The Iron Man was held at the Toronto exhibition¾the CNE. The CNE is a giant yearly fair with rides and all sorts of events, which entertain thousands of people. Among one of the many novelties offered at the CNE was fortune telling. We (Stokes, Tracy, Luis ‘Violet Flame’s # 1 Fan’ and I) passed by this one particular fortune telling gypsy as we walked to the CNE food court for lunch. She (the gypsy) asked us if we were interested in a reading to which Stokes responded in true, stoned Fabian Stokes fashion, “If you can guess my name, then I’ll like totally pay you to tell me my fortune, lady-dude.” We kept walking not giving her a chance to respond. As the Stokes and Tracy kept walking Luis and I discretely fell back and I stooged out Stokes’ first name to the gypsy for future reference. After lunch we walked past the gypsy again, and again she offered to give us a reading. Like before, Stokes replied, “If you can guess my name, then I’ll like totally pay you to tell me my fortune, lady-dude.”
The gypsy seemed to concentrate for a moment, summoning all her magical spirits and gazing into her crystal ball, then replied, “Fabian.”
Fabian Stokes turned pale. He looked like he had just seen a ghost! Boo! Stokes practically ran away. He was very quite for the rest of the day. When he did speak it was only to preach the cosmic knowledge of the all-knowing gypsies! Stokes was now a believer! Luis and I found this incredibly amusing.
That night as high Maintenance walked their sugar momma to her car, I let a still cosmically scared Stokes off of the God fearing hook.
“You fuckin’ asshole!” Stokes shouted at me as he laughed in relief.
Getting back to the actual rasslin’ stuff:
I didn’t end up winning the 2002 Iron Man. I wrestled 41 out of 100 matches during the 18-day tournament. I took great pleasure in kicking the shit out of every wrestler on the AWF roaster. The Iron Man was over and I found myself in need of a greater challenge. I needed to leave my AWF womb to go wrestle abroad. To keep a long story short and professional, I simply did not agree with the ethics and tactics of the AWF office and decided to leave for bigger and better things…