Monday, August 23, 2010

Friendly Encounters

This is a weekly feature highlighting friends who have met celebs.

I have written about Josh Watko a couple times. He runs JW's Wrestling Memorabilia, a website loaded with wrestling pictures, stories and nostalgia.
A couple weekends ago, Josh had a great experience at the NWA Fanfest in Charlotte. Much like his site, this weekend was full of wrestling nostalgia. I asked Josh to share a story and as always, he graciously agreed, but deciding which story to tell was challenging. Finally he settled on Sting, stating that he had the most appeal to fans young and old.
With so much to do at NWA Fanfest, it can sometimes get a little overwhelming. Between waiting in line to get autographs from the featured guests to perusing the vendor floor to trying to meet the extra "vendor guests" who only appear for a few hours, you rarely have time to catch your breath. One guest that fans young and old had to make time to meet was NWA/WCW Legend and current TNA headliner Sting (Steve Borden).
Sting was brought to Fanfest by the promoters of the northeast's premier wrestling convention Legends of the ring. Fans, who paid for a "Superfan" package, received a signed 8x10 TNA promo photo, one of their own items signed and a photo op with Sting, which was quickly printed as a beautiful 8x10, also signed by the legend.
The Stinger, who is known to be one of the more private and reserved wrestlers, was very friendly to his fans of all generations. Dressed in his current TNA attire and face paint, these particular photo ops were some of the most amazing to come out of Fanfest. While fans chose items from all eras of his career, I chose a 1990 WCW Wrestling Wrap-Up magazine from my collection. The entire run of this particular title, albeit short-lived, are extremely hard to find and rarely turn up for sale. This issue features a shot of Sting just after he won his first World Heavyweight Championship from Ric Flair at the 1990 Great American Bash.
It was great that Josh got to meet Sting. I just missed him at the Bound for Glory pre-show event a couple years ago. Josh also met Jim "JR" Ross, Tammy "Sunny" Sytch, Terry Funk, Harley Race, Mickie James and many others. You can check out all of the photos and stories on his site. Hopefully, in the future, he'll share more of his stories here.
Sting (Steve Borden) and Josh Watko in Charlotte, NC-August 2010.

1 comment:

J\/\/ said...

Can't wait to share more! Thanks again!