Hello and welcome once again to The Trademark Rants. Recently, my column was added to a whole slew of new websites. One of these sites, Wrestling-Edge.com, asked me to introduce myself to their readers. So, since I was actually asked, I figured, what the hell… might as well. Besides, I’ve never told my full story to the readers, so this is an opportunity for me to basically come out and tell you everything you may have ever wanted to know about me… okay, not really, but I’m going to tell you quite a bit.
For those of you who are new to the Rants, my name is Mike Johns, and yes, that’s my real name. I was born Michael Dennis Johns Jr. on March 7, 1981, and I was named after my father, who, at best, is a walking informercial about the hypocrisy of many modern “Fundamentalist” Christians. I have been a wrestling fan most of my life, and my favorite wrestlers include Bret Hart, Ric Flair, Raven, Shane Douglas, and Taz. I’m currently an Internet Wrestling Columnist and my life, as I know it, is rather dull and boring. Well… for the most part, anyway.
My major claim to fame, if you actually want to call it that, is that I am one of the few columnists on the ‘Net who actually have some experience working in the wrestling business. I am a former writer for the Akron Area promotion Tri-City Wrestling, responsible for putting together somewhere between 80-95% of the TCW shows, creating characters and, in many cases, writing promos. I began working for TCW in August of 2001 and held that position for nearly 10 months before the company was sold off and became AAW, where my services, due to contractual stipulations made by former TCW Owner Frank Edwards, were no longer needed. Yes, folks, one of the terms of the sale was that AAW was not allowed to hire either me or “The Real Show” Terry Marvin (one of my best friends, whom I’ve known since High School, and was one of TCW’s top guys before it shut down) without Frank’s consent. Terry eventually got his spot in AAW, after a lot of back and forth negotiation between Frank and Kevin, the owner of AAW, but I wasn’t as lucky. Maybe one day, I’ll understand what it was that I did to piss Frank off so much. Was it the fact that I was booking the hottest feud in TCW at the time? Was it the fact that I had successfully pushed a woman into one of the top spots in TCW, mostly by accident? Was it the fact that TCW had been improving their draw, so much so that Frank then decided to start doing more shows a week? Was it the fact that I objected to giving Lydia the TCW Title, despite her popularity, because I knew that she’d drop it a week later and end up being buried in the long run? Or maybe it was because the talent, with the exception of Blaze, respected ME more than they did HIM? Or maybe he was afraid that I, by purely impossible means, would somehow come up with the money and the means to take over TCW? I don’t know how I would have done THAT, though, when Frank did everything possible to keep me away from the shows, the fans, the business partners and the talent, but hey, what do I know? Maybe there’s a way to take over a wrestling company WITHOUT having any connections or money or contact with the talent, albeit HIGHLY unlikely. How was I supposed to know that it’s possible to take over a wrestling promotion with no money and no experience and no contacts?!
My foray into the world of Internet wrestling Commentary began shortly after TCW was sold off, when I decided to enter the “Write Enough” contest run by the folks at WrestleZone.com. I figured at the time that I needed to do something to keep me involved in the wrestling world while I figured out what to do next, so the opportunity to write a column about wrestling for WrestleZone appealed to me. I won the early rounds rather easily, and then I paired off against a guy named Justin Waine, who waxed nostalgic about Hulk Hogan at a time when Hulkamania was in resurgence. Needless to say, he beat me out and he was one of two guys who won a spot on WrestleZone. Within two weeks, though, Justin quit, and I was then offered the spot as his replacement. I went on to write the original Trademark Rants for a year and a half, ending up on around 25 different sites at one point and having a decent amount of success. I never did get paid, though…
Through my column, I established contact with the Parma, Ohio based RCW: Ruthless Wrestling, and I eventually began writing for their website and became an in-ring personality. In early summer of 2003, I debuted as RCW’s masked commissioner. That gimmick bombed horrifically, and quite frankly, I wasn’t surprised. I originally wanted to be brought in as a manager, but the guys in charge, Matt Epic and Kid Wicked (who apparently now works as “Vincent Nothing” on the Indy Circuit), wanted a commissioner, so that’s what I became. The mask was my idea (when I pitched myself as a manager), and it was the only real element of the character I pitched to RCW that was eventually accepted. So, instead of being the Grand Wizard-inspired manager I had originally pitched, I was now a suit in a mask, who was supposed to bring law and order to RCW. I honestly thought the revised gimmick was stupid, but I did it anyway, trying to be a “team player”, and it bombed. The best way to explain that fiasco is to say that everything that could go wrong went wrong for me that night, and the masked commissioner was dead in the water. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of my misfortune. RCW had problems keeping wrestlers on their roster, and they were forced to shut down soon after my debut. In fact, my one and only appearance was on RCW’s final show. RCW, who never had much of a roster to begin with, basically had half of their roster quit in one day, and were going to lose two or three more people by the end of the Summer 2003. Some were unhappy, others were going off to college, and others still wanted to move on. At one point, RCW only had maybe 8 guys on their roster, and that’s when they decided to call it quits. I wish I had a better explanation of what happened with RCW, but quite frankly, I don’t know. I was never told much of anything in RCW, really. All I know is that recently, I’ve made contact with a guy named Jason, who is looking to start an Indy Promotion in the Stark County area, who is looking for someone to buy RCW’s old ring. The asking price is $5000, and if you’re seriously interested in buying a ring, e-mail me at TheMaverickMJ@yahoo.com and I’ll give you Jason’s contact information.
Shortly after the demise of RCW, things went from bad to worse. I had trouble making contact with local promoters, who would either go out of business soon after I made contact, or tell me that they had no spot for me. Meanwhile, things in my personal life weren’t going so great, either. I had recently seen my long-term relationship with Laura Clayborne, who once wrestled in TCW as “Lydia”, come to a crashing end. I had lost someone I loved dearly, my so-called career was going nowhere, and all the while, I was dealing with nothing but negativity on the Internet. I hated wrestling. I hated life. I just wanted everything to stop. There was even a point near the later half of 2003 where I literally suicidal. So, with all of this happening at once, I made a very rash, yet necessary decision… I quit writing my column. In August of 2003, I wrote what I believed to be my final column. I was tired of wrestling. I was tired of the Internet. I was going to give up on the business entirely and try my hand at something else. I was going to take some time to get myself back together and try to regain my sanity, and then, I was going to move on with my life and go into another line of work.
Terry, meanwhile, was dealing with setbacks of his own. He had just begun training with CAPW in the fall of 2003 when he got in a car accident and severely injured his back. That back injury would end up costing him his spot in CAPW. Fortunately, he was able to recover from his back injury enough to land a spot in TCWA out of Toledo that winter. TCWA had just drawn a full house with a card featuring Raven and Simon Diamond, and Terry was in the opening match, working in front of the biggest crowd he had ever worked for. Unfortunately, Terry re-injured his back again during that match, and a month later, TCWA went on a hiatus.
In January of 2004, I was able to make contact with Richard Gray at WrestlingNewsWorld.com. I had talked to some people online through the month of December, and at the time, I had just, and I mean JUST began to watch WWE on a semi-regular basis again. Anyway, I was entertaining the idea of possibly making a comeback, but I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to come back. I was just beginning to overcome the severe depression I was struggling with earlier in the year, and I was still wasn’t sure I wanted to have anything to do with Wrestling, or the Internet Wrestling Community, for that matter. So, I talked to Rich, and somehow, he made me feel better about making a comeback, so I decided to give it a shot, and returned to the IWC.
A couple weeks later, Terry, Chris Mayoros (another one of my friends, and no, he’s not a wrestler), and I got together to watch the Royal Rumble. Terry and I would go on to have a life-altering conversation about our future in the business. Basically, Terry and I began talking about his possible future, considering his back injury, and I mentioned that if he worked Tag Matches, he could wrestle longer matches and take less abuse. From there, the idea came out… Maybe I could be that tag partner. I mean, Terry and I always had a joke between us that he was Shawn Michaels and I was Marty Jannetty, so I just said, well, maybe instead of just saying I’m Marty Jannetty, maybe I could actually become Marty Jannetty, and be your tag partner. Terry then said that if I was serious about this, he’d be willing to train me. Beginning in February of 2004, Terry and I got together three days a week to work out and begin my training. Now, we both understood that I was going to need time in the ring so I could learn to run ropes and take more advanced bumps, but with the equipment we had, he figured that I could at least learn basic mat wrestling and simple bumps, so that’s what we concentrated on. In a six month period, I had lost over 80 pounds, nearly doubled my vertical jump, and was close to being in the best shape of my life. All I needed now was to find a promotion willing to let me try out. Unfortunately, things went wrong. Terry injured his back further while training with me during the summer of 2004, forcing him to cut back. Our workouts continued, though, and I continued to improve. Halfway through the summer, Terry told me to look into some local promotions to see if I could get a tryout somewhere. I couldn’t afford to go to CAPW’s wrestling school, though, and every other promotion I had looked into was a dead end. They either weren’t looking for talent, or they were no longer running shows.
Once Terry got married in August of 2004, our workouts came to an end. I continued to work out on my own, though, figuring that one of these days, I would make contact with a promotion that was looking for talent. All was going well until I began to have some severe back pain. At first, I thought I might have just strained my back, but it ended up being a lot worse than that. It turned out to be a severe kidney infection. The infection recurred three different times over a two-month period, and the pain in my back was so bad that I was forced to cut out my workouts. Fortunately, after the third run with an anti-biotic, I was rid of the infection, allowing me to live comfortably once again. Since then, though, I continue to have occasional pain/discomfort near the kidney area, which, combined with a nearly two-month lapse in exercise, has slowed me down considerably. Terry, meanwhile, continues to struggle with his own medical problems, and it seems that, for now, his wrestling career is over.
I can tell you right now that this isn’t a story with a happy ending. In fact, it seems more and more that wrestling has caused me more pain and frustration that I could have ever imagined. At the same time, though, I couldn’t imagine my life without it. It’s a hard and tireless business, and there are days where I wonder why the hell I ever got involved with it. Unfortunately, today is one of those days, which ought to explain why I’m not wrapping all of this up on a positive note, because, to be honest, there isn’t a positive note to end this on. In the last 3+ years that I have been involved with wrestling either as a writer, performer, or critic, I have nothing to show for it but stories of disappointment and this column you’re reading now. I wish I had something better to tell you, but quite frankly, I don’t. I lost the best woman I had ever known, the best job I could imagine, put a strain on my friendships and finances, and nearly drove myself to suicide on no less than three occasions just so I could follow a dream. Does it get better? I sure hope so. I’ve put too much into this to just let it end like this. I still hope to make my way into the ring or into a creative team or SOMETHING and contribute my ideas and my vision of what wrestling can be. But in the meantime, I’m not going to keep quiet. I have something to say, and since no one out there is going to take me seriously, then I’m just going to have to appeal to the few of you reading who’ve actually supported me from day one. And yes, I know you’re out there. Someone has to read this column after all, and if you guys are the only people I can share my ideas and my vision with, so be it!
Anyway, that’s my story, for the few of you who actually care to know. If you have any comments, questions, or anything else you’d like to share, feel free to write me at TheMaverickMJ@yahoo.com. Thanks for reading, and feel free to come back again for another installment of The Trademark Rants!
