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On The Road & Behind The Scenes

	Kurt Angle This picture with former WWF star and 1996 Olympic Gold Medal winner Kurt Angle was taken at a UPW show in L.A. The interview I conducted with him later in the evening is listed in the interviews section. That night he was competing despite suffering a concussion at the Summerslam 2000 show weeks earlier. This would unfortunately become a trend for Angle, who has performed through injuries to such a degree that it's become a serious detriment to his life.
	The Crippler Chris Benoit unlacing his boots after wrestling a legendary match with William (Steve) Regal at the 2000 Brian Pillman tribute show in Ohio. The flash wasn't used because I didn't want to disturb him. This was the first time I was ever in the same locker room as Benoit, the greatest wrestler in North America. At one point in the evening he asked me when his match was up, and I must have sounded pretty retarded trying to answer his question with my heart in my throat.
	Ten Bell Salute D'Lo Brown and Raven observe the ten bell salute at the Pillman 2000 show. This is probably my favorite picture from the event. Intimidated by all the multi-thousand dollar super cameras being used by my fellow journalists, I borrowed referee Steve Hooper's digital and pretended to use that in between shots - it might not have been much, but it sure was more respectable than the disposable Kodak I was using!
	Samoan Flag Day Rikishi Phatu, one of the top WWF superstars, invited me out to Samoan Flag Day while I was working for Snowball.com in San Francisco, CA. He was the honored guest at the event. Thousands of his fellow Samoans crammed themselves around the barricaded area where he and his family were seated front and center before the stage on which dancing girls and musicians performed. Having failed to talk my way past security to reach him, I had to crawl MacGyver style underneath the bleachers and yell from twelve feet behind him. Right before security snatched me, I got Fatu's attention and he waved me in. It was a tremendous afternoon. The interview he conducted with me is available in the interviews section.
	In The Zone Mike Tavares, one of my writers at Snowball and the person originally responsible for getting me the IGN.com job interview, came to the event with me. While we couldn't get him inside the restricted area with me, he snapped off this shot from the bleachers behind us.
	Hanging From The Rafters A shot of all the Samoan kids looking down from above Rikishi and I. It was a great day for them, as it was for Rikishi.
	Torrie Wilson I met the lovely Torrie Wilson at Pillman 2000 back when she was working for WCW. She's even more beautiful in person than she is on television. She told me that if I was eighty pounds lighter, six inches taller, clean shaven, overbite-free and drove a BMW she'd consider going out with me. Really, she did. Really. Nah.
	Punch The Monkey The Ultimate Fighting Championship is an organization which promotes shoot fighting. The last couple of years it has exploded in popularity after spending over a decade fighting to be recognized as a legit sport. The UFC is a melting pot of styles, offering fighters the chance to win by striking or ground work, making it in many ways more exciting and multi-dimensional compared to boxing. Fighters compete in an eight-sided, fenced in ring. While working for Snowball in the summer of 2000, they flew me out to check out a show in Iowa. While the UFC is a very different ball game from professional wrestling, the two sports are linked by athletes such as Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Tony Halme and Tank Abbott, who have participated in both arenas.
	Mark Coleman On day two of the UFC adventure I met up with Mark Coleman, a world champion shootfighter who was at that time in negotiations to jump from the UFC to WCW. Pro Wrestling is an appealing opportunity for shoot fighters and competitors from other sports such as pro football who may be too injured or too old to compete at the top levels of their profession any more. Mark cut a solid ten-minute impromptu interview with me which is probably one of my proudest, since I was by no means a UFC expert and hadn't seen many of his fights.
	Virtual Ass-kicking While in Iowa, a prototype the new UFC video game was shown to journalists. In this picture, UFC referee Big John McCarthy on the left laughs hysterically as he kicks Mark Coleman's ass in the game.
	Big John Big John was a real pleasure to talk to. Since the other journalists that were flown in were from video game magazines, being a wrestling expert I was more familiar with the actual UFC itself, so I had the opportunity to lead the questioning during a press conference that afternoon. I think John was relieved that there was someone there who could ask him some relevant and topical questions about the company, since he wasn't a video game expert.
	Back in L.A. The next pictures were taken at the E3 video game convention in L.A. in 2000. E3 is a massive annual event where all the top software and video game producers show off the next generation of hardware and video games. Two huge buildings were packed with giant monitors, statues, everything and anything that made their booth look more exciting. For the ECW video game alone they brought in an entire wrestling ring and several of ECW's top stars, and performed matches throughout each day of the convention!
	The Innovator Of Violence Tommy Dreamer, one of ECW's top stars, is one of my favorite interviewees. He's a terrific guy and a down-to-earth company man with an unaparalleled respect for our industry. It was a real pleasure to hook up with him in person for the first time at the convention.
	Keep Out Of Dark Alleys! It may have been a video game convention, but Rhino was as angry as ever when he came to the ring for his match.
	Angry Chicken Plucker The 300lb Amish Roadkill dove off the top turnbuckle to the floor on Rhino. Watch out, don't hit the Nintendo representatives!
	Play It By Ear Roadkill (left) and Simon Diamond (right) take a shot with me and one of the IGN video game reporters who happens to be a wrestling fan. Roadkill's character doesn't talk, so he didn't want to do an interview, but he agreed to grunt "chickens!" into my tape recorder. He now works for WWE.
	Blood? We Don't Need No Stinking Blood... Steve Corino won the ECW Heavyweight Title shortly after this show. He's probably best known for how succeptable he is to bleeding. I can't remember the last time I saw him wrestle without being busted open at some point during the affair. Perhaps it's a sign of a serious disease, but you wouldn't know from watching him compete. As you can imagine, Steve has a profoundly horrible collection of scars on his forehead.
	Beware The Cyrus Cyrus, then ECW color commentator, is a bit of an eccentric. During our interview, he went off on a tangent about how the TNN Network was launching a new sitcom starring he and Tommy Dreamer as a Rock Star and a Professional Golfer living together in an apartment. He elaborated on the plot for several minutes and swore blind that it was true. Of course, it wasn't, but if it wasn't for the utter absurdity of it I'd have bought it based on his commitment to the bit. I hadn't heard such convincing bullshit since the last time I read a Dutch Mantel story.
	Hey, No Back-Answering! Rudy and I catch up with Rhino and Simon Diamond. They gave me a simultaneous interview, which is always fun. Rhino was one of ECW's top guys at this point, and when the company folded a year later, went on to the WWF. Diamond became a regular in TNA Wrestling in 2002, for whom he still works part time.
	Danny Doring "Dastardly" Danny Doring, in the middle, was suffering from a very sore throat, but gutted out an interview nonetheless. He's a major video games fan, and talked fondly about contributing to the making of the ECW game.

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