"I, Shooter: An Excerpt"
by "The Shooter" Dean Malenko

HELLO MALENKOMANIACS!! Now how many people have written to me and said "Dean, I TOTALLY dig your literary masterpieces on the Slash! In fact, SO good are your columns, that during the day, I cannot concentrate on everyday activities such as living and laughing and loving because I am jonesin' for YOUR eloquent writings!" And I thought, who am *I* to deny people the pleasure of reading my words?!

SO, I decided to let a little chunk of the cat out of the bag for this column! That's right, folks, in this very article you will read an EXCLUSIVE chapter from my as-yet-unpublished memoirs! I hope to publish this autobiography someday and it will no doubt TROUNCE the sales of Foley's and the Rock's stupid books! The chapter I have chosen to show here is a chapter that is very close to me emotionally! In it, I recount, in all the gory detail, my drunken debauchery in Japan during the mid-nineties! At the end of this chapter, I make a drastic, life-altering decision, helped along just a LITTLE bit from witnessing firsthand the irresponsible escapades of my foreign colleagues! So without further ado, I present:

The time: August 26, 1994
The place: The Sushi Bongo Club, a bar/exotic dance club in Nagasaki, Japan.

It was a typical after-hours night in Nagasaki. I was, as they say, living the good life of a typical wrestling superstar in Japan! Our usual way of celebrating another day of wrestling shows under our belts was by heading to the nearest drinking establishment and drowning our sorrows with gallons and gallons of sake! The more daring among us even chose to smoke some of the old Oriental favorite, opium. THESE were the folk who we really needed to worry about back then... unfortunately, we were all so fucked up at the time that none of us ever thought to jiggle the handle on the Toilet of Life, to stop us from flushing ourselves straight down the crapper to hell by way of our hard-partying lifestyle!

Little did I know that by night's end, I would be a changed man.

I entered the popular Japanese bar and strip joint, the Sushi Bongo Club, at around 10 p.m. with my driving buddies, Jushin "Thunder" Liger and Super Delfin. And despite the drunken antics that went on around me, (and that were already going on when we entered the Sushi Bongo Club) I, fortunately, was one of the more sober superstars! Now, I'll be perfectly honest here: I was not clean and sober by any means at this time! It is true, faithful Malenkomaniacs... during these years I did fancy a few (many, actually) good glasses of the popular Japanese alcoholic beverage, sake! But, compared to some of these other slanty-eyed lushes, I was freakin' Mother Theresa with a receding hairline!

Upon entry, Liger, Delfin and I immediately approached the bar with bad intentions in mind. The next two hours are a blur to me as I drifted in and out of consciousness caused by drinking too many glasses of sake! At around the two hour mark, I regained my wits as best I could and stumbled about the bar, trying to find my Japanese cohorts! Even in my drunken haze, I noticed that a few other wrestlers from various other Japanese promotions had made the trip to the notorious club, no doubt to celebrate another night of tremendous matches that, years later, would only get ** from Scott Keith!

One of the first things I managed to see in my last stages of coherency for the night was Liger entering a broom closet with two teenage girls. Minutes later, I saw all three of them emerge with their hair messed up and their pants around their ankles! It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what Liger and those Jap teenyboppers had done in that closet! Yes, Liger has always been a chick magnet, and back then he chose to use his God-given powers for evil instead of good! "Oh, how AWFUL!!" I thought! "He's a married man with two beautiful children!" I was disgusted at the actions of my good friend Liger, and further disgusted by the fact that he didn't share one of the Japanese bitches with me! Tool!

I no longer needed to find Super Delfin, the wrestling dolphin, because he had already found me. He was obviously drunk!
"Mr. Marenko, I called Supah Delfin for GOOD REASON! Why, ask you? Simple is answer! Because I drink like FISH! HAHA!"
"Urp...whoa, Delfin, you're fuckin' TRASHED, dude!" I replied! "That shit isn't... ahhhh, good for ya, man!"
"HAI, Mr. Malenko-san! I am bombed worse than HIROSHIMA!! HAHA! BADA-BANG, Shooter-san!"

He then stumbled over to Gran Naniwa, (his gimmick is that he is a giant crab---I shit you not) who, despite his small size, was the biggest drinker in the lot of us. Violent mood swings were just a way of life then for the volatile Naniwa, who, in his sake-induced changes in attitude, could be slapping you on the back and laughing one minute, and trying to slit your throat with a broken beer bottle the next! As if a giant crab weren't scary enough! Anyway, Delfin had the bad luck to approach Naniwa while he was in his belligerent stages of drunkenness. Delfin was, fortunately, a "happy" drunk, and had now elected to play a harmless prank on Gran Naniwa. Harmless...or so we THOUGHT.
"Ah, Naniwa-san!" Delfin began. "Your honorable shirt is on fire!"
"SHIRT ON FIRE?!?! OH, GREAT DISTRESS IS ME!!! HELP REQUIRED FOR ME NOW, DELFIN!!" Naniwa cried!
"No worry, Naniwa! I have solution to fire!"
Delfin then delivered the BOFFO punchline by pulling out Naniwa's shirt, which he had tucked in his pants.
"Shirt is on fire... NOW IT'S OUT!! HAHAHAHA!! AGAIN GOTCHA, NANIWA-SAN!!"

Now, the sober Naniwa would have laughed along at this simple joke. Unfortunately the "belligerent drunk" Naniwa didn't quite see things the same way. "OH, funny you think it is, eh, Delfin? FUNNY NOT AT ALL, FUCKING SCUMBAG!! I KILL YOU!!" A quick sucker punch from Naniwa was all it took to floor the hapless Delfin. "FUCKING PUNK!! I AM NOW AND ALWAYS WILL BE BETTER SEA CREATURE WRESTLAH!!" I tried to calm him down..."Naniwa, dude, it's DELFIN! He was just ribbin' ya! Relax, man!" ...but he would have none of it.

Naniwa was obviously violently drunk and stoned. It was becoming painfully obvious that the opium and sake he had consumed were making him delusional. As if to prove my point, he deftly pounced upon the pool table, dropped his pants, and began screaming at the terrified billiard aficionados. "MOTHERFUCKERS!!!! KNOW YOU NOT THAT I AM MOTHERFUCKING BATMAN!!! VERY TRUE IT IS!!! TO THE BAT TABLE ROBIN, I MUST WARD OFF EVIL WITH MY FEARSOME BATARANG!!!!! FEAR MY BATARANG!!!!"

Naniwa's "Batarang" was, in reality, his penis that he had begun furiously waving at the pool playing patrons. "FEAR YOU FROM BATARANG VERY MUCH!!!!" he screamed. This was no longer just harmless tipsiness... this was getting serious! After witnessing this frightening incident, the gears of sobriety began to spin in my head.

Naniwa was then approached by his then friend, The Great Sasuke. "Naniwa-san. I think you've had enough, bro. C'mon, let's go home. I'll give you a ride in my Toyota because I am a designated driver, and friends don't let friends drive drunk!" 'Suke, in his infinite wisdom, was one of the few among us who was responsible enough to control his sake consumption! The bargoers were firmly on Sasuke's side, chanting "SA-SUH-KAY [clap clap clap]" as they usually did during his in-ring combateering. Unfortunately, a moral victory for Sasuke was not to be, as Naniwa kneed 'Suke in the nuts and hit him over the head with a pool cue for the default victory. It is believed that this incident is what caused Naniwa to leave Sasuke's Michinoku Pro federation in later years. This, however, is merely speculation!

As Liger and I tottered away from this grim spectacle, we stumbled across Masayoshi Motegi, who was (in)famous for appearing in damn near EVERY Japanese junior heavyweight tournament, and losing all of them! What a tool. He was, natch, passed out on the floor after a mere THREE glasses of sake. Poor Motegi. He always was a lightweight! Or as they say in Japan, "junior heavyweight." As Liger stated that fateful night "HA! Look at fatty passed out! Motegi-san is JUNIORWEIGHT DRINKAH!!"
"Oh C'MON, Jush!" I interjected! "This is no time for jokes! He's in bad shape! We should do something!"
"You have very good point, Dean-san... but what should we do?"
A few seconds passed.
"I've got it! Let's duct tape him to the flagpole!"
So Liger, who was well on his way to getting shitfaced (or rather, shitmasked), and I struggled to lift the corpulent carcass of Motegi, who was always very tubby for a so-called cruiserweight! I personally think he lies about his weight! Fatass! But I digress! Anyway, we slowly but steadily managed to heave that lump of flesh to the flagpole, and then proceed to affix his flabby arse to it with "Uncle Fuji's Premium Brand Duct Tape!" As an added ZINGER, we positioned his hand so it was on top of his CROTCH! HA! It looked like he was jerkin' the gherkin right there in front of everybody! We then wrote "I'M A TOOL, PLEASE KICK ME IN THE JUNK" on his forehead! HA! I'll be honest here, folks, this was one example of my debauchery that I do NOT regret! I'd do it again in a second! If you're reading this, Motegi, BRING IT, BIOTCH! I'll whoop you and your stupid mullet and tape your ass to the flagpole ONE MO' TIME, skippy! Tool!

Back inside, the blond-afroed, porcine high-flyer Gedo was, as was per usual at the time, stoned out of his gourd on opium. He was running amuck in the nightclub, wearing nothing but a red thong. Trust the Shooter here: You could certainly do without witnessing Gedo's cottage cheese kiester firsthand! As if his flagrant display of the human anatomy was not nauseating enough, he had, as he later told me, "just as a gag!" decided to dry-hump random club patrons. "BAD MAN! YOU STOP! I CALL HONORABLE POLICE!" cried one woman as Gedo's groin was grinding against her person. "BAH!! YOU LIKE IT, AND YOU KNOW IT TO BE TRUE, SUGAH CHEEKS!!" Gedo retorted. After this incident, Gedo decided that molesting the mere clubgoers was not enough! As an attention-getting device, he jumped up on the stage where several hot Japanese strippers were gyrating, and began dry-humping them as well.

Needless to say, the male patrons did not take kindly to Gedo's desecration of the female entertainment! One man stood up and yelled "NO TITTIES, NO PEACE, PIG-MAN!!!" and the shit was ON. At this point, the mere decadent buffoonery of the Sushi Bongo Club escalated into a full-on barroom brawl. Beer bottles flying everywhere, the high-pitched screams of terrified Japanese ladies, the dull thuds of punches and the hard SPLAPs of knife-edge chops being thrown... Utter madness. Utter madness that, sadly, I was willingly a part of.

As I witnessed the drug-and-alcohol-induced carnage take place around me, I thought to myself: Is THIS what I have become?! Is THIS the way I want to live?! How will my daughter feel when I'm off traveling the world and my wife has to tell her, "Sorry, honey, your deadbeat Daddy is not home! He's off in Japan wrestling his buddies and GETTING STEWED TO THE GILLS EVERY DAMN NIGHT!!" I intensely contemplated the ramifications of such behavior. Just think, because of MY irresponsible actions in the Land of the Rising Sun, my wife is forced to sit at home, all alone, and wonder about the well-being of her beloved Shooter! And my CHILD! While she grows up in what is essentially a single parent environment, *I* am off in Japan getting hammered with no regard to the well being of myself or my daughter! If I keep up this kind of behavior, she'll grow up to be a serial killer! Or some kind of repressed robot with no emotions or facial expressions or---hey,wait a minute...

I thought and thought about this potentially life changing decision for the next few minutes. The decisive nail was driven when I was struck in the back of the head by a wayward beer bottle. I collapsed to the ground, only managing to spew out one more coherent thought before I passed out..."If this is the good life, why does it feel so bad???"

"Mama, put my wristbands in the ground
I can't adjust them anymore
That cold black cloud is comin' down
Feels like I'm knockin' on heaven's door"

Upon waking the next day at 5:42 a.m., face down in a puddle of warm beer and urine, I made the decision to clean up my ways. The world was about to witness a clean, sober, family man version of the Shooter!

And as for ME, Deano Machino? Well, I cleaned up my ways soon after that fateful night! And I certainly reaped the benefits of having my head on straight, as soon after, the upstart American federation ECW came a-callin', looking for the Shooter to help their little federation grow and grow! A year after that, WCW sought out my limitless talent, and a few years after THAT, I became a bona-fide WWF Superstar!

Could I have accomplished as much as I have had I not kicked the sake habit? Frankly, NO! And that is one word you need to remember, Malenkomaniacs! NO! Just say NO to sake! And opium!

Remember, tools, we suffered...

..so that YOU don't have to.

- Peace Out,
"The Shooter" Dean Malenko
Dean Malenko's Homepage! at deanmalenko1000.tripod.com