A Journey in the Cornellverse

[Ironmike]

A little heads up this is my 1st attempt at anything like this I hope atleast a few people enjoy this as I've been going through the idea for the past few days. This is not going to be a standard dynasty like the majority here I am going to write this more as a personal diary of my avatars journey through the cornellverse so it wont be in the format of match 1 result w/e its just going to be alot of words telling my experiance playing TEW'07. My first game I started was with BOTB so thiers going to be alot of backstory with my time using them untill it gets to more recent events.

[Ironmike]

Prologue I guess we kick this off at the begining, the most logical place to start. My name is Michael O'Keefe and i was born in Australia in 1981 into a pretty normal family, you know a mother a father two older brothers. I had i guess a normal childhood and one of the things I used to enjoy most was sitting down and watching SWF with my brothers, we would only see the odd pay per view event after it came out on VHS, I Still remember my old man Bryan telling us 'You know boys, this stuff it aint real? Its all fake!' For the most part we would just ignore him and at the end of the day we didn't care because it was entertaining and while mum didn't like us trying to copy Rip Chords DDTs on each other atleast we were having fun. As a teenager my parents had encouraged me in any sport I tried, my dad signed me into Soccer and Boxing when i was 8 just like my older brothers had been as dad while pushing 40 was still playing soccer but had hung up the gloves years ago. My brother Gary and I also did gymnastics, at first I thought it was a 'girly' sport and to be honest I think Gary only did it to meet chicks, but we were both quite good and all the working out was really starting to show when we posed in front of the girls and then Gary would pick me up and slam me down on one of the mats. I didn't do very well at school, it wasn't that I was stupid, I was just one of those kids that the teacher say 'he is easily distracted in class and fails to apply himself to his studies.' So I left school at 15 and started working construction with my old man like my two brothers before me. It took me awhile to get used to the early starts but it was good honest hard work and I think really helped our relationships as we got to see more of each other, which can be a good thing or a bad thing sometimes. In 2000 me and some mates, some having stayed in school and had just finished, others who had gone on to work similar jobs to mine with dads or uncles went on a 'working' holiday to Canada. I know your thinking 'why Canada?' well it was a really cheap deal as we had been looking to go on a ski holiday and thier were always placing looking for a few extra hands around that time of year. So we spent our days working the ski feilds and goofing off in our spare time, then one day I saw a flier for North of the Border Proffesional Wrestling they were holding a show at the Ottawa Rams stadium in Ontario on the weekend. When I got back I told my mates, most of them didn't care a few even pretended that they would like to go but couldn't make it as they already had plans so I went by myself. The show was a bit different from the stuff we had seen on TV it was based on this family the Stones and featured some other talented guys aswell, it seemed more focused on the action in the ring and the skill of the competetors not what thier girlfriends brother had done over the past month to set up a loser leaves the show match. The main event was the champion Sean McFly who I remembered when he was SWF World Champion a few years back Vs. R.K. Hayes a big rough lookinjg guy who was dishing out some mean looking left and rights, it was a pretty good fight McFly looked a million bucks he was standing toe to toe with this guy giving as good as he was getting, he deffinately had the speed advantage but it didn't even seem to be affecting Hayes until he took him down with a nice suplex then went to the top rope and dropped an elbow in the chest of Hayes who managed to climb to his feet only to walk into the Delorean Driver for the 1 - 2 - 3 and Sean McFly retains the Championship! From that night on I tried to get to as many NOTBPW shows as I could this stuff was great! While I already knew Sean McFly from SWF I was starting to get familiar with the Stones, Dan Snr had been a ledgend back in the day and I knew a little bit about him he was the owner of the company. Jeremy could tie guys up like a pretzel they didn't call him 'The Canadian Wrestling Machine' for nothin. Dan Jnr was like McFly the guy was amazing whatever he was doing but he looked more 'amatuer' compared to the flashyness McFly had apapted from his days in SWF. Lastly but by no means least Duane the guy would move around the ring like a lightning bolt bouncing off ropes into his oponents, jumping from turnbuckles and crashing to the mat he was also a competant 'wrestler' like his older brothers but some of the matches he had with Cliff 'Dark Angel' Wilson blew me away and opened my eyes to a whole new style of wrestling that had me hooked, I think I was Duane Stone's newest no.1 fan and managed to get his autograph after the show! Another show came to an end when Jeremy and Duane teamed up against Billy and Larry Wood, the tag team champs. These were two big burly brawler who looked like they just crawled out from under a rock against a pair of finely chisled Stones. The match was ok but it wasn't as good as previous matches I had seen Duane in, I dont think the rugged brawling of the Woods worked well with the silky skills of the two Stone boys and the match ending by DQ when Larry Wood smashed Jeremy in the face with one of the title belts didn't go down that well with the crowd. I talked briefly to Duane again after the show, it was weird most of the people would rather queue up for 1/2 hour to get an autograph from the champ McFly or one of the elder Stones but Duane was often overlooked. We were chatting about his match, he wasn't that happy with it either I told him it had been OK but could of been alot better I mean the Wood Brothers were huffing and puffing after 5 mins! He told me that he should probably of helped them out a bit more which confused me at fisrt as I said 'hey arn't you supposed to beat the hell outta them?' But i learned that day that professional wrestling was all about putting on the best proformance you can and that means you got to make the other guy look good aswell as making yourself look a million bucks at the same time. Dan snr came over to where we were seated and said 'good match son im proud of you boys' to which Duane just sorta nodded and mumbled something, Mr Stone then turned his head to me and said 'whos your friend here?' Friend? I as like yeah I wish! Duane replied 'Ah dad this is my friend Mike, hes from "Down Under" working here in Canada, hes a big fan of the show.' "Nice to meet you Mike' said Mr Stone, I didn't know what was going on all of a sudden im talking to a living legend! I just sorta mumbled 'G'day Mr Stone' or something similar. He asked me what I was doing in Canada and I told him I'd been working on the ski slopes, he just smiled and said that sounded like alot of fun, then I blurted out something that would change my life forever.

[Ironmike]

'Yeah its OK I guess, but I think what you guys do looks like it would be alot more fun.' What the hell was I thinking? I don't think I really was and if I had maybe I never would have said it, but it sure got Mr Stones attention. 'So you think this looks like "fun" aye? Well let me tell you its not all mucking around in a ring and signing autographs, we put in alot of hard work before weve even set foot inside the arena.' He said it firmly not in an aggresive way but it was obviously something he was very passionate about. ' I ... I didn't ... I mean I ...' Mr Stone held up his hand 'Don't worry kid I'm not mad at you, Duane here seems to like you and you look like a fit young man, have you had any wrestling experiance?' Well if watching the shows and goofing off with my brothers counted... 'Ah no, I mean not really sir but I have been boxing since I was 8 years old and I do Gymnastics also.' Why did I bring up the gymnastics! Thier going to think i'm some kind of wuss, well atleast I mentioned the boxing thats gotta help a little I thought. 'Hmm boxing and gymnastics aye, so I guess you don't know an armbar from a crowbar then?' Heh ofcourse I did, I was an big wrestling fan after all but I couldn't just say it like that or could I? 'Well sir an armbar is a wrestling hold which hyperextends the elbow joint and a crowbar is a tool I have used many times in construction for removing nails, opening wooden crates and just generally demolition, both quite effective if used properly!' Hehe I couldn't help myself and to be honest I think he was a tiny bit impressed. 'OK so you know what an armbar is but do you know how to apply one? Stand up and come here, you too Duane, OK now put an armbar on Duane here.' Alright now im screwed, I knew what an armbar was but didn't really know how one should be applied so I just sorta grabbed Duane's arm between my elbow and tried to bend it back the other way, it wasn't going real well. 'No no no thats not how you do it Armlocks are alot more difficult to perform when both combatants are standing up, so first you need to get your opponent on the mat.' Mr Stone dropped Duane on his butt, put his legs over his face and chest with Duane's arm inbetween his own legs with the elbow joint right up near his crotch and proceeded to pull the offending appendage towards his chest with his own two arms wrapped tightly around it. 'Argh I give Dad' 'Now young fella thats how you apply an armbar.' I just sorta nodded my head in agreement. 'Now if you think that looks like fun and you really do have an interest in wrestling like you mentioned then come up to our gym and we can talk some more about armbars and such, have a nice day.' I was shellshocked Dan Stone had just asked me to come to his gym to talk about armbars? I must of had a strange look on my face as Duane just smiled at me and said it looked like we'd be spending some more time together. The next few months were a dream I was working the snow fields with my buddies durring the day and 'training' at the Stone's gym in the evenings. I wasn't just talking about armbars but learning how to apply them and other holds without hurting the other person, it was an amazing experiance but I really wanted to be running around the ring jumping from the ropes like Dark Angel and Duane but it was important that I learnt the basics first and that included how to look good while getting beat up. I found that my boxing skills were not that big a help as I was more likely to injure someone with a stiff jab and I looked too rigid but my gym work really paid off expecially the tumbling skills I had learned from floor routines aswell as jumping and flipping, some of the guy started to think I looked pretty good even though my offence consited of some robotic looking punches and a few basic holds but I was really selling those backdrops and suplex's. So 2001 rolled on in and the snow was starting to melt and it looked like me and my buddies would be headed to the U.S. we had lined up some work packing fruit on a farm, I was a little sad leaving Canada and the Stones but they had made me promise i'd return when I got the chance, apparently they thought I just might have the right stuff if i kept working at it. So the next 6 months were fairly uneventful I continued to train in local gyms, thier seemed to be kids everywhere in America that wanted to learn to wrestle and thier was no shortage of guys who would share thier limited knowlidge for a price. I even worked a few matches for some small indy promotion, they just sorta laughed at me when I claimed to have been trained by the Stones up in Canada but hey I did't do too badly nor was I amazing and I was relieved that my first few matches went unnoticed by anyone that knew me but the 25 bucks they were paying me was handy, but the experiance was worth more to me. The tail end of 2001 saw me head back up to Canada, I was lucky enough to get my old job back and dropped back in on the Stones. As it turned out they had a few new guys working for them and even some young guys from Japan had come to study under the legendary family aswell as young Edd Stone at age 14 starting to follow in the family footsteps. I hit it off pretty well with Edd we both were fans of the more flashy airial style that Duane and Cliff used and we struck up a bit of a deal with one of the young Japanese guys Yoshii Shiomi that he would show us some of his high flying moves and we would help him with some of the more technical skills. As time went by and our skills improved some of the guys were asked to work some 'dark matches' for the local shows, finally an opportunity to show everyone how we had been progressing, my first match was to be with some new guy called 'Canadian Cat' the guys real name was Owen Pinsent and he had represented Canada in swimming at the Olympics. The guy was 7 years older than me but we had been training for roughly the same amount of time, he looked to be a good technical worker as most people that trained with the stones were and they had big ideas for Owen so we had agreed that he was to come out of the match looking the goods. The match was ok we didn't really have alot of time to do alot out there, Owen picked up the victory after he made me tap with a single leg crab and that was that, the guys thought I did ok but I still had alot to learn. I had picked up alot from Duane, Cliff and the young Yoshii but when I found out Duane was headed overseas to tour with Japanese promotion BHOTWG I begged and begged him to take me along, he thought it might be good to have a familiar face with him and it would be a great opportuninty for his 'protege' to learn a few new tricks. "Protege?" i said, "well" he replied "if Jeremy and Dan can have protege's why can't I?" heh wow I thought, now if only he'd ask the same question about NOTBPW Championships, but in any event I had to pack my bags.

[Ironmike]

So I spent my first 'tour' of Japan as a sort of sparring partner for Duane, I didn't get to do much other wrestling but I was learning alot by just watching the fluid styles of the majority of the guys wrestling in Japan. Burning Hammer were a big time wrestling promotion, hell wrestling was big time in Japan, their were 3 big promotions BH, Golden Canvas Grappling who used to be No.1 but were losing the war and the newish Pride Glory Honor Wrestling who were gaining momentum fast. Wherever we went the fans treated the guys like Demi-gods, but at the same time it didn't seem to have any effect on them, I mean sure its great but they didn't really gloat about it or anything like that. Duane had some amazing matches, mostly with this guy 'Optimus' who was like one of the biggest most popular guys EVER. I found it hard at first with the language barrier but slowly began to learn some basic Japanese, alot of the guys spoke decent English anyway but I didn't feel right having people talk to me in a language that they were uncomfortable with. Another Japanese promotion that were quite new were World Level Wrestling, they wern't as serious as the big 3, but were having some success with a weird combination of the japanese 'Puro' style as well as high flying action. Thier owner Koji Kojima approached me and asked if i'd be interested in doing a few shows, to which I gleefully replied that I'd love to. It was a bit of madness with the whole language barrier thing but I did ok and Koji said I was welcome back anytime, so it began that I would split my time between North America and Japan for the next few years 'paying my dues' as it were, more like working my butt off for very little pay I thought. Duane stop touring so much and I began working more and more for WLW as time went by I would be spending close to 3/4 of the year in Japan, pretty much working full time for WLW. I was helping in everyway I could, I had learned a little bit about matching guys up and how to structure an event and Koji was glad for the extra help, I even started to gain a little following from the fans. At first when Koji learnt I was Australian he was really keen for me to wear a Koala head like mask as he felt the Japanese people would really go nuts over 'Koala Boy' but I quickly shot that idea down, in retrospect I probably would have gotten over with the fans alot quicker than just being introduced as 'Michael O'Keefe'. But all the hard work and time i'd put in finally looked as if it had payed off as the end of 2005 came along I got a call from some guy from BHOTWG who said they wanted to sit down with me and talk about my future in Japan.

[Carlzilla]

I'm enjoying this so far. It's a very interesting read. It's almost like a WriSpi diary.