8 Things You Learn Reading A Wrestling Magazine From 1990

2. Fans Were Even More Determined To Find Scoops Than They Are Today

What on earth did wrestling fans do before the internet? It seems like such a crucial part to the overall wrestling fandom experience that it's hard to believe that there was a time that you could watch wrestling without going immediately online to read about what you just watched. Smart marks, in particular, seem almost pathologically determined to find any scoop as quickly as possible and debate it with other smarks. It is sometimes the most enjoyable part of wrestling. To be a Smark in 1990 though you had to be either incredibly rich or incredibly stupid €“ although the two are obviously not mutually exclusive. Just because there was no internet didn't mean that you couldn't find data via phone lines. You just had to ring pre-recorded messages that drip fed you information, while you paid out the nose for the privilege of hearing €˜news' about a scripted show. Throughout the magazine, there are a few ads for these lucrative services €“ none bolder than the full page glossy ad on the back cover for Jesse Ventura's hotline. All you had to do was call the number and pay $2.00 per minute (or $3.63 in 2016 money) to listen to a voice recording of Jesse tell you basically whatever he felt like saying as he was hungover one morning on the couch. What a bargain! Given the fact that there were multiple services like this, and that they were doing well enough to publish full page glossy adverts, it appears though that it was a lucrative business. Obviously, smarks were equally insane about their craft in 1990 as they are today.