Two years ago at Hoch Explosiv 6 I had the honour to take a seat as a colour commentator in our wrestling company New European Championship Wrestling. I was told I would do that approxiamately five hours before the show back then.
This year it was time for Hoch Explosiv 8 and I made a little thing for the chair where the ring announcer always sits so this chair will be blocked for him. Everybody liked it although it was just improvised.
We all were pretty excited for the show to start as there were awesome matches planned and everybody wanted to make NEW's birthday party something special.
As usual, Alex Wright had a dark match planned with rookies in it so they could show off what they learned, etc. So during the talk with the participants of this match I walked past him and he turned to me and asked if I had my gear with me. "Of course!" was my answer as he taught us in training and repeated it over and over to always be prepared. (That is how he got signed by WCW back in the 90s, becaus they were on tour in Germany and he was just invited to be there and luckily was able to take a spot for another wrestler). So he booked me into the dark match together with 9 other rookies. FUCK YEAH! I was damn happy at that moment.
And somehow the stories just happen right in front of you and it seemed the stars were aligned perfectly yesterday, because our original ring announcer is touring right now with BABYMETAL in Japan and just a few seconds later someone told Alex the replacement guy would maybe not be able to make it. So he turns to me again and asks if I have nice clothes with me. My response was: "You may laugh, but I DO!" The background for that was we had two guys from a german TV station called Rocketbeans TV as guests and as I am one of the commentators I thought maybe they would like to do some footage with us.
But, it turned out that TWO HOURS BEFORE the show started it became obvious I would do the ring announcer!!! HOLY FUCKIN SHIT!!! I mean, I was internally freakin out because I was allowed to be the announcer AND to wrestle! And all in ONE FUCKIN SHOW!
So I dressed up in my fancy suit (which by the way is my wedding dress ;) ) and prepared all the info I needed to guide through the show in merely under an hour. The thing is, since I'm living alone I don't have anyone to take care of my littel zoo and so when I'm at the NEW I always have my dogs with me. Luckily the hotel next to the NEW HotSpot allows dogs, so the can stay in my hotel room. So two hours before the show started I had to go for a walk with my dogs, then changed into "a fancy looking man", prepared the show, and talked a bit with the other guys about our 5 on 5 Tag Team match.
Luckily the dark match was after the break so I had some time to run backstage, change into my wrestling gear and get in the mood of being the Angry Butcher. During this time one the Rocketbeans TV guys took over as ring announcer. After the match I went backstage again, tried to stop sweating like hell (which did not really work), change back into the nice clothes and went back to be the ring announcer again. Luckily there was a lumberjack match which gave me some time to cool down a bit and get back in the ring to announce the rest of the night.
And what a night it was... boy I wish I could share it with everyone, but so, I will shar some photos I have.
Below is me with our new Heavyweight Champion Maveric Cross who won the belt in a Tables, Ladders & Singapore Canes match! It was brutal, bloody, but the fans loved every single second of it! Me too. :)
And although I did some errors and not everything perfect many fans said they liked my announcements, how I lead through the show and all wrestlers told me they also liked me as an announcer and said I was pretty much on the same level as our usual announcer! So you can guess I was overjoyed at the end of the night. Plus I received a very positive feedback for my wrestling from some veterans and Alex Wright.
In conclusion, that day was pretty tough, I had way too much to do and accomplish, but part in joke I said to some guys as the were surprised I would pull off this double duty: "Because I can!" And in the end, everthing went very well and the event received only positive notes, so count me happy and satisfied and who knows, maybe in November I will be the ring announcer again?
