First | Previous | Next In the aftermath of Grrbraa’s contentious victory the crowd sat in respectful silence. It was rare for a previous champion to die, let alone in the first round. The audience wasn’t fully aware of all the Guild regulations in place to prevent such an act from occurring, they just knew champions were supposed to be better than newbies. There were some acolytes down on the field cleaning up Tomrha’s remains with a fair bit more respect than they’d given to Joseph. The thought of another champion dying so easily—even an eldrin—made Draevin uncomfortable. “What doesn’t make sense to me,” Draevin commented, “is how nobody saw this coming. I thought Caelnaste was supposed to be a world renowned seer.” Sylnya slouched in her seat while slowly ripping up a ticket stub. She looked about ready to kill someone and Peter was sitting remarkably still. “Don’t even get me started. I just lost a ton of money and I can’t even complain about it properly since Caelnaste lost her husband.” “You sound like you’re complaining about it to me,” Draevin said. The look she gave him right afterward made him regret the comment. But only a little. “So are you going to explain how that worked Peter?” Draevin asked the human, it couldn’t hurt to remind Sylnya that this was all Peter’s fault. “Why did Tomrha’s mind control break like that? I was under the impression cerebromancy was easier to cast on less intelligent targets.” “It’s a little complicated,” Peter said, while rubbing the back of his neck. There was an unspoken implication in Peter’s words that Draevin didn’t appreciate: the implication that Draevin wouldn’t be able to understand the trick. “Try me,” Draevin said flatly. He didn’t keep the hint of irritation from his voice. Peter cleared his throat. “Okay, but don’t get upset if you can’t follow along. The first step was to yell out his name. People tend to notice when they hear their own name. That was just to distract him.” “I’d figured that part out,” Draevin said. “It almost seems like cheating to me,” Sylnya cut in. “You helped that beast fuckin’ eat him!” Peter studied his shoes and mumbled, “It’s not against the rules. I checked.” Sylnya tossed the shredded remains of her ticket stub into the air in front of her and shot out of her seat. “I’m gonna go check on Caelnaste,” she announced in a huff and stormed out of the booth. “Is she mad at me?” Peter asked Draevin after she left. “I didn’t plan on Tomrha getting killed. I didn’t really think about what would happen after the circlet came off.” “She’ll get over it,” Draevin reassured the human. “She’s always a poor sport like that when she loses a bet. Don’t take it personally. By the time she gets back from her match she won’t even remember how upset she was. Now, were you going to explain why that mind control spell suddenly failed?” “Right,” Peter nodded. “That was just a theory I had regarding the Embrelian model of consciousness. I didn’t know if it would actually work. Clearly it did.” Draevin really didn’t want to admit he had never heard of this “Embrelian model” before. “It’s been a few centuries since I graduated, you might have to jog my memory about the Embrelian model.” “Oh, it’s fascinating stuff! Scholar Embrel was way ahead of his time!” Peter’s entire demeanor shifted. He was making eye contact and gesturing animatedly with his hands for the first time since Draevin had met him. “So he had this theory of consciousness that attempted to explain infantile amnesia based on a fundamental shift in the structure of the mind.” “Infant-what?” “The reason babies can’t remember anything until they’re around four years old.” Peter answered Draevin’s question quickly so he could keep going. Draevin didn’t bother to point out that it took significantly longer than that for elf babies. “So basically, what he said is that once a baby learns speech their mind starts to work in an entirely different way. Before speech they’re all primal feelings, tastes and smells; but after speech they have names for everything. Embrel thought that their older memories could no longer be accessed because their mind worked in such a fundamentally different way. He called the two minds the primal mind and the higher mind. Grrbraa is able to instantly switch between the two minds by removing his circlet.” Draevin wasn’t quite following along, but he nodded anyway. “So…” he trailed off intentionally so Peter would jump in. He didn’t have to wait long. “So when he removed the circlet he switched to the primal mind and Tomrha’s connection was severed. That pretty much proves the Embrelian theory correct!” Peter finished excitedly. Draevin wasn’t nearly as excited; in fact, having this human talk circles around him left him feeling the exact opposite of excited. “It’s too bad Embrel will never know he was right,” Peter said in a softer voice. History wasn’t really one of Draevin’s strong suits, except where the arena was concerned, so he didn’t feel bad about not knowing the fate of some random scholar. “Yeah a real tragedy,” he agreed. “Now do you think we can talk about those glasses of yours?” “Glasses?” Peter asked with perfect innocence. Draevin fixed him with a steady glare. “Don’t think I didn’t notice earlier. Your glasses changed colors. You have some kind of illegal enchantments on them don’t you?” Actually when he thought about it that didn’t make any sense. Peter had competed once already against Korack. “How come the alarm system didn’t go off when you stepped into the fighter’s box?” Peter avoided eye contact. “There’s nothing illegal about my glasses, they just malfunction every once in a while.” “Malfunction? So they do have enchantments on them!” Peter removed the glasses and stuck his fingers through the holes. “That’s because they’re not actually made with glass. I just mounted an illusion enchantment on wooden frames to bend light.” Draevin shook his head. “What? That doesn’t make any sense, regular glasses are way cheaper. Enchanted glasses would cost… you might as well just hire a visceramancer to fix your eyesight!” “I had access to artificing tools at the time, so I made them myself. And it’s not against the rules to wear enchanted glasses in the arena. When the Guild was new every wizard with eyesight problems wore them and the rules still allow for them.” “So you actually registered those glasses as a second item then?” Draevin asked, just to be sure. Peter nodded. “They were inspected and everything.” Draevin shrugged. “Fine then, if the Guild’s okay with it then they’re probably fine.” Down on the field the next contestants were getting ready for their match. Brorn was hard to miss given the voluminous hooded black robes he always wore. “Why is he wearing that?” Peter asked. He pointed to the fighter’s box where Brorn was standing. Brorn’s body was covered so thoroughly not even his skin tone could be discerned. Draevin knew it was technically Sylnya’s job to answer all of Peter’s questions, but with how much information the human had been sharing with him it only felt right to at least return the favor when there was an easy answer. “You remember how we told you Brorn can only bring one corpse?” he asked. “Yeah.” “Well he switches it up every year and wears something like that to hide it.” “Why would it matter if people saw what body he was wearing?” Peter asked, he scribbled down some notes in his pad then tucked it away. Now that Draevin was paying attention to the strange behavior it was really starting to make him curious, but he saved it for later. He still had some more pressing questions he wanted to extract out of this human, like how he had mastered sensomancy so quickly. “Someone might recognize the body,” Draevin told him. “He likes to wear previous champions or contestants. He actually buys lots of remains when contestants die so he has options. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t already made Caelnaste an offer for Tomrha’s remains.” “Why would it matter what body he wears?” Peter asked. “He can’t use the magic they could, can he?” “Of course he can. That’s the whole point!” Draevin exclaimed. “As long as he’s wearing a body, he knows everything they knew when they were alive and he has access to the mana pool they did. He can even use his own necromancy spells on top of that so it’s almost like fighting two contestants at once.” “Interesting,” Peter murmured under his breath, “that explains a lot. How much of the profits from his stores must he be spending outfitting himself for these tournaments?” The question didn’t seem directed at Draevin so he ignored it as the crowd was quieting down in anticipation of the match. “Brorn is an… elf necromancer representing Brornia.” Maeve began. She hesitated on Brorn’s race since it wasn’t as straight forward. He certainly used to be an elf, but judging by his current height he had to be a dwarf, gnome or goblin. “He is possessing the body of a wizard and his wish is for the end of all life... that doesn’t shop at Brorn Mart.” Here she actually did the pause just like in the advertisements. “Brorn wants everyone to know that he is Necro-King Brorn; his reign is eternal and his products are the cheapest on the market. ‘Shop Brorn Mart… or die!’” Draevin idly wondered if Necro-King Brorn had bribed Maeve to do the voices and pauses. There seemed to be large discrepancies in her enthusiasm for certain sponsors. Brorn stood in place still as a statue while he was announced. The crowd booed at him and Draevin was sure to join in. It felt sort of nice that such a diverse crowd was able to set their differences aside to heckle the universally-hated necromancer. “Granstil is a gnome fulgramancer representing the Independent Gnomes of Trenal. He is carrying the Winged Boots of Flight and his wish is to end the war in Trenal by establishing an independent nation of gnomes.” When Maeve mentioned his boots Granstil flew in a loop to show off rather than removing them. This earned a whoop from the crowd. “Granstil wants everyone to know that he is done complaining about the war, he has decided to do something about it himself.” “You’ll want to cast True Sight for this match,” Draevin reminded Peter before it started, “or else you won’t be able to follow any of Brorn’s necromancy.” “I can’t,” Peter said. Draevin felt awkward for having suggested it now. “I could cast it for you if you want,” he offered. “I wouldn’t have enough mana to maintain it,” Peter said. “But that’s not the point. Humans are incapable of benefiting from True Sight for the same reason we can’t sense mana in the first place.” “Right, sorry I said anything about it then.” “I’ll be fine,” Peter assured him. “But thanks for offering.” Draevin cast True Sight on himself just before the bell chimed to start the match. Granstil immediately darted straight up into the air in order to cast a True Sight of his own in relative safety. Brorn spent the time conjuring Soul Fire, which Draevin could only see in the magical spectrum. It seemed to come from within his body. He slapped a hand against his chest and pulled a burning orb of invisible yellow fire out before gently opening his hand and letting it float away toward his opponent. Draevin pointed towards Brorn. “He summons ghostly yellow flames called Soul Fire. One touch is lethal and they can only be seen with True Sight.” “No wonder Granstil flew off like that,” Peter commented. “How fast do the flames move?” “They’re pretty slow,” Draevin told him. “They’re also expensive to maintain.” “Boooo!” Sylnya’s voice called out from the waiting area. “Learn a new trick!” Draevin chuckled. “She’s right, it’s practically the only spell he uses year after year.” Granstil finished his spell and flew in closer. Brorn released a second and third Soul Fire flame from each hand and sent them in the gnome’s direction. Granstil stayed out of their range and unleashed three quick bolts of lightning of his own, each one struck home and left smoking holes in Brorn’s current body. Brorn didn’t so much as flinch. Soon Granstil had to fly away before the invisible flames got too close. Seeing the relative lack of damage Granstil started on a much stronger spell. Peter jumped up from his seat in anticipation. “He’s gonna do it,” he yelled excitedly, “he’s casting Levin Bolt!” Draevin was surprised that Peter could recognize that spell on sight alone. It was certainly a popular spell with the crowd though, so it wasn’t that surprising. The human’s enthusiasm was infectious, and soon Draevin found himself eagerly waiting for Granstil to finish his spell too. The first Levin Bolt of the day usually put on a good show. Brorn unleashed a fourth and then fifth Soul Fire flame and directed them in a pattern that attempted to surround the gnome. Granstil expertly weaved around the yellow orbs of death, taking full advantage of his small size and got in close enough to be sure of his aim. Then he unleashed Hell. Levin Bolt was no simple lightning spell. It acted on such a large scale that it pulled natural lightning out of the atmosphere in a chain reaction that was usually significantly more powerful than the initial cost in mana. A bolt of lightning as wide as a tree crashed down from the sparse clouds up above and struck Granstil’s upheld hand, then ricocheted out towards Brorn in a blinding flash. A deafening explosion followed soon after. By the time Draevin could see again Brorn’s body was a smoldering pile of ash. The crowd exploded into cheers and Peter roared and pumped his fists right along with them. “Hᴇ ᴅɪᴅ ɪᴛ!” Peter cheered along with the crowd. “Tʜᴇ ᴍᴏsᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀꜰᴜʟ sᴘᴇʟʟ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ!” Draevin thought one of his own Glacier Blasts was at least as powerful, but decided not to correct him. He’d have to let the human see one for himself. Brorn’s soul floated out of the remains of his ruined body. Even killing him wasn’t the end of the match. Since he could still put up a fight as a disembodied soul the match wasn’t over. Granstil was panting now and with True Sight Draevin could see that he was low on mana too. Even if the little gnome could cast another Levin Bolt, it wouldn’t be able to harm an incorporeal soul. Peter pointed at Brorn’s disembodied soul. “That hardly seems fair. How’s Granstil even supposed to win?” Index | Next | Patreon
Oh Fuggof was not happy, much as that term could be applied to such a beautiful Lovecraftian beast as herself. The High Matriarch of the Benefactors knew how important it was to keep her subjects distracted, so she had the lesser beings’ training exercises televised. In this case, beings from the newly conquered planet were being hunted by all manner of warriors from across the universe. The city of Baltimore, barely the size of a small Gor’eck village, always seemed to give them trouble. “Guys,” Oh Fuggof sighed once again. “It’s a single male in a single city. How hard can it be?” One of her eyes watched the television broadcast as her lowly servitors all clambered to find an answer that would satisfy her. “And once again,” the announcer, Skroo Yoself said in its giddy voice, “the city of Baltimore has taken far more lives than it logically could! This city just doesn’t wanna- HOLY SHIT! HE CRASHED A GROUND TRANSPORT INTO A FLITTER! ARE YOU SEEING THIS? Ladies, Gentlemen, and everything else watching, this may be the greatest exercise to be televised yet! Never have Ithought that I would witness something like this! Human bulls are strong, but-” If she wasn’t before, Oh Fuggof was thoroughly annoyed now. Skroo Yoself was a major driving force for public opinions. If it was gushing over some primitive from a backwater world, people were going to follow it. In fact, Oh Fuggof already saw that the betting tables were beginning to skew in favor of this male. The camera zoomed in, watching a human male run through the streets. It quickly rounded a corner however, and the image was lost. After a while I managed to normalize my limp into a nice sort of step-flop sort of gait. As I ran through the city, I kept looking over my head for the other flitters. Soon, it occurred to me I needed something to keep the impact off my feet. Uh… um… I looked around feverishly. Perfect! I swung my arm, clotheslining a kid off his skateboard. “Hey!” he yelled from the ground. “Asshole!” “SorrykidmylifedependsonitI’lltrytogetthisbacktoyou,” I stammered as I got on the skateboard and zoomed off. Well, fast as I could get with a popped ankle on a skateboard. I wasn’t gonna be doing any tricks here. Next thing I needed was painkillers, and I had an idea to do that. It was a little hard to skate into a CVS while steering with one foot, but I managed to make it to the pharmacist in the back. Ok, I knew what I was gonna do next was super illegal, so I took a deep breath and fired the ten gauge into the air. Everybody stopped what they were doing and stared at me with a gibbering panic. The cashier reached under the shelf and pulled a pistol. Now that the police were replaced with the Civil Security, nobody wanted to deal with them, so they dealt with stuff on their own. Unlike the military, those folks didn’t care about collateral damage. That meant issues like me were dealt with in-house, in most places. I fired over the cashier’s head and he squatted under the counter. Reloading time, so I started yelling my demands while I did. That's me, the multitasker. “Ok, I don’t wanna hurt anybody, so just give me oxy! I need oxy!” I looked down at my mangled foot. “Quickly! I have to fix this! Now!” “We can’t just give-” I gestured with the shotgun, and the pharmacist stopped talking and started rifling through the drawers for the keys to the opiate storage. “Alright, give me a second!” This was gonna take a while. I feverishly looked outside as the pharmacist fumbled with the keys. “Oh come- motherfucker… There. Got it.” The pharmacist eventually got the drugs out and dropped a bottle on the counter. I ripped open the bottle and dropped a few oxies on the counter. “Is anybody a doctor in here?” I crushed up one of the pills and snorted it. It would work faster that way. One of the dudes on the floor got back up. “I am. I assume you want me to look at your foot?” I nodded. “Sorry about, you know, this. I can’t stay here long. People are hunting me for sport!” It was the sorry facts, unfortunately. I sat on a counter while the guy took a look. “You might still feel this.” He went and reset the ankle, and good lord was he right! With the dose of pretty much but not quite heroin in my system, it was dulled, but still hurt like shit. “Now I recommend you keep this elevated-” “If I survive the day, I’ll keep that in mind.” I shoved the rest of the oxy into my pockets and staggered back to my skateboard just as Civil Security showed up. See, the first thing the Benefactors did when they took over was dismantle all police departments and replace them with security forces loyal to them. Like I’d mentioned, people preferred to deal with their problems themselves than let CS intervene. And no doubt they’d been tipped off to… me, as well. That would explain why they were so heavily armed. The CS split into two groups, covering both exits. The cops at the front all had their force shields, so I wasn’t gonna shoot my way out. Speaking of, as the CS started shooting, I dropped to the floor, crawling towards the window. Grabbing my skateboard, I crawled over a dead cashier, then smashed out a window and dove through into the alley. There weren’t any CS here, so I just skated away. I almost thought I was in the clear until one of the CS trucks smashed into me. My skateboard was gone, but I held onto the hood for dear life, shooting back into the cab in panic. I could feel the heels getting shredded off my shoes. Whatever was going on, I must’ve made the driver hit the brakes or something when I shot him, because the truck jerked to a stop, and he flew through the windshield as I flopped to the street. The rest of the CS guys all piled out and started stomping and kicking, or whatever their alien parts allowed them to do. Now I was still pretty messed up on oxy at this point, so I barely felt it. Somehow I got to my feet and punched one of the security officers in the face. His friends beat the shit out of me. They scrammed, as all corrupt police do, when they heard gunshots. My eye must’ve been bashed pretty hard, because all I saw were blurry figures. Two picked me up, pulled a bag over my head, and shoved me into a trunk while the others stood guard. When the bag came off, I was chained to a chair in a basement somewhere, playing witness to a bizarre sight. Two Hasidic Jews stood there, black coats, felt hats and all. One held a baseball bat, and the other had a length of pipe. “Bit of a putz, isn’t he?” one mused. “Whatever, Yehuda,” the other one retorted. The height of witty banter. A real class act, these two. “Looks like the schlemiel’s awake, anyways.” Baseball Bat tapped the bat against his hand menacingly. “You’re the one causing chaos around here, are you not?” “Huh?” Baseball Bat swung his eponymous weapon into my chest. Even as oxyed up as I was, the blow made me double over far as I could, coughing. “I think you got the wrong guy!” “You were found, having robbed a CVS on a stolen skateboard, being beaten to death by Civil Security. I think we have the right guy, Avram.” Sooooo… Avram was Pipe, and Yehuda was Bat? Was I getting this right? I sighed. “Look, guys. It’s not even, what, Eight? I have been shot at, almost blown up, beaten up, all in less than thirty minutes.” “And?” Avram leaned on his pipe. “You still did what we said you did, did you not?” “Blame the Benefactors, not me. I’m just trying to survive.” At this point, the door opened and a third person walked down. From the silhouette, I guessed it was another one of these guys. Then he stepped into focus, and, well, my one eye was basically bruised shut, but I could have sworn it was my old rabbi. “Young Zimmerman?” It was my old rabbi. “Rabbi Eleazar?” He turned to Yehuda and Avram. “What are you doing!? You idiots! Brendan Zimmerman would never go around hurting people like this! Something must be very wrong!” He unchained me from the chair. I rubbed my wrists and rolled my shoulders. “You two-” Rabbi Eleazar waved the two idiots away. “Upstairs!” The two stooges traipsed upstairs as Rabbi Eleazar pulled up a chair. “Wow…” I didn’t know what to say. “Didn’t you lose your Rabbinical… license or something? Everyone at the synagogue said it was because you smoked a bowl before every Purim.” “Not correct.” “So what was-” “I smoked a bowl before and after.” “I see…” This took a surprisingly odd turn, I’ll be the first to admit. “Soooooo… What do you want with me?” The oxy was wearing off, and my ankle hurt like a motherfucker. “My dear boy,” Rabbi Eleazar laughed. “I’m sure you know of the fragile political meshuggas going on in Baltimore. Ah yes. After collapsing the police and declaring martial law in the city, the Benefactors thought they were gonna roll right over this place. Not so. The gangs all banded together and militarized. You had Jewish gangsters working with Armenian loansharks working with Irish mobsters, so on and so forth. It was kinda funny. All it took for everyone to get along was another bad guy. "So, what. You want me to rough up the Benefactors or something?” “Nothing so crude.” Rabbi Eleazar laughed. “No. They’re already hunting you. If you have to die, you are going to take so many of those putzes with you that they’ll never set foot in this city again.” Well, that was morbid. “I kind of want to figure out what’s happening first,” I admitted. “Then we can do your… thing after that. Promise.” “Hm…” Rabbi Eleazar thought a moment. “You’ll want to find Tommy Tiernan, then, boychik. He works out of Orpheus, but that’s on the other side of town. Around Charles Street-” “It’s on Pratt street.” “Pratt Street. Right. I knew that. Anyways, You’re not gonna make it on foot. That whole area’s crazy heavily guarded.” “Um… Let me think,” I thought. “The Benefactors don’t have any sort of navy. They avoid the water. We could go down to the Inner Harbor and then just cut onto Pratt Street from there.” “You’ll want to take the trains.” Rabbi Eleazar pulled out an ancient rotary telephone. “You aren’t going to make it on foot. Lemme make a few calls.” Avram and Yehuda came back in while Rabbi Eleazar called up Moishe, Gavriel, and Lev. Apparently they were bringing the boys. My old rabbi must’ve had a lot of clout or something, because these guys showed up quick. Anyways, once we had twenty or so guys, we set out. We must’ve made quite a sight, a bunch of heavily armed gangsters all walking down the street. I half expected Civil Security to meet us at the train station. No need to pay for a train ticket this time, of course. We all just jumped the gate and got on the southbound train. A few gangsters got in each train car, from what I could see. I stepped into the train car with Rabbi Eleazar and, quote, his boy, Moishe. “Alright, everybody,” Moishe called as he made his guns very, very visible. I pulled out my own ten gauge and pointed it in the air. People screamed as they ran for the exits. At long last, the train started moving. I had a few stops before Charles Street Station. "So how'd you go from my rabbi to..." I gestured around. "This?" Rabbi Eleazar laughed. "Some old friends of mine. We all grew up in a very orthodox part of town together. When the Benefactors came, we all worked to help each other out." That’s when my luck ran out. Through the window to the forward, still-populated cars, I could see Civil Security checking peoples’ IDs. “Rabbi.” I tugged on his sleeve. “Rabbi!” “Yes, boychik?” Rabbi Eleazar raised his… grenade launcher and looked in the direction I was pointing. “Ah, this is not good. Not good at all.” He got on his phone and soon all his guys streamed in. The door to our traincar slid Open. I knew for a fact we looked suspiciously empty in here. This wasn’t good. In the doorway stood one of the Civil Security officers. “You will give me your ID’s,” it said in its blank, monotone voice. “I think not,” Moishe said as more CS guys showed. “Oh, fuck this shit!” He drew his Desert Eagle and fired it an inch from the first guy’s head, splattering it against the window. “Run!” I tried to scram, only one of the CS guys to tackle me. “It’s him! The bull!” The alien yelled as something jabbed into my side. My boxcutter! This was nice. It was still clipped to my belt. I held the alien by the neck as the four jaws in its mouth slid open, revealing a barbed tongue. It hissed as I grabbed my cutter and started jabbing. Ok, I’ll admit, it wasn’t a pretty little throat slit or whatever. It was a panic stab. I started and just kept stabbing. Whatever, right? Once it flopped over, I stood up. “Oh, you motherfucker!” The next guy’s head, I slammed into the pole in the middle of the train just as Rabbi Eleazar loaded his grenade launcher. “Everybody get down!” It turns out those Vietnam grenade launchers really do go off with a bloop. One of the CS soldiers was slammed into the corner before exploding, blowing out the windows and splattering the traincar with gore. Bright green gore. Acid green gore. I didn’t care. Far worse things had happened today for me to care about icky green goo. My ears were ringing, but I think I was ok. With a yell, I grabbed a dazed soldier, throwing it through a window just as the train went underground. “Oh shit!” I ducked as another soldier opened fire. This just wouldn’t do, now would it? While Rabbi Eleazar and Moishe grappled with their own aliens, I kicked my own annoyance towards the window. Its helmet scraped the exposed tunnel wall, shattering. See, the Light Rail trains zoom along at 60 miles an hour. Concrete isn’t gonna be forgiving at that speed. The alien was thrown to the floor. My heart sank. He’d drawn his knife. The thing ran at me. As he swung, I grabbed its arm, throwing it against one of the poles as the train emerged from the tunnel. Once it got up, I grabbed it, throwing it against the shattered window. Oh geez… its throat was sliced open on the glass. With a shove, I sawed its throat further open. That was that, I suppose. We were out of bad guys at that point. Just as well… We went into another tunnel, finally arriving at Charles Center. Once we got off the train and bounded up over the turnstiles, without paying, oh the horror, it was a two block walk, a left turn, and another three block walk to the elevated walkways. It wasn’t that easy, of course. Soon as we left the subway station, CS was waiting for us. I took cover behind a bench as bolts of red shot over me. When I returned fire of my own, one of the Civil Security guys was blown away. Rabbi E, Moishe and I slowly advanced down the street, making our way to the inner harbor. See, the Inner Harbor was once a major tourist destination, but now it was a no-go zone for the Benefactors, and travel there was incredibly restricted. The place was more or less a self-governing state now. There was a shantytown erected on the harbor itself, with the Science Center and other museums converted into schools, hospitals, and all the other things a rogue state built into a small harbor needed. Once we made it to the walkways, Eleazar turned to me. “I can’t go any further, Boychik,” he said sadly. “They don’t really like me in here.” I didn’t know what to say, but my ankle was hurting like crazy, so I popped another oxy. “Thank you for the help,” I slurred. “Yeah, yeah, not a problem.” Moishe picked up a garbage pail and yeeted it into a CS officer’s face. I turned and ran up the stairs to the walkway as more officers gave chase, dropping from flitters. I dropped to the floor, grabbing one of them and throwing the motherfucker over the side into the water. Aside from water being toxic to Benefactors, the water of the bay in particular was poisonous to humans. That double dose of poison basically melted the guy’s skin off. Now, I just had to make it to the other side of the elevated walkways. The CS would chase me no further. Easier said than done. I jumped over the side of one walkway down to another, firing up through the railings. As the CS gave chase, I ran for it, rounding a corner. “Aw shit.” I was surrounded. There were CS coming up the stairs, and down the stairs. Not good. I fired my last shell into the downstairs ones, then ducked under a punch and swung the empty shotgun into an alien’s knee. As it went down, I smashed its helmeted head against the railing, shattering the helmet. I drew my box cutter and got to work, stabbing, cutting, sawing and generally just brutalizing the aliens. As a final coup de grace, I extended the blade all the way and swung, jabbing it through an alien’s cheek. The CS officer stood there dumbly, before swinging its head to the side, snapping off the blade. It picked me up, blade in cheek, and threw me over the side to the lower walkway. I got up as it jumped down after me and grabbed me and held me down by my face. “Human citizen Brendan Zimmerman,” it hissed. “You stand guilty of five counts of evading Benefactor personnel, fifteen counts of general mayhem and public unr- AAAAAAAARRRRRGH!” The aaarrgh wasn’t the charge or anything, I had bitten its finger off and spat it back in its face. While the alien was distracted, I unloaded on its face, beating the four eyed scaly beast to a pulp. I was so pissed off at that point I just yanked the blade out, tearing open my fingers, and cutting its eyes open. And it was like that, torn open fingertips, gimpy leg, splattered with eye goo, I walked to safety. Previous
FIRE and Kids – The cost of raising children in Australia
This post has been inspired by this recent podcast featuring three of the biggest names in the Aussie FIRE blogging community, and the follow on discussions in the Aussie Firebug Facebook group about how much it costs to raise kids in Australia. As all three acknowledge they don’t have kids so it’s not something they really have any experience with. As someone who has two young kids I thought it would be useful to write about it from my perspective. Obviously my situation isn’t the same as everyone else’s, there are plenty of people who would be horrified with how much we’ve spent, and others who would wonder how we manage to spend so little. Everyone’s situation is different, so what works for my family wouldn’t necessarily work or others. My oldest child has only just started school this year so I can’t really speak from experience beyond the 0-5yo age range, but I’ll talk through some of the typical costs, what we have and haven’t spent money on so far, and what we’re anticipating in the future. The costs people actually talk about The first two things that almost always come up when people start talking about the cost of babies are prams and carseats. Yes, you can spend a lot of money on these things if you want to, prams in particular. From a quick look at Baby Bunting the most expensive pram there is nearly 3 thousand dollars, and I’m betting that with a few accessories you can easily get over that mark. No, you do not need to spend that much on a pram. Yes you can probably pick one up on the cheap from Kmart or Target etc for well under a hundred bucks, but it’s probably not going to be as sturdy or hold much of the gear you take with you. Happily a pram is also the sort of thing where you can pretty easily and safely pick one up secondhand or get a hand me down from someone else. We bought a Babyzen Yoyo, which is basically a small sized pram although it still has enough storage room for us. It folds up so that you can take it on a plane as carry on luggage, is quite light, extremely maneuverable and very sturdy. I’ve taken it running plenty of times, it’s even got a Parkrun PB of 22:06! This thing is absolutely gold. Unfortunately it’s priced as though it’s made of it as well. There wasn’t an option to get one second hand because it had only just been released so we had to pay full whack. I think we spent over a thousand dollars on it including all the accessories and the lie flat and sit up seats etc. It was worth every cent. It’s been going for 5 years and 2 kids and is still in great shape, we’ve never had a problem with it at all. My wife tells me it is one of the best things I have ever bought her, although we both use it obviously. And at the end of the day a one off cost of $1,000 for us as a family is going to have basically zero impact on when we hit FIRE. Plugging the numbers into a compound interest calculator and using 7% annual return over 30 years I miss out on $8,000, which is about a month worth of returns on my target portfolio. I can live with delaying retirement one month for about 5 cumulative years of having a really good pram that works great for us. Similarly you can spend a fair chunk of money on car seats. This is one of those things that I wouldn’t want to get second hand because you can’t see if they’ve been broken or not and safety is a huge priority for us and presumably everyone else. Happily car seats don’t tend to cost that much, you can pick one up for a couple hundred bucks or less pretty easily. If you do that it tends to be one for a much shorter age range, say 0-2yrs whereas I think you can get ones which will take your kid from 0-8 but they cost a lot more. In any case per kid you’re probably looking at a thousand bucks total, and this could easily be a lot less. Again it’s not going to make any appreciable different to us reaching FIRE. So as easy as it is to point at this sort of stuff as being ridiculously expensive and over priced etc, it’s really not going to make much of a difference to most people. Sure you don’t want to spend any more money than you have to, but you also want to make sure you’re getting something that works for you. The other one off costs There are also a bunch of one off costs for babies and young kids like cots, beds, mattresses, baby carriers etc. From what I’ve been told you want to buy a baby mattress new, but that’s only about a hundred bucks at Target, potentially cheaper elsewhere. We have an Ikea cot which cost about the same, you could easily get one second hand or likely for free just by asking around your friends who will probably be delighted to get it out of their house. Some people do co-sleeping in which case you don’t need the cot and mattress although you may like to kid yourself that your baby will actually sleep in their own bed, maybe even through the night. It’s nice to pretend sometimes! As kids get older you’ll need a proper bed for them, again you can probably pick this up second hand pretty cheap and a mattress can be easily had for a couple hundred bucks. So none of these things are really going to have much of an impact so long as you’re a decent saver already. The big costs you see When you don’t have kids it can be great to live in a studio flat or one bedroom apartment in the inner city close to all the bars and restaurants and all the rest of it. You can stay in your local area and have plenty to keep you entertained, there is probably a supermarket nearby and plenty of public transport so you may not need a car either. Once you have kids, it’s likely going to be a different story as your priorities change. It may be that you’re happy renting with kids, but lots of people tend to prioritise stability and security when they have kids and that means owning your own home in most cases. I’m not saying everyone will want this, but a lot of people will. So now that you have kids you almost certainly want a second bedroom and if you’re planning on having more kids maybe a third or fourth etc. Obviously kids can share bedrooms for a while at least but sooner or later they will probably want their own space, as will you. You’ll also be wanting parks with playgrounds nearby and somewhere you can easily take your kids for a walk or kick a football around, ideally in a good school district which can add a couple hundred thousand dollars to the cost all by itself if you’re in Sydney or Melbourne. And if you want to live somewhere cheaper but send the kids to a good private school, well that can cost anywhere from the low thousands to multiple tens of thousands per year. Similarly if you didn’t have a car before, you will very likely want one now. I’ve mentioned before that we drive a base model Corolla which works just fine for us so far, but you’re still probably looking at $20k plus if you buy one new, mid teens if you want one used. If you want an SUV or a luxury model car, be prepared to fork out a lot more. In the same vein if you were previously going on lots of holidays and plan to keep doing so, well you now have at least one more plane ticket to buy, might need a bigger hotel room etc. As I talked about in this post about big ticket items, that all comes at a real cost. We bought land and built a house, so I can say that we spent roughly $100,000 more on that than we would have otherwise. The ongoing costs There are also a bunch of ongoing costs for kids as well. They need to be fed, they need clothes and shoes, they need medicine, and a bunch of other stuff that costs money. I wrote here about a bunch of things that we do to keep costs down, but the reality is that you still have to fork over a decent chunk of change. On top of all that contrary to what you might have been told public school is not free, there are a bunch of things that you have to chip in for here as well. We’re not at the stage that we’re forking out a fortune in extra utility bills etc but we certainly use the washing machine a lot more than we would if we didn’t have kids, there are extra lights and tvs etc on so there are extra costs there as well. There are also a bunch of extra items that you don’t really need to spend, but probably will. For us this includes stuff like swimming lessons, some sports like AusKick (AFL) and Junior Blasters (cricket), occasionally taking them to a theme park or zoo etc. They also get birthday and Christmas presents, and if they get invited to other kids parties they take a store bought gift with them. The above is about what I think our 5yo costs us at the moment based on our spending, our 2yo is probably about two thirds of that due mostly to her not eating as much and not getting swimming lessons yet, as well as not being in school or doing sports. I’ve left the holiday line blank because this is hugely variable. Last year we did a trip to the UK and it probably cost us about $3,000 extra between the two of them, next time it will be another couple thousand dollars more because the youngest one will need her own seat rather being on someone’s lap for the flights. So our spending for our eldest is about two thirds of the costs quoted in this article for a 6yo girl, I would assume that apart from a boy maybe eating a bit more the costs should be fairly similar. The main difference compared to our costs seem to be education and transport. Also, it was somewhat shocking to me just how expensive swimming lessons are! This is actually at our local council aquatic centre and is the cheapest in town. We do get to use the pool whenever we want, but that only tends to be once or twice a week at most. At least the lessons will hopefully only be for a few years for each child, although after that we may be forking out for something else instead. The hidden cost of kids The biggest cost is often actually one that doesn’t show up as an expense, the opportunity cost of one parent giving up paid employment entirely for a while or doing part time hours (I’ve used the phrase giving up paid employment here because looking after kids and a house is definitely work!). If we say that you’re giving up a full time paid job that’s at minimum wage of roughly $20 an hour for 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, then that’s $38,400 a year ($33,605 after tax and medicare levy) that the family is giving up for however long this goes on for. If you’d otherwise be earning more than that, then the opportunity cost each year is even higher. On top of that there is the hit to your career and future earnings, because those are definitely going to be impacted as well. If you’ve got two kids that are separated by two or three years and you as a family want a parent at home until they go to school, well that’s 7 or 8 years of missing out on that money which works out as around $250k based on a full time minimum wage job. I’m pretty hopeful that my wife would be earning more than minimum wage as well so for us it’s even more than that. On the plus side, she gets to spend more time with the kids although that probably feels like a mixed blessing some of the time! Alternatively if both parents want to keep working then there will likely be childcare costs for the first 4 or 5 years and then before and after school care, as well as missing out on spending time with their kids. Because we haven’t gone down this route I don’t know exactly how much it costs, I do hear plenty of stories about it being $100 a day minimum around where I live and it’s a lot more in capital cities. There are subsidies available for this, but you can pretty easily be spending tens of thousands each year on childcare while they’re young and then once they’re old enough before and after school care. You may be lucky enough to have grandparents or other family nearby that are happy to help out with this if they live nearby, but that won’t apply to everyone and it’s unlikely to reduce the cost entirely. The costs that are yet to come At the moment our kids are still young and fairly inexpensive. Between the two of them they tend to eat roughly what a grown adult eats, but from what I’ve been told that will change fairly dramatically as they get older. They’ll need new clothes more frequently, more shoes, potentially play more sports, go on more school excursions, you get the idea. Education could be another factor. There is a public high school that will be built in the next few years quite close by, and assuming that it’s decent our kids will likely be going there. But if it’s not, then we’ll have to look into private schools which can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. There will be extra curricular stuff as well. Given my wife and I are both horrible at music it seems unlikely that our kids will be doing extra lessons there, but there are plenty of other areas like sport or extra educational activities that we’d be considering. I know a few parents who have kids who are in elite sports programs (as in regional or state teams) and the costs here can very quickly add up, likewise if extra education is needed or wanted then that’ll be an extra expense. Government and other assistance I know that depending on your circumstances that there can be government assistance in the form of Family Tax Benefit, childcare subsidy and possibly other programs as well. We don’t get any of these which is fine, we don’t need them and they are presumably meant to be for those who do. If you’re not sure if you should be getting any of these then Centrelink does have this payment finder. We did get the one day a week Kinder program for 3yos and 3 days a week Kinder program for 4yos, although these both also came with costs of roughly $1,500 a year so it actually cost us money, again this is fine, just a reminder that it isn’t actually free. Depending on your employer you may also be able to get parental leave for a while, and there is a minimum payment which they have to make so long as you’ve met some requirements. Some employers may also have some continuing support with subsidised childcare and the like. None of this was applicable to our situation but at least some of it will likely be available for others. So what’s the bottom line? For us the biggest actual one off cost so far has been the bigger house and land that we purchased because we wanted our kids to be able to have plenty of space inside and outside the house. That cost about a hundred thousand dollars more than we would have paid if it were just the two of us. All the other stuff like a pram, car seats, cots/beds, mattresses and all the rest of it have been maybe $5,000 total, which is tiny by comparison. The opportunity cost has been bigger than this though. When we had our first child when we were in Hong Kong my wife wasn’t working much anyway as there just weren’t that many jobs she could do and my wage easily supported both of us so she was doing some very casual part time work and so not doing that work afterwards didn’t impact us much. In Australia though she probably would have been earning at least $40,000 a year after tax, so we’ve foregone almost $200,000 on an after tax basis there. Which as I’m sure you can imagine has a pretty big impact on when we will hit FIRE, particularly given we’ve got another few years or her not being in paid employment at all and then likely only working part time after that. So I would guess we’ll be looking at forgone earnings of at least $500,000 by the time all is said and done, and it could quite easily be a lot more. The actual ongoing costs of the kids so far haven’t been too bad. Between the two of them it’s about $8,000 a year at the moment, although we would anticipate that this will go up a fair bit over time as they start eating more and getting into more extra curricular activities. I get that this is spending that isn’t a necessity, but do I really want my kids to miss out on a bunch of fun stuff so that I can retire a year or two earlier? No, no I do not. So far the total costs look something like this. You can see that by far the biggest cost has been the earnings that we’ve missed out on because my wife has been at home looking after the kids and doing the household stuff (yes I do some of it because I think it’s important that we share the jobs and to role model stuff for the kids, but the reality is that she is at home a lot more than I am and does more of it). Buying a bigger house and land is next, and the actual costs of feeding and clothing and all the other one off stuff for the kids is a tiny proportion of the actual cost. All up I’m hopeful that we can keep the ongoing costs to somewhere between $125k and $150k per child from birth through to age 18, although if private school is necessary then that will push up the costs a fair bit. This is less than half of what this article suggests, so although it sounds like a lot of money it’s actually fairly frugal by comparison. To put it in perspective, it’s basically spending about 7 or 8 grand a year on each child. There are plenty of people out there who spend more than that on food alone, let alone the rest of their living expenses. As I said earlier travel costs are on top of this, and this can increase the costs quite a lot! Travel is a huge part of the reason we’re pursuing HIFIRE, and we want to be taking the kids on plenty of holidays while they’re growing up. That’s obviously discretionary spending to a large extent, but we do have close family living overseas who we want to see every couple of years or so, and it’s not fair to expect them to always be the ones travelling. I would guess that we’ll be looking at about $50k per kid in travel costs by the time they turn 18. That’s about 3 grand a year, which doesn’t sound wrong based on the cost of international travel. It may be less than that which would be great, but could also be a fair bit more. So all up for the two kids we’re looking at about a million dollars from birth to age 18. About half of that is the foregone wages from not working, which is by far the biggest impact. The actual cost of the kids is about another 30%, then travel is 10%, another 10% for the bigger house and land. And then right at the end is less than 1% for the one off stuff like prams and baby seats and cots etc. How could we spend less? Obviously there are other things we could be doing instead to keep the cost down. The biggest expense is the wages that aren’t being earned because my wife is looking after the kids and the household stuff. We could have chosen to have her work and instead pay for childcare and after school care etc. If we did though then she wouldn’t get to spend as much time with the kids (which she tells would be welcome some of the time!) and there would be a lot more house work and shopping that would need to be done after work or on weekends for both of us, we’d potentially eat out more often as it’d be more of a hassle cooking meals each night, as well as a bunch of other tradeoffs. So having her stay at home was our preferred method, and thankfully we’re in the financial position where we can afford to do it that way. Other people make different choices, or they’re unfortunately not in a position to make a choice, they need both partners working or if they’re a single parent have to do it this way. We could have also gone with a smaller house and less of a backyard. I shared a bedroom with my brother for part of our childhood and we both managed fine. It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly doable, and we could have saved a lot of money by having a smaller house. Again we chose not to because we wanted a bigger house and a decent sized backyard for them to be able to run around in and we can afford it. We don’t have to travel, although it’d be a bit rough expecting family to travel overseas to see us every year or two and then not reciprocating. Still, that would save a fair amount of money. It’s pretty hard to say how things will work out with the actual costs of raising the kids. I know roughly what we’ve spent so far, but it’s pretty difficult to know what we’ll be spending in future as they get older. They’re likely to be eating a fair bit more food, s they grow they’ll need new clothes and shoes, they’ll presumably be playing sport and doing other extra curricular stuff which will all cost money. $150k per kid from 0 to 18 seems like it’s a lot less than what it costs most people, but then we already live a fair bit more cheaply than most others so maybe it’s about right. At the end of the day we’re happy with the choices that we’ve made so far, but there has certainly been some room to have spent less money than what we have, or to have had more money coming in through both of us being in paid employment. Obviously it has an impact on when we will hit our FIRE number, but I’d rather take a little bit longer to get there than to make different tradeoffs along the way. Have you got kids or are thinking about having them? How do you think it will impact on your FIRE journey? Original post with pretty charts, pictures, tables etc is here.
Interview with Magician and Card Thrower Rick Smith Jr
Who is Rick Smith Jr? When you're an entertainer, you need to find something that makes you stand out from the rest of the pack. This is also true for performers in the magic industry. With magic man Rick Smith Jr, it's easy to see that he has what it takes to stand out from your run-of-the-mill magician. To begin with, Rick has three Guiness World Records. But it's not just that Rick Smith Jr is a world record holder that makes you sit up and take notice, but it's especially the kinds of records that he holds. Rick is an expert in throwing playing cards, and holds the record for the furthest distance ever thrown with an ordinary playing card. But that's just one of the ways he's made headlines with his card throwing skills. He's also developed an incredible accuracy with his card throwing, and his insane skills have seen him hit the big time in a "trick shots" collaboration with Dude Perfect, which features his card throwing. The video went viral, and at the time of writing it has around 150 million views! In the summer of 2020 he made a return visit to Dude Perfect, the result being this latest video with even more amazing stunts. With his unique fusion of magic and card throwing, Rick Smith Jr is in high demand around the world. He's performed on television many times, for some of the biggest names in the business. Each year he does more than 600 shows for a steady stream of clients, who want to bring his exciting brand of magic and card throwing to their homes, businesses, and events. With a background in marketing, Rick is well placed to serve the needs of corporate customers, while entertaining them with an unforgettable performance at the same time. Rick has been amazing audiences for around 20 years, and with his remarkable skills and talents, he knows how to use playing cards in a way that few others do. We're grateful that he was willing to do this interview with us, giving us the opportunity to get a unique insight look at his world, and get some helpful pointers for taking our playing cards to the next level - literally! https://preview.redd.it/ec4kogd9oyi51.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=019748d63fabef77cefe20d5b02c351848bdacec THE INTERVIEW For those who don't know anything about you, what can you tell us about yourself and your background? Well, I've been performing magic for over 30 years. I perform close to 600 magic shows a year right now, with my card-throwing being a niche of my act. So I'm not just a card thrower, but I am a professional entertainer. I was an NCAA pitcher in college, and I developed my strength of my card throwing by throwing a baseball 90-plus miles per hour. What can you tell us about the Guinness World Records you have set? I have three Guinness Book world records for throwing playing cards. My first world record was set in 2002, for throwing a playing card 72 yards at a speed of 92 miles per hour. My other two world records were set in 2015 and 2017, one for throwing a card the most accurate, which was 46 out of 52 cards to a target in under a minute. The other world record was for throwing the highest, which was 70 feet and some odd inches straight up in the air. What does a typical day or month in the life of Rick Smith Jr look like? Typically, I have been a prize for a fundraising company for the past ten years. I would perform three school shows during the week, Monday through Friday. My weekends, I would travel. I would perform for different companies and corporations around the world, and the school tour thing lasted for ten years. There was 400 shows a year. An average day: I'll try to come up with some new material, perform the shows, post on social media, and hang out with family and friends when I can. I work a lot. What are some of your interests and hobbies outside of magic and throwing playing cards? Going to sporting events. I was a baseball player, and we're from Cleveland, so we go to different Cleveland Indian games. I played baseball up until a couple years ago, after I had an elbow injury, where I had to have surgery, which was both baseball and card-throwing-related. So I gave up baseball. Also four-wheeling, hanging out with family, cooking on the grill - those are my hobbies right now. Aside from your world records, what would you consider to be your biggest accomplishments, and things you're most proud of? I guess my girls. I have a three-year-old, Aubrey, and I have a five-year-old, Averie. Having kids now, it's changed my life. When I'm not performing, I'm going to dance recitals and taking them for swimming lessons and Little Gym and getting them into sports and baseball and soccer and basketball. So I'm spending a lot of my time with those two, and there's one more on the way in August. So it's going to change my life even more, coming up. What instructional videos have you produced that we should know about? If you want to learn some magic and some card-throwing, I have a free tutorial and some more tutorials on my YouTube channel. I also have some behind the scenes of the card-throwing and some in-depth training on a DVD called Velocity, which is available on my website. What playing cards have you personally been involved with producing? I developed the whistle for the Banshee throwing playing cards. Banshees were created by Murphy's Magic, while the whistle was created by me. So Banshees and Banshees Advanced are playing cards that you can throw that have a measuring system. I used the Chrome Kings that De'Vo developed for most of the first video for Dude Perfect. In my second collaboration video, I used my new Falcons, which have a gold and silver edition. We just released a cool Kickstarter for the Falcon Razor deck. What playing cards do you use for performing magic? My magic deck is still Bicycle. I still prefer them over any other deck that I've used for performing magic, unless I'm at a really high-end event and I want to have a fancy deck of cards. I will browse my collection and grab one of De'Vo's earlier decks. I'm not against other companies though, and I have decks from David Blaine, Art of Play, and Theory 11. I probably have thousands different decks of cards, if not more. Some decks of cards, other magicians give to me. Some decks of cards, I've received as gifts. So I like playing cards all around. https://preview.redd.it/70ev4ltioyi51.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67f2ee860b5441acf7a7ce22be8c7d5a8c150c7e When did you first get involved in magic and what first sparked your interest in it? I was seven years old. I always did card tricks. My dad knew one card trick, my uncle knew a coin trick, and that was what really sparked my interest - being able to handle cards and being able to do one-handed cut and shuffle the cards and be able to do little tricks, where I could do some betting things with family and friends. That's how I really got into card magic. The coin trick was just the scotch and soda trick, and that was the trick that my uncle knew and taught me. He ended up giving me the coins to be able to perform that trick for my friends. So that got me interested to it. Back in the day we also had World's Greatest Magic every Thanksgiving. That sparked an interest from illusions to close-up magic to all those other things that just got me into magic even deeper. How have your own performances and shows changed since you first became involved in magic? I've made myself more of an entertainer. I'm not the best or most technical magician in the world. But I feel that I'm a good entertainer. I'm out there performing and doing things that are not easy to figure out, but they're also fun. They're not drawn out, and they're exciting. I try to create some magic tricks that would fit in with my card-throwing For example, there's my own version of a card stab and instead of using a knife I do this: I have someone select a playing card, lose it in the deck, throw the cards in the air, and then I throw a playing card and pin their sign card to a board. I also create tricks that fit in with my personality, which is just have a good time, make sure the audience is having a good time, and keep people entertained. I'm always there to talk with my audience. And if people see me at a show, I'm the same person that they would see if I was just walking down the street. Those are the people that got me into magic, and I'm always there for those types of people as well. How has technology impacted the magic industry over the last couple of decades, and is this good or bad? I think it's enhanced the magic community a ton. I use technology magic in my act now, and I don't see a weakness in it yet, other than someone thinking that it might be an app. But if you can use somebody else's cell phone or somebody else's technology in their hands and end up doing something with their props, you can sometimes just get rid of that whole idea of "That was an app" or "That was something that had to do with technology." If you're a good storyteller, you can kind of work around that. Do have any good stories you can share about an epic "fail" that you experienced? I haven't really had any card-throwing things gone wrong, aside from not hitting the target the first time. But I did have one epic fail. At the end of my shows, I would throw playing cards as far as I could, for example at an outdoor show in the summertime. If it was a kids' show, I'd tell the kids: "Whoever catches this card wins a deck of cards, one of these Chrome Kings" (or a Bicycle deck or whatever I had at the time). I would throw the card as far as I could or as high as I could, and outside it would definitely travel sometimes farther than world record distance because of wind and things like that. Well, one day, I had two kids run into the card at the very same time, and they kind of ran face-to-face, ran into each other. The one kid's tooth popped right out. So that was an epic fail. I was pretty upset about that. But they went to the hospital, and they got the tooth back in, and I never heard from that family again, even in a bad way. But I felt bad. I guess the first show ever I ever did in my entire life was an epic fail as well. I was 15 years old. I thought flash paper and smoke powder and sparkle dust type of stuff that was flammable would be a cool idea to set on fire in somebody's living room. Well, it started sparkling and sparkling and sparkling, and it never stopped until it hit the floor and then burned a nice quarter-inch hole in their carpet. This was a housewarming party for their first house that they ever bought. Now they have a quarter-inch burn hole in the middle of their thing! 20 or more years later, they come up to me, and say: "That burn hole is still there, and we love that you're performing still. We tell everybody that you did it." What advice would you give to a young person just starting to learn card magic for the first time today? Just practice. Don't necessarily practice in front of a mirror. It's good to practice your angles, but practice on your family. Practice on your brother or your sister, your aunt or your uncle. The more that you're out there, performing these tricks on people, the better you'll get. I've seen some of the best magicians in the world technically who can show the most incredible card move that I've ever seen in my entire life, but they don't have the courage to walk up to a real person and perform that trick. Even though they would blow me away technically, they don't have the social or people skills. So develop your people skills. It's going to help you with school. It's going to help you with presentations in college. It's going to help you with anything. The more that you can be in front of people and the more that you feel comfortable with people, the better you'll get with your act. People will see that you're comfortable, and they'll like you as a person, as well as your act. Do you have any thoughts and opinions on cardistry? I think cardistry's pretty cool. I have a lot of friends that do cardistry. I know De'Vo was one of the first to do extreme card manipulation, and he popularized it. Then it became cardistry, and then the Buck twins made it a little bit more popular, which is great. Back in the day all of those fancy card moves were used as performance pieces. Nowadays they're used as things added to enhance your performance. While you're performing a trick, you do a little bit of cardistry in the middle of it, finish your trick, and you're done. It just gives you something you can do with cards that no one else can. What has been your experience with social media, and what role do you think it plays for your career? I never liked social media. I hated that kind of stuff. But I guess I followed just on what everybody was doing. I thought, "I don't want to be left behind too far. I'll post here and there." Now I have an audience of over half a million people. It's not a lot yet, but it's getting there, and it's growing every day. I'm getting sponsors from different companies, and I'm doing sponsored posts. I'm becoming an influencer. I'm making money on YouTube. I'm making money on Instagram. So I'm going to continue to do that, because, as of right now, during this time in the world [COVID-19 crisis] it's the only way for an entertainer to make money. https://preview.redd.it/rhtq2unyoyi51.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a71bf400135306955f1659a0f86f18d1f9b6cf50 Do you have any goals or accomplishments that you would still like to achieve in your lifetime? That's a tough one. Just keep performing. I feel like I've accomplished so much, so young. I would love to build up my YouTube subscribers. I would love to continue that and present card-throwing, magic, and tutorials to the younger people out there in the world, give them a place that they could learn and collaborate with others. I would like to just continue doing what I'm doing, collaborating with different artists, making different trick shot videos, trying to always get better. That would be the goal, never to let it get stale, never let it get old. I had a mentor as a kid when I went on Ripley's Believe It or Not say, "Enjoy your 30 seconds of fame, because it's not going to last more than a couple of weeks." When that mentor said that to me, I was like, "Well, I'm going to prove him wrong." I've been doing card-throwing now for 18, 19 years, making a significant living off that and off my magic. So it's been going on for 18 years. Ricky Jay did it his whole career. I think I can keep enhancing it and making it better, keeping it popular. What should we know about Magic Gives Back, which you founded and are the director of? Magic Gives Back is a platform that I created for my Las Vegas-style magic show. Originally for ten years I was performing at 400 schools a year, as a prize for a local fundraising company. Kids would sell magazines, cookie dough, and wrapping paper and I was the prize for their reward. Instead I basically made Magic Gives Back, the ultimate family night, as a fundraiser. I grabbed 15 of my closest friends, from lighting engineers, sound engineers, to special guest entertainers to dancers to assistants, built some of the best illusions from big magic builders in Las Vegas, like Magic Ventures, and I have tons of different illusions from around the world. We put all that stuff together. We ended up going into schools, offering them 50% of the profit. So instead of kids selling magazines and cookie dough, they would sell tickets to the show. They would be the promoters to the show, and then we would bring that show to their facilities, their auditoriums. In one night, we could raise anywhere from $20,000-$40,000 and split the money, with the school perhaps doing absolutely nothing. And we had a sold-out show and were able to perform our Las Vegas Dallas show without ever having to spend any money on advertising. So it was a win-win for everybody. Where can people go to see you perform today? Most of my shows are private. We do probably 15 Magic Gives Back shows a year. Just say keep an eye out on my social media. If there are public appearances, I put them on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, and if they want to come to a Magic Gives Back big show, the next shows will be in the spring, 2021. https://preview.redd.it/nw3x9vrdpyi51.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9f515bed9049fd2a419878f8ae3321e307fda5b CONCLUSION There's no doubt that Rick Smith Jr is a unique individual with a remarkable set of talents. He has shaped himself into an entertainer like no other. His path to the record-setting top has been shaped by a few key events, especially his baseball background, his first world record, and his Dude Perfect collaboration video. But he's also not afraid of hard work, as his busy schedule of 600+ shows a year makes clear. He's honed and polished his craft, enabling him to do things with playing cards that nobody else in the world can do. But even if we're not about to contest Rick Smith Jr for his world records, that doesn't mean we can't have fun with playing cards in unusual ways. So why not grab a deck of playing cards and give card throwing a shot yourself! https://preview.redd.it/uxxjg7bfpyi51.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=178561667eb0a61cc79d52ea4bc97d1b298b18a5 Author's note: I first published this article at PlayingCardDeckshere.
Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives. PREVIOUSLY:
We open with a ton of details on Steve Austin walking out on WWE last week, and the story took a darker turn this week when Austin was accused of allegedly beating his wife Debra. Looks like Dave is just going to run through the whole last couple of weeks first though, before we get to all that. No wrestler in the history of the business has generated more money than Austin has in the past 5 years, leading the way for WWE to become listed on the New York Stock Exchange and valued at more than $1 billion. Hulk Hogan, Antonio Inoki, Gorgeous George, Jim Londos....no one in the history of wrestling, even adjusted for inflation, has been a bigger money-maker than Steve Austin. Throughout it all, he had a reputation as a pro's pro, always working hard and being unselfish in trying to help the company and his co-workers grow. But over the last few months, things had changed. The company is nose-diving, Austin had become paranoid and distrustful of the locker room, particularly when the NWO guys were brought in. He refused to work with Hogan at Wrestlemania and wasn't happy about working with Hall either, and insisted on decisively winning their match and blowing off the feud. He went home after Wrestlemania, no-showing Raw the night after, but things seemed to be patched up soon after. When he came back, he still wasn't happy and spoke out publicly against the brand extension and the overall creative direction of the company. A lot of people in the locker room supported Austin, feeling he was completely justified in his complaints because everyone realizes the wheels are falling off the company lately. The Sunday night before Raw last week, Austin was told by Jim Ross that the plan was for him to face Brock Lesnar, with the idea that Eddie Guerrero would cost him the match. Austin pointed out the obvious: him vs. Lesnar is a huge money match that should be built up for months on PPV. Lesnar should go through the whole locker room before he gets to Austin last. No first, on free TV, with no build-up. Austin hated the idea and said he wasn't coming if that was the plan. Ross told Vince, who called Austin and left a voicemail. He told Austin to call him back, no matter what time. Austin did call back, at 2am, and they discussed the plan. According to Vince, Austin had reluctantly agreed to it. Austin evidently felt otherwise, because he showed up to Raw that day, found out the Lesnar match was still booked, and decided, "fuck that", got on a plane and went home with Debra.
Raw that night was mostly built around the angle where Ric Flair would have to be Austin's personal assistant after he lost their match last week. Because much of the show was written around that, they had to re-write the whole show at the last minute in a panic, abruptly turning Flair babyface again and ending the huge dual-ownership angle with no build-up (it really sounds like Vince was determined to give away something huge on TV that week without building it up. "Ok, fine, Austin walked out. What else can we ruin this week and throw away a perfectly good PPV money opportunity?"). Meanwhile, Austin was ignoring all phone calls until he finally answered one from Jim Ross, who told Austin he was being unprofessional and to come try and talk it out with Vince. But Austin refused, saying he refused to work with McMahon anymore, and hung up.
So then came the burial. Vince McMahon and Jim Ross taped interviews for this week's episode of WWE Confidential in which they completely buried Austin, with Vince vowing to never bring him back. Basically everything you can imagine: Austin turned his back on the fans, he betrayed the little kids with Stone Cold shirts and all the fans who made him rich. WWE invested so much in Austin only for him to turn his back on them and so on and so forth. Jim Ross in particular dumped a lot of dirt on Austin's grave here, which Dave seems taken aback by. Austin saved Jim Ross' announcing career by insisting that JR be brought back for his Wrestlemania 15 match with Rock. At the time, Ross was still suffering from Bells palsy and Vince had no intention of ever bringing him back, but Austin insisted and the crowd reaction led to Ross being brought back permanently. So for Ross to be burying his good friend like this seems to rub Dave the wrong way (for what it's worth, it rubbed JR the wrong way too. He's gone on record a million times since then saying he wished he hadn't done it and he's apologized to Austin profusely for it). Ross talked openly about some of Austin's personal business, like his previous divorce or when his kids went to live in England, and hinted that Austin's issues were more than just professional burnout. At the time this was being filmed, nobody knew just how true that was.
The night before WWE Confidential aired, at 4am, Austin's wife Debra called 911 to their home in San Antonio, claiming Austin had attacked her. Austin drove away in his yellow Corvette before the police arrived. When they showed up, they found Debra crying with a large welt on her face. She said Austin had hit her several times after an argument then left when she made the 911 call. She said she was worried about the call because of how famous Austin is and knowing word would get out. She also showed them several marks on her back where she said Austin hit her. Austin called the house twice while police were there and they spoke to him and advised him to come home. Austin was cordial to the officers on the phone but refused to come back home while they were there. Debra declined to press charges and because she refused to seek medical attention, under Texas law, the police pretty much consider it a dead issue unless she changes her mind. Austin later returned home after they left. The national news media didn't pick up on it until Monday, at which point it became a huge story. They even had a news helicopter following Austin driving around town (with an open beer in his Corvette), talking with his neighbors in his yard, and also showed him flipping off the news cameras (I can't find footage of any of this). Because Austin is a wrestler and play fighting is what they do, the media treated this very serious issue as if were almost a joke, which Dave seems disgusted by.
With Austin being all over the news that day, this led to the unannounced surprise return of The Rock on Raw, after they spent the whole show teasing that Austin would show up. Rock wasn't scheduled to return until next month, to build for a match at Summerslam, but knowing the company was in a tough situation, Rock agreed to come back early. The plan appears to be for Rock to challenge for the WWE title at Fully Loaded next month. There's also been talk about Rock winning the title and then dropping it to Brock Lesnar at Summerslam, which is a surefire way to create a new superstar (indeed, that's exactly what happens). Rock's return, since it came as a complete surprise, was a flop in the ratings. If they had built it up just one week, they could have made some money on it, but not building up anything seems to be the M.O. for WWE these days. Between the Shawn Michaels return, the FlaiVince blow-off, and now this, that's 3 Raws in a row where they gave away major moments that should/could have been built up for bigger ratings or PPV money. Dave calls WWE a junkie pawning its $2,500 ring for $500 just to get a quick fix. And that's not even getting into the smaller details, such as the fact that Rock is a Smackdown guy, so why the fuck is he returning on Raw anyway? But again, the wheels are totally off the WWE train here in 2002. It's clear to see in retrospect how WWE was falling from their peak and Vince was desperately clawing at any idea he could think of to stop the bleeding.
So back to Austin. Even after the story broke, Vince went on Raw and changed his tune, saying he hoped Austin would some day come back to WWE but time would tell and for now, he's gone. Dave says if you think this is going to end Austin's career, look at Mike Tyson, Jimmy Snuka, Invader I, and Chris Adams. All of whom did even more heinous things than Austin and their careers were just fine. Dave is pretty sure he'll be back. Rock came out on Raw, gave a big rah-rah speech in which he also pretty much buried Austin for "taking his ball and going home" and did the whole "get the F out" tagline. And that's it on the Austin saga for now.
It's officially super-duper extra official now: the World Wrestling Federation is dead. WWE lost its final appeal in the UK's highest court in their battle against the World Wildlife Fund. Vince McMahon had already thrown in the towel and the company has already been renamed to WWE, but the final appeal was never dropped and was still going through the system. In the highly unlikely event that they somehow won the case, they planned to revert back to the WWF initials. But of course, they didn't win. Just like every single lower court before them, the court handed the wrestling company its final defeat. So WWF is dead. WWE it is.
Motoko Baba officially announced that she will be retiring as AJPW president at the end of September. It's expected that Keiji Muto will take over the role, which has been heavily rumored ever since he jumped ship from NJPW.
A rookie named Trevor Rhodes, who was trained by Harley Race, will be working the upcoming tour for Pro Wrestling NOAH (this would be future WWE star Trevor Murdoch).
NJPW held its annual stockholders meeting and Antonio Inoki couldn't even be bothered to attend. Masa Chono and Tatsuo Kawamura were named to the board of directors, to replace Riki Choshu. Speaking of, Choshu was also there and sold all his stock in the company and left without speaking to reporters.
In a radio interview, Jesse Ventura announced that he will not be running for a second term as Minnesota's governor. Ventura didn't go into all the reasons why, but he did acknowledge a recent controversy as playing a part. There's been some news stories this week noting that Ventura's 22-year-old son used the governor's mansion for a late night weekend party awhile back. Cleaning crew members of the mansion went public saying that when their parents are gone, this kid basically throws wild parties there that they have to clean up after. Ventura shot back, basically claiming his son is being slandered and denied it, but said the attacks on his family made him not want to run again. The news stories talked about some of the alleged damage and Dave actually sides with Ventura here. The damage doesn't sound that bad (some empty beer cans, a broken pool cue, and some tables that were scuffed up. "Geez, that's my house whenever there is a fight night," Dave writes. Doesn't sound like that wild of a party. A 22-year old brings his friends over to watch sports and drink some beer. Dave doesn't think that should be a huge controversy or anything. Neighbors near the mansion have said there's been no issue with noise or disturbances.
Major League Wrestling had its debut show at the old ECW Arena and the MLW championship was won by Shane Douglas. They did an angle where they basically tried to re-create the famous Shane Douglas/NWA title incident, where Shane was gonna throw the belt down, but they did an angle where he was told he'd be fined and suspended for life from wrestling if he didn't defend the belt. Angle didn't get over at all and most people there hated it and it led to pretty mediocre reviews for the show overall. Bam Bam Bigelow was supposed to work the show, but when he arrived, he found out they wanted him to do a job to AJPW wrestler Taiyo Kea in the first round of the title tournament. Bam Bam said fuck that and bounced. Steve Corino also managed to get a "fuck Paul Heyman!" chant going, in the ECW Arena nonetheless, which is an interesting note.
Sandman will be doing a celebrity boxing match in Philly soon, going against Tony Luke, who owns a bunch of sandwich shops in the area and is known as "The King of Sandwiches" in Philadelphia. Sure, why not?
There was a recent news story about Sputnik Monroe from a reporter who was in Memphis for the Tyson/Lewis boxing match. The reporter went to the Memphis Rock 'n Soul museum and saw the big display they had there for Monroe, including his ring jacket, trunks, boots, etc. Dave recaps the history of Monroe, who is credited with desegregating wrestling in Memphis during the Jim Crow days of the 1950s. Monroe was a white wrestler who hung out in the black part of town and, as a result, became the black fans' favorite wrestler. He was a huge draw in Memphis at a time when black fans weren't allowed to sit in the main seats, only the nosebleeds in the balcony. Monroe's popularity was so big that one week, they turned away more than 1,000 black fans even though they had room in the arena. Just not in the "colored" section. So Monroe told the promoter he was quitting if they didn't let in his black fans. And since Monroe was such a huge draw, the promoter caved, and just like that, black fans were allowed to sit with white fans anywhere in the arena. It actually had a domino effect, because it was the first sporting event in Memphis to desegregate and it led to other sporting and entertainment events in the city following suit. In the 50s and 60s, Memphis was one of the only wrestling territories in America that was desegregated like this (fun fact: I used to live in Memphis and just went to that museum back in 2018. For starters, I highly recommend it if you're ever in town. In fact, I have a million recommendations for anyone who ever visits Memphis. That city is my heart and soul. Also, the Sputnik Monroe exhibit is still there).
The TNA debut show hasn't happened at press time, but Ken Shamrock is expected to win the NWA title in the battle royal gimmick. If he doesn't, it's because there was a last minute change, but as of now, it's absolutely going to be Shamrock.
Good news for TNA, the company reached an agreement with Dish Network, which adds another 7-8 million potential homes to their exposure. The only PPV provider in the U.S. not carrying them now is Cablevision.
The TNA cruiserweight title has been renamed the "X" title. The idea is that it's not necessarily going to be limited to just small guys and will act more as a secondary title to the NWA belt, not exclusively a cruiserweight thing.
Disco Inferno turned down an offer to join TNA because they wanted him to change his name to Ad Man and have a gimmick where people print/draw ads on his body, like they do in boxing sometimes. Or like a NASCAR. The idea is he would be covered in ads and every week, he'd lose a match and a "sponsor" would drop out and eventually, he'd have no sponsors left because he keeps losing. Gee, hard to see why he turned that gimmick down.
Random other TNA notes: Ed Ferrara is involved in writing the shows along with Jeff and Jerry Jarrett (and, let's be honest, Vince Russo, though that's still top secret. Shhhh, don't tell anybody). Jeff Jarrett was in the pits for the recent NASCAR Kroger 300 race with Hermie Sadler, who is scheduled to be at TNA's debut show. Former ECW manager Sinister Minister will be part of this company, using his real name James Mitchell. K-Krush (Ron Killings, aka R-Truth) is expected to be one of the main heels in the promotion.
Okay, fine. Let's talk Russo. Officially, he's still not involved, but he has submitted a bunch of ideas, many of which are expected to be implemented on the debut show. But "officially" he's not part of the company (he's still gotta have a quick cup of coffee in WWE before they kick him to the curb again, at which point he finally decides to join TNA for real).
The WWA promotion is in deep trouble. They have a show scheduled for Ireland soon and ticket sales for that show are pretty decent. But every other show on their books looks to be dying. They have 3 shows scheduled for Germany next month and all 3 shows have less than 500 tickets sold each. The German promoters are wanting to cancel the tour but WWA promoter Andrew McManus has a contract that will result in a lot of financial penalties for him if the shows are canceled, so he's fighting it. Lex Luger is booked for the tour, which would be his first time wrestling since WCW went down. They're also still promoting names like Jeff Jarrett and other TNA contracted talent, but with their new plan of running live every week, it's going to be hard for any of them to get overseas, work the tour, and still do the TNA tapings.
XWF is making one last grasp to survive. Even though they've been saying this for almost a year now, the promotion is claiming once again to be very close to getting a TV deal. If it goes through, the plan is to hold a press conference to announce it and then tape 5 weeks of TV to air in Sept. and Oct., with plans to air a PPV some time in late-October. Dave says this sounds like desperation to him and he's not buying that a TV deal is close. Especially since they lost all their top stars, like Hogan, Curt Hennig, and Jerry Lawler, all of whom were involved at the beginning but have all since returned to WWE (though Hennig has since been fired by WWE again, so he's available). But even if this miraculously happens, most of the marketable names left out there have already signed short-term deals with TNA that will last through October, so they wouldn't be available either. So XWF will be struggling to fill a roster with names anyone even cares about (obviously this never happens).
UFC will make its TV debut as part of a 30-minute segment on Fox Sports' "The Best Damn Sports Show Period." It will be hosted by Fear Factor host Joe Rogan, who is a huge UFC fan and has a lot of martial arts experience himself. The idea is to show one full fight in its entirety (Robbie Lawler vs. Steve Berger), with highlights of other fights to fill out the rest of the time. Dave criticizes them for not putting Chuck Liddell vs. Vitor Belfort on the show, or at least airing highlights, but that's not the plan as of press time. Obviously, that's a strong PPV draw and that's where the money is, but you only get one chance to make a good impression and Dave thinks it would be in UFC's best interest to give TV viewers a taste of their best foot forward and try to get somebody like Liddell over with a new, large audience.
Dave says the Bob Sapp fight in K-1 that was talked about last week, in which Sapp basically mauled his opponent in such a way that he got DQ'd, was at least partially a work. Had it not been, Sapp would have been immediately fired, not given a rematch with the same opponent 6 weeks later. There's a pretty good chance that his opponent didn't know and that the people who ran in to separate them after the fight didn't know either, but Dave seems pretty confident that Sapp was instructed by someone higher up in K-1 to do what he did.
Rock's next movie, "Helldorado" is expected to film between September until around Christmas. WWE is hopeful Rock can make some appearances on TV during the those months in between filming dates, but that's going to be difficult to pull off (indeed, he never shows up during this time).
Speaking of Rock, he worked the Honalulu, HI house show over the weekend, which drew an easy sellout crowd, the first sellout for a house show in a long time. Due to Rock being on the card, tickets sold out in 2 hours and scalpers were making a ton of money. In fact, the show was such a big deal that a local radio station was giving away tickets for the craziest stunt fans could pull and 2 fans walked through downtown Honolulu completely naked in order to score tickets. Rock beat Jericho in the main event in a great match. It was WWE's first time there in 8 years (Dave corrects himself from before, when he said 14 years in a previous issue and someone here on Reddit called him out on it haha). Rock got a reaction like Antonio Inoki in Japan, he was basically a god in this city. A lot of his friends and family were there as well and backstage, Rock told people that the show was bigger to him than even his 4 Wrestlemania main events and called it the biggest night of his career. When talking about his grandfather, Rock got emotional and began crying and talked about his history promoting in Hawaii. Bruce Willis, for whatever reason, was in attendance, and during the match, they did an angle where Rock held Jericho for Willis to punch him which got a huge pop. Genichiro Tenryu and Motoko Baba were there as well, meeting with John Laurinaitis (Johnny Ace, who spent much of his career in AJPW). They were there to discuss doing business with WWE as well as to get some photo ops for the magazines back in Japan so they can get that WWE-rub. (Sure enough, here's an article from just a couple months ago where Rock says once again, to this day, that the match with Jericho in Hawaii was the most meaningful match of his career. I can't find any footage of the damn thing though, which is a shame).
Notes from Raw: X-Pac lost in a King of the Ring qualifier match to RVD and Dave says it's a good thing nobody in WWE pays attention to their own storylines because just a week or two ago, the story was that if anyone in the NWO loses a match going forward, they're out of the group. But of course, that wasn't even acknowledged or remembered here. Raven lost to Jeff Hardy in 3 minutes and Dave's not sure that Raven made the right move by giving up his safe commentary job because they sure don't seem to see much in him as a wrestler. The "Molly Holly is fat" storyline continued because fuck this company. Lawler even tried to get a "She's a fat ass" chant going. Backstage, X-Pac was shown crying after his loss, "sort of like real life," Dave jokes. They teased Austin showing up by playing his music and having Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit come out instead. They did a thing with Jackie Gayda teasing her being on the WWE Lingerie Special that airs next week and had Vince hitting on her backstage, making it very apparent why she was chosen to win Tough Enough over the obvious most deserving finalist, Kenny. And in the main event, Nash and Shawn Michaels were on commentary burying the match, making fun of Jim Ross, etc. And of course, the show closed with Rock doing his surprise return and promo where he pretty much buried Austin for leaving.
Coming out of Raw, a TON of fans still seemed to think the Austin thing was an angle. Vince's first promo, which was a total shoot about Austin being gone, didn't get over that way, with most fans in the arena expecting an angle and waiting for him to show up. There were constant "We want Austin!" chants and many people that Dave has heard from even thought the Confidential episode was all a work.
Notes from Smackdown: all the mentions of Austin on commentary weren't done live during the show, but were later dubbed in. Mostly it was just an effort to plug the Confidential episode about him, and it was such a last minute decision to do that episode that they had to edit the plugs in after the show was taped. The wall of security guards in the ring during the Triple H/Undertaker contract signing was copying the same thing they did before the Tyson/Lewis fight because it's a pretty cool visual. Nidia is doing a hillbilly gimmick now. Hurricane seems to be dropping his gimmick and going back to Gregory Helms. Word is most of the agents hated the Hurricane character for whatever dumb reason.
Dave talks about the upcoming Hogan vs. Kurt Angle match at King of the Ring and is curious to see how it goes. He thinks the most likely ending is Vince costing Hogan the match and Angle pinning him, but he's curious to see if Hogan is really going to try to put Angle over or is it gonna be another Kidman situation. That being said, WWE is protecting Angle and there's serious talk of giving Angle a run as the top guy, in the wake of Austin and Rock leaving and Undertaker and Triple H being so banged up. The idea is to put the belt on Angle and have him take on all comers, heel and face, like an old-school Lou Thesz-type champion. Either way, this Hogan match is going to be a test of how good Angle is because if he can't carry Hogan to a good match, then no one can. It's also going to be a test of whether Hogan is really the team player he claims to be now (yeah Dave's gonna be shocked at how this one ends I bet).
At the latest WWE tapings in Atlanta, Dusty Rhodes was backstage visiting and introducing his 16-year-old son Cody Runnels to everyone. Cody has been training with his father to be a wrestler. Good luck kid.
Former 50s-80s promoter Jim Barnett was also backstage at Raw and since it was his birthday, the McMahons got him a cake and orchestrated everyone singing happy birthday to him. Barnett was there because he was just hired as a consultant, which is curious timing. Barnett hadn't been officially hired by TNA or anything, but he had agreed to appear at their debut show as part of an angle with old NWA champions. So when WWE swooped in this past week and hired him, it got a lot of people talking but Dave says there's nothing to it. If Vince McMahon was trying to poach people from TNA, he wouldn't start by hiring a 78-year-old guy to be a consultant.
The local FOX station in Los Angeles, like everyone else, covered the Steve Austin/Debra story on the "Good Day L.A." morning newscast. The story was presented as a big joke, even using the headline "Smackdown At Home." Well, one of the anchors, Jillian Barberie, refused to play along, presenting the story as the serious issue it is and afterwards, criticized the station's writing team live on the air, calling them low class for making light of a woman being beaten by her husband.
Random WWE news and notes: Bubba Ray Dudley missed the UK PPV and TV this week due to the death of his mother. Edge and Chris Jericho have joined Kurt Angle as part of the Get Tough on Angina campaign that Angle has already been doing commercials for. A commercial for Summerslam was filmed this week with a bunch of guys chasing Trish Stratus in an ice cream truck.
Rey Mysterio made his WWE debut at a house show in San Diego, beating Chavo Guerrero. Mysterio was wearing his mask again and was said to be more impressive than anyone else on the show. The mask actually did come off by accident at one point though. Mysterio also looked substantially bigger than he did in WCW because, well, he's coming to WWE and you know how that goes.
NEXT WEDNESDAY:Bret Hart injured in bicycle accident, WWE re-hires Vince Russo, King of the Ring fallout, and more coverage of TNA's debut than you could ever possibly want, and a ton more...
At the Holy Grail Casino, you gamble with a lot more than money
"King-high diamond flush," I said boldly as I laid my cards out on the table. Despite my strong hand, my heart still thumped in my chest as I waited for the only other player in the hand to reveal his cards. Although my odds of winning were good, I was nervous. If my opponent had the ace... "Ace-high diamond flush," my train of thought was disrupted and heart my sank. My opponent had the goddamn ace. Unlike any other time I had played Texas Hold 'Em at a casino, I had no idea what to expect. See, I wasn't at a normal casino. I was at the Holy Grail Casino, where one does not gamble with money. My opponent had wagered a finger, and I thought that that had been some colloquial way of making a small bet. Just as we frequently say "an arm and a leg" figuratively for an exorbitant cost, I thought that 'finger' was being used in the same context. I was proven brutally wrong when the dealer, without a hint of emotion, pulled a large knife out from some concealed location and chopped my pinky finger off. I screamed, both in pain and disbelief. I had been expecting the most intense gambling experience of a life time, but I hadn't imagined anything of this magnitude. I had finally found a form of gambling even I balked at. I'll come clean and say it, I'm a compulsive gambler. I've had an enduring fixation on Lady Luck as early as I can remember. As a child, I loved making bets - even small and petty ones - with my peers. When I was eighteen, and had my first job, I squandered a bigger portion of my very first paycheck than I care to admit on scratch-off lottery tickets. With my addictive proclivities, I ignored the glaring net financial loss that this incurred, instead gravitating to the mere twenty dollars I did win with those tickets. Now you can tell me that my gambling winnings are heavily outweighed by my losses over the years, and you'd be right. It's a stubborn fact that cannot be truthfully denied. But it didn't matter to me. I was addicted to gambling. I was always convinced that the big, life-changing win I needed was right around the corner. It is this lifelong habit that has not only brought about a life of financial strain, but which, I fear, has brought about my imminent appointment with my own mortality. You see, my gambling problem reached its zenith last year after I cajoled one of my poker friends, Dallas, into taking me to a secretive and high-stakes casino that he frequently spoke of, and this is as good a place as any to begin telling what happened. "So, is this the night you're finally going to accede and tell me more about the mythical 'high stakes venue' you claim to frequent, Mr. Big Shot?" I asked my friend Dallas. Dallas was a pro at gambling. At least, he swept the floor with the competition nine times out of ten and the backroom card games we frequented. Dallas groaned loudly in the passager seat. "Come on bro," I said doggedly, "you can't just set something up on a pedestal like this and not expect someone to persist." "I don't know man. This isn't kitty shit. This is the big leagues." Dallas answered. "I'm not a lightweight." I objected. "No...but this is way more than anything we'd ever bet back there," he said, referring to our backroom games, one of which we had just left. "This is the real shit. Hard-fucking-core. This is the most hardcore gambling around." Dallas continued. "Like what, Russian Roulette?" I joked. "Nah man." Dallas said cryptically. "Look man, I give you rides to these games every week. You owe me." I was getting seriously annoyed at his reticence. "Fine," Dallas groaned, exasperated. I couldn't believe it. I had actually worn him down! "But I'm warning you. This is serious shit." Dallas said sternly. "I want to go." I said firmly. Dallas reached into his wallet and handed me a medallion. Upon inspection, I saw one side was affixed with the design of an ornate, bejeweled chalice with the words 'Holy Grail Casino' written above it. On the other side, written in elegant calligraphy was the phrase 'omnem marmora' - "all the marbles" in Latin. This certainly bore the look of a ritzy and exclusionary place. I had a feeling I'd either win the jackpot of jackpots or end up homeless on the street. The reality would prove much worse than the latter. Dallas was looking at me oddly, almost as if he was worried. But he could tell he wasn't going to be able to talk me out of it. I still hate him for his acquiescence to my pestering. "When can we go?" I asked excitedly. "I was planning to go tomorrow-," Dallas started. "When I should I pick you up?" I interrupted. "That's...not how we get there." Dallas answered. "What-," I started, but it was Dallas' turn to interrupt. "When you go to bed tomorrow night, write your full name on a piece of paper, then put it and the medallion in your pocket when you go to sleep." I looked at him incredulously. Had he been fucking with me this whole time? "Look...just trust me. Either do it or don't, but that's how you get there." Dallas said matter-of-factly. I looked silently at the road as we neared the place where Dallas lived. Dallas seemed to be pensively looking out the window, as if he was debating whether or not he should have give me the medallion. I dropped Dallas off without a word and raced home. I don't know why I was such a hurry - I guess I wanted to start waiting for tomorrow night as soon as possible. After a torturous day of waiting, the next night finally came. Remembering Dallas' instructions, I wrote my full name on a slip of paper and placed it, along with the medallion, in the pockets of my sweatpants that I was wearing to bed for that purpose. I could have sworn that I had heard my name being chanted as I drifted off to sleep, but the authenticity of those sounds is still ambiguous. What is not ambiguous is the fact that, shortly after falling asleep, I found myself in an opulent red-carpeted casino. I was in a lobby of sorts, at least I think that's what it was. I was in a large, marble room with Greco-Roman style columns flanking a plush red carpet that led to two magnificent ebony doors, which boasted intricately carved ivory handles. As I was soaking in the amazing luxurious sight, a man in a suit briskly approached me. "You can't go to the floor dressed like that!" He admonished me, pointing to my sweatpants and white t-shirt. "I'm sorry-," I began sluggishly, a bit confused by everything. Was I honestly expected to go to bed in a suit in order to gamble here? "No worries sir," the man had a rather upper class accent, "we will get you outfitted here free of charge." A short while later I was sporting a fine burgundy suit, a white dress shirt, and black loafers, and being led by the casino worker back to those grandiose doors. He stopped in front of them, held one of the doors open, and ushered me in. "Enjoy your stay sir," he said as he closed the door behind me. I took in the even more impressive sight that was the gambling floor. I stood at the top of a red-carpeted staircase with gilded railing, looking down at a large room. On the far end, the words 'Holy Grail Casino' were displayed prominently on the wall, illuminated by spotlights. Like the lobby, a red carpet ran through the center, bisecting the impressive layout of games and tables. Interestingly, there didn't appear to be any slot machines- there seemed to be exclusively traditional games. Poker tables, blackjack tables, roulette wheels, and craps tables I all recognized. Finally, I descended the stairs. The patrons and staff paid me little attention as I set foot on the floor. I briefly scanned the floor for Dallas but saw no saw no sign of him. I shrugged and decided to jump into the games. All around me, finely dressed patrons were engrossed in their games, and others stood to the side, nursing cocktail glasses or puffing on cigars. I had never had much of an affinity for roulette or craps, and I avoided blackjack like the plague (it's definitely rigged for the house). Accordingly, I quickly settled on poker. After eyeing several tables I settled on a table occupied by just one patron - an uninterested old man in a black suit. "Can I join here?" I asked. The dealer replied affirmatively. I sat down and noticed there were no chips in sight. I thought it had been odd that I hadn't received any, but I had just figured they would be given at the table. Curious, I asked. "First time?" The dealer raised an eyebrow. "Yes." The old man sighed, annoyed. What the hell? Shouldn't a patron at such a purportedly high-stakes venue be eager to have fresh meat? "Well, the rules state that one's first game is one round of betting only." The dealer said in a monotone voice. No wonder old man was annoyed. I nodded and sat down. "But the chips-," I began to inquire. "We don't use 'em here." The old man spoke for the first time. Before I ask what we did use, the old man placed what would apparently be the sole bet of this hand: a finger. Had I heard him right? He couldn't actually mean- "Bet is one finger." The dealer said, interrupting my thoughts. As I stated in the beginning, I assumed that 'a finger' was being used in the same figurative context that one often uses the term 'an arm and a leg.' I called the bet. The cards were dealt, and I felt confident as I laid out the King-high flush I spoke of in the beginning. But then came the old man's ace-high flush, and then came the chop. I screamed. To my shock, none of the other patrons even looked up from their games at the sound of my screams and the chop. Was this an ordinary occurrence? Before I could get up from the table, the dealer also procured some sort of ointment and quickly dabbed some on the nub where my finger had been. The bleeding instantly stopped, and the pain eased, but I was having none of it. I got up from the table and began to run back to the doors. This was too much. I had to get out of here. I heard a despaired howl coming from the direction of the roulette wheels as I made it back to the center of the floor, but didn't dare look back at the source. I stepped onto the carpet and set for the stairs when I nearly collided with Dallas. "Hey you made it!" He said. "Oooh tough break with the finger," he indicated my hand. "How have you never lost anything?!" I asked pointedly, barely resisting the urge to shake his shoulders. "Well I have," Dallas smirked. "You-you have all your digits." I sputtered. "Well that's cause I won them back." He said. "You can win them back?!" I was in disbelief. "Of course, they'll reattach it if you win one." I should have just cut my losses. I shouldn't have been swayed by temptation. But if you know the rabbit hole that is gambling, you'll know how much people put themselves in the hole vainly trying to win back a negligible loss, all the while turning that negligible loss into something substantial. I was still weighing my options (stay or quit while still ahead) when a booming voice disrupted my deliberation. "Attention floor! We have a class ten loser! Death!" He couldn't actually mean- Before I could make any kind of move, the patrons become a mob, and the wave people pushed Dallas and I to the center with them. A man, who I noticed was already missing an arm, was on his knees sobbing. An emotionless casino dealer stood before him, holding a sword. "Everyone c-cut y-your loss-losses," the man stuttered through sobs. Before he could say anything else, the sobs were cut off by the slice of the sword, and the poor man's head hit the floor and tumbled, landing at my feet.
Growing up, I was always told to avoid addictive substances, because alcoholism ran rampant in my family. Unfortunately, I married an alcoholic and my wife died as a result of a DUI. I have two daughters. They are fraternal twins and are middle school aged. I have no other family besides my twins. I worked as a laboratory technician in a hospital and the day to day grind was starting to get to me. My kids transitioning into teenagers just made everything worse. I needed an outlet. I started to contemplate the idea of sports gambling. I played sports my whole life and I felt like I could predict the outcome of most games. I decided to reach out to this guy, who I went to high school with, who ran numbers for the mob. He was fine with taking my bets, but warned me to do it just for fun and to only bet within my means. He said it was a win win scenario for him and his associates and they would allow me to bet as much as I wanted. However, if I was to lose be prepared to pay up any cost and he reiterated to do it just for fun. I nodded and agreed and decided to put $25 dollars on this weekend’s football game. Surely enough I won and I decided to double down. I kept on winning and now I was up to $1,000. I got such a rush off of gambling and it seemed to be a great distraction from my day to day worries. Then something fell into my lap, the lab where I work received a spinal tap specimen from the quarterback of the Eagles. This information wasn’t decimated to the public and I knew I had inside knowledge, that no one knew besides a small handful of people affiliated with the Eagles. I knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I knew the Eagles were playing a team with the best defense in the league and if the Eagles quarterback had a serious back injury then the defense would pummel him. I decided to bet one million dollars against the Eagles. I called my mob friend and he reiterated the same warning as he stated before I started betting, that he would allow any bet that I wanted, but I was expected to pay regardless and if I couldn’t then the consequences could include death. I had to take this bet because this was going to be my ticket to quit my job and just be happy. I had enough and I was ready for whatever happened. I was ready on game day and the usually predictable Eagles weren’t predictable this game and they actually pulled off a miracle, despite the Eagles quarterback barely being able to throw the ball. The second the game ended my bookie called and said he would be over in five minutes to collect the money. I told my kids to go to their room’s and I had to accept my fate. There’s a knock on the door and as I open the door he says “give me my money.” I tell him straight out that I can’t pay that and he responds “I have to pay my bosses ... I’m going to have to kill you and one of your kid’s.” I said “what!” He replied what he said and took a handgun out. Then, I said “you said nothing about harming my kid” He replied “I also didn’t tell you who the president of Italy was!” I said “I will do anything you ask please don’t harm my kid”. He then said “You work in a hospital?” I said “Yeah”. Then, he said “are you willing to kill six people?” I said “I’ll do whatever it takes to save my daughter”. He explained that I needed to access hospital records so I could find suitable organ donors to sell to wealthy people who were looking for heart transplants. I would need to access the hospital systems medical records database and find six candidates spread out throughout the country. Basically anyone who came into the ED with a minor injury, but was otherwise healthy. The six people needed to be spread out, that way it wouldn’t cause a red flag of missing people in a small geographical area. Once, I found the six candidates, then I would need to have the mob’s former licensed surgeon approve the candidates. I would then have to kidnap each victim, once a month, then drive them back to a cabin in Pennsylvania, where their heart’s would be harvested. It was the only way, I could ensure my daughters safety. I agreed and I was given six people’s blood type, sex, and the desired focal age. Basically, five people in their early twenties and one six year old. Also, they brought the surgeon to my house and implanted a tracking device into both of my daughters. I told my daughters I did it to track them in case they ever got kidnapped, but it was really for the mob to find them in case I didn’t follow through with the agreement. I was given six cities that were given to me by the mob to find heart donor. Then, I knew I had a very limited amount of time to access my hospital’s national medical record database, before their online security system would catch me for accessing private information. Picking potential victims made me gag, these poor people who came into the ED, with nothing more than a sprained ankle, are now going to be kidnapped and literally have their hearts ripped out. So, I scoured the ED records for the specified genders, blood type, medical history, current location, and their ages, and saved the information to a Zip drive. The mob’s heart surgeon reviewed my information and told me which one to kidnap first. I had to travel to Cincinnati which was around a seven hour drive. I had to quit my job and potentially leave my kids for a few days by themselves. I ditched my EZ-Pass so I wouldn’t leave a trail. My plan was to scope out where my first victim, a 22 year old female, resided and then quickly get her into my car somehow. I drove to her address and I had her ED picture with me to help identify her. I arrived at her address at about 2:00 pm. I waited outside for about three hours and I finally observe her leaving her house to take hee dog for a walk. Prior to leaving, I had picked up a revolver handgun from a pawn shop that I was quite certain was stolen. I also bought six pairs of handcuffs from the same store. I had my car windows tinted and would utilize the car’s child safety locks. I never shot a gun before and I hadn’t been in a fight since elementary school. My plan was to meet her about 30 yards from her house, say her name and tell her there is someone who wants to talk to her, while I point my partially concealed gun at her three my sweatshirt. I knew if I failed then at least one of my kids was going to be killed . I had to sound forceful and intimidating, but I couldn’t have every neighbor hear what’s going on and then potentially rescue her. I see her coming back from her walk with her dog and I’m pretending to be playing on my phone. As she comes next to me I say “Julie O’Brien” and she acknowledges her name, then I point my concealed gun at her and say “you need to come with me because someone wants to speak with you.” She seems like she was completely taken off guard and perhaps my nice guy demeanor didn’t overly scare her. I guided her into the front passenger seat, then I closed the door and I ran around to the driver seat. I instructed her to put the handcuffs on as I drove away. I had to drive her to a remote cabin in Berks county Pa, where the surgeon, the heart recipient, and members of the mob would be. I’m guessing the heart recipient easily paid over a million dollars for the operation. I had to text “I’m a gambler” on the burner phone, when I had the unwilling donor in the car, so everyone could gather at the cabin. Driving back to Berks county, I felt like the biggest scumbag. I made up a story and told her that “someone who had money from your past hired me so they could talk to you”. I had filled up the car with gas, right before getting to Cincinnati, so I should have just enough gas to make it to the cabin with my small four cylinder car. She was crying and she kept on asking me, where we were going. I had to block Julie out and focus on my daughter’s survival. This girl was less than 10 years older than my daughters. She seemed like she was just so innocent. I thought to myself “Why didn’t she put up more of a fight when she got into the car?” I started talking to her and she told me she was in her last year of nursing school. Her dad died of cancer. It was just her and her mother. I thought to myself why cause this young girl any more grief. I might as well keep her calm and let her think everything was OK. She asked about her dog and I assured her that her dog was going to be ok. I kept on talking to her and we were now about 10 minutes away from the cabin. The area was really undeveloped with next to no houses. I could tell that Julie was getting more and more nervous. She kept asking me “where are you taking me?” Finally, I pull into the long driveway at 11:00 pm. . It’s a dimly lit one story cabin. There are two cars parked in the driveway. There are two mob looking guys waiting for me and I assume that the surgeon and the heart recipient are in the cabin. The mobsters open the passenger door and forcefully take Julie out of the car. She is now crying hysterically. I then slowly drive away and let off a sigh of relief that they didn’t kill me. I get about 100 yards away and I then stop the car. I say to myself “I just killed that girl” and decide that I can’t let them rip her heart out. I figured I had bullets in the gun and I had to use them. The gun was a revolver and the guy at the pawnshop showed me how to release the safety to shoot the gun. I stopped the car and walked up the driveway. I peaked in through the cabin’s window and I saw Julie strapped to a table crying hysterically. Also I see the surgeon, the female recipient, and the two mobsters. I decide to set the mobsters car alarm off and when they come outside I would shoot them. I attempt to open the mobster’s car door which would set the alarm off then I would crouch down next to the car so they can’t see me, when they come out of the cabin. I hear them come out of the cabin and walk towards their car. As I hear them get closer, I dart up and point the revolver at their chests and fire all of the rounds in the revolver. I hit both of them in the chest and there both still alive. I quickly reload the gun and shoot each one of the mobsters in the head. I then head towards the cabin and release Julie from the gurney. I tell Julie to take the surgeons car and drive back home or go to the police. I give her cash for for gas. I leave the woman who thought she was getting a new heart to her own demise. I then told the surgeon to come with me. I handcuffed the surgeon and forced him to my car. Then, I drove to my house with the surgeon. I made him remove the tracking device from my daughters. After he successfully removed the tracking devices, I then handcuffed him to the refrigerator door handle. It was late at night, but I hurried my daughters to pack up their belongings. I packed the car up and had the kids wait in the car. I then went back into the house and shot the “surgeon” in the thigh. I then drove across the whole state to Utah and decided to a new life in Utah.
Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives. PREVIOUSLY:
PROGRAMMING NOTE:Some of you may have missed last week's post because I didn't do it on Wednesday. Ended up posting it Thursday instead, so it's there in the archives below if you missed it. I know this 2002 series of Rewinds doesn't really have the momentum or appeal that it had back when I was posting them 3 times a week for years on end. Sorry about that, like I said before, I just decided to post these on a whim when the virus started and didn't really prepare for it so it's all kinda haphazard. But just didn't want anyone to miss the one from last week if it flew under the radar.
Steve Austin walked out of WWE this week and threw everything into upheaval. As a result, Raw featured Vince McMahon challenging Ric Flair to a match for ownership of the entire company. It was the ultimate final blow-off to a huge long-term angle, and they did it with only 2 hours of build-up. With Vince now in charge of both shows, questions are swirling about whether this spells the end of the brand split, only a few months in. The reason this all happened is because, only 6 hours before Raw went on the air, Steve Austin showed up to the arena and found out he was scheduled to wrestle (and Dave thinks put over, though he hasn't confirmed that yet) Brock Lesner. Dave immediately points out the obvious, that an Austin vs. Lesnar match is something you should build up ahead of time, not throw it on free TV with no build up at all. Plus, he's still so new, he's incredibly green, and he's spent the last few months selling way too much for people like the Hardyz and Bubba Ray Dudley. Hell, before he debuted in WWE, he wasn't even the most over guy in OVW. He's nowhere near the level you'd expect for him to be winning matches with Steve Austin un-hyped on free TV. In fact, Lesnar should probably go through just about everyone else on the roster before putting him against Austin. That's a potential Wrestlemania-level match and Dave seems befuddled that they would just book it for Raw like this.
Apparently Austin felt the same way because he and his wife Debra left the building and flew home before Vince McMahon even arrived to the arena, the second time since Wrestlemania that he has walked out on the company. A source who was there when McMahon learned of the news said that, for the first time anyone could remember, Vince seemed to drop his "game face" and there seemed to be genuine panic about what to do. Rock has one foot out the door to Hollywood. Undertaker and Triple H are banged up and won't be around forever (bet). Business is already collapsing. And now the biggest star the company's ever had just walked out the door. Last time Austin walked out after Wrestlemania, he was only away for 2 weeks. This time, there's a feeling it could be much longer. Those close to Austin say he's been unhappy for months and this decision wasn't anything specifically to do with the Lesnar match. That just happened to be the final straw. Austin made news last week when he went on the WWE's Byte This show and voiced his frustrations with the company's creative direction. Plans had been put into motion over the last couple weeks for Austin to feud with Eddie Guerrero and then Chris Benoit, which he was happy about (he was enjoying his recent house show matches with Eddie and Benoit is one of Austin's favorite opponents) but that's out the window now. Austin and Vince McMahon reportedly haven't been on good terms for several months now and word is the night before Raw, the two of them had a very heated conversation over the phone that left Austin pissed off and frustrated even before this went down.
And that's the deal on Austin. He has more money than he'll ever be able to spend and doesn't have any financial need to wrestle. He only does so because he enjoys it. And if he doesn't enjoy it anymore, then by all means, it's his right to leave and he doesn't owe the business anything if he wants to hang up the boots. But Dave does feel like Austin owes WWE at least a few weeks to write him out of storylines since he's such an important piece of the company. Walking out from a live TV taping is unprofessional and it leaves guys like Guerrero and Benoit left hanging, thus screwing up their future plans and money-making potential too (yeah, that's something that doesn't get talked about much. Austin walking out fucked Guerrero over pretty hard here. It would take him another 2 years to get back into that main event scene that he would have been involved in here). That being said, pretty much everyone in the locker room sympathizes with Austin and agrees with his complaints about the creative direction of the company, but not many of them were defending the way he walked out. And given that this is the second time he's done it, the feeling is he shouldn't be allowed back without facing some actual punishment this time.
So anyway, the day of Raw, they went into panic mode and had to re-write the entire show. And with the feeling Austin won't be coming back anytime soon, Vince felt they needed to do something big. So they went with blowing off the dual-owners angle in a match that was designed to turn Flair babyface again and establish Vince as the heel owner of everything. There was also discussion of turning Undertaker babyface again, since he's been getting more cheers than RVD when they work together at house shows lately but they decided against that for now (they end up doing it in a couple weeks). So now Flair has been abruptly turned back, after only turning heel a few weeks prior. The brand split may or may not be dead. And there we stand.
In what would have been a major story during any other week, DDP has officially retired from wrestling at age 46. Unfortunately, Austin's walk-out overshadowed everything. The decision on DDP's retirement was actually made by Vince McMahon and Jim Ross, who pretty much made the choice for him after they got his medical reports. DDP has been advised by multiple doctors that his spine is shot and he needs to retire. For the company's own liability, WWE decided to listen to the doctors and DDP agreed. There has been talk of finding ways for DDP to work the remainder of his contract for the company in a non-wrestling capacity. (He obviously ends up wrestling a handful of matches in the years since, but for the most part, this really was the end of DDP's in-ring career as a full-time wrestler).
There were a couple of moments on Raw this week where Shawn Michaels was cutting a promo and made a comment about Austin "losing his top spot" and another comment later about Rock "stealing Triple H's spot." A lot of people in the company backstage were upset, feeling like this was the same ol' Shawn, going into business for himself and trashing on Austin and Rock and yada yada. Not the case. Those comments were actually scripted for Shawn to say because they want to get over the idea that Shawn on the mic is a loose cannon and you never know when he might start "shooting" and say something he's not supposed to. It's all very dumb, you see. Almost like Vince Russo is coming back any day now or something.
Dave gives a big preview and rundown of the Jarrett family's new NWA-TNA promotion, which has its debut show next week on PPV. Not all cable systems are carrying it, however. Cablevision and Dish Network both declined to carry it, but DirecTV is. This cuts down on the number of available homes for the show and probably cuts 20-30% off their potential revenue. The main PPV provider in Canada, Viewer's Choice, has also declined to carry it. Steep mountain to climb here. Dave expects them to do decent numbers for their first show but predicts an XFL-like collapse after that. By week 3, Dave is scared for their chances. From here, Dave gives the whole history of other promotions who've tried to make it on PPV in the U.S., with varying degrees of success and failure. UWFI, UFC, ECW, WCW, PRIDE, etc, WWF has even toyed with similar ideas. In 1991, they did the one-off Tuesday In Texas PPV as a test to see if they could run PPVs back-to-back (Survivor Series was only the week prior) and it was a flop. The original concept for Shotgun Saturday Night was for it to be a weekly Saturday night PPV with a similar >$10 price point, but that idea got scrapped before it got off the ground and it became just another TV show. Dave doesn't think TNA is going to make it without a TV deal. This PPV exclusive plan just has too much working against it. The Jarretts have talked about the millions of disenfranchised fans that stopped watching after WCW died, and it's true. Those people are out there. But those millions of fans all checked out between 1999-2001, and TNA isn't going to win them back by using the same people and the same concepts that ran those viewers away from WCW. All your wacky booking ideas, your Vince Russos, your Jeff Jarretts as champion, bringing in guys that even WWE won't touch (Scott Hall), etc. Those are all the same things that ran away those WCW viewers. Dave just doesn't see how this experiment can work in its current form.
Vince McMahon himself was the latest guest on WWE's Byte This show and needless to say, it was interesting. Vince denied the idea that the wrestling business is "cyclical" and said it's more like a series of peaks and valleys that have slowly been trending upwards over the years. Vince also admitted WWE doesn't always make the best decisions but says their batting average is good overall. Vince also said he's proud to have the word "wrestling" in their company name, which is a pretty big about-face from all the years he's tried to publicly claim they were "sports entertainment, not wrestling." He admitted things are rough right now but said there are huge changes coming soon that will change the entire industry but wouldn't elaborate on what he had planned (I think time has proven that the answer to this was nothing whatsoever. They had no idea what they were doing during this time and were just making shit up as they went along). Vince acknowledged that Austin has been frustrated lately and said Austin is the most demanding of all the wrestlers in WWE. Vince also said he pays no attention to the internet because everyone thinks they're a booker. He also complained that it's hard to live up to people's expectations because fans all think they know everything now. Acknowledged ratings being down and played it off like, yes, WWE is sick. But it's only a cold, not pneumonia or anything, so don't panic.
More notes from Vince on Byte This because huge unbroken paragraphs suck: he hinted at producing movies starring WWE talent. Dave thinks that's a bad idea. "No Holds Barred," anyone? Criticized backyard wrestling, which Dave actually agrees with him 100% on. Was asked about bringing Vince Russo back and said he hasn't given it any thought but he has an open door policy (see you next week, Russo! Jeez, it almost makes you wonder if Vince got the idea from this interview or something). When asked about the recent Jim Cornette/Ed Ferrara incident, Vince basically seemed disinterested but said he admires Cornette's passion for wrestling but felt spitting in Ferrara's face was unprofessional. When asked about NWA-TNA, Vince said he didn't understand how they could do it without television. Trying to get people to pay $9.95 a week for a 2 hour show (a minor league product at that, because anything other than WWE is basically minor leagues at this point), when they already get Raw and Smackdown on free television. Otherwise, he said he has no opinions on it because he hasn't seen it, but Vince seems to share Dave's opinion. He doesn't see this PPV model as sustainable and doesn't seem particularly threatened by it.
NJPW's latest Best of the Super Juniors tournament is in the books and was a disappointment, just like everything else in NJPW lately. Koji Kanemoto won a pretty boring tournament. There was only one new name involved, which was Michinoku Pro wrestler Curry Man (Christopher Daniels under a mask). He's talented and charismatic but he's not even that big a star in Michinoku Pro, much less to the NJPW audience. Otherwise, it was more of the same, with no real notable matches.
Zero-1 in Japan is hoping to put together a working relationship with NWA-TNA. Specifically, they're hoping they can do a Shinya Hashimoto vs. Ken Shamrock feud, perhaps over the NWA title.
While training for his comeback, Kenta Kobashi messed up his shoulder doing bench presses, because of course he did. Doctors have told him not to return too soon but he still plans to be back in the ring by next month. Because of course he does.
NJPW's latest show at Budokan Hall was a disaster. From photos Dave saw, he figures there couldn't have been more than 3,500 fans in the building. Even at its weakest after the NOAH exodus, AJPW never fell below 7,000 at Budokan and this show looked to be half that. It's likely the smallest crowd NJPW has ever drawn to that arena. The whole show was said to be terrible because of the depressing atmosphere of a building that was 2/3 empty.
This week's World Cup game between Japan and Russia did a 66.1 TV rating, making it the #2 highest rated sports broadcast in the history of Japan. This is notable because by doing so, it surpassed the Rikidozan vs. Destroyer match from 1963, which did a 64.0 rating, knocking it down to #3 (for what it's worth, it's believed that a Rikidozan vs. Lou Thesz match in 1957 was actually watched by even more people, but official ratings weren't kept as detailed back then, so it can't be counted for sure).
Dave has read some excerpts from the new Shaun Assael book on Vince McMahon called "Sex, Lies, and Headlocks." From what he's read, Dave says it's a very good and accurate portrayal of how the WWE has grown to what it is today. Vince's former close friend and VP of Titan Sports during the expansion era Jim Troy and Jim Barnett were both interviewed for it, among others. If you're a hardcore fan who's been following the Observer for years, there's nothing new here that you probably don't already know from a major story standpoint, but there's some interesting details at least that were new to Dave. But to the average fan, this should be pretty eye-opening. Dave expects to have a full review soon.
CZW held its second annual Best of the Best tournament at the old ECW Arena and the show got rave reviews. Particularly British wrestlers Jodie Fleisch and Jonny Storm, who tore the house down in their match. Trent Acid defeated Fleisch to win the tournament.
The Coen brothers, producers of the movie "Fargo", have had talks with Bobby Heenan about doing a movie based on his life (this pretty obviously went nowhere).
New Jack is no longer working with XPW and has jumped ship to work with a rival local promoter in Southern California. Perhaps not coincidentally, the last check New Jack received from XPW promoter Rob Black for $800 ended up bouncing. Dave says New Jack probably isn't the guy you want to write bad checks to.
NWA-TNA has changed its taping plans and no longer plans to tour, and they will now be live every week. The first two shows will be taped this week in Huntsville and after that, all future shows will be live from Nashville at the 9,000-seat Municipal Auditorium. Apparently the rent for that building is really cheap because a newer, more modern arena was just built nearby, so TNA can afford it. That being said, with as much trouble as they're having selling tickets for the debut show in Huntsville, Dave thinks it's pretty optimistic to start trying to run live tapings in the same 9,000-seat building every week. He thinks they would be much better off running a small 800-seat building every week, with a smaller, more intimate atmosphere that would come across a lot better on TV than a big cavernous arena that, inevitably, is going to be mostly empty (to this day, 18 years later, TNA/Impact has never once drawn a crowd of 9,000 fans. Never even really close actually).
Various other TNA notes: Dave runs down the list of confirmed names for TNA's first taping. Rick Steiner, K-Krush (formerly K-Kwik in WWF), Konnan, Steve Corino, The Harris Brothers, Psicosis, and a bunch of others. Don Frye has talked to Jeff Jarrett about coming in to work a match with Ken Shamrock. Jackie Fargo is going to be there doing something. They made an offer to Shane Douglas but he only agreed to come in if they didn't hire Francine (some kind of falling out between them). TNA decided they'd rather have Francine. They're expected to be doing some kind of old school vs. new school angle so....yay. More latter-years WCW shit. Mike & Todd Shane are coming in as a tag team called Dick & Rod Johnson and will have costumes that apparently look like penises, just in case you were still on the fence about whether Vince Russo is involved. The top stars are basically making around $3,500 per week which is a pretty decent salary for one day's work every week. The guys without name value, on the other hand, are getting $300 per show and are covering their own transportation. Just in case you were still on the fence about whether Jerry Jarrett is involved.
Ken Shamrock did an interview and acknowledged that he hasn't done pro-wrestling in a few years and knows he's going to be rusty. He also said he's worried because with only 1 show per week, he won't really be able to get enough matches under his belt to get good again. He also said he's signed a 3 fight deal with UFC and will be fighting Tito Ortiz in September, which turns out to be a pretty huge damn deal.
Dave saw the K-1 match with former WCW developmental wrestler Bob Sapp vs. some dude. Doesn't matter. What matters is Bob Sapp is enormous ("makes Brock Lesnar look like Jerry Lynn"). And he mauled this poor guy. In fact, it looked like Sapp was trying to get DQ'd, as he started kicking and kneeing the guy while he was down and just treating it like a street fight, violating lots of rules in the process. He was DQ'd but then K-1 booked Sapp and this other dude for a rematch in July. That leads Dave to think this was planned as an effort to get Sapp over as a lunatic, but if it was a work, somebody should have told the other guy because Sapp fucked him right on up. "This was like everyone feared Mike Tyson would behave, but 1,000 times worse and from a man far more scary." Furthermore, Sapp came out in a full Ric Flair robe and to Ric Flair' ring music, and the arena went insane. Sapp has massive superstar appeal in Japan right now and promoting him as a violent psychopath who has no regards for the rules in a shoot fight appears to be getting over huge.
Edge will not need surgery for his torn labrum injury, so he'll only miss a few weeks of action instead of a few months. Edge is in the midst of the biggest push of his career and this is his chance to finally break through to the next level so needless to say, good news.
Notes from Raw: show opened with Vince walking out, which was unexpected since this is Flair's show. He said Austin wasn't there and made a point of saying Austin was too much of a coward to be there. Pretty well buried Austin and buried Raw as a bad show (blaming Flair in kayfabe for all the show's real life problems. Sorta like last year when they actually turned the bad ratings into a storyline by trying to blame it on Corbin. Some things never change). They're doing a storyline with Trish making fun of Molly Holly for allegedly having a fat ass because, again, some things never change. Former Tough Enough contestant Chris Nowinski debuted doing the Harvard grad gimmick like the heel jock in every teen movie. "The heel jock." Never change Dave. Shawn Michaels made his big return, cut his promo joining the NWO and turning heel on the fans before superkicking Booker T out of the group. So theoretically, this should mean Booker T should have to work his way through the entire NWO one by one before getting to Shawn at the end, in what should be Shawn's first match back. "I'm not holding my breath," Dave says. And of course, Vince beat Flair to take control of both shows. Horrible match but considering it was a last minute panic move, understandable under the circumstances. Lesnar ran in and helped Vince win the match.
Notes from Smackdown: during a big pull-apart brawl, several agents ran in to break it up. Among them were Dean Malenko and Fit Finlay, appearing on TV for the first time in their new backstage roles, and John Lauranitis who was also shown on TV last week. More gay jokes with Billy and Chuck and Rico, which Dave calls Russo-esque. Not quite yet. Jamie Noble was introduced with Nidia from Tough Enough season 1 as his valet, in a feud with Hurricane. There was a big effort to make Bob Holly a star this week, starting a feud with he and Kurt Angle and they really pushed Holly hard as a star and Angle busted his ass to try and get him over. And they did a show-long angle with Maven in the hospital (he's legit injured) and Torrie Wilson shows up, it's implied that she gives him a blowjob, and then Dr. Tajiri shows up, mists Torrie and beats up Maven. Dave is at least happy that they're trying to make an angle out of Maven's injury so he has a storyline to come back to, which is more effort than they put into most stuff these days.
Various WWE notes: referee Tim White suffered a torn rotator cuff in the Backlash Hell in a Cell match and will need surgery that will keep him out of the ring for months. Rey Mysterio is scheduled to debut on WWE house shows this week and, as of now, is expected to be wearing his mask again. Terry Taylor has been reaching out to get hired, but the company won't return his calls (they eventually re-hire him in September).
There's been a lot of praise for the new Spiderman comic "Tangled Web" which was written by Raven (I had to research this, but yeah. "Tangled Web" was a Spiderman anthology series that lasted about 2 years and had 22 issues. Each issue was written by different authors. Issue 14 was called "The Last Shoot" and sure enough, it was co-written by Raven alongside Brian Azzarello, who is the mind behind one of my favorite comic series of all time, 100 Bullets. And I had no idea. Wild).
The long-discussed plan of having Arn Anderson as Chris Benoit's manager seems to be off the table now. The thought is Anderson has been devalued so much in recent months (they pretty much wheel him out every time they need someone to take a beating for heat in a Flair feud) that he wouldn't be effective as a manager for a strong, serious heel.
Tough Enough II winner Linda Miles made her in-ring debut on Velocity, against Ivory. She was accompanied by fellow winner Jackie Gayda, who turned heel on her and cost Linda the match. Dave thinks it's waaaaaay too early to put these 2 women in a feud against each other considering how green they both still are.
The Rock, Vince McMahon, Undertaker, Jerry Lawler, Jm Ross, Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and Shane McMahon were all in Memphis at the Mike Tyson/Lennox Lewis fight last week. Rock could be seen on camera a few rows deep throughout the fight, while Vince was shown on camera as a celebrity in attendance before the fight. The others were never shown on-camera, but they were all there. The PPV is estimated to have done 1.8 million buys and grossed a record $103 million, which are numbers that WWE can only dream of. Prior to the PPV, Rock co-hosted a pre-show party with guests such as Halle Berry and Britney Spears.
NEXT WEDNESDAY:Steve Austin accused of abusing Debra, much more on that situation and Austin's walkout, Jesse Ventura not running for re-election, Rock wrestles in Hawaii, and more...
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