Brutus Knightwing

NAME: Brutus Knightwing
AGE: 31
OCCUPATION: Professional Wrestler
CANON: Giant Wrestling Federation


Brutus Knightwing is seven feet tall and weighs somewhere north of 325 lbs. For a man of his size, he is light on his feet and can perform wrestling moves cruiserweights normally pull off (spinning wheel kick, cross body block, and springboard elbow drop). In a wrestling promotion like GWF, his speed was a valuable asset in earning him three World Championships and five Tag Team Championships with fellow giant Andreas Rude. The Wrestling Observer Reading Magazine (WORM) rated Brutus the Most Improved Wrestler of 2010 and 2011. With this kind of impressive resume, Brutus should be a perfect fit in just about any promotion he goes to. Even Vinnie Mac & Cheese at WWE would drool over this mountain of muscle.

Unfortunately for Brutus, he never got to see the light of day beyond my computer folders. Wrestling RPG’s (good ones, anyways) are few and far between these days. The last time I took part in a wrestling RPG was when OTT Wrestling was still active on Play By Web dot com (obviously before I was banned from the latter). OTT (Over the Top) was where Occupy Wrestling hero Mitch McLeod got his start. He became so brutal and so popular that I had to make him the main character of my novel. But this was back in 2002. I didn’t conceive Brutus Knightwing until late in 2010, exactly five years after I was banned from Play By Web for not getting along with the admins.

When I say good wrestling RPG’s, I’m talking about games where the players get to act out the matches (objective) instead of just cut promos all the time and hope the admin likes them enough to let them win (subjective). Victory through promos is good in theory, but terrible in practice since admins tend to favor promos that are multiple pages long instead of actually good. Only by acting out the matches do the players have any control over their own destinies. Brutus Knightwing would have thrived in OTT, but drowned everywhere else.

And if he drowns in every RPG where talking is the key to victory, that means the only other option for Brutus is to put him in a novel of some kind. Because of his seven-foot tall stature and intimidating first and last name, he will obviously have to play a villain. As someone’s henchman, he could be a big dumb muscle man who throws people around like rag dolls. As a ruler, he could be vicious and quite possibly a conqueror. Yes, ruling would require some form of charisma that most seven-footers don’t have. But who says that the charisma can’t come from a tribal perspective. He could be a raging barbarian who screams his way through battle and rips everyone to pieces. He wouldn’t even need a weapon unless he was wrestling again, in which case he would use a steel chair.

Do you want to know why Vince McMahon prefers muscle-bound wrestlers over smaller ones? It’s because he believes they’re more marketable to the public. They look good when made into toys, printed on posters, and published in magazines. There is a little bit of truth to this. After all, Rey Mysterio on the cover of Muscle & Fitness doesn’t seem right. But here’s where the “internet dorks” clash with Vince: the smaller guys conquering the bigger guys is a more amazing story. Of course the bigger guy is going to win because that’s what we expect. If we get what we expect, the element of surprise is gone. But if a little runt like Daniel Bryan can get a hulking ogre like Kane to submit to the LeBelle Lock, then it’s a memory that’s going to blow everyone’s mind. Brutus Knightwing is a natural villain, and villains were meant to be conquered. Neil Gaiman said it himself: fantasy teaches us that not only are dragons real, they can be defeated.

　

***WRESTLING DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

BAD NEWS BARRETT: The last time Rob Van Dam was relevant, I was still in diapers!

MICHAEL COLE: So Barrett wore diapers as a teenager?