Once upon a time, friends, back before the all-encompassing nature of the Internet, many people got their information, their news, their wrestling fix, their dirt from magazines. For those of who young enough to necessitate explanation, a magazine was a series of physical paper pages bound together which contained static images and written columns. Imagine NAI in a physically tangible form, but MUCH less cooler.
To give you an idea of how archaic this idea is, I remember celebrating the time I received my monthly magazine only to discover they had moved from mainly black and white pages to all-color. This was a HUGE deal way back in the day.
The standard-bearer of “impartial” magazines (meaning ones not put out directly by WWF or WCW) was Pro Wrestling Illustrated . I believe you can still find PWI active today, though I imagine their subscriptions are far less impressive than they were back in the 90’s. PWI was most famous for its annual ranking of the 500 best wrestlers in the world and their “Year In Review”, where they would hand out their annual awards.
In my day, I had a rather impressive collection of PWI magazines. This past summer while visiting my parents’, they showed me the results of their attic cleaning, and among the detritus of old high school athletic awards and theater props, I uncovered a selection of this collection; the crème de la crème of PWI’s. Among these were a number of “special” editions, and on select Thursdays, we’ll be taking a trip in the Throwback Machine to examine certain ones in greater detail.
