Why You Should Meet Your Wrestling Heroes

There’s a saying about celebrities that you will hear a lot in online discussions involving pro wrestling fans: never meet your heroes. This is based on bad experiences some people say they have had in the past. As prices for meet and greets, and everything else, skyrocket, it can be tempting not to want to fool with it.

Over the past three or four years, I’ve met plenty of active and retired pro wrestlers, from rising indie stars to hall of famers, and generally I’ve had great experiences, with some minor exceptions who I won’t name here.

A view that many people working in the business have is to just take the picture, since none of us are ever promised tomorrow. This is a view I have even as a fan when it comes to hall of famers and others who are no longer youthful, although it should apply to the young too, with all the premature deaths in pro wrestling over the years. My wife still regrets not going to an MCW show in 2015, long before either of us had been to an indie show, that ended up being Roddy Piper’s last public appearance before his death the next week.

Recently, I met a WWE Hall of Famer who throws the idea of never meeting your heroes into the trash. Before the Game Changer Wrestling event in Joppa, Maryland, on May 1, I met Ricky Morton, best known as one half of the Rock N Roll Express. He was the primary reason I spent the money to go to this show and took the night off from work. The passing of Dennis Condrey a few weeks ago helped cement my decision after I had been waffling on whether to go.

From the time he first saw me, wearing the shirt in the picture above, he was as nice as anyone could be. After he autographed a picture for me and posed for a photo op, we talked about mutual friends and how I grew up watching him. He talked about coming to Greenville on Monday nights and also going to Fayetteville on the Crockett circuit. I told him what a big part of my childhood he was, and he beamed and told me how much that meant to him.

I stepped over to the bigger lineup of tables of GCW wrestlers and talked to Matt Tremont and 1 Called Manders, and they were both great to talk to as well. As I headed back around to go to my seat, I passed the Mortons’ table again and talked to Kerry, who was now there, as well as Ricky again. We talked about baseball, Tennessee, and the mountains in North Carolina before I started to head to my seat, and Ricky grabbed a Sharpie and signed my shirt for free.

Kerry’s match came up earlier in the show, and he is an amazing heel and was getting “Shut the F up” chants right away. Later in the show, when Ricky wrestled in a trios match, a “Rock and Roll” chant started for him when he was introduced. When he got into the match, he ended up getting the bad end of things and was in the corner selling the damage for a bit before finally getting the pin for his team to win.

After the show, I went over to see some friends near the dressing room entrance, and Ricky came out leaving the arena and was gracious and talked to me again. He also reminded me to come to Philly for NWA 78 in July.

I have met countless pro wrestlers over the past decade, most of them since I started this site in 2022. I haven’t had one truly bad experience, and I’ve had many great ones, even with people who have allegedly bad reputations for meeting fans. I am writing this as a counterpoint to people who say “never meet your heroes.” Sometimes you should meet them, take the picture, and tell them what they meant to you while you still can.