I have a scary-good memory for the wrestling I grew up with, but I’ve got to admit that I didn’t really remember what made Ken Shamrock so damn special to my group of wrestling-loving friends in elementary school. I was a die-hard WCW fan until 1999, and, when I made the switch to WWF, Ken Shamrock was a dude who screamed a lot, hit himself, and suplexed the occasional referee while Jim Ross or Jerry Lawler screamed about him being in THE ZONE, which, compared to Mankind or The Rock—the other two participants in the most talked about match of Shamrock’s career—or even WWF midcard stalwarts like D-Lo Brown or Val Venis, was decidedly boring. Coupled with the fact that you had to spend hard-earned WWF Dollars at the SmackDown! Mall in WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64 (which, before home internet service was fast enough to load pictures, was the way to learn about wrestlers you’d never heard of before), and I just never got on the Ken Shamrock bandwagon. And yet, there he is refereeing the classic Submission Match between Bret Hart and Steve Austin. There he is again fighting Owen Hart in the Hart family dungeon. And here he is, in his first WWF match, against the man they call Vader. (more…)
