In the UK, WWF seemed to surface along with the likes of The Simpsons and some other big US shows as part of the cable/satelite TV 'revolution' in the late 80s. Never had cable TV at home but school friends began to hook me up tapes after my showing an initial interest in "that american wrestling stuff" they kept talking about (I'd seen British wrestling when I was younger, but all the talk of Hogan, Warrior, chair shots, run-ins etc. sounded much more appealing!).
First saw tapes of WM5, Summerslam 89 & Royal Rumble 90 a month or so before WM6 and then began getting Superstars & Challenge recorded which set me up beautifully for the 'Ultimate Challenge' and my seeing my first live PPV on TV. (I'd already developed a disliking for Hogan, so to see Warrior beat him sent my love of wrestling into the stratosphere and up until the Royal Rumble and Warriors title loss it seemed like everything I was hoping for happened!).... I was completely addicted (caught a wicked show on the 91 UK Rampage ft. Bulldog v Perfect IC match and Warrior v Taker in a bodybag match!) and it stayed this way until late 94 when my sources of tapes 'dried up'. Struggled to keep up with things for a while and slowly lost interest as the number of PPVs increased mainly cos I was just missing too much storyline.
....Until around 3 years ago that is, when, on a whim, I started looking up certain matches I'd missed on You Tube and before I knew it I was hooked again. Thanks to Ebay I've score all the old PPVs cheaply on VHS and have been catching up ever since whilst simultaneously watching the current stuff via Raw & Smackdown, even paying for my first PPV last month for Survivor Series (It was all free when I used to watch).
You could say I'm 'enjoying a far more succesful 2nd run'.... LOL
(Incidentally, in light of much of the talk of things being relatively shit since the Invasion and brand extention... Even as a hardened cynic, I'd like to offer an opinion given the broken-up way I have watched wrestling (and having not had the chance to get misty-eyed over the Attitude-era) over the years and say that whilst admittedly the Attitude-era is no doubt a golden age, 2007s been pretty good IMO and things don't seem to be as bad as many peeps make out (particualrly those that seemed to have grown up watching during the monday night wars).