Just what the title says and what made you get hooked on watching fake sports?

I was introduced to wrestling when my dad bought WM III. My first wrestling memory is Billy Jack Haynes getting nailed by Hercules' chain and it busting him open. I think I was hooked right there. My dad taped it on VHS and I watched that event every day for the next 2 years...until WM V was on a VHS I had.

Soon after that, I was over a neighbors house and they had a tape of "Superfly" jumping off the cage onto Don Moraco (?) after Snuka headbutt him and the headbutt sent Moraco out of the cage to win. If I wasn't hooked from WM III, I was definitely hooked from this.

For me it was flipping through the channels onSaturday Mornings sometime around 1980 or so. That was where I found WWF wrestling and was in awe of Andre and Bob Backlund.

My first memory of wrestling was watching Bob Backlund doing the Harvard Step Test ringside. He was challenged by Sgt. Slaughter who claimed to have the world record or something at the time, so Backlund went out and beat it. The next week Slaughter claimed it was cheap because he did it with full gear on and in the sand at Paris Island, so Backlund came back and did it using a park bench to step on. Either just as he was or close to beating the record, Slaughter attacked him. I can still see the whip marks on Backlund.

I started at a new school in 1985, and all the boys there were into wrestling, so I got into it to try and fit in. (Still didn't work.) I eventually started watching around when King Kong Bundy broke Hulk Hogan's ribs on SNME to set up WrestleMania 2, my first memory was an Update segment with Mean Gene showing highlights of it on the show that would eventually become Superstars of Wrestling.

Mid-80s Saturday mornings for me too.

When I was little (late 80s early 90s) I had tons of the Hasbro and LJN action figures but I have no recollection of watching any of the PPVs back then, just Superstars.

A friend of mine got me back into it in '96 and I watched until 2000 or so. Didn't pick it back up again until 2011 when I stayed at a friends, he had in summerslam and Del rio cashed in MITB. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I guess I'm older than those posting so far. As other's said, just the Saturday morning wrestling show. Though my first memories are of Bob Backlund as the new champ defending against former champ Superstar Graham (well, not actually wrestling each other on TV, just promoing against each other).

I grew up in Maryland, so it was WWF territory. In 1983, I got a small TV put in my bedroom. The cool thing about the TV was that it could get channels that the big TV in the living room couldn't get. Including some UHF channel that happened to air Georgia Championship Wrestling. I believe Tommy Rich was top babyface and Dibiase was top heel at the time. But Flair would come in from time to time and cut a promo or handle a jobber. Eventually, that channel switched to Crockett. I basically stopped watching WWF and only watched Crockett for a few years.

It's been an on again/off again relationship with wrestling for me. I completely stopped watching wrestling in 1989 or so. Started up again when Flair joined WWF. Stopped after he left, started again around 1995 and watched pretty regularly until 2002. I still remember why I stopped. It wasn't Katie Vick or violence against women or anything like that. Triple H was given the Big Gold Belt and I decided I was through with wrestling.

Only watched occasionally, basically when big events happened. So I saw the Eddie tribute show and the Benoit tribute show. Then I'd watch for a few more weeks and then stop again.

What got me hooked this time was an odd combination. Dusty Rhodes died and I started youtubing his old promos and matches. I found the WWE youtube channel and started watching Shield stuff. And then I started watching Total Divas.

So the 3 main reasons I'm watching wrestling again are Dusty Rhodes, Nikki Bella, and Seth Rollins. Kind of an odd combination.

A friend of mine was always a wrestling fan but I never watched it. Was at his house one day and he said that he knows I don't watch it but I HAD to see the match from the ppv last night. He popped in taker vs mankind HiaC and I was watching raw from that night on

Interestingly I've always been a IWC type guy even as a 5 year old. Never cheered for any faces except demolition.

Me too. Hated Hogan. Loved Flair. I actually liked Backlund for some reason. But when I hit my teen years, I started cheering the heels.

I wasn't totally pro-heel, but I liked a lot of them and wasn't really into Hulk Hogan. In a backwards way, I only came to appreciate Hogan very much after the fact.

I really think that most of this was due to Jesse Ventura. He was a lot cooler than Vince McMahon, he always made a lot of sense, and despite the fact that he was almost entirely pro-heel, he always got treated as sort of a babyface, between being given his own intro and pop at WM IV and WM V and also pumping his fist to "Jesse" chants at the start of lots of episodes of Superstars. There was nothing that really suggested to me that he was actually a bad guy himself.

I think that it was largely because of Jesse that I took Macho Man's side against Hulk Hogan during my first major wrestling angle, the Mega Powers Explode, and then I strongly tended to take to the guys he would put over the hardest, like Randy Savage and Rick Rude. I didn't just follow everything he advocated, but he was a significant influence over my likes and dislikes of wrestlers when I first started watching.

Watched during attitude era here and there, big Rock and D-Lo Brown fan, always liked it but was never fully in to it (it was hard to watch regularly due to Aussie basic TV.

Got back in to it at uni, had a mate that watched it too and we would get every PPV, take tips on each match and go through a slab of beer, often while trolling non-wrestling friends. Mostly liked Orton & later JBL in that time period.

I got hooked on pro wrestling in early 1991 when I was 11, but it wasn't via TV (mostly). Rather, my town's public library had Coliseum Video tapes of each of the WWF pay-per-views to that point (Wrestlemanias 1-6, plus 3-4 Summerslams, 2-3 Rumbles and I think 2 Survivor Series). I checked out one of those bad boys every couple days and just ripped through them. After Wrestlemania 7 came out on video in early summer, I started watching the WWF and WCW TV offerings. But the hook really got set when I convinced my parents to purchase Summerslam 1991 and watched it live. The Bret/Perfect match made me the world's biggest Bret fan (which I remained for at least the next 6 years), and it was all over .. until around 2003 when I lost most of my interest. Now I just look up the matches everyone says are worth watching after the fact.

So basically you liked 1 wrassler since Rock pretty much stole D-Lo's gimmick.

Grew up watching Stampede Wrestling with my grandpa. Started when Owen and Benoit were just starting out, I believe the British bulldogs had just left relatively shortly before that. Watched in Junior high, stopped for a long time, sort of picked it up again for no particular reason.

in high school a couple asian friends kept doing kaientai's bits from the raw that week which i thought was hilarious so i decided to start watching

Indeed!?

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got hooked on wrestling back in the 60's. springfield auditorium, haystacks balloon (Calhoun) vs gorilla monsoon. sky lo-lo was the referee. haystacks clobbered monsoon with his horseshoe for the win. I was 7 at the time and still cant get enuff of wrasslin that was back when vince's dad ran the show thru regional guys. I always remember vito tallarita as our promoter. I think he was related to pedro morales who grew up down the street from the aud. wow now that I think about it springfield was a hotbed of wrasslers,lou albano,victer rivera and pedro. not bad for a small city in ma.

Late 50's at my grandmother's in Newark, NJ. I was 7 or 8. She was a big fan. The first wrestlers I remember were the Tolos brothers, Chris & John. Moved back to Baltimore ~1960. Tues. & Thurs nights had 2 hour tv shows. Nature Boy Buddy Rodgers was the champ and Bobo Brazil the U.S. champ. Handsome Johnny Barend & The Magnificent Maurice were Rodgers' sidekicks. Saw my 1st title change on tv in 61 when Rodgers & Barend lost the tag belts (didn't even know they were the champs) to The Great Scott & Killer Buddy Austin. Pete Sanchez started out as Scott's partner, but was 'injured' and Austin stepped up. Most tag matches were 2 out of 3 falls. That Killer Austin deathlock sealed the deal for me. I've seen it applied 3 or 4 times the last few years after not seeing it since the 60's. Though no one does it like Austin, who applied it while standing, then would fall backwards to the mat. I'm guessing he injured a lot of knee ligaments, so that move got shelved. Put it on a couple folks as a kid and knew not to fall back as the pain was enough just standing after applying. For those not familiar, sit on the floor with your right leg crossed in front of your left. Have someone stand in front of you and put their right leg between your legs, then hook his right foot in front of your right foot. Case closed. My introduction to wrestling.

hmmm, sounds like a version of an Indian Death Lock. There are guys on the indies that do that now that bridge backward to put on more pressure.