Once upon a time I bought myself a WWF wrestling magazine. Now before you sarcastically think ‘Whoa nelly, this sounds like an exciting tale right here, lemme grab some popcorn pal!’ let me add that this was the only WWF wrestling magazine I ever bought. From my childhood and teens I had a couple of hundred comics. I had an enviable pile of video game magazines. In my late teens I even had a couple of hidden magazines best not mentioned in these family friendly posts.
But strangely I bought one WWF wrestling magazine…and left it at that. Yes I had more Powerslam and Piledriver mags but given that I was a pretty big wrestling WWF fan back in the day, stopping at just one official WWF wrestling magazine seems a bit odd given my fondness for both grappling and reading. But anyway, one was all I had and I believe now is a good a time as any to reminisce.
So today I’m going to cough up what I remember and hopefully with the help of Google and Archive.org, I’ll be able to track down a scanned copy. And if I can’t solve the mystery by doing that, hopefully someone will come along, read this and solve things in a heartbeat..
The mystery of the WWF wrestling magazine
-It was a WWF official magazine. Yes before the World Wrestling Federation wasn’t confused with the World Wildlife Fund and both entities lived in harmony.
-I bought this wrestling magazine from a news agent in Richmond Australia. A completely useless fact in terms of trying to identify which edition it was but it’s here nonetheless for the sake of mind dump completeness.
-At the time my favourite wrestlers were Bret Hitman Hart and The Legion of Doom which meant the cover would have had to have one or the other on it to pique my interest enough to buy it.
-After reading it many times, I cut out some of the pictures and pasted them on my school books. Again it was mostly the pics of Bret as well as Hawk and Animal from LOD. I think this particular wrestling magazine had a poster of the Legion you could remove?
-I vaguely remember a couple of articles (I think): The Legion of Doom write up was the story of their manager Paul Ellering finding Rocco the ventriloquist dummy on a pile of rubble in Chicago? Apparently this was what the team needed to find their fire again? (Again I could be completely mis-remembering here, we’re talking probably 30 years ago..
-Meanwhile Bret Hart was getting set to fight Yokozuna (or was it Lex Luger? Lex famously fought Yoko once upon a time) and his article was about his father Stu giving him special training which involved toughening up his hands for some reason? There was something about buckets of rice or rocks? Remember, I was a very gulliable pre-teen at this point which meant if a wrestling magazine was telling me Stu Hart was make Bret’s hands hard, then that was the truth damnit!
And that’s the highlights I recall which means:
Possible time line:
-The terrible idea with Rocco caused Hawk to leave just after Summerslam 92 (August) which means this wrestling magazine is most likely from 1991 or early 1992. I don’t blame him really, I wouldn’t want a dummy talking me into things either.
-Bret faced Yokozuna at Wrestlemania X but previously in house shows in 1993 So if I remembered correctly that the story was about Bret taking on the supposed Sumo, then the wrestling magazine must have been closer to 92 than 91.
-WWF didn’t become WWE until 2002 which means if it’s not from 91/92 or 1993, well I’ve got a bit of backtracking to do…
Okay Archive.org, what you got for me?
Let’s try..
Sadly nothing pops up with either Hawk, Animal or Bret let alone the WWF
Next I googled WWF magazine scans and amazingly it took me back to Archive.org where apparently the WWE (or someone with that name) posted them up. Unfortunately they start from the year 1994 which is not in my timeline (unless I’m mistaken) but I went through them just in case something turned up..
Mick Foley showed up on a cover soon enough but I know this is well past my era because I wasn’t aware of Mick/ Dude Love/ Mankind/ Cactus Jack until much further in the piece. I don’t think these wrestling magazines are the ones I’m looking for..
How about you then Google?
It wasn’t until I thought ‘Wouldn’t it be easier just doing an image search on Google here?’ that Hawk and Animal finally turned up on a cover or two..
It’s not the first one. It turns out that’s from October 1990 and doesn’t mention Bret anywhere so it looks to be too early here. So I spent the next ten minutes scanning through things and casting the eyeballs over many a wrestling magazine until I came across a great resource: WWF Magazine Collection 1983-1992 If my timing is correct then it should definitely be in here yes?
Sadly, no. Lots of great covers, nothing jogging the memory banks. Strangely a headline about Randy Savage and Ric Flair fighting over photos of Elizabeth rings a very small bell…but nothing on that cover with the headline suggests it’s the wrestling magazine I’m looking for.
However a cover from 1993 did seem mighty familiar.. wait a minute, was it this one??
(it doesn’t have anything about the Legion of Doom on it though…I am confusing this for another magazine possibly? Did I actually buy more than one WWF wrestling magazine back in the day? Gah!) Unfortunately while there’s quite a few scans of wrestling mags from many months and years…I can’t seem to find August 1993 to check.
So if you have WWF Magazine August 1993 can you please flick through it and let me know, is there an article about Bret Hart training with buckets of sand/rocks/rice etc to toughen his hands up? I’m more than a little curious to see if I’m remembering things correctly – thanks in advance!
And where the hell are these memories of the Ric Flair and Elizabeth photos and more importantly the Legion of Doom poster coming from??? That part of the mystery continues!