you also get two new articles. My Top 5 favorite action movies, and what I believe to be the Top 5 most over-the-top scenes in action movie history. I won’t lie, it’s the greatest self=help/martial arts instruction book of all time.

My Summer Vacation At Camp Crystal Lake – My brand new ebook that’s become so popular it’s charting on the album sales charts. I cover the Friday The 13th franchise in Man Movie Encyclopedia fashion, followed up by a few list-based articles, chronicling my favorite kills, moments from the franchise, and a few other subjects. $3 via amazon, or simply email me and get it for $2, either way, it’ll probably change your life.

Caliber Winfield On The Facebook –
Anything new that I do you guys can find here. Last I checked I was at 54 likes, which is pretty fucking solid in my book. However, I saw Joe Lee and A Bloody Good Time were over 110. C’mon now, we can’t let them beat us, can we?!
Mercy Is For The Weak Podcast –
Along with my co-host, we cover everything from movies, music, TV, video games and pop-culture, to pro-wrestling, and all things burly. We’re on hiatus at the moment, but there’s a decent catalog to go through.
All Things Caliber –
I merged my wrestling website into my long standing website that’s been up for over 6 years. Anything under the sun, I’ve written about it.

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