By the tail-end of public school I was one of the tens of thousands of people worldwide who was absolutely obsessed with the underground Internet phenomenon of Backyard Wrestling.
I initially discovered Backyard Wrestling by accident through fellow public school classmates in Grade 6 and 7. We created a quasi pro-wrestling/MMA shoot backyard group that grappled on trampolines. I was in the Wolfpac group alongside my factions members, adorned with an old wife-beater shirt turned into a NWO shirt thanks to my friend Tyler's collection of red model paint.
In this shoot Backyard Wrestling fed we wrestled for real and the back-stabbing was real. Very easily you could show up to the event as a member of a group just to have your faction turn on you at one point during the event in a shoot back-stab moment. Looking back on it, the shoot moments were pretty funny in a way. It's probably no wonder one of the guys in that fed turned out to be a drug addicted, neo-nazi, steroid freak; constantly in jail through his adult life. If you can't separate real life from backyard wrestling, how can you expect to navigate through adult life with any success?
Everyone in my public school was obsessed with professional wrestling. For awhile it seemed like I was the odd man out, left in the dark about this fantastic form of entertainment. I had been a young wrestling fan as a young child, owning many of the toys and watching all the shows. Unfortunately my love for backyard wrestling was evident from the start and I began to emulate the actions on television with my younger brother Nicholas. This prompted my parents to ban me from watching wrestling or engaging in wrestling. My toys were given away to my neighbour John and I wouldn't re-discover wrestling until Grade seven at public school.
You couldn't go anywhere without seeing an Austin, Degeneration-X, NWO or Goldberg shirt. Everyone had the monthly magazines. Everyone was talking about what happened on Monday Night Raw or Nitro. And everyone, it seemed, was involved with a backyard wrestling group with their circle of friends. The younger kids were in the shoot fed, my aged friends were in a mattress based group called Canadian Wrestling Alliance (CWA) and the older kids were in a ground based hardcore fed called Amateur Wrestling Federation (AWF). It was safe to say these people took wrestling seriously and everything for that period of time seemed to revolve around professional wrestling.
Wrestling in our school-yard at recess
By Grade seven I was hooked on professional wrestling and was doing anything in my power to watch the weekly shows and keep up-to-date with the world of professional wrestling. I'd watch the re-runs on Tuesdays after school, shutting it off just before my parents walked in the door. I played the demo disc for WWF Warzone thousands of times while my parents were away and spent a lifetime at friends' houses playing games like No Mercy, Wrestlemania 2000, and WCW Revenge. I started a love affair with the world of wrestling magazines, hiding the publications in my school bag to avoid confiscation. While my friends proudly adorned their new WWF t-shirts and visited the city for the time Monday Night Raw came around, I had to keep my engagement with wrestling a secret.