To start off this little exposition I’d like to make one thing perfectly and painfully clear. I have not, can not, and will not ever FULLY understand Morgan Pride’s disturbing obsession with professional wrestling and more specifically John Cena. It really is creepy. I mean... more creepy than mouth-breathers.
Take that first night for example... I went to his room and he, who was damn near a grown man, came to the door dressed in a bright purple shirt, complete with yellow wrist bands, a purple and yellow hat, and a purple arm band. This was my companion for the night. I want you to understand this clearly. Morgan Pride, who until this point I had considered to be a man, had shown his true colors. He may look a lot like a man most of the time, but when it comes to John Cena, he looks like a boy. I officially had a man-boy on my hands... half-man/half-boy... the man-boy is the ultimate in female turn-offs, but as sad as it sounds. Morgan Pride made this disturbingly obsessed man-boy style look... cute.
He answered the door with his traditional dorky smile, and of course I couldn’t help but laugh at him. I mean... he looked like John Cena’s promoter had thrown up all over him. “I don’t see why you don’t go out dressed like this every day... just in case something comes up and you get into a fake fight... or a rap battle with the whitest kids in the school,” I told him... even I couldn’t bring myself to flirt with this joke of an individual.
“Are you saying that you don’t wear a jersey when you watch basketball or football? Because the principle is the same really... showing support for a team or individual you idolize... the only difference is that with mine the support doesn’t have even the slightest chance of affecting the outcome,” he came back... I must have touched a nerve.
“You don’t have to get so touchy about it you know... it’s kinda cute to see you all hyped up,” I calmed him.
As I walked into his room I saw that he had a mirror posted at a weird angle... and when I looked off to the other side I understood... it was angled so that from the bathroom he could see the TV screen... now he was passing into some seriously obsessive shit. “You’re kidding right?” I asked as I pointed to the mirror.
“I don’t want to miss anything... and we don’t have TiVo here,” he shrugged to me as he plopped down on his sofa. It was a beautiful leather couch, facing a 55” LED TV... one of those big monstrosities that you can’t sit right in front of because the screen is too big for you to see everything and you’ll probably get like... 8 different forms of brain cancer from the electromagnetic waves.
He had a sound system hooked up to his TV that shook the room whenever ANYTHING happened on-screen. I looked at the walls and that was only slightly less disturbing... he had posters... not like one or two, but fifteen different posters of John Cena... and then a few other wrestlers were spliced in-between every now and again. “This... this is no longer cute... this is the beginnings of either a stalker or a serial killer... you’re starting to scare me,” I commented as I was outright overwhelmed by this complete turn-around from his almost barren room a few hours before.
“A little too much?” he asked me in response.
“Oh no... the police will love to see this when they come to investigate... it’ll give them a nice little glimpse into your mind; psychologists would have a field day with all of this,” I laughed as I motioned around the room.
So alright... now you have a glimpse into the sideshow I was witnessing... my only fear at this point was that I would insult his hero and he’d chop me up into tiny pieces. Then the show started. I learned something then... Nickelback sings the opening theme to Monday Night RAW. I also learned that Morgan Pride has a deep-seated hatred for the band Nickelback... he sang the opening song grudgingly through clenched teeth.
Then there was a huge explosion as the pyrotechnics on-screen went off and his impressive sound system nearly deafened me. Great... five minutes in and already I couldn’t hear. When they went to the packed auditorium there was a man standing in the ring... a man that if I hadn’t seen Morgan’s posters, his shirt, his hat, his armband, his wristband, or the way his stupid grin got massive when he saw him and his face lit up, I would have had no clue was John Cena.
“He needs to lay off the juice,” I told him... the serious look on his face told me that Morgan was contemplating getting offended when he just laughed.
“Yeah... I guess he would look pretty roided-out if you hadn’t seen him while he was filling out,” he laughed. Morgan watched the show and I watched both it and him. First of all... these guys all have these little theme videos and songs that came on when they came out, and when Morgan heard some songs he would get in a marginally good mood or a bad one. I have to admit that the first time I saw him I thought this “John Morrison” guy that came out was dead friggin sexy... even if he was dressed rather ridiculously with those bedazzled crosses on his aviator sun-glasses. It was almost comical the way they slowed down the taping of his entrance and when he put his hand up the pyrotechnics in the back round exploded and at the same time a small wind came up to blow his hair up... not joking here.
John Morrison wrestled some black wanna-be rapper that called himself “R-truth”. I have to admit that his style of wrestling was interesting... he liked to jump around a lot for a man of his general body type... his style closely resembled one of those Mexican luchadores I thought, but when I mentioned it to Morgan he just shook his head. I saw why in the next match when a wrestler calling himself Sin Cara came out and mesmerized the fans with his antics. At one point he reverse a “powerbomb”into a pin by continuing the motion and rolling his oppenent up. It didn’t win him the match, but make no mistake, eventually he did win.
Morgan was in the bathroom, peeing in a relatively noisy fashion when I heard what sounded like a castanet... and then a scraping of feet and a loud clatter as Morgan tripped over himself as he attempted to shove his wiener back in his pants mid-stream, and tried to run through the bathroom door. I understood why a second later.
John Cena stood at the top of the entrance ramp, gave a simple military salute, and when he put his hand down it pointed to the ring. Instead of taking his time and slapping hands on his way down to his fans, John Cena ran right up to the ring and slid between the mat and the bottom rope, she slid into the middle where he stopped. He threw his hat off to one side of the ring, peeled his purple shirt off and threw it to the other side... I looked at Morgan... his face lit up enthusiastically like a 5 year old who found out he just got locked in a candy store.
“Please tell me that he never wore that shirt,” I told him to break his attention.
“Oh no... I got one of those once, but the kid next to me looked like he was going to cry so I gave it to him,” Morgan said seriously. John Cena took off his dog tags, kissed them, and handed them and his purple armband to an attendant outside the ring.
Morgan evidently wasn’t the only humongous fan of John Cena’s... as he came out there was an audible amount of screaming and a bright stream of flash photography in the stands. The image this conveyed to me was simple... this was the face of the WWE... the ring they stood in, was his ring, at least for the time being.
I looked over at Morgan... the front of his pants had a urine stain, most-likely a result of when he’d been in a hurry to put it away and see his hero. I have to admit, that while I was stunned by his actions from a moment ago... I could really tell that Morgan admired John Cena when he watched him on TV or heard his music. They went to commercial before they could announce Cena’s opponent, which was good because Morgan stood there doing his pee-pee dance like a three year old. He bolted into the restroom again and pissed as fast as was humanly possible I could tell.
When the show came back to the arena another wrestler was just getting into the ring. As soon as Morgan saw this new guy he started booing. He was a rather snobbish looking fellow with a gaudy gold belt with the logo for the WWE in the middle of it. The Miz... the reigning WWE champion, and perhaps the most hated person in the arena at that point. I recognized the Miz from the hundreds of real world-road rules challenges they used to do on MTV, but something told me that Morgan had absolutely no idea about these.
He had some jock following him, who they identified as his former protege Alex Riley. “A-ri” as they called him, was dressed in a business looking suit while his mentor was ready to wrestle. The commentator Jerry Lawler didn’t seem to thrilled to see the Miz from what he said about the champion.
The match went on just like any other, there were a few near-pins, but John Cena kept going for this... they called it the “AA” but I don’t think they meant the support group. At one point John Cena managed to get some momentum going; he did a shoulder block to the Miz after other had bounced off the ropes. The Miz went down hard and sold it. John Cena popped up like nothing had happened. He looked down at the Miz for a moment before he turned to the ground walked over to the ropes and threw one of his massive bear claws into the air. The crowd screamed. He walked over to the Miz looked down on him and did this weird hand gesture as he said “you can’t see me”. He bounced off the ropes once and did this theatrical fall as he hit his opponent on the face.
He rolled the Miz up for a pin but he only got a 2 count. I took this opportunity to ask a question. “Why did he have to do all that just to hit the guy... why not just hit him like he has been all night?” I asked Morgan.
“Because it’s the five-knuckle shuffle,” he responded with a shrug and a snort... as if that answered ANYTHING. I turned back to the screen; John Cena was on a roll, he was slamming the Miz time and again. Then Cena picked him up on his shoulders like he had twice. He did a little jump, and as he fell he whipped the Miz over his shoulders so he fell with his back to the ground, he rolled the champion up and this time there was no 2 count... John Cena pinned him.
His entrance music came on as he threw his hands into the air and climbed to the second rope, his fingers were held with his thumb and his forefinger making a circle while the other three were up.
However, before John Cena could escape the ring, Alex Riley and the Miz sneak attacked him and hit him with a briefcase before doing this weird face plant sort of thing that the announcer called the “skull-crushing finale”. The broadcast cut away to a picture of the Miz celebrating his attack on an “unconscious” John Cena who was laid out in the ring.
I turned to Morgan who looked visibly upset. “So... John Cena’s the champion now right?” I asked him... he shook his head to return to reality and turned to me.
“No... tonight was a non-title match, unfortunately the titles don’t change hands too often during the weekly programs, they like to save all the big matches for pay-per-view events... drums up support for the PPV ya know,” he explained to me.
“That’s too confusing... I mean, the champion wrestled a guy who wasn’t the champion... the winner should be the new champion,” I replied with a laugh. The two of us watched a little bit of a wrestling based reality show called “tough enough” before I decided to go back to my room and go to sleep for the night.
Morgan had just said goodbye to me for the night at my door when he suddenly bent over and kissed me lightly on my forehead. Immediately I felt my face turn to fire... I reached up and kissed him once on the cheek before turning to go back into my room.
This idiot was ruining everything... even if he was cute... why’d he have to go and kiss my forehead like that? I might have been complaining, but the fact that I stayed up for hours after that thinking about it meant something I suppose.
