# @wrestlingnewsco on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DbsCO-LAgLz
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/68752838-wrestlingnewsco-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/88039d86cc.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-08-06T06:08:41.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Wrestling News - WWE, AEW (@wrestlingnewsco) — https://gondola.cc/wrestlingnewsco

## Caption

Before message boards and social media, 90s wrestling fans lived online in RSPW, CompuServe, America Online and Prodigy.

RSPW, the Usenet newsgroup rec.sport.pro-wrestling, dates to the late eighties and was where fans argued results, traded rumors and posted the earliest versions of what became internet wrestling culture. CompuServe and Prodigy ran their own wrestling forums for subscribers.

ECW’s following grew in those spaces. The promotion became the darling of the early online fanbase, and WWF, WCW and ECW loyalists argued in newsgroups and chat rooms the same way fans do on social media now.

The WWF’s first official home online was not wwf.com. It was AOL, reached through a keyword, with message boards, live pay-per-view chat rooms and superstar chat sessions. Vince McMahon took fan questions in AOL chats as far back as 1995, and stars like Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker and Mankind all did sessions. WWF Livewire even read questions from the AOL chatroom live on air in 1996.

That same year, AOL named Sunny its most downloaded woman of 1996, one of the first internet-fame milestones in wrestling.

Getting online in the first place usually meant one of the AOL free trial floppy disks or CDs that arrived in the mail and fell out of every magazine, offering some free hours before the meter started running.

Eventually everyone built their own homes. The WWF and WCW moved to wwf.com and wcw.com, and ECW registered ecwwrestling.com in December 1997, with Joel Gertner and Joey Styles plugging it on ECW television and pay-per-views through the promotion’s final years. 

#WrestlingHistory #WWF #ECW #AOL #DidYouKnow

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## Tags

ecw, wwf, aol, wrestlinghistory, didyouknow

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