This week with Caliber Winfield…

This week, I thought I’d keep the theme in house and go with wrestling, and talk about my favorite moments from when I was a kid. 

Before we get to the main event, I thought I’d dip into the mailbag. Of course, there’s only one letter in the mailbag, but I like sounding needed.

Man, anytime I see Goodfellas on TV, no matter where it’s at, I have to watch it from that point until it finishes. The scene in question is excellent, and definitely one of the greatest. For me, however, it has to be the scene where Todd, Dirk, and Reed head to the drug-dealers house to sell him baking soda. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a scene from Boogie Nights. It’s absolutely perfect. Alfred Molina is borderline psychotic from all the coke he’s smoking, playing Russian Roulette with himself and screaming about song order on an album while his Chinese house-boy lets off fire crackers. The tension just keeps building, as the music makes a perfect bed for everything taking place. It’s perfect. 

Anyone else who wants to be featured, hit me up at faucetofslfame@hotmail.com

Sure, as adults, as wrestling fans, we’re as passionate for it as anything. Well, almost anything. When you’re a kid and you’re a wrestling fan, there’s no half-in. You’re OBSESSED. You don’t miss a minute of the programming, you get all the action figures, you read all the magazines. Being a kid, and being
a wrestling fan is something I really hope my kid gets a chance to enjoy, if I ever have’em. He’ll rarely have more fun in his life.

For me, it started the night after the inaugural In Your House. I was flipping through the channels, I had one of those cable boxes where it had a list of about 10-15 channels in three rows, you’d click the channel, then flip the switch to the row you wanted, and bam! So as I was flipping I found some guy with curly hair beating the  hell out of a guy dressed like a king. He was swearing, and just losing his mind. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. From that point on, there was nothing greater.  My parents would go to church, and I’d have a match against the sofa pillow while I watched Superstars. I’d leap off the sofa, dropping the big elbow, knowing full well the pillow couldn’t continue.

I recall there was a time when Raw ended that I was so upset, I was in tears. You see, the upcoming PPV was going to be Nash vs Sid, lumberjack match. As Raw came to an end, Diesel was in the ring with his ‘jacks, and Sid was headed to the ring with his. Just as Sid stepped into the ring, it ended! I was SO upset that I seriously almost cried. At 11 years old, there just wasn’t anything worse. At 28 years old, that match, there just isn’t anything worse.

That’s something about being a kid that I miss. I didn’t care about match quality, I just wanted to see my favorite wrestlers beat the bad-guys. Razor Ramon was my favorite, and no one was cooler. End of story. I broke my foot in the 6th grade, so my mom would go to Crazy Mike’s Video every day and rent me a wrestling tape. She had explicit instructions to make sure the tape had a Razor Ramon match on it. If not, then something with Diesel. You can’t imagine my joy when she came home one day with a purchased, PURCHASED copy of WrestleMania 10! Are you kidding me? Razor Ramon is in a ladder match and I get to own it?! There was no greater.

I use to watch the PPVs scrambled, as I’m sure a lot of you did. I remember running home from hanging out with my friends because I absolutely HAD to see, or hear, Bret Hart vs Yankem, and Diesel vs Mabel. This was a must. I also watched the IYH where Bret took on Jean Pierre Lifiet. Now, one of the happiest days of my life was when my parents finally let me order a PPV. I set up a blanket, I had pizza, chips, soda, the works. I had my action figures ready, along with my WCW toy ring, which was way too big for my figures, and I was set. 

Survivor Series 1995, baby. 

We called them…and holy hell. We needed to have some crap called a “cable box”. A cable box?! What the hell is that? WHY? WHY?! But my mom, being the awesome mom that she is, risked many speeding tickets to get to the cable store in time to get a box. I don’t know what your guys’ looked like, but mine was about the size of a DVD player now. Or the size of a dreamcast, if you will. It had the red numbers for the channel, and when you’d order a PPV, the channels on the front of the box would flash. Was it awesome. I ended up having to get the replay at 8pm that night, but it didn’t matter. I was in heaven. 

Now, at the time, the WWE was all there was. WCW was crap. It was full of old guys who couldn’t cut it with the awesomeness of the ‘E. I’d occasionally watch a replay, but only for a laugh. So, you could imagine my absolute horror when I was 7 minutes into a call on the Ross Hotline, and found out that my boy, Razor Ramon was headed South! This could not be. I was heart broken. I mean, I’d just bought myself a sure fire chick-magnet piece of jewelry, the golden razor blade that said Razor Ramon on it. I’d…I’d look a fool to wear it if he was in WCW now.  I tore down all the Razor pictures in my room, feeling betrayal speed through my veins. But at least I had Diesel, I tried to comfort myself wi—aaah, you gotta be kidding me! I didn’t want to see my guys in WCW, losing to Hulk Hogan after getting hit with a woman’s shoe. Nothing good could come of this. 

But then…

The most excited I’d ever been as a kid was when Razor debuted on WCW, starting a war. I raced out to the family TV to change the channel and show my mom just what was going down. I mean, why weren’t they preempting all channels for this?! After a few months, it was like my dreams had come to fruition. Here they were, my guys, destroying WCW. Trying to burn it down to the ground. It did not get any better. Especially since I still believed that wrestling was real. My mom would never argue with me about that, but she’d ask me questions like

“How are Kevin & Scott making money if they aren’t working for WCW?”

“Duh, mom. They have Billionaire Ted! He’s a millionaire! He’s footing the bills! And WCW won’t call the cops because they know the nWo brings the ratings! They need them!”

As the years went by, my belief of it being real was dwindling. The last straw was when a friend of mine brought in a copy of the WON to the school, and I read about how Macho Man agreed to the 6-man match at Starrcade if he got the pin. The more I read, the more sense it made. Wrestling wasn’t on the real, and I finally turned to the smark side. with Raja’s old website as my homebase.

Of course, another pillar of one’s childhood wrestling memories is the wrestling video games, perhaps we’ll save that till next week. 

Thanks for reading, guys. Take it easy.

– Caliber

Str8 Gangster, No Chaser – Got an interview with Matt from Botchamania up, plus my thoughts on Extreme Rules, along with The Man Movie Encyclopedia, and 3 years worth of some alright. 

email: faucetofslfame@hotmail.com