Championship gaming is a mindset, bro. It’s a mentality. It’s a way of life.
It’s about knowing, in the marrow of your bones, in the chambers of your heart and the fiery depths of your soul, that you—and only you—are the most dominant, most destructive, most unstoppable force known to man.
I have become danger. I have become death. I have become the terror of the shadows that haunts you in your nightmares and hides under your bed waiting to jump-scare you screaming, “BAAAHAHAHAGRRRAHH!” when you least expect it.
When I kill you in a game—and I will—I’m not just beating you. I’m not just scoring points or winning bragging rights or adding another trophy to the mountain of trophies I already have. I’m demoralizing you. I’m destroying your social confidence. I’m taking your very essence and offering your pixelated blood to the Blood God. I am taking everything you are and everything you had hoped to be.
That is what being a championship gamer means.
Now, I ask you—could I be all those things, could I have that killer spirit and devotion to pure berserker dominance, if I was fucking six foot two??
Could I embrace the champion’s way of life if my body was anything less than the perfectly chiseled, diamond-cut, forged-in-the-eternal-fires-of-Mount-Doom athletic phenomenon it is?
Could I be the one-and-only Dr Disrespect if my vertical leap was only thirty-six inches?
The truth is so crystal clear I don’t even know why we’re talking about it. You need physical dominance to be a winner. You need incredible height and supercharged athleticism to be a champion. You need an insane vertical leap to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
In anything: video games, life, love, video games. Anything!
But I don’t judge you for your ignorance. Just kidding—of course I judge you. But I also pity you. You simply can’t understand how important in life it is to be physically superior to your fellow man—because, well, you’re probably not.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s what I want you to do. Right now, I want you to get off your ass—no, don’t put down the book, you gotta keep reading so I can order you around—and I want you to go look in the mirror. Yes, at yourself.
Now, we got two options here, right? Either a) you’re a flabby, pear-shaped, cellulite-dimpled Grimace-body, or b) you’re a skinny, stick-figure, stringy-muscled punk. Don’t argue. You’re definitely one of those two. That’s just the way it is.
Now, the honest truth is that I, the Doc, the Two-Time himself, love you just the way you are. You go right ahead and be ridiculously out of shape. Have an ass the size of a semitruck. Have shoulders so bony they could cut glass. It seriously doesn’t matter to me, because I’m rich and successful and inherently kind enough to love everyone, even you.
But after reading those straight-up facts about your body, how do you feel? Pretty shitty, right?
And trapped in that physical reality—a reality of being perpetually shorter, squatter, thinner or fatter, and less athletic than myself—you’ll never have my powerful mentality. You’ll never comprehend what it means to be a superstar hyper-dominant killing machine.
So what do we do about it?
Unfortunately for you, pretty much nothing.
I wish I could tell you that my physique is this impressive because I worked hard at it. Or even because I worked at all. I wish I could give you some list of turbocharged, foolproof exercises and dietary supplements that would magically transform you from a completely average, totally unimpressive human being into something Herculean.
But the reality is that all that garbage about the importance of working out and eating right and living a healthy lifestyle—it’s all just a bunch of people trying to sell you shit you don’t need and crap that won’t work.
I was born this way, man. I’m incredibly in shape, but I’ve never worked out a day in my life.
I’m so fast, I could beat Usain Bolt in the forty-meter dash right now—RIGHT NOW—and I literally haven’t stood up from my jet-black rich-Corinthian-leather couch in thirty days.
I’m so strong, I would dominate Dolph Lundgren in a steel-cage death match, even though I gotta admit Red Scorpion is way underrated.
And I’m six foot eight because, well, I’m six foot eight. I’ve never taken growth hormones. I’ve never even drunk a full glass of whole milk. As far as I’m concerned, calcium is for pussies.
I’m not gonna lie and say you can have any of these things, because you can’t. It’s just not in you. But I can help you fake it—at least for an afternoon.
How? Easy. Go RIGHT NOW to InterdimensionalChampionsClub.gg for your very own DOMINEX, BY DOC official athleticism-in-a-box kit. (Shit, isn’t it fucking awesome not having Nigel the Editor around to fuck with my game when I’m trying to help my loyal fans—and earn a tiny bit of cheddar on the side?)
For the low, low price of $195.95, not including shipping and handling or an additional $59.95 I literally just decided to add to the price, you’ll get delivered to your home address a large cardboard box that contains everything you need to pretend to be athletically superior like the Two-Time for a full afternoon, give or take.
Your completely non-customized DOMINEX, BY DOC will include:
One (1) Pair of Adjustable Stilts and/or a Couple of Tin Cans You Can Strap to Your Feet (Six Foot Eight Maximum Height)
One (1) Pair of Extra-Long Pants (Burlap)
One (1) Pair of Attachable Turbo-Loaded Compound Springs That May or May Not Be Broken Slinkies
One (1) Official DOMINEX, BY DOC Man Girdle, or “Mirdle”
One (1) Advanced Prototype Foam-Rubber Muscleman Bodysuit
That’s Pretty Much It
Now, I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking, “Doc, that sounds like a pile of crap I could buy at any flea market for maybe a dollar seventy-five. What gives?”
And maybe you could.
Or maybe, just maybe, the fact that you’re even thinking something that stupid shows just how awful your short, unathletic, tiny-vertical-leap mentality really is. Maybe you proved, right now, just how much you really need DOMINEX, BY DOC.
Because let me tell you what’s gonna happen when you purchase DOMINEX, BY DOC and that carboard box full of shit arrives at your doorstep. Let me tell you what’s gonna happen when you strap those adjustable six-foot-eight stilts onto your legs, when you put on that extra-long pair of pants and you attach those turbo-loaded compound springs to the bottom of your shoes. Let me tell you what’s gonna happen when you buckle your fat ass into your Mirdle—and honestly, even if you’re skinny, I highly recommend it, it’s just that comfortable—and you zip yourself into your Advanced Prototype Foam-Rubber Muscleman Bodysuit.
First, you’re gonna trip and fall on your face. Because honestly, getting the hang of stilts is harder than it looks.
But then, after you pick yourself up and wipe the blood off your lip, you’re gonna walk out that door and for the very first time in your pathetic, pudgy and/or skinny life, you’re gonna know what it feels like to be physically, athletically dominant over everyone else.
You’re gonna stride down that sidewalk staring down at every man, woman, and child who passes by, and you’re gonna think, “Hahaha, I’m taller than you.” You’ll marvel at how much smaller they seem from your tall-person’s vantage point—like ants, really. Or losers.
You’ll blink your eyes at the clouds swirling around your head at such a high altitude, you’ll gaze at the mountaintops and catch your breath in the thinner air, and you’ll think, “So this is what it means to transcend the pathetic limitations of short people.”
You’ll stare at these humans who are so much smaller than you, and you’ll realize that they’re not just little—they’re also flabby and out of shape. With your stunning, molded physique, things you never even noticed before will suddenly really fucking piss you off.
The obvious love handles bubbling beneath some doofus’s pink polo shirt. The subtle
rounded slope of a coward’s shoulders. The two-inch tribal tattoo encircling a weakling’s pathetic arm. All of it will feel like an offense to nature, to perfection, and most important, to yourself.
You’ll squeeze your firm foam-rubber biceps, you’ll thump your fists against your carbon-reinforced artificial pecs, you’ll caress the grooves of your square, plastic abdominal muscles, and you’ll say to yourself, “Thank God I’m not those people.”
And then, just when you think you can’t feel more satisfied, just when you think you can’t feel more like a winner, more like a champion, you’ll see something in the distance.
Maybe it’ll be a light post. Maybe it’ll be a basketball hoop or a tall, rusty old sign at an abandoned gas station. Maybe it’ll be a shiny red apple at the tippity-top of a tree.
Who knows what it’ll be—I’m not a psychic—but whatever the hell it is, it’ll be high up. Real high up. Way over your head. And you’re gonna want to reach up and touch it.
But instead of looking at it and walking past with a loser’s sigh like usual, for the first time ever, you’re gonna stop and smile. You’re gonna put your feet together—that’s right, you won’t even need a running start!—and you’re gonna do a vertical leap.
And you’re gonna snatch that apple, and you’re gonna feel damn good about yourself.
And when you land back on the ground—only briefly, because athletic, jacked-up Adonises like you aren’t destined to remain earthbound for long—you’re gonna eyeball that high-up place you just reached and say, “Man, I bet that was a good ten feet in the air! Taking into consideration my above-average wingspan and superior height, I bet that was a thirty-seven-inch vertical leap!”
You’ll be wrong. Because only the Two-Time has a thirty-seven-inch vertical, but still—it’ll be an impressive vertical.
And for that hour or two, or at most a single afternoon, you, an average person, will finally know what it’s like to be physically exceptional. For that small window of time, you’ll understand what it means to have a champion’s mindset.
The impact will be real, if short-lived. You’ll get a raise at your job without doing an ounce of work. A pretty girl will smile at you. Your enemies will fear you. Your friends will respect you. You’ll dunk a basketball.
Then it’ll be over.
I know. You want it to go on forever, right? Or at least longer than an afternoon. But it can’t, and it’s for your own damn good.
Because the fact is, there’s only so much physical perfection, only so much athletic power, only so many vertical leaping inches an average brain in an average body can handle.
Hit your mind with too much Doc too fast, and you’ll go crazy! You’ll be like the fucking Lawnmower Man.
You’ll stare down at all the tiny people walking below you and start feeling dizzy. You’ll touch your perfectly sculpted lats and your brain will glitch. You’ll jump so high you’ll burn your fingers on the sun.
So for your own safety, for your own sanity, once you’ve enjoyed your single afternoon of Doc-like physical superiority, I want you to take off your DOMINEX, BY DOC kit and destroy it. Or ship it back to me, at your own cost, so I can resell it to someone else.
It’s enough that you’ve experienced, even briefly, what it feels like to exist in my perfect body. To know for a single afternoon what it means to think like a winner and live like a champion.
Savor that memory. Cling to it. And console yourself with the incredible gift I’m about to give you—part 2 of “The Kumite Except for Video Games and Also It’s Real.”
CHAPTER 11
THE KUMITE EXCEPT FOR VIDEO GAMES AND ALSO IT’S REAL
Part Two: The Champions Club, Baby!
All right, so in case you need a reminder—who are we kidding, of course you need a reminder—here goes:
I’d flown to Hong Kong to compete in the greatest, most ancient, most cutthroat video game tournament in the world, like this actual Kumite of video games called KEFVGAAIR. It was held by this shadowy, mysterious network of super-criminals called the Brotherhood—generic, I know—and I got pissed off, kinda lost my patience a little, which I do sometimes, so naturally I insulted their one-handed diabolical leader, Lord Hannn, in front of the entire arena.
Like, I called this loser out, okay? Totally showed him up.
So it was a few hours later, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, because I’d really made a great first impression. My guide, Carl the Hunchback, was showing me to my luxury suite, and suddenly I spotted the Nigerian champion, Just Plain Usman, gesturing at me through the cracked door of a secret double-agent spy room.
Or maybe it was just a janitor’s closet. I had to find out.
“Um, you go on without me, Carl the Hunchback,” I said. “I’ll catch up to you in a sec. I’ve got to, uh, look at… something… around… here.”
He rolled his eyes and kept walking.
“All right, Just Plain Usman,” I said. “I’m getting, like, strong secret double-agent spy vibes from you. So what’s the deal, man? And why the hell are you wearing sandals with socks?”
“Doc,” he said, “I’m part of a secret international organization of double-agent hero spies that’s been trying to infiltrate the Brotherhood for centuries. The earliest known socks, dating from 300 AD, were excavated from Oxyrhynchus and had a split toe designed for sandals. Socks were invented for sandals—why are you wearing socks without sandals?”
“All right,” I said, “what’s your organization called?”
“Well,” Just Plain Usman said, clearing his throat, “we’re also called the Brotherhood.”
“JESUS CHRIST!” I shouted. “What is wrong with all you secret international organizations? Is it that hard to come up with an awesome name?”
“Look,” he sighed. “I’ve been trying to get it changed ever since I became a member, okay? But there’s a lot of red tape in these secret international organizations! It takes five meetings just to agree on an agenda, our Slack channel is an absolute mess. I’ve had to refile my proposal for our new name five separate times, in triplicate, but the registrar keeps losing the documentation…”
“So what is it?” I said. “Your pitch for the new name?”
“The Other Brotherhood.”
“Yeah,” I said. “BEFORE I STAB MYSELF IN THE FUCKING EYEBALL OUT OF FRUSTRATION, we’re gonna have to move on.”
“We’ve learned that Hannn uses the KEFVGAAIR tournament as a front for his entire criminal operation—illegal gambling, money laundering, grand theft auto, murder, extortion, international arms dealing, violence, and mayhem.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I mean, I already knew they were criminals, so…”
“But,” he sputtered, “did you know how bad the crimes were?? The murder! The mayhem!”
“Yeah, gotta be honest with you, that all sounds pretty cool to me.”
“But—”
“You literally just listed my favorite things.”
“But—”
“Like a real-life version of James Bond meets Goodfellas meets all the Fast and Furious movies except Tokyo Drift.”
“But—”
Too late. I’d already closed the secret double-agent spy room/janitor closet door behind me.
“Hey, Carl the Hunchback!” I shouted as I jogged to catch up to my guide. “Hey, what kinds of crimes do you guys do, anyway?”
He shrugged as he unlocked the door to my suite. “Just the cool ones: illegal gambling, murder, extortion, international arms deals…”
“Sweet. That’s what I figured.”
I walked into the suite, and even I was impressed. We’re talking a state-of-the-art flat-screen TV so huge, so massive, and so flat that it covered one whole wall. We’re talking top-of-the-line speakers so gigantic they covered two more walls. We’re talking a bed so fucking big and luxurious it covered another wall. Yeah, it was a Murphy bed, but it was a really awesome one.
And all the other walls? We’re talking wall-to-wa
ll-to-wall slate-black slate everywhere. That’s a lot of walls, a lot of black, and a lot of slate. Plus one big-ass mirror on the ceiling.
That’s my kind of room.
“Whoa!” I shouted as I ran over to the gigantic Murphy bed. I pushed a shiny silver button and it lowered from the wall automatically. Pretty fucking cool. “This must be, like, an experimental prototype Murphy bed, right?”
“Sure,” he said. “Doc, I shall leave you now. You’ll need your rest for tomorrow’s KEFVGAAIR. I do not think Lord Hannn will easily forget today’s… interruption.”
“It’s cool.” I grinned. “I’ll dominate.”
Carl the Hunchback bowed and closed the door behind him.
I kept pressing on the silver button over and over again—it was so much fun watching the Murphy bed go up and down!—until suddenly the damn thing broke. Instead of going down, it slid to the side, revealing the entrance to a big-ass secret industrial warehouse.
And stacks and stacks of illegal merchandise.
Crates full of Kalashnikovs and M203 grenade launchers. Piles of rigged slot machines and roulette tables. Rows of Lambos and Ferraris and Jaguars with fresh coats of paint and filed-off VINs. And bale upon bale of counterfeit currency.
I mean, what can I say?
FUCKING AWESOME!
Then I saw something else.
Hidden behind boxes of throwing stars, a totally different kind of illegal merchandise. Thousands of small, lifelike plastic action figures. Each with its own blood-red tactical jacket. Each with its own pair of mirrored Sony prototype specs. Each with its own perfectly square jaw and flowing black-diamond mullet and little mini Slick Daddy.
That’s right. The illegal merchandise was me.
Unauthorized, knockoff, bootlegged Dr Disrespect action figures to be trafficked in black-market toy stores in every country on the planet.
I picked one up. It was an awesome idea, but the workmanship was shoddy. The paint was scratched, my little mane of hair had no luster, and the Ethiopian Poisonous Caterpillar looked like it had retreated into a cocoon. And yeah, I just came up with that metaphor right now.
Violence. Speed. Momentum. Page 12