Welcome to the latest Roundtable discussion here at iFight365.com where this week, we’re asking the question: What was the one moment, match, promo or angle that hooked you into being a wrestling fan?

Martin Smith: I started watching wrestling when I was about four years old. I was hooked on the characters and the “real” element of the matches and storylines. I’ll always remember Shawn Michaels as a young blonde tag team wrestler, Davey Boy Smith as the hero and the likes of Skinner, Earthquake, Sgt. Slaughter, Mr. Perfect and more being in the ring.

I loved the whole feel to watching wrestling. The whole good guy versus bad guy scenario.

Of course, as I grew older and older, I realised wrestling was infact not like it said on the tin. It was “fake”. My interest in the sport wandered into oblivion. It was on-par with the likes of Coronation Street, Friends, Eastenders and any films at the cinema – it was “fake”. Eventually, I stopped watching. I had grown out of wrestling in about 1995.

In 1999, I visited a relative (who I have only seen once in my life) and they had the old “WWF Warzone” game for the Playstation. They’d just bought the Playstation, so that was the only game they had. What?! No Worms!? No Duke Nukem!?! Ah hell, we just had to go and play WWF Warzone.

I wasn’t so much hooked, but I liked the game. So, I decided to buy it. I got involved with the characters, their moves and the matches. However, I swore that I would never get back into watching that “fake” sport.

Until I was having lunch one day and amongst the other programmes on television, I spotted WWF Livewire. There was ten minutes to run, so what would the harm be? Nothing else on television, so I might as well. It was that ten minutes that hooked me into watching again.

The last ten minutes of Livewire featured a storyline where a woman was fighting the men. Hang on, A WOMAN was fighting THE MEN? The storyline? Chyna fights her way into the 1999 Royal Rumble by taking on the Corporation in a battle royal for the Number 30 spot. It was brilliant. That’s how simple it was for me to get hooked again and that is why wrestling companies today, particularly TNA, need to realise that less is often better.

From there, I watched the 1999 Royal Rumble and I saw The Rock smash Mick Foley with a chair over and over again. The rest, as they say, is history.

It’s weird how that story fell into place but in hindsight, without my relative buying the game, me going on that day, buying the game myself, WWF Livewire being on at the time I was eating my lunch and the storyline with Chyna being the main one on Raw that week, I probably wouldn’t have followed it again.

I was that close to closing that chapter of my life.

Phil Lowe: Watching wrestling growing up as a kid in the 1980s here in the UK was a million miles away from the product put out on TV today. I remember watching ‘World of Sport’ on a Saturday lunchtime with family over fish and chips. To those of you in America, I may as well go the whole hog here and say that I followed it with a spot of tea and wore a bowler hat.

I still remember watching the WoS shows, but I can’t recall one single match or angle that had me hooked. It wasn’t until the late 80s when I started to watch some WWF shows (and satellite TV back then wasn’t anywhere near ‘the norm’ as it is today) and also some WCW shows which had a late night midweek slot which I would record and watch over breakfast the next morning before school.

I don’t remember watching WCW as a kid and thinking “wow” on any occasion. I enjoyed watching Sting and a few of the other babyfaces but when I compared it to a WWF tape I either bought or had friend or relative record for me, WCW to me just didn’t seem like as big an event as even a taping of WWF Primetime would.

Angles such as Shawn Michaels superkicking Marty Janetty stand out and attending Summerslam 92 live is still fresh in my mind. From WrestleMania III onwards I would casually watch shows, but I was never a Hogan fan and didn’t see the big deal about him. I think that’s the case for a lot of non-Americans as well.

But for me, the one event that got me hooked on wrestling was WrestleMania VI and Hulk Hogan being beaten by The Ultimate Warrior. I was a huge, huge Warrior mark, despite perhaps even as a kid knowing back then that he was freakin’ useless. But I was totally sold on the face paint, the energy and the AWESOME entrance music that I would still (ashamedly) pop for today.

Mark Bright: This is an easy question for me to answer. The moment that made me a wrestling fan for life and turned it into something I’d watch every week happened when I was 9 years old.

ITV used to show WCW Worldwide, with highlights of recent big shows and I’d watch it off and on but nothing really hooked me, until my favourite wrestler, Sting, lost the US title to Ravishing Rick Rude.

WCW had been doing an angle where Cactus Jack and Abdullah The Butcher came out with a huge box for Sting and at this particular event, which I believe was a Clash Of The Champions, they finally revealed what was behind it as World Champion Lex Luger jumped out of the box to attack Sting, taking out his knee with a wrench. Sting was “sent to hospital” and the announcement was made that Rude would win the title by forfeit if Sting didn’t make it back.

Throughout the show they had Eric Bischoff “by phone outside the hospital” giving updates on Sting. He JUST made it back to the building in time, raced down the ramp, got in a hot brawl with Rude, kicked out when Rude’s manager, Paul E. Dangerously hit him in the head with his giant mobile phone, fought back and got a couple of nearfalls. But Rude clipped the already injured knee and pinned him. I was fucking LIVID and just had to tune in the next week. And the week after that. And the week after that and on and on forever until Sting got his revenge.

Steve McLaren: There wasn’t really one thing that hooked me to be a wrestling fan. As a real youngster, I was more interested in people fighting than watchin Postman Pat. My favourite film as a child was Conan and I guess the thought of people beating the hell out of each other was fun to me back then (and it still is). When I no longer had Sky, I drifted out of wrestling until a few years later when we got Sky back.

It was right around the WrestleMania 14 period. The one guy I still remembered watching from back before we had the Sky turned off was The Undertaker. I was more drawn to his storyline with Kane, than I was to what Steve Austin was doing. I can still remember now, thinking, there is no way Undertaker can beat Kane, it’s impossible. Of course, when Undertaker did win, I “marked the hell out,” as they say. Even if Undertaker did lose, I doubt I’d never have continued to watch wrestling.

James Mustoe: Well I’ve been watching wrestling for such a long time that I can’t really remember what initially made me a fan as such. My earliest real memory of wrestling was watching Ice Train vs. some jobber on WCW on ITV one Saturday afternoon. Suffice to say as Ice Train was involved I don’t think this really counts as the moment that hooked me!

Moving forward a number of years, the match and card that really hooked me on wrestling again and in particular moved me towards the internet side of things was the Royal Rumble 2000 PPV and Cactus Jack vs. HHH in a Street Fight in particular. I watched this show with a load of mates (we were all about 15 at the time) and spent the entire evening drunkenly cheering for all the matches and various participants. Even through the alcoholic haze, the sheer brutality of the Street Fight stood out and I was hooked (again!) from then on. A lot has changed for me since then, but that card and match is still a defining moment for me as a wrestling fan…

Michael Campbell: I don’t think there was one particular moment that hooked me. I just always loved pro wrestling. I can’t remember not liking it and I can’t remember any one thing grabbing my attention, mainly because I usually saw only matches (on tape and then WCW’s TV shows) and angles came a little later for me. As a young ‘un, I was dazzled by Ricky Steamboat, Randy Savage, The Ultimate Warrior, Sting. Then Bret Hart, The Rockers, The British Bulldog and my favourite of all time, Mr Perfect.

Perhaps the first epic moment that springs to mind was The Ultimate Warrior’s clash with Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania VI. Back then, it was such a rarity for two babyfaces, especially of that magnitude, to be colliding on a big show. So although neither were my favourite (and I HATED Hogan), it still felt like a huge event. It didn’t pull me into this whole ‘rasslin’ nonsense, but I’m sure it helped emphasis why I was so into it.

At that age, I also recall being totally hooked by the Bret Hart/Roddy Piper Mania match for the IC title and in fact, Bret’s run throughout that entire year, especially as he took on Davey Boy Smith at Wembley Arena and then Shawn Michaels at the Survivor Series.

But the angles that I do remember that really, really had an impact included Jake the Snake Roberts getting his cobra to bite the Macho Man (holy crap, that was some terrifying stuff right there), the angle in WCW with Paul Heyman and the giant gift-wrapped box for Sting, and a couple of years later, Bret’s feud with Jerry Lawler kicking off. Their Summerslam 93 match was a particularly big event in my ten-year old eyes.

The one that really topped them all though, was Shawn Michaels superkicking Marty Jannetty through the Barbershop window. Damn, that was some serious stuff.

In later years, two things spring to mind that really rekindled my fading interest and should be mentioned. The first was accidentally catching the Bret Hart documentary, Wrestling with Shadows. And not long after, the match that really changed my perception forever, was Triple H’s Iron Man match with The Rock at Judgement Day 2000. For me, that bout was the one, that spoke to me as a teenager and really absorbed me back in the business. Everything about it was ingenuously put together and I could see that, even without knowing what it was I seeing. I still maintain that it’s one of the all time most horrifically underrated bouts.