1,560 days. That’s the longest Pokemon Wrestling Federation heavyweight championship reign in history and it belongs to Machoke.
It’s an achievement made even more impressive considering no other PWF heavyweight title reign comes close; the second closest? Lucario, who held the title for 327 straight days – an impressive run of course, but not Machoke level.
There’s one more number that has to be mentioned when it comes to Machoke: 305, the number of days he’s been sidelined with a debilitating knee injury suffered during a harrowing match-up against current PWF champion Incineroar, the Pokemon who finally ended his streak.
How much longer will Machoke be sidelined with his injury? Will the number of days he’s been out of action surpass the amount of days he was champion? And who does he intend to face in the ring when and if he makes his return?
“Uh huh, yeah. Do you hear a Jynx singing right now?”
Machoke sits across from me, a hulking sculpture in a leather reclining chair; bulging grey muscles on top of grey muscles, he’s nearly as immense now as when he first debuted in the PWF nearly twenty years ago. His voice is every bit as gruff too; it resonates throughout the room like a chainsaw.
He holds a hand to his ear like he’s trying to hear better. “Because I don’t hear a Jynx singing right now, yeah. I’ll be fighting until these 25-inch Arboks fall off. And even if they do fall off, you still won’t be able to tell me I’m done. Oh yeah!”
The Arboks to which he refers aren’t actually the evolved form of Ekans but his massive, twenty-nine-inch biceps, the biggest recorded arms in the PWF – just another record to add to the pile.
“This is where the power still lies, yeah.” He holds one of his arms up to demonstrate, flexing it. When he turns his wrist his bicep swells, veins the size of garden-hoses crackle all up and down the length of his arm and the precipitous bicep peak looks like it might tear through his skin. “The tower of power, oh yeah. Don’t be hypnotized, no. Those eyes you’re giving me are looking a little bit Drowzee, yeah.”
I assure Machoke that I’m fine, although it’s difficult not to steal a side-eyed glance at his physique from time to time during the interview.
Of course, with the passage of time, I notice not everything about Machoke has remained exactly the same. His fingers and wrists are covered in white athletic tape; he wears a black knee brace, a necessity he says, after the injury and the subsequent arthroscopic knee surgery which repaired three torn ligaments in his right knee. And of course, the belt he wears around his waist is no longer the PWF Heavyweight Championship but a lower back support strap.
“I went from the top of the mountain, yeah – the longest PWF Heavyweight championship reign in history – to the lowest of lows in the shadowy valley, yeah: being told by a bunch of Chanseys and Nurse Joys that I might never be able to wrestle again.”
The rehabilitation process hasn’t been easy. Steel-hard muscles once able to bicep curl entire Gravelers, hoist sumo wrestlers on a single finger and even lift dump trucks with one hand are now used primarily for water aerobics, yoga and rest. Plenty of rest. And icing his knee every few hours after any activity. For someone whose PokeDex entries describe him as “tireless” and “boundless in power,” the downtime has been one of the biggest challenges of Machoke’s career so far.
“From wrestling 300 days a year to icing my knee on the couch every 3 hours? Absolutely this has been one of the biggest challenges of my life. But the beat goes on, yeah. What’s surprised me the most hasn’t been the physical pain because I knew that was coming, yeah. It’s been the mental pain. Being unable to get right back at it, brother. But the beat goes on despite the pain, yeah.”
Pain is usually reserved for Machoke’s opponents in the hundreds of matches he’s had over the years, some of which are considered the finest in PWF history. His 45-minute victory over Conkeldurr at Anistar City Assault ‘15 is only one example, a match described by wrestling analyst Professor Sutton Spruce as “a new paradigm for big-time, barn-burner brawls in Pokemon professional wrestling. Not only a slobberknocker of epic proportions, with Machokeslams off the top rope and Vital Throws through tables wreaking havoc on poor Conkeldurr’s body but also a display of surprising athletic proficiency and in-ring prowess, particularly from Machoke, who looked like he barely broke a sweat in nearly an hour of high-intensity wrestling with very few rest holds.”
When I tell Machoke that he’s among the top ten wrestlers (9th on the list, to be exact) with the most matches rated 4 stars or higher in Professor Spruce’s PWF MatchDex, he just shrugs his shoulders and smirks.
“I’m no Hitmonlee flipping all around the ring throwing twenty different variations of kicks or some razzle-dazzle, flashy Flare Blitzer like Blaziken but there’s one thing I know I can do just as well as anyone in that ring and that’s connect with the crowd, give the fans what they want and beat the daylights out of any Pokemon who shares the ring with me. Dig it?”
When it comes to connecting with, or more specifically, astonishing the crowd, one has to mention Machoke’s Rage in a Cage match with Mankey at PokeBrawl XIV.
“Oh yeah,” Machoke mutters. “That match: we took it to the limit in that one and back, yeah. It unjustifiably put me in a position I’d rather not be in.” He puts a finger up to tell me to wait a minute.
The result of Machoke throwing Mankey from the top of the steel cage during their match at PokeBrawl XIV/Art by: @mehchall
During the hellish match, Machoke and Mankey, battered and bloodied from ramming one another into the steel cage walls from a multitude of angles for ten straight minutes, both ended up on top of the 20-foot enclosure, grappling for dear life and threatening to fall through at a moment’s notice to the absolute consternation of the crowd.
“Once we made our way up there to the top I felt like even the slightest shift in weight and BOOM! I was going to fall through.
Yeah, I thought Mankey had me. He was gripping with those paws of his super tight to the cage and low kicking me in the back of the head and I thought, ‘I’m gonna fall almost two stories through the cage right now and break my neck right there on the canvas.’ But somehow, some way, I managed to stay on top.”
Machoke managed to stay on top in the two’s struggle on high by throwing Mankey over seventeen feet from the top of the cage through the announcer’s table below.
“That throw went in slow motion, brother. I felt like I was watching Mankey fall for what seemed like ten whole minutes. I was praying he hit the table and not the bare cement. I was thinking, ‘Yeah, this is what I’m gonna be known for. Not the longest title reign in PWF history but for killing Mankey.’”
Luckily for everyone in the Wyndon Stadium that night, Mankey, after plummeting through the announcer’s table with a thunderous crash, survived. After being arranged onto a stretcher by a pair of sobbing Chansies, Mankey suddenly arose from the wreckage of the table, ready to continue the fight.
“I’ll still have people stop me on the street, Pokemon trainers, former tournament battling Pokemon, older Pokemon who don’t look like they’d be the type to watch Pokemon professional wrestling – you name it. They’ll say, ‘Man, that time you Machokeslammed Mankey through the top of the cage’ or ‘By God, how did Mankey survive that?’”
He shakes his head, as if the memories of the match are too painful to recall. “I might be the epitome of Machoke Madness but I gotta give credit where credit is due: I honestly don’t know how Mankey did it. Being thrown nearly twenty feet through an announcer’s table like that. He’s a tough little son of a Muk, that Mankey. Probably the toughest in the whole PWF. I didn’t even want to do that spot, truth be told, getting up on top of the cage like that. But he just kept coming back and coming at me. He’s almost too tough for his own good.”
When the match was finished, the entirety of Wyndon Stadium gave the two a standing ovation that lasted nearly five minutes in length. Machoke says that the crowd’s energy that night was rivaled only by the crowd in Nimbasa City the night he won the belt from Heracross and started the historic reign that will likely remain at the top of the record books for quite some time.
“The crowd was just non-stop chanting ‘You deserve it.’ I nearly broke down right in the middle of the ring, yeah. All I could do was kneel down in the center of the ring, hold the PWF Championship belt in my arms like a kid and revel in that moment, yeah.”
Machoke explains that it was moments like that which made his difficult journey to become a professional wrestler — a career choice which almost didn’t pan out, all the more gratifying in the end.
“Twenty years ago I was working for a moving company. It was steady work, steady pay. When I told my parents that I wanted to spend less time at Machoke Movers and become a professional wrestler, they looked at me like two Dodrio heads had sprouted on my shoulders. They weren’t happy when I started training to become a wrestler and was basically living out of one of the gym trainer’s discarded PokeBalls for a few months. Sometimes I had to sneak straight from the moving job to the wrestling academy and practice, fall asleep for a few hours and then do it all over again the next day. Luckily, the people in charge and Commissioner Alakazam saw the potential in me. And the rest is history, brother.”
When I ask him what the first thing he’d like to do when he returns to the PWF, Machoke just smiles knowingly.
“Incineroar, I hate your guts! You think you’re really something, don’t you? Yeah. You think you’re the cream of the crop. Well, your cream’s about to get real sour because in the PWF I’m the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. Comparatively speaking, next to the longest-reigning champion in PWF history you are nothing but a grain of sand in the Asado Desert.
I’m gonna Machokeslam your mangy hide right in the middle of the ring, yeah. Then I’m gonna place one foot on your flea-ridden carcass for the three count and get my PWF Championship belt back, oh yeah. Dig it?”
What will happen when Machoke makes his return to action in the Pokemon Wrestling Federation? Do you think he can recapture the Pokemon Wrestling Federation Heavyweight Championship title from current champion Incineroar? We’ll keep you updated.
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