Young wrestler, invest in yourself: The story of Punishing Pete

This is a public service announcement.

Please share this with someone you know, it may save a life... or at least someone's sanity.

I hereby dedicate this story to the many people in wrestling who I am blessed to say are in my life, and are NOT "Pete".

Some time ago, I was told that in order to make it in life, you have to make an investment in yourself. It’s okay once in a while to purchase things that will make your working life easier, even if it means going against the “traditional” methods. I was told this first by my mother, as she was telling me I don’t need to feel guilty over the price of a tablet I now use every week, and again by a friend who was cursing about another friend, whose career has pretty much stalled due to some ill choices he has made. I didn’t quite understand the importance of investing in yourself, until recently.

Part of the web work I now do includes cropping and editing photos of wrestlers. Usually, this is extremely easy work that takes no time at all. Just crop the photo down to a good size, and up it goes. There are plenty of wrestlers on the Indy scene who take pride in their work, and are a joy to watch.

… And then… There are some who really need more schooling.

There’s a man who I’ve known for several years. I’m withholding his actual ring name, because I don’t feel like dealing with the drama. So for the sake of this story, I’m re-naming him “Punishing Pete”. It’s nowhere near his real or ring name, but it is similar in some ways to what he named himself. (Actually this might be a better name overall.)

Now Punishing Pete used to be just “Peter”, a WWE fanboy who spent five years sitting next to me or on me at every single ROH show I ever went to, and would bitch and moan and complain that ROH will never be WWE. He’d go on about it for hours, and if I moved to another seat, he’d follow. It got to the point where other wrestlers would have to step in and ask him to leave me alone and let me watch the fights.

I travelled up to Milwaukee in 2010 for another show (I have another blog about this half written on the PC. It’s an excellent and fun tale I will tell one day) and while I was there, I spotted Pete.

“What are YOU doing here?? ME??! What are YOOOUUUU doing here!?!?!” is how the conversation started.

“I’M here because I was asked to be. What the HELL are YOU doing here??” I snapped at Pete.

“I’M a WRESTLER. Duuuuuu~uuuh!!” Snapped Pete back at me.

“WHAT?? Since when??”

Right away I started flagging down every wrestler I could, asking where he came from and who told him he could wrestle. And while Pete did not wrestle on this card, I was told that he had been in training for five whole years, and that his trainer was listed as “I dunno, some guy down the road who works at Wal*Mart, who was once a high school legit wrestler, but quit back in the 70’s because of a knee injury or something like that”. Note how this story lacks a name? Yeah, it’s always a great start to an epic career when the wrestler’s origins begin with training in “some guy’s” basement. That is also NOT a joke.

The next time I saw Pete was a month later. He was allowed an opening card match against a veteran who was much smaller, had fantastic charisma, and openly JOBBED Pete. Pete did not realize that the older wrestler was throwing the match on purpose, just to get a rise out of the crowd. Pete would smack him, and the elder wrestler would cross his eyes, stick out his tongue and yell “Oooooh OWCH that TOTALLY smarts!!” like a dad playing victim to a toddler’s punches. There was even a spot where Pete was losing a fight to himself, and the elder just stood to the side of Pete, yelling “Oh ouch oof ow take it easy, no stop ouch.” Pete never realized that he was indeed wrestling a t-shirt.

After the show, there was an after party. Pete flexed his girth at me. I say girth because he’s at a level where I can’t say he’s muscular, but I can’t say he’s chubby either. Anyway. Pete flexes his girth at me, and says “HA! I bet you think I’m real hot now, huh? Bet you think I look sexy. I’m a reeeeal wrestler now, I bet you’re pretty impressed. Bet you respect me NOW, huh?”

Have you ever seen one of those cartoons, where there’s a school bully who’s been left back a year, and once people find out he’s actually done something alright, he starts boasting about how big he is, but everyone still treats him like the pink elephant in the room? Yeah, let’s imagine that cartoon character, as (true story) The Iron Sheik is two chairs behind him, laughing loudly “what FAKING BOOLSHEET” as Pete is talking. Did I mention that I adore the Iron Sheik? I do.

This past winter, I saw Pete and the elder in a series of photos. The elder wrestler has long since given up on Pete, and has spent the last two years beating the ever loving hell out of him every chance he gets. This amuses me, since the elder wrestler is about 5’4. Punishing Pete is 6’2 and double the elder’s weight.

I recently saw a few more photos of Pete, and I had to crop them for a site I work on. If you see the photo I’ve posted, you’ll only see Pete from the neck up, and I’ve Photoshopped him so he looks as menacing as his bio says he is. I recently got praise for the photo from another wrestler, who told me this looks professional. I can’t begin to tell you how much that means to me… since this was a several hour job.

Remember earlier when I said that you need to invest in yourself? Well Pete never got that memo.

You see, Punishing Pete… does not have ring gear. Like, at all.

In the (now) 7 years he’s been a wrestler, Pete has never once purchased ring gear. Ever. His persona is that he’s a menacing punisher. A perpetrator of pain, at least that’s the tagline his new promoter has given him. So imagine Judge Dredd, minus the helmet, and that’s Pete’s persona.

Pete does not dress like Judge Dredd.

Pete does not dress like The Punisher.

Wanna know what Pete wears to the ring?

It ain’t ring gear.

It ain’t a singlet.

And it damn sure ain’t spandex.

Nope!

Punishing Pete comes to the ring in a Slayer wife-beater, khaki shorts and flip flops.

… THAT’S RIGHT!! I said FLIP-FLOPS!!!

It has come to my attention that Pete refuses to take pride in what he does. He does not invest in himself, so how can he expect other people to invest in him??

Let me ask you, if you were a wrestling fan, sitting front row at a show, and a man named Punishing Pete came down the ring in dirty, used flip-flops, would YOU take him seriously?

This is not even a comedic heel. This is no Repo Man or Santino Marella. This guy is supposed to be one of those serious, Razor Ramon types… and he’s out in flip-flops!

What’s sadder? He’s one of the main event heels. Pete was in a four way for a title. He went up against one cowboy wrestler (name withheld out of respect), one dude who was wearing a lime green singlet (400 lbs. and no cup or underwear) and another wrestler, who was 4’10 and about 250 lbs.

Of the four, the cowboy wrestler took pride in himself and invested in his gimmick. A sight for sore eyes, he had a gimmick that made sense, hair that had been freshly washed, and a body that screams “I see the gym no less than two times a week”. He reminded me of Bob Orton Jr in Shawn Michaels’s body, and he wrestles like a champion. I’ll be blogging about this dude and his lady another time, and I won’t be shocked at all should he wind up on your televisions screens one of these days. Again, he invested in himself.

The other three??

Now I don’t ever want to be one of those shallow types, so for three weeks, I tried really hard to put this out of my mind, and convince myself that there was nothing wrong with the match. I tried to tell myself that there was nothing wrong with the way the other two looked. And I tried super hard to keep this up…

Until I saw another wrestler post that he was tired of seeing people climb into the ring and take absolutely zero pride in how they look. The sentiment being “for the love of humanity PLEASE buy some ring gear and hit the gym” which let me know who he was probably talking about.

Like I said, Pete never invested in himself, though he’ll gladly bitch and complain for an hour about how the business has treated him, and how to make it in the business, and how WWE is business, and all anybody cares about is business, and business business business. Guess what his favorite word is?

So he’s invested in what he thinks is “the business”.

Guess who hasn’t invested in Pete?

The WWE business.

You know, the company Pete is all about joining someday. “THE” business, if you ask him.

And that doesn’t surprise me at all. Punishing Pete you see has NEVER even sent them a tape. Like at all.

The last time I saw him (hanging around a bar at an after party, bitching about how this guy and that dude will never make it to WWE) I asked him point blank:

“Alright wise-ass. Since you’re all about WWE, why don’t ‘cha send them a tape, head out to developmental and JOIN them? WHY are you even here?”

The Iron Sheik was still sitting two chairs behind him. I’m wondering if he heard Pete, because I do remember hearing his loud, bellowing laughter, and I remember a few people sitting with him pointing in my direction and looking for Adam Pearce.

Pete looks at me like I’m an idiot, and says “DUH! I don’t NEED to send THEM a tape. They’re the WWE! They watch everybody. All I need to do is keep hanging around some of these areas, and wait. Just wait, princess. In another year or so, I’ll definitely be in developmental.”

This was in 2010. Guess who’s not in developmental?

Now I’m sad to say that Punishing Pete’s story isn’t new. There are a few other people, who do not want to take pride in themselves. I wouldn’t know that, except I’ve seen many a Facebook post from actual wrestlers, begging a few of their own Punishing Petes to either see a gym or seek employment outside the squared circle.

So many people do not want to set foot inside of a gym, lift weights, develop a persona, purchase ring gear or even do something with their hair. And yet these are the SAME Punishing Petes who so desperately want to wind up high on the PWI 500. (As they post on their Facebooks.)

So for the other Punishing Pete’s in the world, here’s a diagram I’ve made up of starter looks, totally suitable for the ring.

Try them out for yourself!

Please click on the photo to see all of the details.

Domestic meteor shower

All I wanted to do was to see the meteor shower.

The following story is sad but true. For the love of humanity, if you are anything like the woman in this story, please, I am begging you, get OUT of whatever pathetic excuse you call a relationship, file a police report and move on.

And I don’t even care what gender you are. If you are in an abusive relationship GET OUT. Don’t even give me the lame, wussy excuses of “But he/she luuuuvs me” or “But I luuuuuv him/her” because if love was actually a part of the equation, the fists would NEVER fly. Act your age, toughen up, pull yourself up and get to running. Never look back.

Hypothetically, I could have posted this the day after the meteor shower, but my gut told me to wait a few days and see what happens. I’m very sad to say it was right.

So a number of days ago was the meteor shower. I had fog in my area but it was clearing up, so I left my window open. Normally I don’t do this, especially at night, but how often can you say you saw a meteor from your comfort zone? So I turned down the lights and waited.

Oh, I got a show alright, just not one that NASA would approve of.

Now across from my house is a little blue cottage. For all the 7 years I’ve lived in this Podunk area, my redneck neighbor lady has been for the most part quiet. The last time I mentioned her was probably in 2009 when on MySpace I referred to her as “drunk lady”. Why? Because on the occasion I do see her, she’s swilling wine, in a white tank top, daisy duke jean shorts and sometimes with car keys in her hand. For all 7 years also, there has been a redneck man coming by her house almost every day in a pick-up truck. I don’t know their names, but I do know that anytime he comes around, she stops drinking, bows her head and goes inside the house.

I’m kicking myself now for not seeing the big picture.

So on Saturday night as I’m waiting for the meteor shower, I hear screaming from the little blue cottage.

I turn to see the pick-up truck man grab the woman’s face, and throw her four steps to the ground off of her porch. He then races down and starts beating her.

I grab the phone and dial 911, trying to stay calm while the seemingly bored operator lazily makes the call to the police. I swear I wanted to hit something at that moment. This 911 woman couldn’t even try to act like she cared. As soon as she had my address, she hung up. Oh real nice.

I wait, watching this man beat the woman. Nobody shows up.

He walks into the cottage. My stomach drops. I don’t know this woman too well, but I know she has a little daughter and an elderly mom with really bad arthritis, both of which stay with her a good chunk of the time. I’m scared he’s going to target them next.

Instead he comes back out, and the two start looking for jewelry. I wouldn’t know that except they are screaming at each other. Apparently in the melee she dropped some Wal*Mart women’s jewelry that HE wants for himself. I’m not even kidding.

She has a flashlight and a cell phone that she’s using for light. He’s spitting and screaming at her, she’s trying to find a ring.

Suddenly, he puts her in a headlock takedown, and begins beating her again. As I turn to dial 911 a second time, he pulls out a BiC lighter and sets her face and hair ablaze.

Mama is now on her phone and we are both screaming “SHE IS ON FIRE!!” I watch the woman run down the street as he is screaming at her.

He goes inside the house, comes back, then from the truck produces a large dog.

Now, I’m no expert on dogs, so I have no idea what breed this is. All I can tell is that he’s big enough to eat Scooby-Doo. This thing looks like a shaved golden retriever but with monstrously HUGE front legs. It’s got an abnormally large neck for a dog and it’s muscles are pulsating. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was on steroids as I’ve never seen a dog like this before.

The dog starts sniffing around. He’s screaming at the dog to go after her, but when he lets go of the leash, the dog just starts sniffing around in a circle. While the dog does this, the man is turning his truck lights off and on, threatening to mow her down.

Finally, after 15 of the longest minutes you can imagine, the cops arrive. He gets a police escort in his truck while the woman is sobbing. Her lip is messed up, but she will make a full recovery.

The next day I find out that the man was already on the local police radar. Just three weeks ago, he slammed into a pole with his truck, hit another car and nearly missed hitting a kid.

Then another person steps forward, claiming he used to work with him. He’s a locksmith.

Every day he would come to work super drunk, and proclaim that the woman (who is in reality his EX wife) somehow ruined his life, and because of that, he wants her dead, and he firmly believes everything she owns or has ever owned (even prior to meeting him) HE earned, HE deserves, and he wants it all. Her jewelry, her clothes, all of it. This is not the first time he’s beaten her.

Now with a head case like that, you would expect the story to just stop right there.

It doesn’t.

I opened my window today to see his truck in front of her house again. She kisses him, and then screams “OH YEAH?? WELL FUCK YOOOUUUUUU!!!!” and the argument over who deserves the $5 Wal*Mart ring begins again.

I’m hoping at least her daughter and mom are somewhere else today, the last thing I’d want to see is the two most helpless people getting caught in the crosshairs.

In case you’re wondering, the sky cleared up right as the second cop car parked in front of my house. I didn’t see a meteor shower, but I got a shooting star. I’ll let you imagine what I may have wished for.

So my idiot father is dating a psycho woman.

I think I’ve blogged two things before. One that my parents are split and second that my father is dating a crazy woman, whom I have re-named “Maryse”. Why? Because I don’t want to be sued. That’s why.

For a short back story on Maryse, please read my last major post about her: http://codenamesailorearth.blogspot.com/2011/12/does-charles-nyan-or-meow.html Additional notes to today's story, Maryse is 39 years old, a Twilight fan, an ex-cheerleader, and a Public School French Teacher for SMALL children. Oh, and she talks like a nasally wing bar waitress. Leik a total Hooters waitress an' stuff. Leik Ohmaigawd!! Oh and I'm sorry to tell you, she has bred. Her son is a teenager, and she has more than one boyfriend, outside of my idiot father.

Oh, and one more thing, her teenaged son has a 1 and a half year old daughter. So she's a grandmother. Isn't this special??

Now my father the last three weeks has been more than a nightmare to handle. So far, he’s called me a lazy bitch loser for not cooking for him, and a deadbeat because I just “draw pictures” (that’s what he calls cartooning) and I never have a “real” job like the one he was fired from. (Working at a 7-11. No really, I can’t make this up.)

Now he’s blamed most of this on the gout attack from Hell, and just a bit ago, I got a reason “why” he’s been acting like a demon in a Baptist church.

So in a “civil” conversation with my single mother, he tells her the following story:

Maryse is angry with me, because I won’t babysit my father. Mind you, he’s over 50 years old, that’s old enough in my book to take care of himself. But because I won’t go to his apartment, and cook and clean for him, massage his feet and peel him a grape, I am somehow a horrible human being, and she thinks I need to go to her house, obey her commands, clean it and apologize to her for not being my father’s slave. I am not joking, I have yet to even speak to her face to face, and already she wants to destroy my freedom? Bitch, I’m 25.

Oh, and she keeps telling my dad that my life is a lie, that every show I ever went to, and every person I ever met is me lying to her through my dad, and I need to apologize to her, and all three of her other boyfriends, because she also thinks I’m somehow standing in the way of her marrying Billy Corgan. Mind you, she’s never been to Chicago, and God willing, it stays that way. I think Billy deserves better, don’t you??

So because she is so angry, Maryse has been taking my father all over the place at all these garage sales. She feels that by keeping my dad around (and I’m being honest when I type this) she is keeping “the devil” at bay. Yes, that’s right, she thinks that the devil has been living inside her back, and somehow my father and shopping garage sales makes the devil go away.

Oh wait, this is just the forward to the tale.

There’s one strip of land that she calls Garage Mahal. She claims she made up the word to describe this strip, that is chock full of nothing but people having garage sales, and that the new TV show with Bill Goldberg doesn’t exist… and neither does he.

Maryse is aggravated at my father’s gout, and his constant complaining that his doctor told him not to spend too much time on his feet. Doctor’s notes are just silly excuse post-it-notes that mean nothing, after all. Now he says he cooks and cleans for her, and tries to do right by her, because she is a hoarder. He says there is trash in her house from floor to ceiling, she says he needs to respect her pizza boxes. (Wow, what a charmer, right? Keep reading.)

So since he won’t “just stop” having gout, she put a hex and a spell on him.

… I will state this again. She put a hex and a spell on him, because she isn’t able to handle the fact that he’s got gout. That’s as batshit crazy as if you saw somebody putting a curse on a guy in a wheelchair, because that person is handicapped. And I’m fairly certain that witches tend to believe that what ever spell you put out, comes back to you 10 times over.

Now the hex and spell she placed on him? She did this to make the gout WORSE to teach him a “lesson” for his having gout.

By the way… she’s a school teacher. For small children. In a public school. Wait, there’s more.

So then she tells him that she wants to continue casting spells on him, so that they will both eventually die (dad first she says) and then their souls will become intertwined, and he will be reborn as a Black man, so he can properly pay for his sin of having gout in her presence.

… AND SHE’S A SCHOOL TEACHER?!?!?!?! AND A GRANDMA??!?!?!

Now the logical question here folks, is “Why don’t you break up with her????” which is exactly what I asked while looking in the phone book for the padded wagon.

He says “but I like her drama. It gives me something to talk about.”

For Christmas last year, one of my uncles sent me an apology, for smacking him face first with a baseball bat when they were children. Had he known the damage would be permanent, he would have just played with his erector set instead.

Does Charles "Nyan" or "Meow"?

My parents are separated. I feel obligated to open every story about my father with that line.

So my father just got back into his apartment in my basement, looking rather disheveled. He claims that he just got back from an “emergency” trip to Target… for cat food.

Now for the record, nobody in my local bloodwork owns a cat. In fact, I am severely allergic to short hairs and “Garfield” style cats, so a feline is out of the question here.

Ergo, one must surmise that my father was buying cat food for his girlfriend, and this would be correct. So this is the tale he told me about this late night excursion.

Now if you were a fan of my MySpace blogs between 2009 and 2010, then you already know about her. But for those of you just joining the party here on Blogger, let me catch you up.

My father began asking my mother to help him pay for coffee for his girl “Maryse” in 2009. “Maryse” is 39 years old, huge Twilight fan, has a teenaged son who is her personal slave, has more than two boyfriends (One of whom is serving a decently sized sentence for touching a 13 year old) and is an ex-French teacher for children … who “LEIK TOTALLY CAN’T UM UNDERSTAAAAND WHYLEIK THE SCHOOL LEIK TOATALLY WANTED TO FIER HER AND STUFF? LEIK WOW WHAT’S GOING ON MAAAN?” Can you imagine this bitch trying to speak French? “LEIK BONJUUUR COMOTALLYVIEU??” I should point out her nasal, wing bar waitress voice. Also, she is an ex-cheerleader.

So now that you know who Maryse is, let me tell you why she needed cat food.

A while ago, Maryse went to Japan. There, in a city outside of Harajuku, she went down a dark alley.

There, she found a one-eyed cat, marching between two boxes….

I want you to hold onto that image of the cat marching for just a bit.

Maryse found the cat to be so attractive, that she snatched the cat up, and ran back to the airport.

She paid $500 to have the cat sent to the US.

… No, God forbid she spend that kind of money on a local US shelter cat, where she would know ahead of time if the cat belonged to anybody, naaaaaaah why risk it? Sure, let’s plunk down Fie-Hundred-Dollaz on a random stray, and not even bother to check if he belongs to someone, is sick or has been neutered.

So $500 later, the cat is now on United States soil. She named him “Charles”. (No really, that’s his name.)

Now Charles is a black and white cat… but his patches aren’t exactly what you would expect.

Charles has one patch over his missing eye, in the shape of an Emo haircut…

The other black patch is small, box-like, and stationed under his pink nose.

This is Charles, photo taken right after he had his shots. Assumed age at the time thi photo was taken: Barely one year.

O_O;;;

Once more, Charles loves to march.

And in case you are wondering, this Japanese cat has yet to “Nyan”. However, when he hacks up a fur ball, he has a nasty habit of dry-heave coughing “HIEL mew HIEL”