"Beowulf! Beowulf! Beowulf! Beowulf!" the crowd chanted. A dark-skinned man stood in the center of the ring, taking all the glory. He was shirtless, which showed his well-defined body. Whoever said the eight-pack was a myth would be proven wrong when looking at Beowulf's abs.
He had the body of a warrior, with muscles showing everywhere on his top half. There was no fat at all. On his bottom half, he wore jogger pants with a wolf drawing on the right side, and the name Beowulf was also on them.
This man the crowd kept cheering for was called Beowulf—at least, that was his wrestling name. His real name didn't matter; it was too mundane, too normal. But Beowulf, now that was a name. It signified strength and dominance, and it was linked to his favorite animal.
"Howl! Howl! Howl!" the crowd cheered. Beowulf had a large grin on his face. "You wanna see me howl!?" Beowulf asked the crowd. "YEAH!" the crowd screamed. "I don't think I can hear you. I said, 'Do you wanna see me howl!?'" Beowulf asked.
"YEAH!" the crowd screamed, this time louder than the first time. Beowulf shook his head in disappointment. "Either I have tinnitus or you're not screaming loud enough. I SAID: DO YOU WANNA SEE ME HOWL!?" Beowulf screamed.
"YES!" the crowd answered. This time, the arena of twenty thousand people began to vibrate when they screamed. It was like a small earthquake had just occurred.
Beowulf grinned, all his teeth showing. "That's better!" Beowulf said. "If you wanna see me howl, then I guess I got no choice, do I? I gotta give the fans what they want."
With a microphone in his ear, Beowulf bent his upper body back so much that it almost reached the ground of the arena, and he let out a large howl. "AWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!" Beowulf howled.
"AWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU! the crowd began howling as well. The symphony of howls was almost indescribable. It was perfect. Every one of those howls was admiration for Beowulf, and he loved every second of it. He almost wished it would never end. But sadly, his voice gave out, and his howl ended.
He got back up. "Now, that's what I'm talking about! Now that was a howl!" Beowulf exclaimed. The crowd roared with cheers. "We love you, Beowulf. You're the man! You better win; I bet my life savings on you."
The last cheer was pretty awkward, but Beowulf pushed it to the side. He wouldn't let that ruin the awesome moment he was savoring. Beowulf began speaking to the crowd through his microphone. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, my loyal fans… Nah, you're not my fans. YOU'RE MY PACK!"
The crowd roared once again. "You are! You are! You guys are my pack. You've had my back since the start of my career in the W.W.U. (World Wrestling Universe)."
"What's it been? Fourteen years?"
"Fifteen!" a fan yelled. Beowulf looked in the direction the shout came from. He saw a middle-aged man, wearing glasses, a bit overweight, wearing one of Beowulf's merch shirts. Beowulf smiled. He knew the man—not personally, but he knew him. He always came to Beowulf's matches every time he fought in WrestleManiac, the huge fighting event that happens once a year, which fans all over the world would come to see. This man hadn't just come to all of Beowulf's WrestleManiac matches, but he also managed to get front-row seats every time.
Beowulf didn't know how that was possible. Tickets were hella expensive, and everyone rushed for them faster than a kid who hadn't had ice cream for a whole year.
Beowulf approached the ropes of the ring and pointed at the man. "Thanks for reminding me. I'd say the reason I forgot was because I'm getting old, but it's more likely that I got brain damage from all the punches, body slams, and chair slams I've taken for the past fifteen years."
The whole crowd began to laugh. There was no harm; Beowulf did mean it as a joke, after all. But the doctor did warn him to avoid any more head injuries. "Do you know how every time I got knocked down it felt like I couldn't possibly get back up, but I did so anyway?"
The crowd fell silent. "It was you. You and you, and you and you," Beowulf said as he pointed to different people in the crowd. "It was all of you! And when I take on Draco, The Irish Giant, I want all of you…"
Music started playing in the arena which cut off Beowulf. The arena was also flashing with orange lights, and fog was starting to appear in the area. At the edge of the arena, orange lights formed a pathway, turning orange one after another, leading to a platform.
On the platform stood a man 3 meters in height. He was shirtless like Beowulf but was not as muscular as Beowulf was, except for his arms. He had a red goatee, no top hair, and wore a green kilt while holding a large sword on his shoulder.
Yeah, a sword. The large man was Draco, the Irish Giant, the unbeatable champion of the World Wrestling Universe. He was the tallest man in the history of the world, and he was Beowulf's opponent.
A large grin appeared on his face. He used his right arm and pointed his sword towards Beowulf, who was far away in the ring. It was his provocation move. Every wrestler in the W.W.U. had one. Well, all the known ones did.
As soon as the crowd saw this, they began to boo. Draco didn't seem to mind this. In fact, he invited the boos by waving his left hand in a to-and-fro motion.
He walked to the ring slowly, with his music playing and the loud booing in the background. The crowd didn't hate Draco because he was a bad guy. In fact, they didn't hate him at all.
They were just so damn tired of seeing him win. Every. Single. Time! It was unbelievably frustrating. During Draco's first years in the World Wrestling Universe, the fans were fascinated by him. Hell, they loved him. The world's largest man being a wrestler in the W.W.U. was quite entertaining to watch.
How he would defeat his opponents without much struggle was amazing. But as the years went by, and Draco kept winning again and again and again and… again, the fans just got bored of him.
The entire point of wrestling was expecting the unexpected and still getting something you didn't expect. The thrill the fans got from seeing someone struggle and push past their limits to defeat their opponent was an inspiration that resonated within all of them.
Draco never struggled to beat his opponents, so he had no fans in the arena cheering for him. But Beowulf… Beowulf was a different story. Beowulf was an underdog during his first days in the W.W.U.
He was pretty bad at first, losing most of his matches during his first year. But then something unexpected happened. Beowulf started winning his matches. He was getting better and better, defeating all the champions in the W.W.U., and the fans started to take notice of him. Beowulf had defeated all the champions except for one: Draco.
Beowulf wasn't just the fans' champion. He was their beacon of hope. They believed that he could change the outcome they had been seeing over and over again for the past two decades—that of Draco defeating his opponents with very little effort.
Draco reached the outside of the ring. There were metallic stairs that a wrestler would use to climb up to the elevated ring, but Draco wouldn't be doing that.
He grabbed one of the ropes at the end of the ring and used its strength to jump into the ring. He landed in the center. Beowulf felt the vibration move all over from Draco's spot on the ring to his feet.
Despite his towering size and his inferior body build compared to Beowulf's, Draco was quite an athlete. One needed more than their own body advantages to succeed in wrestling.
Draco walked over to Beowulf, and Beowulf walked over to Draco. They both met each other at the center of the ring. Beowulf looked up to Draco's green, ferocious eyes, and Draco looked down on Beowulf's steady eyes.
It was hard to tell what Beowulf was thinking or feeling. His facial expression turned stoic when he came face to face with Draco. What Beowulf felt was simple. Beowulf felt absolute terror.
'Holy shit! Holy God! Holy mother of God! What the hell am I doing!?' Beowulf screamed internally. 'This monster is twice my size!' Beowulf was one point nine meters in height, while Draco was three meters.
"So, it wasn't an accurate calculation. But still, Draco was pretty damn big. 'No! No. I can't be thinking that way. Not when what's about to happen…' Now you might be thinking that Beowulf meant fighting, but no.
What was about to happen was something almost as important as fighting, if not more. Something essential that every wrestler had to master if they wanted to succeed in the W.W.U.
Smack talk.
"Well, well, well. Look at what we have here," Draco said. He had a microphone in his ear as well, so the whole crowd could hear him. "Little wolf thinks he can take me on?"
Draco let out roars of laughter, and the crowd's boos got louder. Beowulf began walking in circles around Draco, looking down on him. "You know? I remember the first time you came here. I remember the first time you got your butt handed to you by the most pathetic wrestler. Now look at you. These idiots keep screaming your name, and you've become deluded enough to believe that you can defeat me."
"ME! DRACO THE IRISH GIANT! DRACO THE UNDEFEATED! DRACO…. THE BEST DAMN THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO THE W.W.U." The crowd continued to boo.
"YOU ALL KNOW IT'S TRUE! YOU ALL HATE ME BECAUSE I'M THE BEST! WELL, GUESS WHAT?" Draco turned his back to Beowulf and faced the crowd that booed him. "I'm not going anywhere, you talking pieces of shit!"
The crowd booed once more, this time far louder than before. Some threw drinks and food at Draco, but none of it reached the ring. "That's right! That's right! Boo all you want! It never stopped me before! It won't stop me from making a bloody mess of your champion!"
"You wanna know how I'm gonna do it?" Draco turned to Beowulf, walked toward him, and pointed his sword at him. 'He's not going to use that, is he?' Beowulf thought.
The entire crowd turned silent, with only a few mutters being heard, thinking the same thing. The sword that Draco held was supposed to be a prop—something that his wrestling character played with.
The action in the W.W.U. was very real. But something that sometimes wasn't the same with wrestlers themselves. Wrestling was meant to be something extraordinary, and the truth was that most of its wrestlers' origins were pretty normal.
The W.W.U. couldn't have that. So a lot of its wrestlers came up with their own fake origins. Lying was fine as long as it was entertaining and spectacular.
Draco's made-up origin didn't matter. What mattered was that the only time Draco had used that sword was over a decade ago against one of his opponents.
Everyone remembered that night. It will always be remembered in W.W.U. history as Bloody Wednesday. Once was enough. Draco was almost banned from ever wrestling again, but luckily for him, he was let off with a warning and a condition to never use his sword on any of his opponents.
Now the fans in the arena were wondering if they were going to see a repeat of Bloody Wednesday. Draco placed his sword close to Beowulf's face, not making contact with his skin.
"I'm gonna mess up those eyes. Make those eyes turn a bit purple. And those ears won't stop bleeding when I'm done with you," Draco pointed to all the facial parts he had mentioned.
"And those teeth." Draco pointed at Beowulf's jaw, and this time his sword made contact. A drop of blood dripped onto Draco's sword. Beowulf's eyes looked defiantly at Draco while Draco's grin kept getting wider.
"I'm gonna feed you your own teeth. Then let's see how you'll keep making that annoying howl." Draco stopped pointing his sword toward Beowulf and backed away. The crowd continued to boo.
Draco had delivered his smack talk. Now it was Beowulf's turn. He began to wave his hand in front of his nose. "Whew! I didn't think it was possible, but your breath's gotten worse," Beowulf mocked.
The crowd burst into laughter. "Draco, buddy, you gotta do all of humanity a favor. Take a mint, 'cause it seems to me that your bad breath is relative to your size. And if that's really the case, you must have the worst breath in all of human history. Now THAT is a real accomplishment."
The crowd couldn't stop laughing, which put a frown on Draco's face. "You know why you're going to lose tonight, Draco? It's because I have them." Beowulf waved his hands to the crowd.
"My pack! It's because of them that I beat every arrogant champion that looked down on me. It's because of them that I made it this far. And it's because of them that I will make history tonight at WrestleMania by beating you, taking the belt, and becoming the new champion of the W.W.U."
Beowulf pointed to the belt that Draco was wearing. It was made of black leather and had golden metal embedded with indents that spelled W.W.U. It was a belt that only the best wrestler in the W.W.U. wore, and it hadn't been taken away from Draco for twenty years. But Beowulf planned on changing that.
"My pack, show me your support." Beowulf bent backward and started to howl, and so did the entire crowd. "AWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
Cheers erupted from the fans. Two people then entered the ring. One was a beautiful blonde woman in a red dress, wearing white gloves that passed her elbows. The other was a man in black and white clothes.
It was obvious that the woman was the announcer and the man was the referee. The woman in red got in between Beowulf and Draco. She held a microphone in her right hand and began to speak into it.
"Ladies and gentlemen. Tonight is a match for the W.W.U. championship by pin or submission. Here are your contestants. The first, the world's largest man, the undefeated champion for twenty years. Introduucccing… DRACO, the Irish Giant!"
Draco raised both his arms in the air as the woman introduced him. The boos continued. "The next, a rising star, an underdog, the wolf, the alpha. Introduucccing… BEOWULF!"
The crowd erupted in cheers, as they had been doing. The referee went over to Draco, took the championship belt, and raised it to show the crowd. The woman was starting to leave the ring when the match was about to start. But before she did, Beowulf gave her a wink. She'd probably been hit on by many wrestlers before Beowulf, but he had to shoot his shot. She didn't seem to mind the seductive wink.
In fact, she did something even bolder. She blew Beowulf a kiss. The crowd gushed and snickered after seeing this. The woman in red left the ring, Beowulf and Draco backed away from each other, and the referee stood at the side. They were preparing for the match.
The bell dinged, signifying the start of the match. Draco immediately used the ropes from his side of the ring to launch himself at Beowulf. Beowulf, seeing this, reacted by rolling out of the ring, making Draco hit nothing.
"One! Two!" The referee and the crowd started counting. If they made it to ten, then Beowulf would be disqualified, making Draco the default winner. Beowulf rushed to the other side of the ring, climbed the metal stairs, and got on top of one of the ring posts.
"Four!" The referee and the crowd stopped counting as soon as Beowulf re-entered the ring. Beowulf remained on top of the ring post, waiting for Draco to approach him, which he did.
Then Beowulf leaped toward Draco, hoping to make him fall by using his weight. Draco, seeing this, grinned. He caught Beowulf by the neck with his right hand. An amazing feat, but considering his inhuman size and physique, it wasn't that unbelievable.
Beowulf jumped in the air and slammed Draco's body into the ring. As he did, every fiber of Beowulf's body vibrated in pain. Thank God it wasn't concrete, or Beowulf might have been dead.
Draco didn't let Beowulf rest in his pain. He began stomping Beowulf over and over again. Every time he did, Beowulf felt a rush of pain that he had never felt before during his entire time wrestling.
He had been stomped before, but he had never felt this amount of pain. Draco stomped Beowulf for the last time, this time jumping as he did, which caused Beowulf to yell in pain. "AAAHHH!"
Beowulf breathed heavily. He lay on his side with his hands on his stomach because that's where Draco had been stomping on him. Draco turned Beowulf to lie on his back and pressed his right foot on Beowulf's chest. He was going for a pin.
The referee quickly dove to the side of the two wrestlers and started to tap the floor. "One!" The referee started to count. Then Beowulf broke out of Draco's pin by kicking out.
The crowd cheered, glad that their champion wasn't out of the match yet. Draco let out a scream of frustration. He expected the match to be over quickly.
"Draco went for another stomp, but Beowulf quickly grabbed his right ankle before he could. This caused Draco to lose balance and fall on his back. Then Beowulf used his leg to interlock with Draco's tight leg and started twisting Draco's right ankle.
"AHHHHH!" Beowulf screamed in pain. Beowulf had gone for an ankle lock. This had been his plan from the beginning. Winning by pinning Draco was impossible given his size; Beowulf knew that.
So he planned on winning by submission. Eventually, Draco would no longer be able to take the pain and would be forced to tap out, making Beowulf the winner and the new champion.
Draco continued screaming in pain and rolling over the floor of the ring; it was clear that he was in agony. But he wouldn't give up. He used his left leg to repeatedly kick Beowulf in the face.
Beowulf tried his best to hold on, but the kicks coming from Draco were just too powerful. Beowulf let go of Draco's ankle and got pushed off Draco's leg.
Draco needed some time to recover from the painful pressure placed on his right ankle, and Beowulf needed some time for the pain from Draco's kick to wear off.
Both wrestlers lay in the ring for a few moments. Draco was the first to get up; Beowulf got up a few seconds later. Both wrestlers stared intensely at each other. The fans kept screaming Beowulf's name.
Draco charged at Beowulf, successfully hitting him against one of the metallic poles. The sound of impact was loud, and the sound of a few bones cracking was heard. The crowd fell silent. Many thought that this was the end.
Then suddenly, Beowulf wrapped his left arm around Draco's neck and his right arm to lock the choke. Beowulf was using the Guillotine Choke, another type of submission.
The crowd's cheers increased when they saw this. Draco tried to break free from the choke, but Beowulf jumped and used his legs to interlock himself with Draco.
Draco struggled, trying to break free but with no success. Draco felt flat against Beowulf; he was losing oxygen but still conscious. Moments passed with Beowulf still holding his submission, and then something amazing happened.
Draco brought out his right hand. He was going to tap out! The crowd screamed in joy, far more than they ever did. It was finally happening. Beowulf was going to be the new champion of the W.W.U.
Draco's hand was almost on the floor when Beowulf closed his eyes and opened them. He was no longer in the arena. He was in a place that looked like a cave, and his body was chained to a wall as he knelt.
"What the hell!?" Beowulf exclaimed. "Buddy, you have no idea how right you are," a voice said. Beowulf looked up to where the voice came from, and he saw a man. No, not a man. Its skin was bright red, it had yellow glowing eyes, and a pointed tail resembling an arrow.
"Where am I? What are you?" Beowulf asked in fear. It showed as his voice trembled and cracked.
"What I am isn't important. But to answer your first question, I'll give you a hint," the red-skinned creature said.
"What?" Beowulf asked, confused. "You've already said it," the creature repeated itself. The creature crouched and smiled at Beowulf, revealing its frightening pointed teeth. "You're in hell."