Introduction

I’ve been watching professional wrestling since the late 1990s. In that time, I’ve seen some dizzying high points – and some stultifying lows to boot. Professional wrestling at its finest can inspire passion in its supporters that give them a life-long emotional connection. Similarly to following a sports team, everyone wants to get behind their favourites as they do battle in the ring, with the implicit comfort blanket that these are highly-trained athletes and even when the most dastardly villain enacts their most diabolical scheme, they’re not really trying to maim their opponent. It’s all a show, a spectacle, and that’s where the fun comes from – but the beauty is in making us forget it’s all an act, suspending disbelief like one would for any television show.

Over the years, I’ve maintained my own passion for professional wrestling and it’s no exaggaration to say it’s changed the course of my life. Thanks to pro wrestling, I met my friends in newLegacy Inc.,  which led me to meet a number of friends further from there who like nL.  I also owe my relationship with my best friend to professional wrestling. I’ve been fortunate enough to start my own wrestling podcast, Ruthless Aggression Relived, covering one of the most important periods in my wrestling fandom. And through one of my other major passions, video gaming, I’ve enjoyed hundreds of hours of fun almost every year since the turn of the millennium playing out and creating storylines and fantasy matches on almost every gaming console I’ve owned.

But it’s always bothered me that I have so many gaps in my wrestling knowledge. I love being able to share this passion with people, but I so often find myself admitting, “Ah, sorry, I don’t know much about that company,” or, “I’ve got a real blind spot for that wrestler,” or words to that effect. I have decided it’s time to do something about that. And in starting this blog, I intend to hold myself accountable and not only watch the wrestling events I have less knowledge of, but hopefully also gain better appreciation for them and the wrestlers who appear on the card.

What this blog is and is not

First things first, let’s get one thing out of the way: I can’t review every single episode of every professional wrestling show ever. It is simply impossible to have a normal human life and watch wrestling all day every day. I’d go mad! Besides, it’d be way less fun that way. The simple fact of the matter is this: there is more professional wrestling than it is possible for a single person to watch in a lifetime, and the amount of professional wrestling that exists only increases on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong, if I was able to do this for a living, I’m sure I’d be able to work something out, but I’m quite fond of my sanity and my interpersonal relationships so I’ll be doing as little as possible to compromise either, thank you very much.

Instead, I’m going to focus on the wrestling supercards, the mega events, the pay-per-views, the premium live events (if you’re a pervert). Call them what you will, they’re the big events where storylines usually crescendo. In the earliest days this is going to create some slight lack of narrative cohesion as these events were often months apart at a time, meaning characters could have radically changed as the major story beats often happened on television. With a shift to a pay-per-view-focused model in the 1990s, storylines are usually recapped at these supercard events meaning you can generally watch a couple of events per month and fully grasp everything that’s going down.

I know some purists will cry, “But, L. T.! You’ll miss some classic moments that happened on free TV that way!” and, yes, you are right, I will. But – again – I need to preserve my sanity, my enjoyment and my free time. If I aim to watch all the TV episodes as well as the supercards, I’ll never see this through. There’s just too much – and, we need to be honest, a lot of it’s not very good. I think there is merit to watching the TV episodes if you’re having a specialised focus. For Ruthless Aggression Relived, I always watch the TV episodes for full and proper context so I can make informed statements about what has been going on. If I were to decide I wanted to watch every episode of Raw, that’s a lengthy task but it’s a focused goal. But, I’m sorry, I can’t watch every episode of wrestling TV from the 1980s to the present day. I just can’t do it and, by golly, you can’t make me!

I’m not going to do in-depth match rundowns for the matches on these events, running through the moves and spots. Not here, anyway. I’m happy to do those on podcasts because it’s appropriate for the medium and I like to think it helps you visualise what I’m describing. On paper, however, it’s surprisingly dry. As pertains to this blog, I’m more interested in how something made me feel. If I really liked something, hopefully that will come across – and equally hopefully that will encourage some of you to check out matches and events you may have missed too.

I’ll be primarily focused on the major North American wrestling promotions since the 1980s, specifically the beginning of the modern age of professional wrestling, June 6th 1982. I appreciate that’s a WWE-focused date but I have to start somewhere. In some cases, to be candid, the footage either does not exist or is not readily available for a number of promotions I’d really like to cover. Available video footage of good quality is very sparse for World Class Championship Wrestling, so too is this the case for Smoky Mountain Wrestling, though both are important to 80s and 90s wrestling, respectively. I’ll probably be able to pick and choose a handful of shows from those companies to cover but it is perhaps wise if we consider those bonuses. In time, I would like to mainly cover the history of World Wrestling Entertainment, World Championship Wrestling, Extreme Championship Wrestling, Total Nonstop Action, Ring of Honor and All Elite Wrestling. Of course, I am intelligent enough to accept most of these companies are a long, long, long way off my start point. There’s no rush – they’re not going anywhere.

I’ll be giving matches and events ratings but please understand I am under no delusion that my opinion is any more valid than any other wrestling fan’s. I happen to have an extremely simple rating system which is as follows:

1/5	Bad. A match with no merit.
2/5	Poor. A match that had the slightest glimmer of promise but just couldn’t deliver.
3/5	Okay. A perfectly serviceable match. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing to write home about.
4/5	Good. A match that has a lot of fun elements to it but perhaps didn’t quite hit all the high notes or was let down by one or two minor details.
5/5	Great. Highly recommended, a match that won’t disappoint, with everything firing on all cylinders.

I may also give the following personal awards:

DUD	Terrible. An appalling stinker of a match, or an excuse therefore. Avoid if possible.
STAR	Excellent. A must-see instant classic. The best of the best.
X	Unrated. Sometimes you just can’t give a rating for whatever reason. In case that happens, we have this.

One last thing this blog is not: a moral arbiter of right and wrong. Look, a lot of wrestlers are very bad people. It’s something every wrestling fan has to accept. A lot of your favourite wrestlers will probably have some rather sizable skeletons in their closet – and, to be frank, a couple of them keep the skeletons on the front lawn. Wrestling is full of fiends, criminals, liars, bigots, bullies and sleazes. In covering the matches of these wronguns, I’m not defending their actions as a human being outside of the ring. I am merely reviewing their contributions to the industry. However, that doesn’t mean I’ll always be able to prevent myself from taking a pop at them. It’s still my blog, after all, and if I want to insult someone for being a piece of human refuse then I’m going to.

And that’s all a rather long-winded way of saying this much: I’m going to watch some wrestling, I’m going to write about that wrestling and hopefully you will enjoy what I have to write! Much love!

L. T., 30 June 2026