Olimpia DeJesus, World-Class Wrestler and Murder Suspect from "Seven Star Reads"

 

Rhino: ECW's Motor City Monster

 

"Wrestling, Issue One" by What Culture

BOOK TITLE: Wrestling, Issue One

AUTHORS: What Culture Staff

YEAR: 2016

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Pro-Wrestling Bookazine

GRADE: Mixed

The articles can be fascinating to any hardcore wrestling fan, but not if they suffer from the same typographical errors as the next volume in the series. Vince McMahon’s first name was spelled without an N, the word match had its A capitalized, the word to was all-caps for no apparent reason, need I name more? This wouldn’t be too big of an issue if the typos were few and far between, but they occur so frequently that I can’t give this bookazine a passing grade. A reputable editor with a fresh set of eyes could have easily pinpointed these glaring mistakes and polished this otherwise fine piece of reading material to higher standards.

Typos aside, the articles were actually fun to read, with the glaring exception of WWE vs. Internet Fans. To me, that just sounded like a bitter old man ranting and raving about the inevitable emergence of the internet, as if this new technology is somehow to blame for wrestling being as bad as it can be sometimes. It seems uncharacteristic of What Culture’s writing staff to put out such an article considering they themselves are wrestling critics and employ a mostly millennial workforce. Maybe this particular article author was an outsider from the beginning, I don’t know.

But enough about the negativity. Let’s talk about my two favorite articles in this whole bookazine. Let’s begin with Britney Pillman’s story about how her father, Brian, died of a heart attack while preparing for a WWF pay-per-view. To hear the author describe Britney’s pain as she grew up with a drug-addicted stepmother and without a loving father, it tugs at the heartstrings and makes the reader want to legitimately root for her life to improve. While Britney is in a better place since the tragic incident, she did miss out on royalty payments from the WWF that instead went to the drug-addicted stepmother Melanie Pillman. I wouldn’t wish such poverty and heartache on my worst enemy. We’ve all had to deal with toxic people at one point or another, but I think any reader can agree that Britney and her siblings need a permanent vacation from them. That’s what the author of the article did for me as a reader: put me in the role of cheerleader.

And of course, Adam Blampied’s undying creativity will always be my favorite part of What Culture’s past. Although his recent sex scandal puts me in a tough position with regards to his fandom, I can at least enjoy his vision for how he would book Rey Mysterio’s first World Championship run in WWE. No more will the lovable luchador be jobbed out to everybody and their uncle. He’ll win matches by the skin of his teeth, like a true underdog hero is supposed to. He’ll have credible opponents to put him over the moon. He’ll have blood-curdling storylines that aren’t nearly as despicable with Eddie Guerrero’s legacy as real life was. If Rey Mysterio had been booked under Adam Blampied’s guidance, I would have been a bigger believer in this ultimate underdog. But as it is…

The negatives of this bookazine shouldn’t turn you away from what is ultimately a fun read for all wrestling fans. Typos are easy to fix and even if they wanted to keep the anti-internet fan article, readers could just skip over it. There’s a top 100 wrestling match list,  a fantasy world cup tournament, a nice juxtaposition between Bray Wyatt and his eerie theme song, too many wonderful articles to name. Though not perfect, this work of nonfiction will get a respectable mixed grade out of me.

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?

Christina McLeod

The more I think about it, the more I believe there’s a reason Christina McLeod is currently an unemployed character. As you can guess from the last name, she’s related to Mitch McLeod from Brawl Mart (soon to be separated into Occupy Wrestling). What you don’t know is that she’s his older sister. This isn’t exactly a good reason to remain unemployed (unless you ask Keegan Day about it). Christina’s Mary-Sue-like perfection on the other hand is.

When I first came up with Christina McLeod, it was during my teenaged years and a time in the WWE when sexualizing women was the norm. Teenaged boys plus sexy women equals 30 minutes of masturbation. It’s not the new math, it’s the old science. So I kept asking myself how I could make Christina McLeod as sexy as possible. Bisexuality with a preference for women always works. Long black hair? Check. Snow white skin? Got it. Skimpy wrestling clothes that look more like beachwear than sports gear? Hell yes.

And last but not least, an infamous incident in the fantasy world where she competed in a bikini contest with other WWE divas and instead came out wearing nothing but a diaper. No shirt, no bra, not even pasties, just a diaper. You think she won that contest? By a landslide, and I’m not talking about the one going on in her male fans’ pants.

But of course, sexualizing women doesn’t work in today’s wrestling world, or even in a normal society for that matter. WWE programming is rated TV-PG and TNA programming is too sucky to get the girls any real attention. On top of all that (that’s not a sexual innuendo, I swear), I’m also mature and liberal enough to recognize that women don’t owe men anything when it comes to their bodies. If women want to show them off, that’s fine. If they’d rather be remembered for something else, even more power to them. I could take the easy road and say Christina made the choice to show off her body, but coming from a male writer who invented a fictional character, that’s not going to fly, so I just let it go.

And as it turned out, if Christina McLeod would have been published, she might have been remembered for something else as well: being so good at fighting and wrestling that she could not only defeat male opponents, she could do so convincingly. According to her back story, Christina had a stint in the marines and learned martial arts and mental toughness from that institution. The only reason why she’s no longer a marine is because she beat up multiple male soldiers who tried to rape her. That’s okay, because she didn’t want to die for a country that normalized rape anyways. Suck it, Paul Ryan and Todd Aiken.

Okay, so we’ve got this super hot chick who not only looks good naked, but also could kick anybody’s ass on any given Sunday. Hell, she could win the KDW World Title tomorrow if she wanted to. But there’s a problem with these credentials. In all this time I’ve been flapping my gums, I never once gave Christina one character flaw of any kind. That’s not good. Not good at all. Flawed characters are easy to relate to. Connecting with the audience in some way is important for any character. If you’re a villain, you want to be cruel and unusual. If you’re a hero, you want to be an overachieving underdog. What do you do if you’re Christina McLeod? Pardon me, but I haven’t figured that out just yet.

　

***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

KRAMER: Things are going pretty well for me here in Hollywood. I met a girl.

JERRY: Kramer, she was murdered.

KRAMER: Yeah well, I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship.

-Seinfeld-

Billy Rogue

I’ve been watching the wrestling tag team of The French Pirates in my head for quite sometime. It appears as if they’re living…two lives. One of the lives is Jonathan Thief. He broke away from the tag team and became a successful multi-time world champion and future Hall of Famer. He has a social security number (not really). He pays taxes (to his home country of France). He even takes out his landlady’s garbage.

The other life is Billy Rogue. He couldn’t find the same success his tag team partner did and fell into obscurity. He is also guilty of virtually every drug crime the US has a law for. One of these lives has a future. The other does not. Billy Rogue is the one who doesn’t have much of a future.

The French Pirates draw a lot of comparisons to the real life WWE tag team from the early 90’s, The Rockers. Jonathan Thief found the same amount of success Shawn Michaels did. Billy Rogue couldn’t, a la Marty Jennetty. Having said that, what do you give a man who has no future? A bottle of poison? A loaded gun? A grudge-match storyline against his old tag team partner? No, no, and yes.

But more importantly, you give Billy Rogue drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. You make him so depressed with his lack of success (that rhymes) his only option is to use every kind of illegal drug imaginable. Pot is becoming legal in a lot of states and it has no harmful side effects, so that doesn’t count. I’m talking about the hard stuff. The extreme stuff. The tubes of glue. The balloons of cocaine. The bigger balloons of heroin. And then wash it all down with a nice big bottle of vodka.

Sending Mr. Rogue to rehab would seem like the right way for a wrestling company to spend its money. If he followed the right steps, he could make a full recovery much like former WWE superstar Joey Mercury did and become an inspiration to those wanting to be sober. But how do you sell such a gigantic bill of goods to someone who still harbors jealousy toward his former tag team partner? If he gets sober, can he stay that way? Even if he does get sober, will he not find another destructive outlet for his raw feelings?

Let’s say it’s possible. Let’s say for the sake of argument Billy Rogue quits drugs and alcohol altogether and becomes a better person for it. His criminal record is spotless and he’s actually able to hold down a job. What kind of life is there for him on the other side of recovery? He didn’t have much of a life before he turned to drugs, what makes you think he’ll have one after? You think he’s going to be content with sitting in an office building or getting his computer science degree? Or maybe he can completely dork out and sell popcorn for the same wrestling promotion he was a part of.

This is a struggle that is all too familiar in drug fiction and nonfiction. It can be said about any kind of addiction, really. You don’t have to constantly shoot heroin in your arm in order to relate to addiction. There are porn addicts, adrenaline addicts, self-harm addicts, and then there’s that one addiction I personally can relate to: food addiction. Billy Rogue is to drugs what I am to food.

I’ve been addicted to food ever since going on my first round of schizophrenia medication. I used to be a skinny little twig in high school. In today’s world, my belly is large, my clothes barely fit, and my energy is gone. Food was the one thing I could turn to that gave me just a little bit of satisfaction in a world where mental illness kept me from having fun. One Reese’s Cup was more intense for me than any song written by Rammstein or Pink Floyd. Because I was so attracted to that constant high, my weight spiraled out of control and now I’m left with the daunting task of having to lose all the weight and keep it off permanently.

Addiction is the only thing Billy Rogue and I have in common. Though I live through my own characters, I don’t want to be the guy who lives through someone who openly admits to having no future. I refuse to accept dystopia. If I have a big belly and a weird appearance for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t matter to me as long as I still had a future worth working toward. That future starts with editing the crap out of Brawl Mart and sending it to a reputable publisher instead of doing the heavy lifting myself with Smash Words. I don’t know how far away that time in my life will be, but it is there. I will make my own dreams come true one way or another. I’m an adult. It’s my right to make my dreams come true.

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“I’m torn to pieces. I’m broken down. I still see your face when you’re not around. I sit here in misery wondering if I’ll ever be half the man you wanted me to be.”

-Pop Evil singing “Torn to Pieces”-