DarkStar Diaries: Entry 1 by DarkStar Shady

I missed a lot of the Attitude Era. It was rough being a kid in the late ‘90s and early 2000s and not being allowed to watch the then-WWF. The Rock was everywhere, Stone Cold was the biggest name, and kids were doing the DX crotch chop constantly.

I didn’t understand any of it.

I don’t know why it changed, and I don’t quite remember the exact date—my brain doesn’t work very well, and my memory is something I’m a bit self-conscious about. What I do remember is flipping channels one night and going past an episode of SmackDown and someone said it was okay to leave it on. And then I saw something that instantly made me a fan.

Chris Jericho entered after his Y2J countdown, holding both the WWF and WCW titles, the first Undisputed Champion. After a moment he pointed for Stephanie McMahon to join him.

That was it. That was the moment I became a fan.

Chris Jericho was instantly the coolest guy I had ever seen, and Stephanie McMahon was instantly the biggest crush I’d ever had. She’s still high up on my list, actually. I wish I could say Jericho was among my current favorites, but I’ll still always cherish my early memories of him.

It was like a switch flipped, and wrestling became a constant. My younger cousin and I were watching weekly and quickly got invested.

It was hard, though. We didn’t have cable so we couldn’t watch Raw, and my family wouldn’t have been able to afford PPVs even if we had the access. 

And we were young. I was 11 or so, and my cousin was 6. My grandpa started recording episodes of SmackDown on VHS each week so we could watch it and still go to bed on time. More often than not, we’d end up staying up late watching SmackDown and then rewatching it on VHS. We might still have some of the tapes somewhere, too.

There are things I wish I had watched at the time. Moments that I only got through recaps on SmackDown and in issues of the magazines I made sure to buy at each release.

• The reintroduction of the World Heavyweight Championship, awarded to Triple H

• Evolution. The coolest stable imaginable at the time.

• A lot of Shawn Michaels' initial return.

But there’s plenty I remember fondly, and it’s a hell of a list:

• Problematic now, sure, but at the time it was incredible: Brock Lesnar’s debut and his first run. The iron man match on Smackdown against Kurt Angle for the WWE title was the peak of weekly, free television.

• John Cena and the start of the Ruthless Aggression era. The Doctor of Thuganomics is my favorite thing he’s ever done.

• Rey Mysterio’s debut. I was new to wrestling, but his style was so much different than everyone else, and his old entrance music was so much better than his new one.

The obsession lasted for years before life took me away from watching. I had tons of action figures and playsets, as many video games as there were for the consoles I had, and even a Stacy Keibler poster on my bedroom wall. 

In the in-between I’d catch clips online, and watch the occasional one-off event. I happened to catch the Royal Rumble where AJ Styles debuted, and I made sure to watch Becky Lynch main event WrestleMania and become Becky Two Belts.

For a few years before reigniting my spark as a fan, I did sit down and watch WrestleMania, once it shifted to streaming rather than PPVs.

Then one day I was at work, and the supervisor I was training decided we should put on the Royal Rumble while we closed the store. 

The year?

2023.

My friend was excited; he said he wasn’t a big WWE fan but he was a huge AEW and NJPW mark. He said someone was returning to the company from injury and it was someone he actually liked.

And then the music hit at number 30, the crowd exploded and I got caught in the hype.

Just like with Jericho, I was hooked all over again.

I had never watched Cody wrestle before. By the time he moved to SmackDown during his original run, I had stopped watching. But his ring work was phenomenal and he cuts a hell of a promo. 

Sami Zayn betrayed Roman Reigns in the main event, and that led to me catching up on The Bloodline and Sami Uso.

Suddenly my TikTok was full of wrestling clips, I was watching weekly again, and PLEs were necessities in my apartment. I never looked back.

I got back into WWE with a passion that was larger than ever before. Becky Lynch had become a favorite of mine over the years through clips and her big WrestleMania main event. I knew some names and started to love others.

NXT joined the mix, and I became a huge fan of Tiffany Stratton. It’s been incredible to be able to watch her ascent to the top. Now my clock is never showing anything but Tiffy Time.

I got to fulfill a childhood dream of going to a live WWE event. I went to Raw and SmackDown in Salt Lake City. Cody opened and closed the show at the Raw I attended. I was in the crowd for the SmackDown double taping before they went to Australia for the Elimination Chamber in 2024. I was disappointed at how few cheers Tiffy got, so I made sure to scream even louder. 

I tweet about wrestling non-stop. I was one of the Cody Crybabies that The Rock bitched about.

I play their video games constantly; I never actually stopped. 

I collect the cards—it’s become a problem.

I even had a (short lived) WWE fan fiction podcast with my best friend. It was chaotic and ridiculous. We’d quickly recap the week’s WWE shows before diving into our own versions of how we’d book it, continuing our own storylines week by week.

Now, I can’t imagine life without WWE as a focal point.

Next up on my list? Saving for my own championship belt. My igloo fanny pack can only tide me over for so long.