PART THE SECOND:
In which our intrepid hero finds no practical use for his decaying infielding skills.
The first and second posts in this series will undoubtedly increase your enjoyment of this installment.
Now that he’s successfully completed his mandatory new hire processing and and picked out some sweet threads, it’s time for Dolphin to step into the squared circle. Sure, he’s a little long in the tooth, and he’s got no real practical experience, but with nearly a decade of single A under his belt, he’s got some fundamental athletic prowess that will undoubtedly carry the day against whatever jabroni the higher ups toss his way.
Caring not who he will crush, Dolphin makes his way to the ring:
Clearly, great things are expected of Dolphin. He’s already got his own theme! Prepared by the legendary Sega Sound Team, the driving force behind such hits as “Green Hill Zone,” “Space Harrier Theme,” and “Game Over Yeah,” no less! Note that Dolphin is so manly he uses the original Greek “Heracles” instead of the far less tough “Hercules” as the basis of his theme. No one stands a chance. Who will Dolphin be using as a springboard to glory?
Well, turns out it’s Johnny Ace, better known to US wrestling fans as John Laurinaitis, one time director of talent relations for the WWE. Turns out he actually had a serious run in AJPW back in the 90s. Also turns out he was a wrestling aqua sock enthusiast. Having a past as an actual legitimate sportsman instead of some lame extreme “athlete,” Dolphin has to have a bit of a leg up here. Enough blabbering. TO THE MATCH!
0:29 – Dolphin is demoralized as he quickly realizes that Sega Sound Team has also done Johnny Ace’s music. Wikipedia reveals that Johnny Ace’s theme was actually Kickstart My Heart by Motley Crüe. This can only be a mind game. There’s no way anyone would otherwise be willing forgo such a grand entrance song.
1:30 – Things get off to a rocky start, as Dolphin’s clumsy first move is reversed into a swinging neckbreaker. Dolphin starts to take a pretty serious beating at the hands of big Johnny. Good thing he pre-loaded on those pain pills. Note that as Dolphin takes a beating, his life bar drops, but the meter directly above his name increases. This indicates that the crowd is behind him and his momentum is building! They must be remembering that time back in ’88 when he set the single season hit by pitch record. Dolphin’s past in baseball has apparently garnered him some goodwill with the fans.
2:39 – The crowd appears to be very impressed with Dolphin’s apparent love of taking unanswered blows to the face. With each elbow crammed down his throat, Dolphin can feel a groundswell of support rising from the crowd. As they begin chanting his name, Dolphin wonders why they aren’t cheering for the clearly superior athlete. Johnny must be pissed. Dolphin also notes that the crowd is a flat bitmap, and begins to wonder if he is in some kind of existential hell.
3:00 – Realizing his dream is fading, Dolphin digs deep into the bag of tricks he learned at wrestler’s correspondence school, and he starts to mount some offense! The crowd support is making it a little easier for him to time his moves – he’s not out of the woods yet, but he’s narrowing the gap.
4:00 – Dolphin begins to notice that every successful hit he lands on Mr. Ace seems to be increasing the crowd’s support of him as well. Dolphin is confused about Japanese culture and wonders if he should have eaten all that octopus before his match.
5:00 – Ace damn near takes Dolphin’s head off with a lariat from hell, and goes for the cover. Dolphin kicks out before 2, but only at the expense of some of his crowd support. Dolphin fails to see why escaping defeat would somehow lessen his crowd support. Then again, Japan is a strange place. They eat with sticks.
5:25 – Dolphin has had enough of this crap. If he loses this first match, he’ll have wasted five minutes of his life, and he’ll have to cancel Christmas for at least two of his families. He rolls out of the ring.
5:34 –
Yep, that was a Stone Cold Stunn…. Ace Crusher. Crap. Can’t get worse than that, though, can it? Nobody can pin you outside of the ring, and there doesn’t appear to be a countout here. Dolphin will just sit tight for a bit.
5:45 –
SWEET LORD. Do you SEE that thing? CLEARLY, this second Ace Crusher has done some serious damage to Dolphin’s neck. Why else would it say “Danger” three times and have a little picture of a bomb? Presumably, this means that Dolphin only has 70% more neck left before he explodes. This is not a positive development.
6:10 – After ambling around aimlessly, pondering how to win this match with only 70% neck remaining, Dolphin manages to ram Ace’s head into the ringpost with a satisfying thud. This seems to yield positive results, and Ace doesn’t seem to have been programm… er, trained to deal with this. It isn’t long before Ace is receiving warnings about his cervical spine as well. Weirdly, the crowd loves it. Sick.
8:00 – Hey, we’re starting to have a nice little back and forth here. Maybe now that Mr. Ace fully appreciates that Dolphin is a scumbag who is willing to do anything (within his limited four move arsenal) to avoid defeat, he’s treating him with a little too much respect. Dolphin is not to be respected. Ace will learn this the hard way. Nobody respects Dolphin and gets away with it.
10:00 –
Improbably, after getting elbowed in the face and taking a vertical suplex in the middle of the ring, Dolphin hits a relatively routine belly-to-back suplex…. and then….
Wow. This makes absolutely no sense. Dolphin had absolutely no skill going into this match, the little noise meter at the top of the screen seems to indicate the crowd is fully behind Ace, and Dolphin had just eaten a series of devastating maneuvers right in the middle of the ring. If Dolphin didn’t know better, he’d say this was fixed. Dolphin is silently thankful that this is all happening in 1997, and the Internet wrestling community is not well developed enough to complain about this kind of lazy, disappointing booking.
Tune in next week, as Dolphin perfects his craft, attempts to scale the language barrier, and considers taking out a Lloyd’s of London insurance policy!
I seem to remember that in career mode, those injuries would really add up quickly, meaning you’d be hobbling around one neckbreaker away from dying in the ring. Which actually makes it a pretty good simulator for that era of Japanese pro wrestling.
You just wait for part 3!