|
Personality
Chronic stoner outside of the ring, innovation and daredevil extraordinaire inside. Black exists within a perpetually unending mushroom trip where he believes he has a "higher" knowledge of the order of the universe, which has led to him adopt a self-conceived stoner religion that worships song lyrics and heralds his former tag partner as a marijuana messiah. Part of this involves carrying around a master-crafted water pipe named "Geezer".
Often appearing in his promos is his tag partner from the CHRONIC COLLIZION!! (formerly the Crimson Calling, the SONIC TITAN (formerly Ivan Dalkichev), the alleged prophet to their cannabis cult, who is usually seen adorned in some ridiculous attire while spouting off endless lines that don't typically make sense to anybody but Black and himself. Though they're friends and tag partners, he's an on-screen talent only, and doesn't accompany Black to the ring for his matches.
If he had a real wrestling equivalent, he'd be the hybrid offspring of Rob Van Dam and Sabu -- not surprisingly, two of wrestling's biggest stoners. He has the martial arts skill and wrestling innovation of RVD, along with the "homicidal, suicidal, genocidal, death-defying" nature of Sabu. This gives him the unique ability to wrestle a variety of different wrestling styles for a variety of wrestling fans: he can hang in the ring with the best mat wrestlers, he can wow the fans with high-flying spots, he can impress wrestling purists with expert striking and submission manuevers, and he can take things to the outside or into the crowd when things go the way of "extreme". Only thing he can't dish out are power moves, for obvious reasons.
Being smaller than the average-sized wrestler, Black has to use his speed and cunning toward his advantage more often than not. Against larger opponents, he'll vie for diving and rebound moves, along with martial arts striking. Against opponents closer to his size, he might dish out more slams and takedowns. He has a strong mental index of wrestling maneuvers to adapt to any kind of opponent. On top of that, through drug-induced hallucinations, he's gained a unique perspective on the sport, which leads him to often innovate new moves, either flashy or devastating, during some matches. He usually has a mad-scientist approach to this; whatever he dishes out could work or blow up in his face.
Though he's a great wrestler, at his heart, he's an entertainer when in the ring -- particularly when he's on the LOSING end of an exchange. He's not so much recognized in the wrestling world as having a dominant offense, but instead an uncanny ability to sell any spot convincingly, and often comically. Almost all of his matches involve a spot where he puts himself through sick and devastating stunt that look like they could destroy a man of his inferior size, yet he almost always walks away from it (albeit dizzy and babbling something incoherent). He's often praised by the IWC for his ability to make any match entertaining, regardless of who won or who his opponent was.
Besides his wrestling and selling abilities, Black can also work a crowd from dead silence to booming applause. He has a number of comical antics that involve his perpetually being high all the time and consistent posturing -- his favorite pose involve holding his reaching his hand out in the distance and looking out past it, similar to Hogan's stretch pose. In some matches, he might escape to Geezer for a quick "pick me up", especially if things aren't going his way -- of course, this causes him to go into Popeye mode, suddenly perking up and throwing a barrage of rights and lefts. Geezer also serves as a useful weapon, when it's legal. Black does much to interact with the crowd, from asking for weapons to accepting gifts from ringside fans (beer, hotdogs, cigarettes... joints). Regardless of his alignment for a match, he always has a core group of fans.
Background
The year is 1998. The hand-held camcorder's footage opens up on a black and red luchadore mask. What appears to be a wildly gesticulating fourteen-year-old young man in nothing but satin pajama pants and a Halloween mask is standing on the roof of his garage, flaunting everything he's got at the camera. The filmmaker zooms out, revealing a pick-up truck parked in the driveway. In the bed is a table, and upon the table is another teenager, feigning unconsciousness.
"El CAPRI-CANRANA! OLE!"
Without warning, the amateur lucha-libre fan lunges head first off the garage toward his intent target. The landing is catastrophically off target. Two bodies violently CRUNCH through the wooden table and slam into the bed of the truck with enough impact to blow the tires with a BANG. The handler of the camcorder tremors in what can only be described as dumbstruck awe.
"WHOA, SHIT!!"
The view goes to the pavement of the driveway briefly as he runs to help them. Cut to black.
This is the first known match of the professional wrestling innovation sensation that was born in Lebanon, Indiana in the year 1984 A.D. under the Christian name of Erik Robert Black. Then known under the ring name as "El Cabrón", the young Erik's first foray into the sport was a far cry from where he would inevitably end up. Four years later, in pursuit of his childhood dream to hold a career in the sport of professional wrestling, "The Goat Bastard" Erik Black travelled to Japan. He trained under the tutelage of some of the foremost experts in martial arts and professional wrestling, picking up a skill and a passion for the sport that he would have never received back stateside, stuck in the stagnant backyard wrestling scene of the Midwest.
One night, while attending a show in Okinawa, Erik Black caught sight of a giant in the crowd of Japanese fans that stood two feet taller than everyone else. The man was Ivan Dalkichev, a Russian-born sambo master who, like Black, had left his home in St. Petersburg to pursue a life in the sport. Though neither man spoke a word of the other's language, the would-be dynamic duo formed an instant bond, both being foreigners in a foreign land with a common passion for pro wrestling. They eventually began touring together from show to show. Within a few weeks, the two decided to form a tag team.
Billed as "The Tyrannical Titans", Pan and Atlas, the team of Black and Dalkichev quickly displayed their united strength in the island's indie tag team scene. They became known for their often acrobatic and innovative tag team maneuvers, made possible by Ivan's abundance in size and strength and Erik's high-flying and daredevil prowess. However, in spite of their remarkable talent and ability, their ignorance in the business-aspect of the sport hindered their progress from going beyond the indie-level.
The two spent two years working together in Japan as little more than unknowns, doing mainly small shows spread across the island and making a meager living off of rice and soy sauce. Then, one night after a show, the two were approached by a man who introduced himself as Nathan Fear. Having suffered a career-ending injury the previous year, Fear was interested in managing talent, as a means of handing over his wrestling knowledge and help create a professional wrestling success story. He was impressed by the dynamics created in a tag team consisting of a perfect balance of strength and speed, and took both men under his tutelage, with a promise that the both would be break-out stars if they went back with him to the states. Fear boasted a sizable knowledge of the sport and inner-workings of professional wrestling, and his insight was the much-needed guidance both Erik and Ivan needed to take the next step in their careers.
Fear renamed them "The Hammer and Sickle," a Soviet/Communist-themed tag team which their manager used as a platform to orate his leftist political opinions. They did some work in the indie scene around the Pacific Northwest. Around this time, Fear made a partnership with an old acquaintance from his time in the area known as Jason "Stalker" Reeves, and they formed Insanity Wrestling Federation. The federation picked up a television deal on an obscure channel, and as Fear was Vice President and managed the IWF's financial department, he employed his tag team as security personnel. Erik and Ivan would appear sporadically on televised IWF shows as Fear's personal bodyguards, but have little to no in-ring activity, except to participate in unsanctioned attacks on soon-to-be-released talents in many of the Vice President's famous firings.
The two were employed by contractual agreement. What the two did not realize until many years down the line was that their contracts contained a clause legally binding their creative in-ring personalities under the direction of their manager, Nathan Fear, put in place as a fail-safe in case the two ever get inspired to go at it independently. Even when IWF inevitably folded and Fear cleansed the corporate office of its staff, he retained their contracts, which lasted until 2020.
Though the television network deal fell through and the federation eventually flopped, in the year 2004, Fear soon got into talks with Paul Freeman, then the mastermind of a little known project called "Empire Pro". The tag team secured a spot on the roster, finally earning their first major international spotlight as the newly dubbed "Crimson Calling." Black and Ivan finally had their chance to show their ability as a team, and at the federation's first Pay Per View event, Black Dawn, the two managed to make federation history in becoming the first Empire Pro Wrestling Tag Team Champions. Riding the wave of success, things seemed to finally going well for Black and Dalkichev. This abruptly came to a halt when Nathan Fear fell into disagreement with the federation's new owner, professional wrestling legend "The Ego Buster" Dan Ryan. Midway through their tenure as tag team champions, Fear quit the federation, taking his team with him, and casting an uncertain future for the team while Empire Pro's tag scene quickly flourished in the wake of their departure, ushering in favorites such as Blitz and the Cameron Cruise Project.
Shortly after their leave, Fear suffered a nervous breakdown from the stress of the situation, and committed himself a mental rehabilitation hospital in his native Midwest. Erik Black and Ivan Dalkichev were on their own, and once again without direction. The two continued touring the nation in indie shows but never could regain their success under the name of The Crimson Calling. Two years of inactivity followed as the two squandered the remnants of IWF's bank accounts to sustain their living. Around this time, Ivan had an unsuccessful venture into the pornography industry, and fell into a state of alcoholism. Erik Black fell into an inescapable addiction to marijuana use, working himself to a point where he would smoke through half an ounce a week. Both were at virtually rock bottom in their lives, living in the basement of Erik's mother's house and passing the bong back and forth. Their second chance at professional wrestling would come in the year 2007, when the announcement was made that A-1 Entertainment would be hosting a tag team tournament to determine who would compete against the nearly unstoppable World Tag Team Champions, "The Ego Buster" Dan Ryan and BigDog, open to any who apply. Black and Dalkichev unitarily saw this as their opportunity to reclaim their former glory. No longer finding use in adopting a theme that they didn't understand to begin with, they chose the new, arguably flashier name of THE CHRONIC COLLIZION!!, formerly the Crimson Calling. Without Fear's supervision and control of their promos and ring strategy, the two were free to be whomever and whatever they wanted to be as professional wrestling.
Though written off as a pathetic pair of pot-heads past their primes and putting on pounds, Black and Dalkichev quickly whipped themselves into shape and made an impressive showing in the tournament, failing to be defeated by ANY of the other teams, and subsequently went on to defeat the seemingly invincible champions for the A1E World Tag Team Titles. The remainder of the year went well for "The Escape Artist" Erik Black and "The Raging Russian" Ivan Dalkichev. The continued to enjoy success in A1E as well as returning to Empire Pro, where they came just short of becoming two-time tag champions in a remarkable match against then-champions, The Forsaken. Then, without warning, Nathan Fear returned during a Forsaken TV segment on EPW's Aggression. Having left the mental hospital, Fear was determined to rekindle the spirit of the Crimson Calling, now that they were a booming success once again. Black and Dalkichev were this time hesitant with their former manager's offer, seeing their success by their own efforts, and politely declined his invitation to rejoin their number. At this time, Fear pointed out the binding clause in their IWF contracts, which were still legally recognized, and informed the two that he had full control on whatever they did or said in the wrestling industry.
For a period of the year, the Crimson Calling floundered. Dishonored in defeat in A1E, Fear played a similar scene as he did in EPW and quit the federation, once again taking his team with him. In Empire Pro, the two consistently failed to win a single match, as their method of wrestling under the CHRONIC COLLIZION!! mentality clashed with Fear's elitist vision of the Crimson Calling. Fear's constant hampering and interference only worked against their success. Having had enough of his overbearing authority, Black devised a scheme that was carried out over the course of several months. During the Empire Pro Pay Per View, Wrestleverse III, the manager came into contact with what could be described as a heroic dose of LSD. Later in the evening, the Crimson Calling manager came to the ring and began a rant while live on Pay Per View, attempting to disrobe on camera. Agents from the mental hospital that released him were quickly on the scene and took him away to an uncertain future.
With Fear once again off their backs, the CHRONIC COLLIZION!! were allowed to flourish once again. Even so, after their victory at Wrestleverse III, the two haven't shared the ring since as a tag team. This is explained by an event that occurred in Death Valley as the duo were driving down every back road in Arizona and listing to the discography of Northern Californian stoner rock trio Sleep, all the while tripping on mushrooms. By their own account, they experienced "a spiritual reawakening" that put their professional lives into perspective. No longer seeing an appeal or even a purpose in attaining legendary status as a super-successful tag team, the two realized their road to immortality by revolutionizing the spirit beyond boundaries and limits that few, if any, were ever daring enough to cross.
For the first time in nearly six years, "The Druid" Erik Black has decided to pursue a singles wrestling career, in New ERA of Wrestling.
Erik is a Capricorn, of mixed Dutch-Irish ancestry, and his favorite color is red. His personal professional wrestling heroes are Felix Red and Jared Wells -- in his own words, "They're the only people willing to go out there, do whatever they feel like doing no matter WHO it pisses off, and not give a FLYING FUCK what people think of it. I admire that." His favorite strain of weed is Purple Kush and, when available, Kryptonite. His a registered member of the self-conceived "Church of the Holy Mountain", of which only he and his former tag partner are members of, listed as "Prophet." His favorite author is H.P. Lovecraft. His favorite bands include Sleep, Electric Wizard, Clutch, and Rage Against The Machine. His favorite movies are John Milius' "Conan: The Barbarian" and Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive", and has tattoos paying tribute to both of them. According to his Facebook profile, his relationship status with Katy Perry is listed as "It's complicated..."
|