Yes: I realize that I am now three months behind (June, July, August) on commentary, but I have been struggling to transfer MartySugar.com over to GoDaddy.com. The move will save me about $150/year in hosting fees...only it took a lot longer than I had expected to make the move over from Yahoo!/Geocities. But it's done, now, so let's get you Sugar Addicts up to speed!

As you should already know, May ended with me becoming the first-ever Okanagan-Interior Champion. I would only have 13 days to enjoy the moment, however, as I headed on over to Kamloops on June 12 for my first title defense against J.J. Jetson: a man with 20-plus years of experience who is making a return to action after a lengthy hiatus. I have great respect for Jetson, as he is a veteran of the business, a loving husband and father, and a genuine nice guy...but there was no way in Hell I was gonna let this "Comeback Kid" use me as a stepping-stone back to the top. I needed to make sure nice guys finished last in Kamloops. It was a classic wrestling showdown: power versus speed, a veteran against a hot young stud (stop laughing!), and we were pretty evenly matched at the start. The crowd was split down the middle as well, as several fans had made the trip from Jetson's hometown of Barriere to catch the action. We started brawling on the outside, where Jetson hit me with a diving senton off the apron that sent us both crashing to the floor; I was able to fight back with a suplex on the outside, before rolling Jetson back in to target his lower back. To his credit, Jetson wouldn't go down without a fight, and we went back and forth until it looked like J.J. had me down and out with his Jetsault (moonsault) off the top turnbuckle...but I got a foot on the ropes. At this point, a Jetson fan might start yipping that my handler, Big Steve, may or may not have put my foot on the ropes to save my title. Let me respond by saying it took more than six years for me to win my first wrestling championship, so I'm gonna do whatever it takes to retain it.

It's called Dogged Determination: deal with it.

Back to the action, and I reversed a whip and went for a backdrop. Jetson saw it coming and went for a sunset flip...but I sat down on the attempt and hooked one of my opponent's legs for the surprise pinfall. First title defense: in the books! Jetson was frustrated, but shook my hand like a true pro, as I went backstage to celebrate with Big Steve and Jim Beam.

I have to admit, (Mad) Dog-Lovers, I was stressed to the gills before my showdown with Jetson. Not only was Jetson there when the original territories died (as part of the proverbial "Honor Guard," if you will), but this was my first-ever match where I had the added responsibility of representing a promotion as their champion. I am sure everyone that has ever held a title has felt this pressure: a need to deliver 110% to prove to "the powers that be" that you are the right person to hold the strap. I am always stressed before a show, but during the 10-12 days before Kamloops I was a sleepless, irritable mess. But now that the first title defense is in the books, I am sure I can relax.

Yeah, right.

At that same Kamloops show, I was witness to a match between Disco Fury and The Mauler that went to a no-contest brawl. Only eight days later (June 20), it was my turn to face The Mauler: in Camrose, Alberta at the debut card of the RockStar Wrestling Federation. This was slated to be a New York Streetfight, and I was accompanied to the ring by "Badass" Jack Daniels, the RWF promoter; it turns out that Daniels and Mauler have a problem with each other, and Jack asked me to help settle the score.

First off, let's talk about the event itself: we were set up with nice in-town accomodations, free gym passes, a huge backstage buffet, and post-show pizza. And a huge crowd turned up, to boot. As for the match, it got out of hand from the opening bell...and I had soon busted Mauler open with several chain-wrapped fists to the skull. But blood only gets The Mauler more excited, and he came at me like a rapid 350-pound Rottweiler. All looked lost for yours truly, as I got dropped with a Russian legsweep and Mauler was setting up for his killer backsplash...when Daniels got up on the apron, creating enough of a distraction for me to surprise Mauler with a schoolboy for the pinfall. Now my opponent was REALLY pissed, as he laid me out and than bashed Jack's skull in with a baseball bat! Daniels has sworn revenge on The Mauler, so we'll see where this war will be waged next.

Okay, we've wrapped up June, and that left me out of the ring until July 30: some promotions tend to slow down in the summer (for good reason), and it gave me time to hang out with the family, drink some beer, and work on my tan. Maybe I worked on my tan a little too much, as now "Streetfighter" Tim Flowers says I should work a Cuban Assassin gimmick, and Honky Tonk Man suggested I wrestle as an Arab. When I told Honky I'm nowhere near dark enough to be from the Middle East (and I'm of Ukranian/Romanian/British/Scottish decent), he replied in that Southern drawl of his:

"You get on a plane with that beard...you an A-Rab."

This all went down at the Abbotsford Agrifair, where International Championship Wrestling was putting on three shows a day for five straight days (July 30 to August 3). I was there for the first four days, and this would kick off the busiest 30-day span of my career: 15 matches between July 30 and August 28. My first bout on July 30 was against "Bad Ass" Bruce Briscoe: despite standing 6-6 and weighing 260-plus lbs., this kid is anything but a badass. No killer instinct, and I made quick work of him in about six minutes. This would not be foreshadowing of things to come, as every other match that week was 10-20 minutes long, while the temperature kept hovering around 100 degrees in the airless Cadet Building we were wrestling in. The other two matches I had that day were a three-way with "Moneymaker" Adrian Walls and The Mauler, followed by a singles match with Walls. Adrian won both matches: the former with a Fujiwara Armbar on Mauler after drilling the behemoth in the shoulder with my Big Bone, the latter with a roll-up ... and holding the ropes for leverage. Even though I went 0-4 against Walls during the week (another singles loss on July 31 and a tag loss on August 2--where I teamed with Mauler and Walls teamed with "Mr. Beefy Goodness" Vance Nevada), and despite the fact Walls would quite often prefer buy a win rather than earn one, I gained a ton of respect for this relatively unknown mega-talent. Walls can work a myriad of styles, can match up with anyone, and is a true ring general. Plus, his punches are amazing...to watch; taking them is another story. I am sure our paths will cross again: I saw Walls greedily eyeing my Okanagan-Interior Title at the last Kelowna show, and I still have $100 he tried to bribe me with in our last one-on-one showdown.

Come and get it, Moneymaker...if you dare!

On July 31, aside from the one-on-one loss to Adrian Walls, I had a tough lost to Quick-Kick Kirk (a veteran who trained at the original Hart Dungeon), who caught me with a wicked superkick; and a loss in a three-way dance that saw The Mauler pin Mikey D. August 1 saw two more consecutive losses--a brutal slugfest with The Mauler and a match with The Great Kasaki--before I broke a seven-match losing skid by pinning Mikey D. The match with Mikey was significant for several reasons: it was the longest match I had that week (it went nearly 25 minutes), it was the best match I have had so far this year, and it involved my oldest daughter, Zoe (age 5), in her first wrestling angle.

Two days previous, Mikey D was struggling to get the slowly-growing crowds to show him some appreciation. The only fans that were there for each and every show were the Sugar Family; and over the course of the first two days, Zoe was really the only fan that would join along when Mikey would try to get the fans to start clapping for him. Mikey appreciated the gesture, and decided to award Zoe with a pair of Mardi Gras beads to wear as a necklace. The problem arose when he gave those beads to her during the aforementioned three-way match that included Mikey, Mauler, and me. I was not impressed; I was even less impressed when Mikey delayed the start of our one-on-one encounter to give another pair of beads to my 21-month-old daughter, Tegan. Zoe was torn: she was worried that her Mad Dog Daddy was offended by accepting the gift, and she was worried that one of her new favorite wrestlers (Mikey), was going to get beaten within an inch of his life. Tegan was unperturbed: she got a gift and she got to see people get beat up. A win-win in her book. Mikey and I really tore into each other, and the battle waged back and forth until I was able to counter a Blue Thunder Bomb with a Sugar Shank, to steal a hard-earned pinfall victory.

My inolvement in the Agrifair wrapped on August 2 with the Nevada/Walls tag loss (with Mauler), a three-way with Mauler and Disco Fury that saw Disco steal a win from Mauler by knocking him out of the ring and then frog-splashing me for the win, and finished up with another tag team match: me and Marvelous Matt against Disco and String Bean. "String Bean" is more well-known as Weed, but is now wrestling under the moniker of Big Bad Chad...which is great, since he's maybe 5-6 and weighs about 150 pounds. But the bugger is tough as nails, to be sure. That tag match started with me overpowering Chad and seating him on the top turnbuckle as an attempt at intidimidation; he countered by attempting a flying hurricanrana that caused my ailing left knee to just completely buckle. I tagged out, only to watch Disco and "Bean" cut Matt off and really work the kid over, until he got the hot tag to yours truly and I kicked some ass; it culminated in my debuting the Okanagan Stampede (Oklahoma Stampede), on Bean to get the pinfall and end the rough-and-tumble four days on a positive note.

After that grueling week of wrestling, I seriously needed some time off: my back, knees, neck and elbows were a mess. My left knee has been especially horrid: when it buckled against Chad, it was no fluke. I have had problems with my left knee for the last 15 years, ever since I blew it out in consecutive years playing intramural basketball in college (I attended Loyola University of New Orleans as a Broadcast Journalism major). But I can't gripe too much, as so many of my wrestling brothers are nursing far worse injuries than mine...especially when it comes to their necks. But I would only get 20 days off, as The Year of the Dog rolls on: August 22 saw me drive four hours up the highway to Malakwa, BC (pop. 600ish), for their "Summer Slam" fair to try and raise money for a new Community Hall. I applaud the effort of the volunteers involved, but the Dog's Honest Truth is that Malakwa is a year or so away from being a ghost town: most businesses I saw were boarded up, burnt down or abandoned.

The "baseball field" wasn't much better, as it was just a dried-out patch of scrub-grass with no actual ball diamond and bleachers that would fall apart if you were nutty enough to get within three feet of them. And did I mention it was swarming with about 10,000 wasps? That would mean the wasps outnumbered the people at the fair by over 100-to-1. I showed up early (2:30pm; the first match didn't start until about 6:30) with the Sugar Family, which was a blessing and a curse: my daughters got to take part in the childrens' events (which packed up by 4:30), and Zoe got to have a "pony" ride. I used quotations, because these were full-size stallions, which is beyond ridiculous. I swear the horse they put my 5-year-old on was an underfed Clydesdale: the 7-foot-tall Lerch-impersonating farmhand running this operation couldn't look the damn thing in the eyes! And mean? These walking glue factories scowled and snapped more than Mike More does.

Speaking of More, he would stick his nose in my business that day in Malakwa. I was slated to face Friar MacBeth, with the Okanagan-Interior Title on the line. The show opened with More stealing a win over Slave, thanks to a handful of tights. Now More was parading around ringside, verbally supporting his Celtic Coaltion Party teammate. As usual, Friar and I beat the bejezus out of each other, punching and stomping each other like we owed somebody money. One day, the two of us will get smart and team up, so as to inflict pain on others; but until that cold day in Hell, we'll just stick to pounding the snot out of each other ... over and over and over again. Back and forth the battle raged, until I caught Friar with the Okanagan Stampede and was on my way to a pinfall victory. And that's when More put Friar's foot on the rope and started squawking at the referee. The official only saw the foot, not the infraction, so the match continued; Friar Pearl-Harbored me from behind while I was distracted by the yammering "Hardcore Celebrity," but I fought back and locked in The Muzzle (mandible claw), which was sending the challenger to Dream Street ... when More slithered into the ring and drilled me in the back of the skull with Friar's gnarled wooden staff. I won the match by disqualification, but was looking at the wrong end of a two-on-one beatdown; that's when Slave stormed the ring and helped me turn the tide. That would set up the last match of the evening, after a music break: Sugar & Slave vs. the CCP.

This was another stiff battle, which Slave and I controlled until the CCP sucker-punched Slave and cut off the ring. The most popular man in Thrash Wrestling fought valiantly, despite the brutal assault by both More and MacBeth, until he countered a double-clothesline with one of his own and tagged me in. I hit the ring, hot as can be, and blasted both foes with clotheslines and Ukranian Hammers (I'm not Polish!), hitting another Okanagan Slam on Friar for the apparent victory. More interrupted again, dropping me head-first with a nasty Northern Lights suplex; he was taken out almost immediately with a Slave Driver, but Slave got dropped by a Deep Friar. I went back on the attack, but Friar cut me off and went for another Deep Friar, which I countered with an eyerake, followed by a Stunner...and the kilted bastard wouldn't go down. So I planted him with a Tombstone Piledriver to seal the deal. My wife and daughters were there to celebrate two hard-fought victories, and I was rewarded for my efforts with food poisoning from the fairground concession stand. Good night, Malakwa!

After that brutal Saturday, I had only six days off before the next All-Star Wrestling show in Kelowna (August 28), where I had a non-title match with Disco Fury. This was another stiff affair, as Disco and I really bring out the beast in each other: he wants to put his former student in his place, and I want to prove to my former mentor that this Dog can hang with a world-traveled multi-time champion. Just like our previous showdown in Enderby, this was a back-and-forth chopfest, that saw me nearly win it with an Okanagan Stampede, but Disco got a foot on the ropes to avoid a pinfall. The fight continued, and Disco dropped me with a "pedigree" piledriver ... and Big Steve put my foot on the rope, as a measure of revenge. Disco was irate, and he punched Steve right in the face, knocking him hard to the Rutland Centennial floor! I used the opportunity to hit a Sugar Shank, driving Disco to the mat and scaling to the top rope for a flying headbutt ... and Disco rolled out the way, finishing me off with a second pedigree. The loss was doubly-frustating, because Disco used the victory as a catapult to become the Number One Contender to the Trans-Canada Title, when ASW returns to Kelowna on October 2. That title shot should be mine!!!

Okay, we're FINALLY caught up, and it only took forever. Until next time, Sugar Addicts.

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