CHIMPOKOMAN!!!!!!

Wow, where to start, I've always wanted to do a write-up on my site but never really found the time to follow through. I figured after a week in Japan now was as good a time as ever. My trip was absolutely amazing, and though it has always been one of my top goals in Professional Wrestling to work there, and I had built it up in my head, it exceeded all my expectations. Everyone treated me great and the respect and honor of the culture shines through in even the smallest of instances.

My trip totally began Monday night when I started making packies for my venture to the other side of the world. Josh called me at about 11pm and told me he had been licking toilet seats and somehow contracted the AIDS or something and there was no way he'd be able to go. We talked for over an hour but in the end the west nile, sniffles, whooping cough, mono, legionaries disease, tuberculosis combo he had was too much and I'd be flying solo. I was pretty bummed cause Josh is my boy and I looked forward to our tag team getting some international experience. As I packed the night away I rocked this sweet idea of not sleeping until the plane ride which worked out rather well for me. MDad drove me to the airport at 7am and I was off. First stop was Chicago were I met up with my boy Spyder Nate Webb and we boarded our flight to the Narita Airport in Tokyo Japan. Luckily the flight wasn't very full and I slept like an ultra-mega champion only waking up for foods. Some 13 hours later we touched down and met up with your boy the Mad Man Pondo. Together the 3 amigos of insanity hooked up with Haru from Eidos Japan and he took us to our Hotel 2 hours away in Yokohama where we met up with your boy Zach Gowen and Mike Samples. Nate, Zach and myself decided to head out on the town and see if we couldn't find any treasure. Well, maybe they were looking for food or something.......but I was looking for treasure. I'm not sure if it's considered gold or not but we did see a KFC complete with a jugungous Colonel Sanders out in front welcoming the Japanese Patrons. Last time I checked Colonel Sanders was from Kentucky and pretty darn Caucasian so this musta been his distant relative Colonel Sanderson. We also got our first peek at a Pachinko Parlor. What's Pachinko you ask? I wish I could tell you. What I do know, is that it's insanely loud, super weird, and Japanese people love it. It looked like they were playing slot machines but instead of monies they were putting ball bearings into the machines and watching em bounce around. Apparently ball bearings are currency in the Orient or something, I dunno.

That night Pondo called one of his friends Hidehiko and we got to check out the world famous Ribera Steakhouse. I was really excited to eat there and I totally got my Ribera jacket so now I'm ultra-indyriffic........it's rip roaring purple to boot. The Steak was pretty good and it's rumored to be Kangaroo so maybe that's why I'm a high flier or something. It was really cool inside the place because the walls and ceiling are lined with photos of wrestlers in the Restaurant with their jackets. Everyone from Andre the Giant to Owen Heart to Hulk Hogan to Mike Tyson to my personal favorite The Dynamite Kid. I felt honored to eat in a place so many greats had stepped in before I.
We woke up Thursday and rode to Korakuen Hall in Tokyo which I had repeatedly heard was, "Mecca of Wrestling in Japan....ECW Arena Japan" so I was really excited. We pulled up hours before show time and people were already waiting outside......then the goofiness began. Once the people realized who we were they started chasing our van! Literally running after it like Donny Walhberg from the New Kids on the Block or somebody was inside. Instantly I looked over at Pondo as my adrenaline glands kicked in and said, "what in the serious hell is going on here?!" I was super excited and at this point I couldn't wait to wrestle for such amazing fans. Before the show we were signing autographs and taking pictures a plenty. People knew who I was and I was shocked........my neighbors don't even know who I am let alone some dudes half way across the globe.......it was a very surreal experience as was much of my trip. Some fans even took me out for ice cream as I was signing before the show. I didn't actually know what was going on because all I heard em say was, "come, food, we buy" and I was starving so it sounded good to me. A couple seconds later I was eating the first ice cream I've had in a good 5 years. Oh well, a once in a lifetime opportunity like this......might as well eat some silly ice cream.

That night El Drunko (Nate) and I took on Naoki Numazawa and Mad Man Pondo in a match I couldn't have been happier with. As soon as we made our entrance I knew this would be something special. All the fans were amazing and the atmosphere was like nothing I've ever been a part of before. I could just feel the audience and anticipation, and looking out at something like 1,600-1,700 eager Japanese wrestling fans is something I'll never forget. I thought I'd have to do a lot to prove myself to the crowd and I hoped that by the weeks end they would warm up to the idea of maybe thinking about cheering for me if I was to come back maybe somewhat sorta kinda maybe. Little did I know these people were out to have a good time and everyone seemed to take a liking to me right from the start, which made the match that much more enjoyable and amazing for me. Moves I've been doing here for years like the Flagpole Press, Shooting Star, and Sasuke Special received insane reactions and I wanna thank each and every fan and wrestler for making my very first Japanese wrestling experience so memorable. Korakuen Hall is definitely the coolest place I've ever wrestled and I can only hope to make it back there one day. It was awesome signing so many autographs and having fans bring you gifts or "presentos" was very touching. I was also thrilled to see my friends Disco Machine and Mr. Excitement from LA at the show. Final count 1,698 Japanese wrestling fans......2 Americans, haha. They were over for Osaka Pro and had come to check out the show that night. It was cool to share such an amazing time with them. I'd also like to thank Numazawa for helping me out countless times on my trip. I gave him one of my shirts as a token of my appreciation my last night in Japan and the morning I left I saw him in the hotel lobby wearing it, awwwww.

After the show Haru from Eidos took us to a Korean BBQ styled restaurant so we could play eatkins. Japanese portions are pretty tiny and the country as a whole is really in shape. In my week there I didn't really see anyone who was sloppy, floppy, slippery sack fat and me thinks it had a lot to do with their tiny portions. Tiny portions are great if you're Japanese, or maybe a Hamster, but when you're pretty serious about weight training and body building you know how important food is......and you need a lot of it. Luckily the food at this place was tasty good and nobody looked at me too weird when I ordered the equivalent of 4-5 Japanese meals. After dinner I was introduced to the very strange world of the Japanese Karaoke bar. Pondo was antsy the whole day, and he couldn't wait to get to this place, which I didn't understand until we got there. Standing in front of a room full of people singing songs that aren't punk doesn't sound too appealing to me and I've never quite understood the attraction. Well, instead of a Karaoke Bar this place should have been called The Self Esteem bar. As soon as the doors opened there were 15 girls screaming and clapping and cheering like Mad Man Pondo just walked in or something........oh yeah, he did just walk in.......hmm, it all makes sense now, never mind. Then you sit down and boom there are girls surrounding you, fanning you, wiping you down with wet towels, getting you drinks, walking you to the bathroom and hanging all over you............omega weird. I felt somewhat uncomfortable and they kept calling me "shy boy" but all in all I had a terrific time and would definitely love to go back. We got back to the hotel late and I hopped in the shower to call it a night. When I got out I thought I had passed out or something cause it was completely light out at 4:30AM......totally light out.......strange. They're not kidding about that whole "Land of the Rising Son" thing. So I closed my curtains and made sleepies at 5am Tokyo time or 4pm Ohio time.

The next morning we walked to the Big Japan Wrestling Dojo were we boarded the BJW bus to Saitama. That night Nate and I wrestled Abdullah Kobayashi and Naoki Numazawa in another enjoyable match which I've been told aired on Samurai TV. I think I did more brawling in my week in Japan than I've done in the rest of my career combined. It was fun to wrestle amongst the fans and a little picture of me squirting an entire container of Ketchup onto Abdullah Kobayashi's face made Gong Magazine in Japan. After the event we hoped right onto the bus for a "little" bus ride. I was told it would be about 4 hours.............so 8 hours later at 7am we pull up to the dock were we were going to be boarding the Ferry Boat to Sapporo. Only problem is the Ferry doesn't leave until 11 so we've got 4 hours to kill......well actually that's not the problem.......the problem is you CANNOT get a rise outta Japanese people. I would do backflips in front of crowds of people just to pass the time and what would they do, clap? cheer? anything? nope. I could have walked up to a group of people, shot myself in my Thomas Jefferson and I don't think they'd even blink an eye. About the only thing I could think to do to pass the time was surf on the escalators. I don't know why I never thought to do it before but if you jump on the handrail of an escalator......surf's up dude!!!

They finally let us on the boat and the thing was huge like cruise ship style so I was ready for my Caribbean vacation. There were 2 restaurants, an arcade with slot machines, large decks all around the boat, and all kinds of rooms to explore. I was feeling pretty good aboot the situation and then I realized we'd been on the boat for 2 hours, seen about everything there was to see and done everything there was to do and we hadn't left port yet. Turns out they let us on the boat an hour or 2 early so we still had quite the journey in front of us. How long was this boat ride going to be? Long.....3 hours, naw........5?........nope..........wow, how bout 10?..........not even close...........are you serious? 14 maybe?.............I wish............18 f'ing hours!!! I thought for sure when we finally got off this thing I'd be at my house in Ohio, how the f can you spend 18 hours on a boat?!?!?! Then it got ultra super mega lottery sweet. The places to eat closed down and I was starving to death......you couldn't go outside, "due to rough weather" even though it was immaculately beautiful out.........all the wrestlers were in one room were you had to sleep on the floor and couldn't even turn the light off..........and the arcade with the slot machines?.......yeah, the slot machines were, "just for fun", you could put money in, but you couldn't win any back.....what a blast! lol I should also mention that I was absolutely disgusting at this point, I'd wrestled, been on a bus for 8 hour, waited for 4-5, and got on an 18 hour boat ride still full of Numazwa and Kobayashi's blood......sexy....I know. Needless to say I needed a shower......bad. I asked what the shower situation was and found out there was a bathhouse on the first floor. What's a bathhouse? As far as I can tell it's a big gay Japanese man hot man porno. I took a peek in and it was like 30-40 Japanese dudes wishy washy, wishy washy, washin their balls, all in the same room.....hot! I went and got Zach and told him, "quit acting gay and take a shower with me" and he agreed it would be totally gay to not shower with me. We got in the little dressing room deal and started playing pants off and Zach goes, "dude, were should I put my leg?" LOL The cubby holes for our clothes were smeeee so I told me to just throw it on top of the thing. Zach put his arm around me and we opened the door to the bathhouse and came hoping in. I freakin wish somebody coulda been taping this or something. I wonder what in the serious hell went through those dudes Japanese minds when they saw some kinda 3 legged, 2 headed, 2 penised American man monster thing come into the shower. I'm sure some of them are telling their kids right now as you read this. As a matter of fact I bet it becomes part of Japanese folklore and is passed along the generations and someday my kids will get a picture book about it in elementary school entitled, "The Gaijin Chimpoko Knee."

Aboot three hours before we arrived I couldn't take it anymore and had to get some sleep or I feared I might die. There WERE actually beds onboard but you had to book em ahead of time and they were expensive like expensive. I couldn't sleep on the floor after wrestling that day, especially with Kobayashi snoring louder than I've ever heard a human being snore. I'm so serious, I even got it on tape, ask me to show you sometime....ridickulous. Basically I started peaking into the bed areas until I found an open one and I stole 3 hours of sleep in it, what a rebel I am! The boat finally docked and it was back to the bus and our destination for the day, Sapporo. Sapporo is a city on the island in the north of Japan and it's freezy cold compared to Tokyo which was real nice. The show that day was at Teisen Hall which is connected to a bowling alley and we got there at like 7am so we had pretty much all day to explore and search for secret passageways. There was a mall nearby so Zach, Nate, and myself went to check out that badboy but when we got there we realized it didn't open for a couple hours. We were all dead tired so we kinda sat down noting that the floors were rather clean. All of Japan is rather clean actually, I never really saw that many trash cans but I never saw trash. It was nice, like the Japanese people actually care about their country, either that or they really really like throwing away their garbage, maybe it's a game over there like trashinko or something. Well, us sitting in this train station/mall soon came to us laying down in this train station mall. Next thing I know Zach's waking me up cause some security type dude is yelling at us for sleeping on the train station floors in the middle of everything. I really wish somebody had taped this as well, we're passed out on the floor of this place like we're totally homeless......awesome. Once I got up I rocked an Intro-net cafe and spent my last 12 bucks talking to Dork at home (meant in only THE most endearing of ways). That night I wrestled Kintaro Kanemura and Ryuji Yamakawa which was a huge honor. I saw a lot of Kanemura's stuff in ECW and I've even had a Best of Kanemura tape for years. We had a nice little match even though he hit me in the head with a chair and I had this goofy looking mark on my forehead for the next 4 days like I'd been hit in the head with a golf club or something. People should sit in chairs instead of hitting each other with em, I dunno, maybe I'm alone on that one but at least if I'm going to take a chairshot it's from Kanemura. I also tried to put Yamakawa through a table but I'm pretty sure they don't know how to make tables in Japan. They call em "Desks" and they SHOULD call em, "skinny thick ass thingies that have absolutely no chance of breaking cause they're all big and thick and shit" or "STATTHANCOBCTABATAS" for short. I did a splash off the ringpost and jumped as high as I could, hitting it as square as possible......nothing. I just nail the thing and bounce off almost breaking all my ribs and smashing my abrivleae. To make it worse all the Japanese people laughed at me, lol, but to their credit it was probably funny like ha ha and I'm sure I'll laugh when I see it on tape. The highlight of the match was when I hit the Flagpole Press onto Yamakawa off this big ass scaffold near the back of the building. I've never hit it off something so high before so hopefully it looks cool on tape. We were brawling in the crowd and it caught my eye.........oh! a big ass scaffold, what'dwe got?! I started climbing and when I got into the Flagpole position and looked down I was like shit, lol, oh well, yeah, hopefully it looks cool.

After the event Pondo and I were signing autograph's and these 2 really cute girls kept....well being girls, haha. They'd peak at us, smile, giggle, and run away. Come back, take another picture, giggle, run away. I saw they were shy so I kinda waved em over. Pondo asked me if I'd like to take em out that night and it sounded like a balls hot idea to me so he asked em if they'd like to go out and eat with us after we got changed. They couldn't have been happier and I was pretty excited too. We took a cab to the downtown area of Sapporo and I hit the streets with my new Japanese girlfriend "Saki." Man oh man did I get some looks on the streets with such an attractive girl on my arm. Perhaps the highlight of the evening was walking along and hearing, "Pondo! MDogg!" we start looking around wondering what's going on and then we spotted the BJW bus heading back to the hotel for the night with all the guys jealous and giving us the finger out the window's, lol. After we ate with the girls we decided to go check out Kill Bill 2 or as it was known in Japan "Kill is Love" is something like that that actually makes no sense at all. Japan is crazy expensive and it costs 18 dollars to see a movie! That's the conversion, 18 American dollars so when I paid for Saki as well it came out to 36 bucks.....yikes. DVD's over there are like 50 bucks and to get into the wrestling shows was $65. As far as the movie goes I wasn't too big of a fan and liked the first one approximately 987312981237 times more. I'm actually glad they were split into 2 movies now as in my opinion there's a sweet one and a poopy one. The first one was like crazy action, blood, blood, action, fighting, blood action with the 5,6,7,8's while the second one was kinda talk talk who cares talk lame fight more talking, sweet old Japanese kung fu master dude, oh yeah and some talking......and no 5,6,7,8's. It's not really "bad" and I'm sure a crap ton of people will enjoy it but it's certainly no Kill Bill 1.

After the movie we went bowling which is kinda funny because the last time I bowled was with Pondo 8 months ago in London England. Apparently when MDogg and Pondo cross paths bowling can't be far behind.......that is if we're abroad I guess, haha. Man, I totally had no idea what shoe size to get so I grabbed the biggest one they had because Japanese people are smeeee. I wear a size 10 here which apparently is close to a 28 in Japan, cause that's what my shoes said and they fit. Bowling was cool and the girls took video of me hitting a moonsault in my funky funky ballsack disco bowling shoes after I got a strike. Do we have video phones over here? Cause they totally had em over there. After bowling we rounded out the night at a late night Karaoke bar and then at 6am it was time to say good-bye to my Japanese Girlfriend. Bye-bye-Ada she kept saying, which I guess is kinda like, "I don't wanna say good-bye" awwwww, haha.

The following morning (and by "morning" I mean 2-3pm) we drove back to the Teisen Hall for my final day of matches. Nate and I took on Ryuji Ito and Naoki Numazawa and we were accompanied to the ring by Badboy Hido and Madman Pondo. I was able to secure the win when I hit the Shooting Star Press on Numazawa but before I knew it Yamakawa, Shadow WX, Gosake, and a couple other dude's hit the ring and all hell broke loose 5 on 5 style. We ended up losing the impromptu 5 man but I think we gained the respect of the other team as everyone shook hands and man hugged in the ring at the match's conclusion.

That night we were taken out to eat by a gentleman who was the owner of a Japanese wrestling store along with having a wrestling radio program. It was a Chinese restaurant and you took your shoes off when you entered and put em in bags to carry with you......um, ok, why not. It was good times and since it was practically my only meal of the day I ate like there was no tomorrow. It was hard to eat well and enough for that matter in Japan and I lost somewhere between 5-10 pounds over there. I'm used to working out all the time and eating 5-6 times a day but when I was in Japan I'd be lucky to get 2 meals a day and the portions were anything but generous. Not to mention I don't know the Japanese word for protein, so noodles it was, haha. The highlight of the night was the wife of the guy who took me out asking me about Ted and making a toast to him at dinner. Ted was my best friend (for more news on him check the merchandise section of the site). After eating that night we headed to an American Gaijin bar (Gaijin is the Japanese word for foreigner). Nate, Zach and myself had a real good time even though I was felt up by some Japanese dude, yikes. I decided that my plan of not sleeping until the plane ride worked so well for me on the way to Japan that I'd be stupid not to do it again. So after getting back from the bar all ultra late style and rocking some intro-net in the hotel lobby I laid down for an hour of rest.

The next morning it was time to begin my ultimate travel day. I would leave at 7am and get home at like 8pm Ohio time. To me it seemed like one long day whereas in actuality it was 36 straight hours of travel once the time change  of 13 hours was factored in. Nate and I took a cab to the train station where we took an hour train ride to the Haneda airport in Northern Japan. We then took a domestic Japanese flight to an airport in Tokyo. THEN we took an hour bus ride from this Airport to Tokyo's Narita International Airport where we'd wait 5 hours before boarding our 12 hour flight to Chicago, wait for our layover and finally fly home to Cleveland.

When we were hanging out in the Narita Airport in Tokyo we had about 5 to kill. It's a nice big airport with like a kinda mall type gimmick deal thing in it so we weren't too hard pressed to find something to do. It was weird cause I only saw 3 Americans in that big ass place the whole time I was there.......and they were all wrestlers, apparently nobody goes to Japan unless they wrestle, haha. We rocked some McDonalds (I'm not proud of it but I wasn't in the mood for freeze dried squid tentacles or some of the other oddities they call "food") and Nate took note of an attractive girl who had passed by us earlier. Well turns out this girl was Simply Luscious ready to head home after her very first 2 week tour of Japan and we were all on the same flight. Nate and her had met before but this was the first time I'd been introduced to her. It helped the time go a lot faster and when it came time to board our flight I took a look at her ticket to see where she was sitting............34A and I was 34B.......Hatchie Patchie! I really enjoyed her company on the plane and it made a 12 hour flight a lot more bearable. She's a really cool girl and I hope to talk to her and get to know her more in the future.

Also of note is that at about the last hour or so of this 36 hour travelpalooza I got food poisoning or some crap because I suddenly started to feel like rubbish. I've never had food poisoning before and maybe this was the AIDS or something but when I got home I started playing throwup-kins which wasn't too fun. I was so pumped to tell everyone aboot my amazing trip and I'd had such a great time and all I could do was hang over a toilet. Oh well, being sick is gay so I stopped.

What should you do the day after you get back from your week wrestling tour of Japan just after a 36 hour travelathon complete with throwing up?......wrestle of course!!! I got back Tuesday night and Wednesday night I went to visit my boys Question Mark and Chlamedia and we bumped around their beautiful 20x20 ring which they have in their backyard in it's very own "barn" which is actually just a huge sweet building the ring is in. I told em how sweet Japan was much as I'm telling you now......and there you have it..........my first commentary! How'd I do?!?! Should I do more!?!?! Look Ma no hands!!!swb082bss291sb12-38n092in1*&!UNQoi2jn09n 

-Dude-