Written by Eddie T.
I have been into professional wrestling for a long time. However, there’s certainly a difference between being a TV fan, and being an “online fan.” Quite the difference. I, too, went through the shocking process of getting an Internet connection one day, typing in “WWF” into the first search engine there was, and getting millions of pages as results. Wow. A few nights of reading followed up, and a few years later, I find myself as the webmaster of a website that follows professional wrestling closely.
It’s been quite the ride. I started doing all this back in the day, on the good ol’ GeoCities web space that Yahoo! provided. Not too different from Joe, and the beginning of TBL, which you might have read about in his TBL @ Ten series. My little website was called “WWF Recap and Thoughts.” You can still find it through some search engines. The remains of it at least. I was so into it that it became my #1 hobby. I would post news gathered from around the net every day. I wasn’t trying to be the best informer out there, or pretend to know anyone and get the breaking news. No. Never. My idea was to simply cut through all the bullshit links of naked women, and pop-up ads that started coming around, as well as faulty headlines on “news boards.” The idea was simple – just one page that contained a summary of all the day’s important wrestling news. I became pretty successful. Within a few months, WWF Recap and Thoughts became the #1 website on GeoCities/Yahoo! for pro wrestling. There was a point where you’d type “WWF rumors” on Google.com or Yahoo.com and my website would be third – behind WWF.com, and Rajah.com. I managed to read a small audience of about 500 at first, then went on to doing 2,000 unique hits per day. You have to remember – at this time, that was quite a number, considering the fact that I was on GeoCities. That became a problem. I was getting too many hits for the server to handle, especially when I started doing PPV coverage live at the site, with silly funny remarks. People seemed to enjoy that. It was definitely a great time.
The summer of 2002 came. Although I was pretty successful, I just wanted to expand the audience I reached online. TBL was undergoing renovation and I saw an ad on 1wrestling.com that a website was looking for columnists. I applied, and Martin Hawrysko, who was appointed by Joe to run things at the time, seemed to like my application a lot and hired me to the site as a columnist. My column, The Prime Cut, has been at TBL since. It has been an amazing ride. I went on to write what I was most proud of – my News & Analysis weekly report which looked at the week’s shows, as well as the most important news and provided some of my personal analysis. This was definitely my peak with the site. I was getting lots of feedback from readers, and was proud with my work.
A lot has changed since then. I went on to become a vital part of TBL, and currently run the website. I feel my interest in wrestling waning a little bit, but hope it’ll pick up again and reach the same levels it was before. I’ve went on to create some of TBL’s new core, such as News & Analysis, our media section – TBL Soundoff (which I was also very proud with), as well as bring Annual Year-End Awards to the site, and work on our already establish Roundtable. Hopefully, I’ve contributed enough to the site, and people have enjoyed it.
I have enjoyed working with everyone at TBL. There’s way too many names to mention that have come and gone through the years. There is, however, some people that need to be addressed. A big thanks to Trevor Hunnicutt, who has kept me going often times, and has turned into more than a colleague – rather a personal friend. Obviously, an even bigger thanks to Joe for letting me run with the ball and having full trust into me. His trust and respect is deeply appreciated. Of course, Martin Hawrysko has my personal thanks as well, for bringing me to TBL and for being a great support when I started at the site. Guys like Lou Corsaro and Josh Fox make this fun, because they’re never shy to say what they think, and are always fun to e-mail with. I just wish I had more time to do that. Happy 10th Anniversary TBL, and wishes for many more!
Eddie
– E-mail feedback to Levski11@aol.com
