10 Early Internet Wrestling Outrages

3. 'THEY ARE NOT VANILLA MIDGETS THEY ARE...

Austin Fake Beer
WWE.com

...THE FUTURE OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING!'

If you were a fan of pro wrestling, at the turn of the millennium, and you were in your formative adolescence, there's a very good chance you borrowed wholesale the opinions of Scott Keith and his ilk. Having been wowed by the athleticism of the WCW cruisers, and made inroads into the dirtsheet racket, they - we - me - proclaimed the likes of Billy Kidman and Crowbar as the future.

These guys weren't old dinosaurs throttling WCW with creative control (and inconvenient sh*t we just ignored like demonstrable drawing power), they were state-of-the-art performers who just needed a push and a live mic to usher us into a new era.

One WrestlingClassics user, a Richard Sullivan, predicted his own vision of that future, and his name was...

...Jamie Howard.

You may know him as Jamie Noble, so the snarky response to that post - "You mean that guy who jobbed to Kid Romeo on last weeks WCW Saturday Night? *LOL*" - wasn't entirely warranted. Sinister_Playa had played himself.

J followed up by writing "If WCW has a chance it is in the cruiserweight division." He wrote this in the year 2000, which doesn't speak to their prescience.

Daffney and Crowbar didn't reverse WCW's fortunes. If only Sting had laid down.

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!