Back in the late 90’s, I was “TSN.ca’s Darkside” who wrote “Tales from the Darkside” for the second most popular section on TSN.ca…which at the time was tsn.ca/wrestling. I built that bad boy from the ground up, and wrote a ton of awesome articles.
There was a time where I could write something and get a million views in a month. Those were heady, heady days.
Two of my favourite wrestlers, Edge and Christian, have a podcast now – E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness, every week they ask for reader letters, and since I’ve got some fun Edge and Christian stories, I thought I’d send one in.
This is that email.
Here we go…
Hey guys, long time fan, first time write-ist. I just wanted to write in a couple of OG memories that I have of the two of you, I was one of those “guys behind the guys” back in the nineties.
For example, I was in the crowd in Hamilton when Sexton Hardcastle faced off against Christian Cage, my buddy “Big Daddy Donnie Abreu” told me “Mark my words brother, you’re looking at the WrestleMania 20 main event.” HAH DONNIE, IT WAS CALLED WRESTLEMANIA XX! Plus Christian faced off against Jericho ya mark!
We were also in Hamilton on September 27 1998 when Christian debuted while interfering in Edge’s match against Owen Hart at In Your House Breakdown.
Dick move Christian. Dick move!
I had a couple of cool moments with Adam that he may (or more likely may not) remember.
The first one was at a strange TSN party thing that I had been assigned to (I was working at TSN.ca at the time). We had a ring, and Edge and Kurrgan had a match together with Jackyl at ringside. After the match we did a chat session on the computer, and I just remember Jackyl telling Kurgan to “Dance Giant” over and over again. Edge, you were pretty cool and very nice to a young 20 something computer nerd.
At that event I met Carl Demarco for the first time, and one afternoon (I think it was July 30th, 1998) he called me and asked me if I could bring a video camera to the Skydome for an event involving Edge.
Adam, you were throwing out the first pitch at the ball game and I followed you around recording everything for WWF.com. We got toured around the clubhouse by Tim Johnson (I remember seeing Juan Guzman getting stretched by a trainer. We didn’t know it at the time, but it was his last game as a Blue Jay). We went around a corner and there was Jose Canseco working out on a hammer strength machine. Dude was JACKED, I just remember realizing how big he was at the time. The two of you talked and he said he’d love to walk you out to the ring some time, and I think I suggested getting Pinball Clemons involved too because he was such a huge wrestling fan.
There were a couple of other times we ran into each other too, you did Off The Record a couple of times and I ran into you in the green room, but you totally big leagued me (kidding, I know you guys meet so many people). My favourite chance encounter though was when I was going into the Silver Snail on Queen Street and you literally bumped into me, I turned around to apologize (because I’m Canadian), and I was all like “Hey, Edge!”, and you just flashed a smirk and kept moving on.
Anyway duders, much love from this Canucklehead, you guys gave me hours and hours of enjoyment and I always felt a special bit of pride in having “discovered you” way back during that Hamilton show.
Puffy Shirts 4 LYFE!
I included a photo of me, Edge and Kurrgan from the event. Kurrgan is really Robert Maillet, who you may recognize from Pacific Rim as Lt. Aleksei Kaidonovsky.