--Rio De Janiero, Brazil, the finals of the ADCC Submission Wrestling Championships

There was one minute left when Jorge swept his masked opponent into the mount position, adding four points to his already insurmountable lead. At 20-0, it would be simple to just hang on for the remainder of the match, accept his gold medal and his place in the record books as an Abu Dhabi world champion. Known as the Olympics of submission-wrestling, an Abu Dhabi championship would be the ultimate validation of his skill.

But in this case, merely winning wouldn't be enough. The clown he held beneath had insulted the dignity of jiu jitsu with that ridiculous mask he wore. Even worse yet, the fool had claimed to have never studied jiu-jitsu, but rather to have derived his knowledge of submissions from...of all things...that farcical professional wrestling! Then again, at least he wasn't holding Brazilian jiu jitsu responsible for the way he'd ! The fact that the masked man had even made it into the finals was smear enough on the sport...for him to go the distance, even in defeat? That was too much!

The crowd roared as Jorge shifted to an arm-bar. However, his opponent locked his arms up instantly. Bridging onto his neck, the mask grappler kicked his legs over, landing atop Jorge, into his guard. The seconds ticked away to zero as Jorge tapped his submission.

As loud as the crowd's disapproval was, as long as he'd waited for the referee to raise his arm (and he'd been waiting all his life), as much as he'd prayed to Christ for what he'd just achieved, he could only hear Jorge's moans of pain as he held his now-swollen ankle. And has Jorge's raven-haired daughter, Natalia, knelt over her injured father, hatred blasting from her eyes, he could not look away.

"You...you've destroyed everything! You...you...monster...its all ruined...all...if he defeated you, he was going to be put at the head of his own school...the Gracies themselves were going to accept him into their family...but if he lost...if he lost..."

Her words collapsed into sobs. They were still echoing in his mind on the plane ride back home, along with her baleful, damning gaze, made all the worse by the crystalline beauty of her eyes.

Later that day, at Pepe Beach, the site of one of Brazil's most famous brawls between luta livre (the Brazilian version of catch-wrestling) and Brazilian jiu jitsu contingents, KnightMask found himself sitting up on the sand, holding his mask within his hands. He kept looking into its empty vizor and the mask seemed to look back at him.

"What's eating at you, KM?" Euclides, an icon of luta livre who'd helped KnightMask train for the tournament. "We done catch-wrestling and luta livre proud bro. All those old-time submission kings from back in the day, all them old school pro-wrestlers, we made 'em proud today, we showed that jiu jitsu ain't got nothin' on us, man. I don't know if your old teacher, The Strangler, still watches wrestling up in Heaven, but if he does, well, I bet he liked what he saw man."

Tyrone looked up from his mask and stared out at the waves crashing in on the beach.

"You remember Tiger Mask, Euclides?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course man. Dude created Shooto in the 80's, beat the crap out of the Dynamite Kid...got kicked in the jimmy by Akira Maeda back in the UWF..."

"No, I mean, the original Tiger Mask...the one from the cartoon...I was wanted to be like him, man. I think that's why I chose catch-wrestling...you remember why he became a good-guy? To support the orphanage he used to live in as a kid?"

"Look, lets get right to it. His hot daughter's got you shook up, don't she? Well shoot, Galahad...someone had to lose, you know? Yeah, her old man is probably in a rough spot now...and yeah, losing to a guy wearing a mask, a guy with training lineage that traces back to pro-wrestling...the dude has probably lost face, and depending on how bad his leg is, well...anyway, point is, sometimes you gotta go from one challenge to the next man. Feelin' guilty ain't gonna help them out...heck, saying sorry is only gonna ease your conscious. They probably won't even like hearing from you. You wanna help 'em make ends meet? What are you gonna do, go over and do the dishes for them? You don't have any money, man. Kick butt and get paid for it. That's the only way, bro."

Euclides pointed to the surfers racing out to meet the tides.

"You did good in the world of grappling, now its time to take it up a level. Enter the world that's so crazy, so dangerous, it makes what those guys are doing look sane. You wanna be a knight errant? Go do it, man. You wanna be Tiger Mask for Jorge and his kid? To make the kinda money that they're gonna need to get by, you're gonna have to be willing to subject yourself to a heckuva lot more than just submission holds, man. Catch-wrestling came outta pro-wrestling, guess its time for it to come back. That is...if you really want to help out Jorge and Natalia. You're too frigging ugly for the movies, bro."

Man, I'd kick this dude's butt.

No you wouldn't. I'm going to go on record as saying you won't even get a single victory in your first month here, Leroy. What do you think about that? I'll willingly eat out one of your muscular, manly whores if you can get a win. Deal?

You're a funny little man. I can't smell the fear in you.

(03-03-2013, 03:15 PM)BigBadLeroy Said: You're a funny little man. I can't smell the fear in you.

Yeah I can't smell it either you fucking reject. How stupid are you? Is this your first day trying out this new thing called the English language? I'll show everybody just how stupid you are on Saturday if you have the testicles to show up. Imagine how many stupid things you can say between now and then.

You mad little man? Its been settled, I'm smashing you this Saturday.