Rex Loman had big dreams when he decided to enter the pro-wrestling world. Sure, he didn't finish high school with any decorations in wrestling or football, but he thought they toughened him up pretty good. He wasn't expecting things to be easy, heck, he'd heard the horror stories about how tough breaking into the business was. Nonetheless, he figured with a good school and the right attitude, the sky was the limit. He just had to be willing to put in the time.

And man, did he put in the time.

He was fresh out of high school when he started the whole thing...and now he was staring down the cold, steel barrel of 30...in a body that felt more like 50. He couldn't even lay down without triggering an ache somewhere. He actually didn't mind the pain though. He could swallow about as much punishment as there was to dish out if that was what it took to get better. He hadn't been getting better though, not a bit, not in all this time. He didn't know a heel-hook from a fishhook, let alone a padlock from a headlock. Still, he was a stubborn s.o.b., with as much game in him as a prize pitbull and as much quit as a cancer. When it came to sticking with something, he stuck.

But he wasn't stupid. Not that stupid anyway.

When he got stretched by the vets his first day in, after being put through a battery of running, push-ups and endless body-weight squats, he chalked it up to a learning experience, even though they didn't actually explain anything to him about the holds they were tapping him out with. And when they threw him in against Jim Londos later that week in a non-title match, well, that was a trial by fire, he figured. They wanted to see if he was man enough to come back at it after Londos super-kicked him into the emergency room.

They were just testing him.

That was why they fed him to Gary Albright (to get darn near paralyzed) when someone needed to be scared up to sate the big man's lust for suplexing people and it was also why he found himself on the mat with Hiro Matsuda, listening to the sound of his various joints popping and crunching under the pressure of holds he didn't even know the name of, let alone the defense to. It was why he'd faced the legendary Kazushi Sakuraba on a day's notice.

Just testing him.

But then, the following day at the gym, when Sakuraba came by the gym to throw him some pointers on how not to get snagged in a submission in less than a minute, the trainers and veterans seemed to do everything they could to disrupt Sakuraba's casual instruction. Finally, they broke the session up entirely by sending Rex away on an errand, while they chummed around and took photos with Japan's famed "IQ Wrestler."

It was a little after that, when he'd first heard the boys whisper that word. He was getting dressed in the locker room, shaking out the cobwebs from a piledriver to the concrete he'd received en route to a loss against Marge the Mangler, a local female wrestler known in the ring for her girth in the kitchen for her famous cornbread. He was alone on his bench, in a corner a good ways away from the rest of the guys as he laced up his boots and threw on his sweats. But as he passed them, he heard it. It was a whisper, but he heard it. He heard it again before he left the gym that day, low and soft, but audible. It wasn't long before the whisper got louder, until even everyone, even the new guys, were calling him "j o b b e r", right to his face.

Rex was big, wide and muscular, with a hard, ruggedly handsome face and a strong, prominent jaw. He was also timidly shy and clumsily awkward, both physically and socially. He wondered if that was the problem; as tough as he looked, any top-name would look like a real giant-slayer kicking his butt around the ring and as wimpy as he actually was, it was an easy reward with no risk. Why would the guys ruin a solid money-maker like that by teaching him how to maybe, possibly beat the main-eventers that were all too eager to use him as a powerful, tough-looking wrestling dummy?

Whatever the case, eventually he realized his body and his health were being sacrificed so his handlers could make a quick buck. So he left the Mongoose Den and made the trek across town to Slam Master's. They were nicer at that gym, abut it just seemed like he'd gotten too used to being the punching bag to step out of the role. Sean O'Grady of the USA network's old "Tuesday Night Fights" used to call it "sparring partner syndrome." And even if he could overcome it, he had all the wear and tear of a 20-year veteran with all the know-how of a neophyte. By the time he finally, at long last, really learned to wrestle, would he be going around in a wheel-chair?

And yet, being a jobber was how he put food on the table. It was job...or starve.

The wrestling business, he decided, was like a gigantic monster that was constantly feeding. And its diet consisted of hopes, dreams...and health. If you didn't have those, if you had no soul to be fed into the belly of the beast, you did just fine. The bullies and sleazes, they seemed to go right to the top of the business, as wrestlers, as promoters and as owners. The good died young and the evil lived, prospered and partied.

It sucked to watch.

Of all the people at the Mongoose Den, there had been one, single solitary person who had shown him any kind of kindness. And he wasn't actually a professional wrestler. He was this guy by the name of Tyrone Gunder, who was part of the Mongoose Den's catch-wrestling and submission-grappling program. He seemed to practically live in the gym. And he was a great athlete. When he wasn't on the mats grappling, he was hanging from the gymnastics rings or doing upside down push-ups on the dip bar or doing curls on the stability ball. It was funny, he was always listening to 80's heavy metal. Sometimes it blasted from his headphones so loud that it was practically playing for the rest of the gym. He had to be one of the only black guys he knew who was a metal head.

Tyrone always said hello, always asked how he was doing. He even once heard Tyrone speak up for him to some of the other guys. Guy was a hardcore pro-wrestling fan, he was always talking about how the style of grappling he did, catch-wrestling, came from professional wrestling rather than jujutsu. Then, something happened, and suddenly Tyrone was wearing this superhero mask and calling himself KnightMask. Something about the mask seemed to kick Tyrone into overdrive, because suddenly, in no time he was the top grappler in the gym. It was almost like he wasn't even playing the same sport as the other guys.

Usually, two guys locked up, fought for a takedown, then ended up on the ground and fought for a dominant position. Eventually, after it was firmly secured, the man with the dominant position would hit a submission and tap the guy out. It was kind of boring and generally, the pro-wrestlers ignored that section of the gym.

Tyrone, or rather, KnightMask, was different.

Sometimes the pro-wrestlers would even halt their training in the ring to look over at Gunder or KnightMask or whatever you wanted to call him as he did these crazy rolls and spins he did in the place of takedowns literally landed right into instant leg-submissions. In his hands, the molasses-slow sport of grappling suddenly because this fast-paced, acrobatic and dynamic endeavor. He sometimes wondered, when watching him, if he was to grappling what rock and roll was to music.

He was overjoyed when he heard that KnightMask had reached the pinnacle of his sport, winning gold at the ADCC world championship. When he later appeared at Slam Master's, he was even happier to see his old friend. When KnightMask explained that he'd been essentially banned from submission grappling on trumped up charges of steroid abuse, he truly felt for him...he knew how much he loved the sport. But Rex Loman's heart truly dropped when KnightMask announced to him his intentions to enter into the world of professional wrestling. The hope in his voice, the excitement...burned at Rex, for he knew his words to be those of a man essentially laying himself down at a pagan altar, with no notion at all about the evil forces to which he was going to be sacrificed.

When he'd heard that his friend, in only his second match, was going to be thrown in with the ruthless French superstar Arnaud Chevailler, he was agonized by the awful inevitability of their confrontation. The drama they were playing out was one he'd seen far too many times now. Kindness and mercy were not rewarded in the harsh world of professional wrestling, unless those traits were merely pretended at for the manipulation of fans and sponsors.

Chevailler was going to destroy KnightMask. KnightMask was a technician, a sportsman. Chevailler...that man came at you with gouges to the eye, shots to the groin when the referee--conveniently--was looking the other way...he didn't have anything to do with sport. He was full of a hatred and spite that charged every elbow, every stomp, ever sucker-punch he threw. Hatred thrived in the squared circle.

And if Chevailler already knew in advance that just beating the masked man wasn't going to be enough to satisfy his appetite for the destruction and humiliation of his fellow man, that arrogant, snooty Frenchman had embarrassed KnightMask by spitting on the man even as he mocked him. This when KnightMask, true to form, had attempted to befriend him. He'd seen the video that had been making the rounds on news outlets of KnightMask caught on tape destroying a life-sized Chevailler cardboard figure. Arnaud had already broken the poor guy mentally...and now, now he was going to physically destroy him as well.

It just wasn't right. Nothing in this blasted business was. If only he was stronger. If only he had the power within him to correct all those wrongs he had witnessed...or at least, the power to avenge them.... But he'd given up on justice a long time ago. If Lady Justice was out there anywhere, she sure kept herself far, far away from their business.

Tears welled up in the eyes of Rex Loman. He didn't expect anyone to notice them or if they did notice, to care. But what did it matter? He was a
j o b b e r anyway.

He had no face to save.

He glanced over and saw KnightMask struggling Ratboy--Slam Master's resident whack job--with a syringe of some sort. Ratboy was screaming, "Its for your own good! Its for your own good!"

He heard KnightMask respond with something about how he didn't do steroids...of course he didn't. Not that you stood a stray dog crossing rush hour traffic's chance of making it if you didn't juice. Ratboy though, he was fighting hard to jab that syringe into KnightMask and he seemed to be backed by that madman's strength they always talk about in the movies.

Rex might not be able to right all the wrongs in the wrestling business, but he sure wasn't going to stand idly by and watch KnightMask get stabbed by Ratboy's crazy self.

Rex rushed to help, when suddenly the syringe flew out of Ratboy's hands...across the gym...and straight into Rex's shoulder.

"So, Ratboy, this super soldier serum you were trying to inject into me...what did you say the side effects were?"

"None! No side-effects! I mean, it might make you a little hyper..."

"Hyper as in, jumping around, talking too much....?"

"Oh, no, nothing that bad. I just mean, you might throw some cars around, smash through walls, level buildings and maybe try to use your superhuman strength to get revenge on any and everyone who ever wronged you in life...you know, just good clean fun really..."

KnightMask looked over at his friend Rex, who was foaming at the mouth and bulging with muscles and veins that seemed primed to rip through his skin. He looked up and his eyes were glowing every bit as red as KnightMask's vizor.

"And how long does it take for it to take effect?"

"Its pretty much instant."

M. Ike Hagar, the Southerner and other members of the Slam Master's gym all looked on agape as Rex, or rather, the hulking, seething mountain of inhuman muscle that was Rex, stormed towards them.

"KniiiiiiightMask.....you don't have to worry about Arrrrrrrrrnaud....I'm going to kill him before he can hurt you....but fffffffirst things fffffffirst........where are all those guys that used to beat on me and call me a j--j-j-jobbber....I'm going to kill them all...one by one...."

TO BE CONTINUED