|| Career History ||

Wrestling is a fine sport/entertainment. It's greatness has reached to many aspects in life, and all sorts of products. But one product comes to mind at this moment, for it is the beggining of the Careers of both members of Now Playing.

This particular product which we are referring to, is none other than wrestling video games. But how is it that such a thing could have begun a chain of events leading to Now Playing's entrance into the world of sports/entertainment known as wrestling? Well it's quite simple really, so just follow along.

It all started when Max and Caster were playing a wrestling video game called "Saturday Night Slam Masters" in the years of 1994-1995. Regular wrestling fans who watched it on TV whenever we could. The game really appealed to us. The characters looked something like these two guys you see on this page. Now the game was a little exagerated, because it wasn't all wrestling maneuvers cause some guy could fly liek an energy beam, but that's beside the point. The game was really fun, and since we were still into action figures, we decided to do something different than usual.

We had a bunch of Marvel action figures (you know, like X-Men and Spiderman and all that). We thought it'd be a fun idea to recreate the guys in the game into these action figures. We took a box and made a ring out of it, made little belts with paper, which by the way look very good and fit around the waists and shoulders of the figures. We had fun at that. In the game, there was a guy we didn't like called Scorpion. Because of this, we used a Spider Man action figure to represent him and made him a Jobber, but since we didn't know the correct term at that time, instead of calling him a superstar, we called him a stupidstar. We eventually created our own guys with their own gimmicks cause we had so many figures.

But seeing as how our chidhood years had passed away and we were in our early teen years, we felt we had to change the approach to the recreation of wrestling. This is when we both felt the urge to actually start wrestling ourselves...

To kick things off, we decided to start wrestling the same way everybody does when they are young. We put up bed matresses to form a ring and decided to just brawl. Not much skill or showmanship, but hey, it was fun at the time. But it quickly got boring to just fight each other, so we thought, hey, why not practice all those cool moves. Starting out with the simplest moves like holds and submissions and working our way up. It took some time to learn many basic moves, expecially since they were all self-taught. But slowly, we were improving and recruited people to join us. (yeah I know, backyard wrestling is bad, but we were kids)

Thus began the backyard organization known as OTW (Ottawa Teen Wrestling). It kicked off allright, except it wasn't much, even for a backyard federation. Caster was self appointed Cruiserweight champion and Max was self appointed Intercontinental champion. The belts were made out of cardboard at the time. Eventually, the name of the fed changed from OTW to UCW (Ultimate Championship Wrestling, which later turned into Ultimate Canadian Wrestling).

Well, even though we had our own backyard fed, we only wreslted from time to time, and not in a very spectacular fashion, until one day, we recruited more people, grabbed a camera, and made a weekly show called Turbulence. We were better than the first days, but still weren't very skillfull. But hey, when you aren't being professionally trained, you usually suck, plain and simple.

Now Playing starts to put on more of a show at this point. Wrestling in Max's basement, filming the shows, making special events (like PPVs only not), and eventually gaining an audience who came to watch on a regular basis.

But the great indoors cannot compare to the great outdoors, where we were able to practice more spectacular feats (considering) and draw larger crowds. What mostly improved from wrestling ouside was our aerial skills.

But after a couple of summers, it wasn't too possible for Now Playing to go and wrestle. There were no basements to wrestle in, and many people stopped showing up at UCW's events held outside, so we couldn't do it too much. Then came two days where we were special guests in HCW (Hard Core Wrestling...our "rival" backyard fed). Now Playing were to square off against one another in the oppening bout, which was of main event status (backyard wise that is). We definetly made an impact with our superior skills those two days.

But time passed once again. The following summer, we had another opportunity to show boat our skills, but not as much. We still had a lot of problems getting other people to come and wrestle. In early 1999 during the winter, Now Playing and TG (Jay Lauzon) were invited to join OCNWO (Ottawa-Carleton New World Order). It was a basement match. They also decided to stick all three of us in the opening card in a triple threat match, which was of main event status as well (again, for backyarders). We had shocked them all by performing superior moves and showing our abilities and mic skills. The match was taken throuout the entire house, with a couple of bodies flying down the stairs. But this was but a one time event.

The year passed by slowly, until the summer of 99' came. The owner of OCNWO ran into Now Playing on the streets while we were on our way to a dance. Communications were made, ane we came to a deal that Now Playing would join his fed, now renamed OWA (Omega Wrestling Alliance). It was quite a summer experience, with five different areas where we wrestled. But unfortunately, Caster was on the sidelines for awhile due to elbow surgery. After a week or so, Caster managed to win the world title through a massive conspiracy, even though he was injured. Thus, Now Playing were the only two ever to win the OWA world Heavyweight title (which doesn't mean anything anyways).

Eventually, at the end of the summer, there was no place to wrestle anymore, and we had to trash the matresses for good. This was a very sad moment. But nevertheless, there is always the next step forward. The last day with those matresses, Now Playing was truly formed as a tag team, and since then, we have done nothing but double our entertaining efforts out of the "ring", in anticipation of going back in there to show all the fans what is purely entertainment!

In September of 2000, Now Playing were invited to join a fed known as TKW (a cheap copy of the old TCW) which was located in a school gym in Western Ottawa. We had but a one day stint in there, for the "company" was badly organized. Not too long thereafter, we joined a more organized organization known as NSW (Never Surrender Wrestling), based within a gym in Vanier. Wrestling there has made us more and more succesfull. We had our pictures taken for the Ottawa Citizen, and some of those made their way into the National Examiner.

It was in NSW that Caster became arguably the biggest heel in Vanier as he started a feud with the so-named district of Ottawa. Doing this helped Caster much in developing mic skills which would make him the character he is today. The actor gimmick evolved into an alleged actor gimmick at this time as well.

Caster and Max then made their way to the Battle Ground Academy to train under the tutelage of former WCW and WWF wrestler, Dave Dalton (whom was trained by Ron Hutchinson of Sully's gym along with WWF wrestlers Edge and Christian). Both graduated in May 2002.

Caster got his first taste of an actual wrestling promo on September 22, 2001. He was one of the new guys rehearsing for a spot in the Cornerstone's Corporation for the UWA, in a show which took place in Fort Coulonge, Quebec.

Caster got his first match on February 1st, 2002, as he was the first opponent in a gauntlet against Thunder, for TWF in Buckingham, Quebec. It was basically getting stiffed and squashed for 5 minutes by a guy 3 times Caster's size.

Caster and Max squared off for the first time against each other professionally on March 1st, 2002 for TWF in Buckingham, Quebec, which was the first round in the Outaouais Championship Tournament.

Caster's first victory as a pro wrestler came on September 8th, 2002, for TWF in Gatineau, Quebec. It came against "Ruthless" Fern Rage, a 300 pounder...and cheating doesn't appear in the record books. :P

On August 23rd, 2003, Caster and Colin Oliver Carnage III unoficially proclaimed themselves the UWA Tag Team Champions. These were lost to Super Dave and Tim Jim Jimbob that very day...the entire championship debacle has been stricken from the UWA record however.

Caster captured his very first legit wrestling title by defeating "Showtime" Shaun MacMillan for the UWA Cruiserweight Championship, on October 25, 2003, in his real hometown of Ottawa, Ontario. This he held for 23 days short of a year. He lost it on his very first title defence, but as champion got the pleasure of getting a "Hardcore" beat down from Sabu.

~Roll Credits~