Midget Time: Nowhere to go but up for Short Sleeve
What a way to start a career. Short Sleeve Sampson is barely a month into the wrestling business, and he gets a call on a Sunday night from WWE.
Naturally he assumes it’s a prank call, but eventually he’s convinced that it’s on the up-and-up.
“They asked if I was interested in doing a spot the following night on ‘Monday Night Raw.’ No prior training. I’m green, I’m new,” said Sampson, who drove from Rhode Island to the Continental Airlines Arena in New Jersey for the show the next day.
A half-hour before the show is to on the air, he finds out what he’s there for: a segment with Triple-H, The Big Show, Stephanie and Shane McMahon and The Rock helping establish a WrestleMania storyline.
On his way home from the arena, Sampson had an epiphany.
“I said to myself, If I’m going to do this business, I think I’d better go get trained,” and the 4’2″, 115-pound Sampson began training with the legendary Killer Kowalski with the goal in mind of transcending the bounds of being a midget wrestler.
“I don’t necessarily want Short Sleeve Sampson to be known as a midget wrestler. I want Short Sleeve Sampson to be known as a wrestler who is a midget,” said Sampson, who wrestles matches with fellow midgets but has made his name in the business by taking on the big boys.
Which is what he does in Awesome Wrestling Entertainment. Far from being a gimmick, Sampson is as tough as they come, as evidenced by a story from a show that he worked for AWE founder and booker Marvin Ward in Georgia a few years ago.
Sampson had a spot in which he was to do a suicide dive through the ropes onto his opponent go bad. He flew through the ropes and missed his mark, effectively shooting himself as a missile into the ringside barrier, breaking his nose and orbital bones and suffering other significant facial injuries.
Ward had booked two shows for that particular Saturday, one in the afternoon and then later that night. Sampson had every reason not to wrestle the night show, but he did.
“I looked like the Elephant Man, but I still did it, because I’m committed to doing what I say I’m going to do,” said Sampson, who is committed to Ward and is committed to AWE and thinks the new promotion’s potential is “limitless.”
“We have a group of guys who have come together from different walks in this business, from different personal experiences, all of whom have had a taste of big companies and a lot fo exposure and training. We’re coming together with the same beliefs, the same visions, the same goals – to give the fans what they’ve been asking for, what they’ve been craving for years. They want to see wrestling. They don’t want to see somebody talking on a mic in the middle of a ring for 20 minutes. They’d much rather see two guys beating the crap out of each other for 20 minutes,” Sampson said.
Video: Short Sleeve Sampson
