9. When Reading About Wrestling On The Internet Didn't Exist
What's interesting about the boom of wrestling in the late 1990s and the internet is that both of them became really big at around the same time. The internet wasn't in the home of the average household until around 1997 or 1998. Some had it years before, but not everybody. This was back in the day when you would have to pay something like $25 per month for about 40 hours of internet usage per month. It wasn't high speed like it is today. It was dial up. It took so long for anything to load. As wrestling fans know, the business really started to take off when Hulk Hogan led the New World Order in 1996 and then two years after that WWE really became a big deal thanks to the rise of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin as the biggest draw in the business. If you were an internet wrestling fan, you probably didn't start reading about the business until that same period. For me, the first time I ever thought to check about wrestling online was after Survivor Series 1997 because my friends at school were talking about how they read about what really happened with Bret Hart and I was intrigued. That was 17 years ago. Reading about wrestling on the internet is a lot easier than it used to be. You couldn't read a Dave Meltzer newsletter online. It was mailed to your home. You couldn't go to some random website to find out what wrestler had heat backstage because of some comment he made when he got behind the curtain. You couldn't read amazing wrestling columns on wrestling sites like this one either. Somehow, we survived. Being an internet wrestling fan at the time of the Monday Night Wars and everything that came after it was incredible. There was so much news all the time. These days it's become a lot more simplified because the internet is a part of our daily lives much more. Back then, it was still new and as we look back on it now it's amazing how far we've come as an internet wrestling community.