FINALLY . . . THE RUSS HAS COME BACK TO SHOTGUNREVIEWS.COM!

Top 5 Favorite Shotgun moments

 by Russell Ray

I'm Russ. I used to write pro wrestling articles and was the managing editor for Shotgun for a while. If you want to know more, go bug Troy. He will probably write a blurb about each of us because I am too LAZY to write my own bio.

Anyway, I think I was the third or fourth person who came on board after the site initially launched in '99, and that period to 2002 was probably my favorite time on the site and what I would consider to be my heyday. At the time, I went through 3 jobs that I hated and wrote as much as I could while on the clock just to get through the day. Here are my top 5 favorite memories of that time:

5) Free schwag. Before the internet economy tanked and then the rest of the economy afterwards, people would throw free stuff at us with just the mention of the word "press". It's only recently with the advent of social media and the resurgence of blogs that this has picked back up again, but if Troy was good at two things, they were the best things to be good at: hiding dead bodies and scoring free (fill in the blank).

In the wrestling boom, we got the trifecta: ECW, WCW Monday Nitro, and a WWE house show. The house show was my favorite wrestling experience ever. I would rather watch a house show than Raw/Smackdown.

ECW was... well, it was ECW, and I guess it's one of those things that at least I could say I did it. The Indianapolis house show was cool from a historical standpoint because it was Mike Awesome's last appearance before running off to WCW (the crowd was about to lynch the guy) and Taz came back from WWE for one night to win the ECW Championship.

WCW was where Troy got to hand a business card to the possible next future Mrs. George Clooney, Stacy Keibler. This was when they were doing Nitro Girl auditions all over the country. Who knew that he would pick the one that would become the most famous?  (Troy's Note: Yeah, I was really going out on a limb there . . .)

Also, I got a complete set of the Royal Rumble Anthology 5 years ago... I guess I still owe WWE that review.

4) Meeting the famous (and infamous). Like I said, we got fairly close to Stacy Keibler that one time... I also got an interview with another of the Nitro Girls: Fyre. She was at Wizard World one year promoting some crappy comic book with her as the main character (she probably got the idea from Sable) and I went there to do the worst interview ever recorded. I'm not sure which of us was less interested in doing the interview, but it was a train wreck all around.

I also got to meet several comics guys through Troy: Chuck Dixon, Grant Morrison and Mark Waid all stick out to me. Dixon especially, because I got a personal introduction, but also because the guy should be teaching at a university somewhere. Is there a school where you can major in English and gun ballistics?

3) The Wizard World conventions. I'm like a segue machine! Lots of hilarity ensued the two years that Shotgun set up shop in Artist's Alley to promote the web site. Well, let's be real... we didn't really promote so much as lease a little bit of real estate in the back to chill at while we waiting for the next panel. This could be a top ten on its own, so I'm just going to spit out a bunch of stuff that you may or may not know or remember or may be too inside for this crowd.

Windy City Wrestling, and their wrestling Star Trek redshirts. Me and Birdsong walking through the convention with our lucha masks on. A Mexican guy calling me "El Santo" when I was clearly NOT wearing Santo's mask. Birdsong screaming at me after about 15 Birdweisers while I pretended to be asleep (yes, I worked everybody and you heard it here first). Crapping my pants when I saw Kevin Nash for the first time because he was so tall. Lou Ferrigno trying to work me into buying his stupid merch. Meeting and hanging out with the Battle Pope guys... and now I realize that one of them created the Walking Dead, so I wonder how many other famous people I met before they became famous. Me making an idiot of myself in the La Parka mask because I FORGOT THE FREAKING DANCE. Going Stone Cold on the people at the Hyatt Regency because they jerked around our hotel reservation, and stomping through the baby boomers in the lobby that were there for the Beatles convention that same week.

I haven't been up to the convention in about 10 years, but I think I would be sad if I did... I've heard that it's all CCGs and lameness and even more offensive self-promotion now. And, it wouldn't live up to the memories either.

2) Express it on the X. We have a free paper in Indy called Nuvo, and their editors had a weekend talk show on X103 on Sunday nights for an hour. Troy got us hooked up to go on the radio to talk about the web site and I tagged along to answer a question about wrestling. It was fun and I wish podcasting had come along sooner, because we could have had a lot of fun with it. It also made me wish I had a career in radio, but I don't know if I could fill an hour of talk, let alone 3 or 4. The best part is that it was the segue to get us into a semi-regular rotation of writing for Nuvo, including an article on WCWO, the indy wrestling company I worked in.

1) My pro wrestling initiation. My dad had an accident at work in the spring of 2000, and I had to take about 3 months off from wrestling while I took care of him. When I came back, Don Basher (who runs WCWO) had an idea where I would get beat up by his female valet. We were running monthly shows in a bar, and he wanted to build to a tuxedo/evening gown match since it was an adults-only show, so the idea was for me to get in the ring, attack me, strip me down to a T-shirt and boxers, and then challenge her to the match for the next show.

I couldn't tell anyone though, so it was a surprise to the rest of the crew, and to me... I was afraid that I couldn't pull it off, but it was amazing to me how much you can do in wrestling with so little work. That night, it was just a few chops and a clothesline out of the ring. Later in my “career”, I would work battle royals, receive chair shots, and go through a table… it’s amazing how great people made me look with so little effort on my part. Wrestling also afforded me the opportunity to meet a lot of names in the business: Big Show, Marty Jannetty, Bushwhackers, Johnny Grunge, Tracy Smothers, Matt Borne, Rikishi, Buff Bagwell and Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

Well, that was only supposed to be 500 words, so if you’re still reading this, leave some comment love, okay? And I promise the rest of the week will be shorter…

The Russ, Russell Ray, was the Managing Editor of ShotgunReviews.com, the architect of The Rasslin' Ring section, and served as the ring announcer for Wild Championship Wrestling Outlaws.  More than any of that, he's our pal.  And we're just glad that he got back into the ring with us again.