On the Road with Puppet the Psycho Dwarf
An intrepid AAJ Writer goes behind the scenes with the little men who are willing to bleed for your enjoyment
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We arrive at the venue, Vogue nightclub, in a college district of Indianapolis. In the changing room in the back of the building are tubs full of beers, bottled water and Red Bulls. Also provided by management, tucked innocuously under a chair, is a tray full of torture implements, for the hardcore match: a chain, pizza cutter, toilet plunger, staple gun and jar of thumb tacks.
The staple gun causes consternation because it contains much longer staples than they normally use. When Teo releases one into his palm and displays the inch-long ammunition, the other wrestlers wince in pain. “Okay, we won’t do stapling,” Puppet says.
Somehow, nobody seems pleased by this, so the conversation becomes safe body parts to pierce with the industrial-sized staples. “Ass, thighs, cheeks,” Kato lists, pawing his face, “the fleshy part of the nose—“
“No nose!” Puppet interjects. “Because then it always gets in this part,” he says, indicating the nasal passage between the nostrils and ridge of bone. “No nose with these, guys.”
By the time Puppet takes the stage, at around nine o’clock, for his pre-wrestling stand-up routine, the club is filled with people, swelling against the ring. If possible, the crowd is more liquored up than the audience I saw in Chicago, and when Puppet demands, “Are you ready more some midget violence tonight?” there is no hesitation to temper their roar of approval.
Puppet paces the stage with the puffed-up bravado of Andrew “Dice” Clay. “I’ve been a problem for other midgets ever since my 78-pound head squeezed out of my mama’s pussy,” he declares, before clarifying: “That’s right, her pussy. She’s hot, and I got first licks!” Squeals and moans of disgust emanate from the audience.
A young woman, hammered to the point of nearly drooling, has been straining against the ropes, trying to touch Puppet since he got on stage. He gives her a hand into the ring. “You really want to fuck a midget, don’t you?” he asks. In response, the woman flops onto her back spreads her legs in the air. Puppet falls on her and begins humping savagely. The only sound in the packed club is the squeaking of the rickety boxing ring, and nervous laughter from members of the audience. “I know that girl!” says a guy next to me.
Puppet dismounts, stands up, and yells, “That’s what it’s like to fuck a midget! Get this bitch the fuck out here!” The crowd exhales, laughs and cheers. If there is any unrest, it is caused by impatience for the promised violence.
“Fuckin’ fight someone, you midget!” yells a male voice from the crowd.
The first match ends with Kato, having been body-slammed one too many times, muttering and moaning painfully under the weight of Teo’s 90-pound body, as Spyder—tonight’s referee—gives him the count and then holds up Teo’s hand in triumph. After watching a few matches, I think I’ve figured out the policy: Puppet always wins if he’s in the ring, and if he’s not, the smaller wrestler wins.
Backstage between matches, Mexx is holding court on a frequent topic of his: How paranoid it can make you to owe thousands of dollars in child support across the country. You don’t know which state has a warrant out for you, and getting pulled over for speeding could result in months spent in jail.
Spyder goes out to lay the tray of torture implements it in the ring, and a few minutes later we can hear his voice over the sound system. “Who wants to see a midget bleed tonight?” Time to go to back to work.
***
Mexx emerges from the back, moving his way to the ring with a gait that is part-skip and part-crip walk. He emits short, excited barks, the only sounds he will make until the match’s finale. His ponytail has been undone, revealing his mullet.
The match starts innocently enough. Mexx leaps off of a top rope; Puppet headbutts him viciously in his crotch. After about five minutes of throwing each other around, Puppet enacts an elbow-blow to Mexx’s face that leaves Mexx standing dazed in the middle of the ring. Puppet picks up the staple gun, to the delight of the cheering crowd.
“Midgets are like strippers,” Spyder says over the PA. “Throw dollars at them, and they’ll staple them all over each other’s bodies!“
Almost instantly, balled-up dollar bills begin flying into the ring. Puppet collects a few, and with loud thwacks from the staple gun, covers Mexx’s wide-eyed face with bills. Mexx eventually wrests control of the gun and begins attacking Puppet with it. After a chaotic minute, both of their faces and posteriors are papered in dollar bills. The stated plan of avoided noses has been ignored. Puppet has a bill hanging from his nipple. Then, they begin the process of tearing the dollars off of each other. They aren’t bleeding, not yet.
In the next fifteen minutes, they pair use every tool on the tray. Puppet attempts to incise Mexx’s cranium with the pizza cutter, then complains that it’s gone dull. He fetches an empty beer bottle from the audience, smashes it against the floor of the mat, and presses the jagged edge against Mexx’s forehead. Of course, there’s no shortage of beer bottles in the club, and when an audience member quickly chugs the contents of one and hands it to Mexx, he gets his revenge. Blood is now gushing down both of their faces.
For the finale, Puppet brings a folding chair into the ring, while Mexx lies slumped against the ropes after a knock-out kick. Puppet and Spyder begin officiously laying thumbtacks on the seat of the chair. Puppet drags the wincing Mexx to the chair and sets him down on the thumbtacks. He climbs up onto the ropes begins a diatribe against immigrants. “They sneak into our country,” he says, “They steal our jobs. You got a good job in a factory, watch out, a Mexican wants it! Let’s get ‘em out of America!”
With that, he body-slams Mexx, collapsing the chair beneath them. Mexx shoots up and sprints a circle around the ring in cartoonish pain, before slumping back against the ropes, a dozen thumbtacks stuck in the seat of his spandex.
Puppet, always the businessman, wraps up by thanking those that made the show possible: “I want to thank the Vogue, the good people at Camel…”
The dazed Mexx lifts himself up, and speaks for the first time. “Dame tu mano, esse! Damo tu mano!” he says, offering his hand to Puppet.
Puppet hesitates for a few moments. The crowd seems torn on this latest development. Some are cheering Mexx’s sportsmanship; others boo. Puppet finally takes his hand, making amends and ending the event with a feel-good vibe, which is the Half-Pint Brawlers’ standard. They exit the ring, Puppet pumping his fist jubilantly, Mexx dragging his beaten body, thumbtacks still embedded in his ass.
