Monthly Archives: May 2022

TALES OF THE INVISIBLE BACKSTAGE CAMERA: I feel bad for all these people, Jimmie

(THE SCENE: After a STRUGGLE house show, (we have shows y’all don’t know about, honest) ZIPPITY DUDA is alone in the locker room, and he has taken great pains to assure himself that this is truly the case. He’s looked around every corner and inspected every nook and cranny, and when he’s made absolutely sure that no one else is anywhere nearby, he pulls out a Zip-Loc bag, which contains a small vial of liquid and a hypodermic needle.)

ZIP: (nervously) Okay… It’s okay, you can do this. Okay… Just one quick poke, and you’re on your way… Muscles, money, girls… Your mother will stop yelling at you… You can do this…

(Not having any idea what the hell he’s doing, ZIP starts to tie off his arm like a heroin addict, then slowly inserts the needle into the steroid vial, his hands shaking the entire time. Shaking so hard, in fact, that he ends up dropping it, and upon hitting the floor, it shatters, and its contents are immediately soaked into the indoor/outdoor carpet.)

ZIP: (With the despairing tone of a dude who just lost something he had to sell his XBox to buy, because that’s exactly what just happened) Noooo!

(ZIP drops down to his hands and knees and starts trying in vain to salvage whatever he can, when – to his horror – he starts to hear the sounds of an elderly German filmmaker bickering with a maniacal burnout pseudo-journalist; it’s COBRA HIGHWAY!)

REINHOLD KINSKI: Mein Gott… How is it zat you have come to arrive here?

ZIP: Look, this is -I mean, I-I-I

RAOUL KEMP: Better keep your distance from that one, Adolf. A junkie without his shit is liable to turn on you like a rabid dog. Give him ten minutes and that boy will become a wild-eyed, slavering brute who’d be thrown into a ditch and poked with sharp sticks if this was a decent society.

ZIP: Junkie!? No, no, no, this is-

KINSKI: It is truly an accursed thing we bear vitness to on zis day. His soul screams in agony. God himself looks down upon zis young man, and he gazes upward toward ze heavens, and he knows. Knows zat he has been chosen by the divine Himself. Chosen to be abandoned.

ZIP: No, seriously, you’ve got it all wrong! This isn’t-

KEMP: C’mon, let’s get the fuck out of here. I don’t want to be the nearest potential victim when this freak’s eyes roll over white and he starts thirsting for blood.

KINSKI: Ve should get some chili dogs.

(KEMP and KINSKI disappear in a cloud of grizzly bear fur and amyl nitrate caplets, and ZIP is very confused. He then sadly starts trying to pick the broken pieces of glass out of the carpet, in order o destroy the evidence before anyone else shows up. As with most things in his life, he fails, as he suddenly smells the telltale scent of Icy Hot and regret – It’s disgraced former world’s champion ACE LA GRANGE!)

ACE: God damn, brother! How is it that you have come to arrive here!?

ZIP: Oh no…

ACE: I mean, things got pretty dark back in the day, but even I never messed around with that shit, brother.

ZIP: (sighing defeatedly) Look… It’s not what you think. That was… I was doing steroids.

(ACE pauses for a moment, as though the hamster wheel in his brain cannot process this information, then can’t help but laugh)

ACE: Ha ha ha ha ha, bullshit, brother! You ain’t on the gas! Look, I spent the entire 2000s on enough gas to fuel a fleet of buses, and that ain’t the body of someone who’s juiced up.

ZIP: It was my first time! Or.. You know… It would’ve been.

ACE: Then why’s your arm tied up like that, brother? You just stick yourself in the butt, or, you know, wherever.

ZIP: What, really? Son of a…

(ACE reaches down and picks up the piece of the vial with the label, then looks shocked.)

ACE: I’ll be damned, you weren’t lying. Brother, what the hell are you doing this for, anyway?

ZIP: Well, you know… To get bigger.

ACE: Brother, you’re a cruiserweight. You’re like four feet tall.

ZIP: i know, I know, it’s just, you know…. My mom…

ACE: (in a very serious tone) Brother, be honest with me… Are you trying to bulk up to beat up your mom?

ZIP: No! It’s just, you know, she just doesn’t respect me, and I thought that if I could win more matches…

ACE: Really? Hell, brother, you don’t need muscles to kick ass. Well, I mean, you do, but not asses as small as the ones you’re trying to kick. Come on, brother, I’m taking you under my wing.

ZIP: Do what now?

ACE: Look, brother, I’m a former world’s champion. If there’s one thing I know, it’s kicking asses professionally. And trust me brother, taking the kinda shortcuts you were gonna take is no good. Sooner or later, you’re gonna end up all messed up, like I did, or like Rockin’ Roland or Alex Kane or Damien Nova.

ZIP: Who’s Damien Nova?

ACE: Aw, brother. Probably the biggest “never was” in the history of Tri-State Area Wrestling. Huh… Heard he just got outta prison, come to think of it. Wonder what he’s up to…

NEXT TIME: We find out what he’s up to.

The Movement Begins

(THE SCENE opens on a dimly lit gym with a wrestling ring in yhe middle of the room. Tri-State Area wrestling legend TUPAC MACHINE stands, arms folded, in front of the ring apron. As the camera slowly zooms in, an instrumental version of “Hail Mary” plays, before his voice can be heard as a voiceover)

TUPAC MACHINE: I’ve been in this game over 25 years now. A quarter century. Longer than some of these young cats have been alive. And in that time, I’ve been all over the world, and I’ve beaten everybody there is to beat.

(As he continues, the scene fades in and out on archival footage of PAC’s career, with an emphasis on scoring victories with several variations of his patented “All Armz on Me” cross armbreaker finishing move and posing with various championship belts.)

PAC: But you know something? People this whole time, been out there trying to change me. “Yo Pac, why not mix it up a little? You’ve seen some of the moves these young kids have been using. Add some flash. Modernize.”

(The interspersed video footage changes to other wrestlers using an array of impressive acrobatic maneuvers, including CANNONBALLS!’s 630 senton, CRASH FERRARI’s Phoenix Splash, and IMMORTAN JIMMY’s infamous Double Lotation Moonsault.)

PAC: And I’m just like, y’all don’t understand. It’s one thing when I beat somebody with the diving headbutt or the Liger Bomb. But when you get that armbar on someone, and you feel that will to fight leave your opponent, you feel them tap? That’s special. There’s no fluke wins, man, no “I wasn’t ready.” That’s your opponent telling you – telling you, man – “I can’t beat you. I give up. You win.” Ain’t nothing in wrestling you can do better than that.
And you know, I already said I been doing this for a long, long time. I’m not 25 any more. The clock is ticking, you know what I’m saying? Lately, I’m stating to think about my legacy, what I’mma leave behind. And I wanna leave this sport better off than it was when I got here, and lately, dog? I’m not feelin’ it. So it’s time to get proactive, to take what I know, to take the art of submission wrestling – the art of forcing another wrestler to tell you that you’ve beaten them – and teach the secrets I’ve learned to a new generation. Introducing B.A.R.S. – The Broken Arm Retaliation Society.

BLACK PANTHER MASK: The thing you gotta understand about this is that it’s more than a stable of wrestlers. It’s a movement. This is a revolution. We’re here to put everyone on notice, to change the facing a wrestling as you’ve known it. And fortunately, this revolution will be televised.

JUNIOR GRIM: It has often been asked whether or not pain is “all in the mind,” which is to say: is pain merely a definite autonomic response to external stimuli, or is it a more more abstract thing that can be affected by factors that exist outside the stimuli in question? Well, a recent psychological study conducted by Yale medical school set out to look further into this question, as well as several others.

(TUPAC MACHINE and BLACK PANTHER MASK both eye each other nervously, and PANTHER shrugs)

JUNIOR: But y’all, before I get further into this, let me first say that I have discovered several inconsistencies in their methodology, which have caused the data they collected to have several not-insignificant flaws. Fist of all, when it came to the selection of members of their control group, they failed to consider…

(TUPAC MACHINE kind of gives a throat-slashing gesture to the camera operator, at which point JUNIOR’s audio drastically reduces in volume to nearly-nonexistent levels, suggesting that her mic has been cut. Existing in her own little world, she continues speaking for quite some time, even after PAC steps forward and talks over her)

TUPAC: So… So anyway… What you’re looking at are two young, motivated, dangerous individuals, and under my guidance, they’re gonna represent the future of STRUGGLE Pro Wrestling. And this is only the beginning.

JUNIOR: …Because membership in the Broken Arm Retaliation Society may be by invite only….

BPM: ….But we’re always taking submissions.

ON SALE NOW!