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Guest Columns | Shawn Colton |
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MY LIFE AS A MARK II
Hello Friends and Lovers, I haven't gotten a spectacular reaction from part one of this piece so naturally I'll continue. In the first installment ,still close by on the home page no doubt, I detailed a couple of my early adventures as a mark. If you don't wanna read a self absorbed column then look elsewhere because this column features me, me ,me. Oh yeah, and some lady named Trish Stratus and some wrestler named Ted DiBiase. I have to say first that obviously these little anecdotes of mine aren't that big of a deal compared to the likes of the Mike Samudas, Al Isaacs of the world, who routinely chat with big names in the wrestling business, but that's kind of the point . I'm just a fan and the things that have happened to me as relates to wrestling have been pretty damn cool for a fan-boy. Am I attempting to " put myself over" ? Hell no. Like I said there are others that have brushes with greatness so frequently they have probably become immune to it. I haven't. Not yet anyway. In fact, I've been able to incorporate my little hobby into much of my everyday life, even the important stuff. My wedding is an excellent example. My wife and I are a not exactly what you'd call religous people and neither of us were too terribly comfortable with the concept of getting married in a church, so we had to spend a little ( gross understatement ) extra to rent a chapel. That's when I decided that this would be a very unique affair. It's all her fault anyway. She's the one who said " Ooo Yea ! " , when I asked her to marry me. My wife is no fan of wrestling but she fully supports my love of it and happily made a couple of concessions when we were putting together the ceremony. First off I insisted on getting my own music to "walk that aisle ". Initially I wanted to use " Sexy Boy " . I thought the lyrics " Oh, oooh Shawn ! ", and "eat your heart out girls, hands off the merchandise" would have been appropriate in a really ridiculous kind of way. Sadly that was a bit much, so I decided on Razor Ramon's theme "Bad Boy" instead. I did the Scott Hall glide down the aisle and it got a pretty decent reaction. For the processional we used Goldust's theme and that worked out magnificently , as no one knew it was an androgynous wrestler's theme and it sounded majestic as all get out bouncing off the chapel's walls. Goldust theme faded and led right into " Here Comes The Bride ", and the single greatest moment of my life as I saw my soon to be wife make her way down the aisle. I've also been lucky enough to meet a couple of the people that were in the business along the way, one of the most memorable being Ted DiBiase. Back in 1995 he was promoting an " In Your House " PPV being held at the Saginaw Civic Center . The autograph signing was at a McDonald's of all things. This is before I got too "smart" for my own good, so I was marking out big time. I had a whole bunch of DiBiase merchandise with me and when I got up to him it turned out DiBiase still has a little mark left inside him as well. DiBiase was pretty impressed with some of the stuff I had, particularly an old WWF Spotlight magazine. If you don't remember these mags, they came out quarterly and featured one particular Superstar, I believe DiBiase was the first heel to garner a Spotlight. So he asked me to have a seat ! He wanted to look at the stuff after he was done with the signing. I'd ask him an occasional stupid question in between signatures. The most memorable being. " So Mr. DiBiase, where is the Million Dollar belt at these days ? ". He looked sort of startled and turned to see if I was being a smartass or really interested in this prop of kayfabe. " It's in storage , but I think we're gonna use that angle one more time ", The Million Dollar Man said. I refrained from asking the question that came to my lips. " What an angle? ". After the session he leafed through the old magazines and laughed most heartily at how different Shawn Michaels had looked as a Rocker. I only wanted him to autograph one piece but he was nice enough to autograph two. Then I got smart, which of course means I got internet access and the whole world looked a little different and wrestling would never be the same for me again. That was 1997 or so. Last May being a " smart mark " actually helped me when I was in Novi, Mi for a comic convention with my equally wrestling obsessed nephew Jack . An unadvertised " fitness celebrity" was doing an autograph session. Her name : Trish Stratus. Now even last May the rumor mill speculated that Trish would soon be involved in the wrestling world . When I saw her put her name plate up, I gasped and ran over to her table like the geek that I am. It was odd because she had no assistants with her to take care of her light work. She was unloading the pictures herself and putting them on the table. Even more amazing is that she was being ignored in a sea of models that were handing out more revealing photos and were also more scantily clad than the future valet/manager of "Test....and....Albert ". Trish was dressed in jeans and a sweater, and the fact that she was clearly the best looking woman of the bunch was lost on all the cleavage magnet fan boys scurrying about. I actually got to talk to her for quite awhile and I was quite impressed with how bright she was, and how seemingly void she was of a super-ego. Of course her initial battle with the microphone on RAW didn't help put the intelligence aspect over very well. Didn't matter though, I still have an autographed photo " To Shawn Lots of Love XOX Trish Stratus ". Good enough for me. Gawd, this looks like an eighth graders composition paper. Oh well, next time I won't talk about me at all. I promise. Until then, I am my inner child
Shawn Colton |
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