Post by Mad Mumf on Jul 20, 2013 23:15:40 GMT -4
*A short story for your consideration. One man pushes another. The other man responds by decking him. The first man retaliates by pulling a gun and blowing him away. This situation is presented to you by the concept of extreme rapid escalation. Despite the fact that most, operative word being most, human beings are born with an inherent amount of common sense, we see situations like this escalating as a day to day occurrence. It is just a fact of life. Tempers take control of a situation or things spiral out of control. This is, of course, an extreme example, but there are ones that are significantly less extreme.*
*Mad Mumf has gone to the ring twice now and found success both times in the APW. He has delivered on his promises and made an impact from the get go and has only just begun to show what he is about. He is only just starting to showcase what he is capable of in his new fighting condition and with the new repertoire at his disposal. The road only gets harder from here, however.*
*The more he fights, the more people will begin to think they know what to expect. The more he steps into that ring, the more people will think, at the very least that they have some aspect of his strategy figured out. That is when he will need to adapt, adjust, and overcome, just as he always has. Just as he always will. In the end, the more people he fights, the more will fall before him whether it be to the Death Sentence, Death From Above, or the Execution. He will surpass them and claim what he desires. What he strives for. That, of course, being the championship.*
*The very championship he's in a match for this upcoming Overdrive?*
*The scene opens to a computer screen, displaying a popular internet meme.*
*Mumf's voice comes from behind the camera as it pans around towards him.*
Mad Mumf - I think that sums the situation up quite nicely, don't you? Two matches in and I'm already being faced with some of the APW's best and brightest in the hopes of putting the title back around the waist of somebody who's at the very least under contract with the company.
You know, this business is a strange creature. It always has been and probably always will be. There are so many contributing factors to make up what goes on both in the ring and backstage. First of all, you have the obvious part. The on screen action, the faces you see on your TV screen. What you get to enjoy week in and week out. Then you get the behind the scenes stuff that you are privy to as well thanks to internet exclusives, interviews, special segments during the shows, and conversations like the one we're having right now. Hello TV Land.
Then there's the non-public side of things. You think on-screen, some of these guys have egos? You should see them when it comes to how they are when the cameras aren't rolling anymore. The camera may add ten pounds, but sometimes it shrinks the ego by about 50 percent. That's because behind the scenes, that's where you have guys worried about contracts, who they do and don't like. Who they butt heads with in the company. Which members of the front office they have issues with. Whether their contracts are big enough, long enough, or worth enough money. Even the lowliest curtain jerker these days makes more, on average, in a year, than the white middle class male. Give one of some of these folks a title, and their idea of self-worth and monetary value spikes even more.
Combine all of that crap together and you have a volatile mixture that ends up being dangerous as a whole not just to a company but to an industry. Market value goes crazy, wrestlers start asking for more money, don't get the money they want, start holding out of performing in matches, start working without contracts and essentially anarchy ensues. Essentially you start looking at a situation that the APW powers that be find themselves in right now with Evan Envi.
Personally, I don't know the guy. I don't know a whole hell of alot about him except what I've seen on the monitors in my locker room after my two matches have been done for the evening. I don't give two craps about him, really, but here you have a situation where there is a guy who has a large and evident ego, perhaps warranted, I have no idea at this point to be honest. I don't know him from the stray hair on my ass cheeks. Anyway, here's a guy, with said ego, who is holding one of this company's prestigious belts and his contract's up. Essentially, he's a free agent and he could walk any time he likes and not have any obligation to drop that title or even to defend it. He could turn up on another company's show tomorrow night and throw the title in the trash, something that has happened a few times in the history of this business.
That kind of thing can devalue a title. It can change how it looks in the eyes of the boys in the back if it's simply vacated. In some eyes, it's questioned if they ever truly won the championship since they never beat the title's previous holder. It's a situation that management and guys in the front office hate. And it's a situation that APW management finds themselves in now. At any moment Evan Envi could just say the hell with it and take his ball and go home. He could easily do it and there would be no legal grounds or recourse for this company to deal with it since he's not under contract to be here. He's got no reason to show up in the ring aside from whether or not he feels like it.
So it puts the powers that be into a very difficult and very precarious position. They have to tread carefully with their Overdrive Champion lest he take his ball and go home. They have to coax and convince him to feel like entering that ring. And they find it falling on their shoulders to either find some way to get him to sign a new contract or figure out some sort of solution to their little problem. They need to either get that belt off of their champion or get him to stick around. July 25th, 2013; enter the solution.
Given the issues that Evan Envi has stated to have with this company and the people in it, management appears to have decided it will be easier, again, relative term, for them to pry the title from Envi rather than talk him into sticking around. So how do they ensure that this happens? How do you stack your deck in hopes of putting the title back around the waist of someone you do have contractual control over? How do you keep the current champion from just begging out of the match and taking his ball and going home? Well, hell, that's simple. You threaten to strip him of the title if he doesn't show. You risk creating a shit storm, but at the same time, I suppose it's your best bet. I mean, you could still end up with the title being devalued in the eyes of some if it's just stripped and awarded to the winner of the match, but it's better than the embarrassment of having it show up in a trash can or on another show's live feed, I suppose.
Ah, but there's still the risk of the current champion showing up and winning, leaving the problem to be ongoing. How can the powers that be further ensure that the title will change hands. How can they increase the odds and grant themselves a greater probability that it won’t leave the building around the waist of somebody who isn’t on the payroll? How about by throwing six, that’s right, six other superstars, ranging from newcomers to veterans at him in a Scramble Match, which I’m assuming is a match where virtually anything goes and anything can and will happen. There’s management’s recipe for getting the title back where it belongs.
There is one small problem, however. I had a mixed reaction when I first read about this match and the comments from the powers that be, explaining their motivation in setting up this match. You see…I have this thing about being used by others as a tool or an instrument of any kind. I’ve always had a problem with it. It probably goes back to the days of my previous work experience that I talked about last week. I’m only going to say this once because I feel it should only need to be said once. I am admittedly a problem solver of sorts, but I am no man’s puppet or cannon fodder to fight somebody else’s war for them, at the very least not without them asking for my assistance. I’m no man’s performing monkey or hired muscle. I’m here to hurt people, to achieve my goals, and to give the people in every arena across this country what they want. This is a war that the APW has ongoing with Evan Envi and now I have been cast into it. My reactions to this match ranged from eagerness, to annoyance, to irritation, to acceptance, and back to eagerness.
Why would I look a gift horse in the mouth? Why not just be happy about this chance? I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Or I’d be in the APW offices right now banging down doors. But let’s face facts here. I’ve been in this company for roughly two weeks. Week one, I was a mid-carder in a match where one of the participants backed out in a need for self-preservation during a show’s grand finale. A nice start, but not exactly something to shoot me up the power rankings. Four days later, and I’m in a dark match, warming up the crowd by beating the hell out of somebody who thought, quite incorrectly, that he could handle what I bring to the table.
That’s it. That encompasses my entire APW career in a nutshell. A week’s worth of work and I’m already being thrown into a title match. Again, this is not a complaint. What it is, however, is a statement of how clear the writing on the wall is. Management is worried and desperate. They want their belt back and are willing to throw anything they can at its owner in order to get it back. And there, as they say, is the rub. They’re throwing me, like a random name picked out of a hat, at Envi in the hopes that one of the six darts, myself included, they’re throwing at him will find a hold.
I’m going to break down the fourth wall here for you guys for a minute, partially because I hate the damn thing anyway. I like being on the level with my fans and with the people I’m about to beat the living hell out of. This, my friends, is why I hate the business side of this industry. I can’t stand the contractual bullshit. I can’t stand the backstage egos or any of the other nonsense that goes on. What I love, however, is chaos. I love pure unadulterated violence. I love the change to entertain every last one of the fans that pays their money to turn up. I love making them scream with savage enjoyment. I often compare it to the days of gladiators in the coliseum. It’s that same feral, animalistic adrenaline rush that pumped through their veins centuries ago. It’s the look of fear in your opponent’s eyes as they know their end is coming pretty damn soon. It’s the lifeless glaze the eyes take when you knock them out or choke them out.
So, I’m going to let this one slide. I’m eager and ready to go. Hell, after all, it is the Overdrive Championship, and I’d be an idiot to turn down an opportunity, whether I’ve earned it yet or not. Let’s face facts, I was going to be coming for it sooner rather than later anyway. It didn’t matter who was holding it, whether it was Evan Envi, Joseph Johnson, Fozzy Bear, Miss Piggy, or Howdy-friggin-Doody.
*He holds up a piece of paper in one of his hands.*
Know what this is? It’s my APW contract. It’s not a big fancy contract like you see most guys insist upon with lots of zeros, stipulations, signing bonuses, and all that other nonsense. I don’t give a damn about the money, as I’ve said before. It’s just enough to cover doctor’s visits, a nice seat on all my plane flights, the occasional decent rental car, and a good hotel room at each city we stop in. See, the reason I don’t care about the money or the bonuses or the stipulations is because this piece of paper is my license. It is a ticket that gives me free rein to hurt people, maim people, and to do things to people in that ring that would get me thrown in jail for doing to an average guy on the streets. That is worth all the money in the world. That is my bonus. That is my perk. When this contract expires, the company could just photocopy it and give me a new one to sign and I would do it in a heartbeat regardless of whether I was champion or a mid-carder. It’s not exactly easy to get a simple piece of paper that gives you permission, no, encourages you to beat the living hell out of whoever you feel like.
Take this match for example. A seven man scramble, provided Evan Envi shows up, for the title. Seven men in that ring going at it like rabid animals for the right to claim the Overdrive Championship as their prize. That’s controlled chaos right there! That’s why I love this business. That’s why I’m willing to swallow all the backstage garbage, to ignore the nonsense, to deal with all the other things that come along with being in this or any company. Mad Mumf is, was, and always will be in the business of violence, fighting, and destroying whatever’s in his path, and as a great man once said, business is about to pick up.
After all, it’s important to enjoy what you do for a living. Otherwise, it just becomes a job.
But there’s an added bonus to this match. See, there’s a participant in this match with whom I have a little unfinished business. Yes, Joseph Johnson I’m talking about you Mr. Opportunity. Tell me something, slick. How did that whole keeping yourself in peak condition for your title shot work out? Because from where I was sitting on Thursday night it looked like you got the holy hell kicked out of you anyway. Looks like that strategy really paid off for you.
And yet here we are, stacked up against one another again in a match with multiple opponents. Just like Meltdown. However, unlike Meltdown, I doubt you’re enough of a coward or a…ahem…tactician to beg out of this match like you did our last one. I don’t think you’re going to tuck and run this time, giving up a chance at a championship just to preserve that pretty face of yours. This, in my book, is a good thing. I’ve got plenty more to give you. I’ve got more of a lesson to teach you, and I’m planning on putting on a clinic on how to be unstoppable not just for you, but for every single person standing in that ring.
I’ll be honest. I don’t know any of you stepping into the ring all that well. Like I said earlier, I’ve been here all of two weeks, and I’ve seen most of you fight once or twice at the most. That’s still, admittedly better than nothing. The good news is that I can spin through some archive footage to get at least a slice of what to expect from all of you, but any wrestler worth his or her salt doesn’t reveal their whole hand in every match, no matter how far back you look. We’re always learning, always adapting, always adding a move here or a tweak there. We have to make ourselves different so that we don’t become stagnant and predictable. Becoming a one trick pony is the bane of a fighter’s existence.
I learned that lesson the hard way some time ago, and I took it to heart. I’ve changed myself quite significantly so far since then, and as you folks can see it’s paid off pretty well so far. In my first match I did enough to make Joseph Johnson worry about his well-being for a title shot, delivered a Death Sentence, a carry-over from my earlier years, and even took to the top rope. Then, just when Dirk “Cold Blooded” Diggler, or whatever the hell his last name is, just when he thought he was going to be able to avoid the Death Sentence, I choked his ass out.
I promise you, that no matter what direction I’m coming from on Thursday night, none of you will see it coming. What you will see is Mad Mumf leaving with the championship. I may not know much about any of you but that doesn’t honestly matter. You could be a 7 foot tall behemoth, a high flyer, a tactician, a technician, a statistician, a pediatrician, a magician, a brawler, a bingo caller, a fishing boat trawler, a shoe shiner, or downright coward who hides til he sees an opportunity, and in the end I’m just going to quite simply learn about you what I need to on the fly, put you down, and enjoy every second of showing you just who I am and just what I am about.
Even winning that title is only a perk in a lot of ways. Yes, I strive for it just as every other person in this business does, but this will be far from my last chance to claim it. It is the first of many opportunities. This is, however, also a tremendous opportunity to hurt some people whose names carry some weight around here. We’re not talking about just newcomers anymore or guys who are off their game or people who simply don’t know what they’re getting into. We’re talking about veterans who know their way around a ring. We’re talking about guys who have, themselves, been underestimated. We’re talking about men and women who have learned to roll with the punches and adapt to a situation just like every good fighter knows how to do. That means when I beat the hell out of you, win or lose, you aren’t going to forget who I am or the way it feels when my fists, my knees, my elbows, and every other body part that can be used as a weapon rain down on you from every…single…possible…angle.
Controlled chaos, remember? Not only do I get to do what I just mentioned, but no matter which way I turn, no matter who comes in front of me, there’s an opportunity to do just that. There’s just one more opportunity at every turn to make a lasting memory of Mad Mumf in the APW with each punch, kick, suplex, and slam.
Let’s look at it this way…
*He holds up the contract again.*
I’m Charlie, and this match is my trip to Willy Wonka’s factory. This contract? It’s my golden ticket and I want an oompa loompa now, daddy. I want it now.
Ladies and gents, welcome to the longest night of your lives. See you in the ring. Just remember, there is a distinctly good chance that YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE!
*He laughs and walks away humming the song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, “I’ve Got A Golden Ticket” as the scene fades to black.*
*Mad Mumf has gone to the ring twice now and found success both times in the APW. He has delivered on his promises and made an impact from the get go and has only just begun to show what he is about. He is only just starting to showcase what he is capable of in his new fighting condition and with the new repertoire at his disposal. The road only gets harder from here, however.*
*The more he fights, the more people will begin to think they know what to expect. The more he steps into that ring, the more people will think, at the very least that they have some aspect of his strategy figured out. That is when he will need to adapt, adjust, and overcome, just as he always has. Just as he always will. In the end, the more people he fights, the more will fall before him whether it be to the Death Sentence, Death From Above, or the Execution. He will surpass them and claim what he desires. What he strives for. That, of course, being the championship.*
*The very championship he's in a match for this upcoming Overdrive?*
*The scene opens to a computer screen, displaying a popular internet meme.*
*Mumf's voice comes from behind the camera as it pans around towards him.*
Mad Mumf - I think that sums the situation up quite nicely, don't you? Two matches in and I'm already being faced with some of the APW's best and brightest in the hopes of putting the title back around the waist of somebody who's at the very least under contract with the company.
You know, this business is a strange creature. It always has been and probably always will be. There are so many contributing factors to make up what goes on both in the ring and backstage. First of all, you have the obvious part. The on screen action, the faces you see on your TV screen. What you get to enjoy week in and week out. Then you get the behind the scenes stuff that you are privy to as well thanks to internet exclusives, interviews, special segments during the shows, and conversations like the one we're having right now. Hello TV Land.
Then there's the non-public side of things. You think on-screen, some of these guys have egos? You should see them when it comes to how they are when the cameras aren't rolling anymore. The camera may add ten pounds, but sometimes it shrinks the ego by about 50 percent. That's because behind the scenes, that's where you have guys worried about contracts, who they do and don't like. Who they butt heads with in the company. Which members of the front office they have issues with. Whether their contracts are big enough, long enough, or worth enough money. Even the lowliest curtain jerker these days makes more, on average, in a year, than the white middle class male. Give one of some of these folks a title, and their idea of self-worth and monetary value spikes even more.
Combine all of that crap together and you have a volatile mixture that ends up being dangerous as a whole not just to a company but to an industry. Market value goes crazy, wrestlers start asking for more money, don't get the money they want, start holding out of performing in matches, start working without contracts and essentially anarchy ensues. Essentially you start looking at a situation that the APW powers that be find themselves in right now with Evan Envi.
Personally, I don't know the guy. I don't know a whole hell of alot about him except what I've seen on the monitors in my locker room after my two matches have been done for the evening. I don't give two craps about him, really, but here you have a situation where there is a guy who has a large and evident ego, perhaps warranted, I have no idea at this point to be honest. I don't know him from the stray hair on my ass cheeks. Anyway, here's a guy, with said ego, who is holding one of this company's prestigious belts and his contract's up. Essentially, he's a free agent and he could walk any time he likes and not have any obligation to drop that title or even to defend it. He could turn up on another company's show tomorrow night and throw the title in the trash, something that has happened a few times in the history of this business.
That kind of thing can devalue a title. It can change how it looks in the eyes of the boys in the back if it's simply vacated. In some eyes, it's questioned if they ever truly won the championship since they never beat the title's previous holder. It's a situation that management and guys in the front office hate. And it's a situation that APW management finds themselves in now. At any moment Evan Envi could just say the hell with it and take his ball and go home. He could easily do it and there would be no legal grounds or recourse for this company to deal with it since he's not under contract to be here. He's got no reason to show up in the ring aside from whether or not he feels like it.
So it puts the powers that be into a very difficult and very precarious position. They have to tread carefully with their Overdrive Champion lest he take his ball and go home. They have to coax and convince him to feel like entering that ring. And they find it falling on their shoulders to either find some way to get him to sign a new contract or figure out some sort of solution to their little problem. They need to either get that belt off of their champion or get him to stick around. July 25th, 2013; enter the solution.
Given the issues that Evan Envi has stated to have with this company and the people in it, management appears to have decided it will be easier, again, relative term, for them to pry the title from Envi rather than talk him into sticking around. So how do they ensure that this happens? How do you stack your deck in hopes of putting the title back around the waist of someone you do have contractual control over? How do you keep the current champion from just begging out of the match and taking his ball and going home? Well, hell, that's simple. You threaten to strip him of the title if he doesn't show. You risk creating a shit storm, but at the same time, I suppose it's your best bet. I mean, you could still end up with the title being devalued in the eyes of some if it's just stripped and awarded to the winner of the match, but it's better than the embarrassment of having it show up in a trash can or on another show's live feed, I suppose.
Ah, but there's still the risk of the current champion showing up and winning, leaving the problem to be ongoing. How can the powers that be further ensure that the title will change hands. How can they increase the odds and grant themselves a greater probability that it won’t leave the building around the waist of somebody who isn’t on the payroll? How about by throwing six, that’s right, six other superstars, ranging from newcomers to veterans at him in a Scramble Match, which I’m assuming is a match where virtually anything goes and anything can and will happen. There’s management’s recipe for getting the title back where it belongs.
There is one small problem, however. I had a mixed reaction when I first read about this match and the comments from the powers that be, explaining their motivation in setting up this match. You see…I have this thing about being used by others as a tool or an instrument of any kind. I’ve always had a problem with it. It probably goes back to the days of my previous work experience that I talked about last week. I’m only going to say this once because I feel it should only need to be said once. I am admittedly a problem solver of sorts, but I am no man’s puppet or cannon fodder to fight somebody else’s war for them, at the very least not without them asking for my assistance. I’m no man’s performing monkey or hired muscle. I’m here to hurt people, to achieve my goals, and to give the people in every arena across this country what they want. This is a war that the APW has ongoing with Evan Envi and now I have been cast into it. My reactions to this match ranged from eagerness, to annoyance, to irritation, to acceptance, and back to eagerness.
Why would I look a gift horse in the mouth? Why not just be happy about this chance? I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Or I’d be in the APW offices right now banging down doors. But let’s face facts here. I’ve been in this company for roughly two weeks. Week one, I was a mid-carder in a match where one of the participants backed out in a need for self-preservation during a show’s grand finale. A nice start, but not exactly something to shoot me up the power rankings. Four days later, and I’m in a dark match, warming up the crowd by beating the hell out of somebody who thought, quite incorrectly, that he could handle what I bring to the table.
That’s it. That encompasses my entire APW career in a nutshell. A week’s worth of work and I’m already being thrown into a title match. Again, this is not a complaint. What it is, however, is a statement of how clear the writing on the wall is. Management is worried and desperate. They want their belt back and are willing to throw anything they can at its owner in order to get it back. And there, as they say, is the rub. They’re throwing me, like a random name picked out of a hat, at Envi in the hopes that one of the six darts, myself included, they’re throwing at him will find a hold.
I’m going to break down the fourth wall here for you guys for a minute, partially because I hate the damn thing anyway. I like being on the level with my fans and with the people I’m about to beat the living hell out of. This, my friends, is why I hate the business side of this industry. I can’t stand the contractual bullshit. I can’t stand the backstage egos or any of the other nonsense that goes on. What I love, however, is chaos. I love pure unadulterated violence. I love the change to entertain every last one of the fans that pays their money to turn up. I love making them scream with savage enjoyment. I often compare it to the days of gladiators in the coliseum. It’s that same feral, animalistic adrenaline rush that pumped through their veins centuries ago. It’s the look of fear in your opponent’s eyes as they know their end is coming pretty damn soon. It’s the lifeless glaze the eyes take when you knock them out or choke them out.
So, I’m going to let this one slide. I’m eager and ready to go. Hell, after all, it is the Overdrive Championship, and I’d be an idiot to turn down an opportunity, whether I’ve earned it yet or not. Let’s face facts, I was going to be coming for it sooner rather than later anyway. It didn’t matter who was holding it, whether it was Evan Envi, Joseph Johnson, Fozzy Bear, Miss Piggy, or Howdy-friggin-Doody.
*He holds up a piece of paper in one of his hands.*
Know what this is? It’s my APW contract. It’s not a big fancy contract like you see most guys insist upon with lots of zeros, stipulations, signing bonuses, and all that other nonsense. I don’t give a damn about the money, as I’ve said before. It’s just enough to cover doctor’s visits, a nice seat on all my plane flights, the occasional decent rental car, and a good hotel room at each city we stop in. See, the reason I don’t care about the money or the bonuses or the stipulations is because this piece of paper is my license. It is a ticket that gives me free rein to hurt people, maim people, and to do things to people in that ring that would get me thrown in jail for doing to an average guy on the streets. That is worth all the money in the world. That is my bonus. That is my perk. When this contract expires, the company could just photocopy it and give me a new one to sign and I would do it in a heartbeat regardless of whether I was champion or a mid-carder. It’s not exactly easy to get a simple piece of paper that gives you permission, no, encourages you to beat the living hell out of whoever you feel like.
Take this match for example. A seven man scramble, provided Evan Envi shows up, for the title. Seven men in that ring going at it like rabid animals for the right to claim the Overdrive Championship as their prize. That’s controlled chaos right there! That’s why I love this business. That’s why I’m willing to swallow all the backstage garbage, to ignore the nonsense, to deal with all the other things that come along with being in this or any company. Mad Mumf is, was, and always will be in the business of violence, fighting, and destroying whatever’s in his path, and as a great man once said, business is about to pick up.
After all, it’s important to enjoy what you do for a living. Otherwise, it just becomes a job.
But there’s an added bonus to this match. See, there’s a participant in this match with whom I have a little unfinished business. Yes, Joseph Johnson I’m talking about you Mr. Opportunity. Tell me something, slick. How did that whole keeping yourself in peak condition for your title shot work out? Because from where I was sitting on Thursday night it looked like you got the holy hell kicked out of you anyway. Looks like that strategy really paid off for you.
And yet here we are, stacked up against one another again in a match with multiple opponents. Just like Meltdown. However, unlike Meltdown, I doubt you’re enough of a coward or a…ahem…tactician to beg out of this match like you did our last one. I don’t think you’re going to tuck and run this time, giving up a chance at a championship just to preserve that pretty face of yours. This, in my book, is a good thing. I’ve got plenty more to give you. I’ve got more of a lesson to teach you, and I’m planning on putting on a clinic on how to be unstoppable not just for you, but for every single person standing in that ring.
I’ll be honest. I don’t know any of you stepping into the ring all that well. Like I said earlier, I’ve been here all of two weeks, and I’ve seen most of you fight once or twice at the most. That’s still, admittedly better than nothing. The good news is that I can spin through some archive footage to get at least a slice of what to expect from all of you, but any wrestler worth his or her salt doesn’t reveal their whole hand in every match, no matter how far back you look. We’re always learning, always adapting, always adding a move here or a tweak there. We have to make ourselves different so that we don’t become stagnant and predictable. Becoming a one trick pony is the bane of a fighter’s existence.
I learned that lesson the hard way some time ago, and I took it to heart. I’ve changed myself quite significantly so far since then, and as you folks can see it’s paid off pretty well so far. In my first match I did enough to make Joseph Johnson worry about his well-being for a title shot, delivered a Death Sentence, a carry-over from my earlier years, and even took to the top rope. Then, just when Dirk “Cold Blooded” Diggler, or whatever the hell his last name is, just when he thought he was going to be able to avoid the Death Sentence, I choked his ass out.
I promise you, that no matter what direction I’m coming from on Thursday night, none of you will see it coming. What you will see is Mad Mumf leaving with the championship. I may not know much about any of you but that doesn’t honestly matter. You could be a 7 foot tall behemoth, a high flyer, a tactician, a technician, a statistician, a pediatrician, a magician, a brawler, a bingo caller, a fishing boat trawler, a shoe shiner, or downright coward who hides til he sees an opportunity, and in the end I’m just going to quite simply learn about you what I need to on the fly, put you down, and enjoy every second of showing you just who I am and just what I am about.
Even winning that title is only a perk in a lot of ways. Yes, I strive for it just as every other person in this business does, but this will be far from my last chance to claim it. It is the first of many opportunities. This is, however, also a tremendous opportunity to hurt some people whose names carry some weight around here. We’re not talking about just newcomers anymore or guys who are off their game or people who simply don’t know what they’re getting into. We’re talking about veterans who know their way around a ring. We’re talking about guys who have, themselves, been underestimated. We’re talking about men and women who have learned to roll with the punches and adapt to a situation just like every good fighter knows how to do. That means when I beat the hell out of you, win or lose, you aren’t going to forget who I am or the way it feels when my fists, my knees, my elbows, and every other body part that can be used as a weapon rain down on you from every…single…possible…angle.
Controlled chaos, remember? Not only do I get to do what I just mentioned, but no matter which way I turn, no matter who comes in front of me, there’s an opportunity to do just that. There’s just one more opportunity at every turn to make a lasting memory of Mad Mumf in the APW with each punch, kick, suplex, and slam.
Let’s look at it this way…
*He holds up the contract again.*
I’m Charlie, and this match is my trip to Willy Wonka’s factory. This contract? It’s my golden ticket and I want an oompa loompa now, daddy. I want it now.
Ladies and gents, welcome to the longest night of your lives. See you in the ring. Just remember, there is a distinctly good chance that YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE!
*He laughs and walks away humming the song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, “I’ve Got A Golden Ticket” as the scene fades to black.*
