A Brief History Of Lance Hoyt And Why He Wants To Kill Me
Wrestling fans may know Lance Hoyt from his time in WWE as Vance Archer, where he teamed with Curt Hawkins and was notable enough to be in a pre-show battle royal at WrestleMania XXVI and make the roster of the WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2011 video game. You may also know him as a 2-time NWA World Tag Team Champion in TNA, where he was also one half of ‘The Rock ‘n Rave Infection.’ It was him, Jimmy Rave and Christy Hemme cosplaying Slash and carrying Guitar Hero controllers to the ring. Cooler fans know him as New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Lance Archer, 2-time IWGP Tag Team Champion, Suzukigun member and one half of Killer Elite Squad. His nickname is “the American Psycho.”
The “the” is very important.
As you (hopefully) know, I’m the ring announcer for a wrestling promotion in Austin called Inspire Pro Wrestling. We’ve worked with a lot of international talent so far — New Japan’s Takaaki Watanabe, for example — and Hoyt’s competed at a couple of our events. The first was in a tag team match, wherein I neglected to announce him as “The American Psycho.” “We’re in America,” I thought. “What am I supposed to do, call him The Psycho?” Regardless, I left out the nickname, and that got him heated. Here’s what it looked like:
I’ve got a pretty big forehead, and like half of it was covered in Hoyt-spittle.
But hey, I forgot the nickname. I deserve to be yelled at a little. Time passes and we’re at our June event, the hilariously named CLASH AT THE BASH, and Hoyt is challenging the Inspire Pro Champion ‘One Man’ Mike Dell for the title. I’ve been looking at flashcards that say SAY THE NICKNAME all day. Hoyt walks to the ring with a bottle of water, gets into the ring, walks right up to me and spits the entire thing in my face. Full on ocean spray. I’m like, “sigh, okay,” and when he circles back around, he throws the bottle in my face.
I should note here that I am not a wrestler. I’m barely even a wrestling personality. I’m a guy with a blog whose dad was a radio DJ so he’s got a nice enough voice to say wrestler names. I’m a pacifist vegan loser with a blog. What am I supposed to do, spear him? So I suck it up and begin the ring announcements. Before I can even get to the nickname, he walks up and starts shoving me in the side of the head, yelling “do it right.” It is pretty hard to do anything right when a giant shouty guy is shoving you in the face. Eventually I get through it, he walks around the ring with his arms over his head and I move on with my life.
As a ring announcer, passive-aggression is my most useful tool. I announce Dell thusly: “From Jersey City, New Jersey … [point to Hoyt] kick his ass ‘One Man’ Mike Dell.” And then I fled, because Hoyt Hands were about an inch from ripping off my head. Hoyt and Dell wrestled, and Dell retained. I have not come in contact with Hoyt directly since.
That, uh, did not prevent Hoyt from going backstage and yelling into a camera about how he’s going to find me and kill me.
So here we are. Our next event is on July 27 and Hoyt isn’t announced to be there, but who knows. I could take the coward’s route and just write my response to him on the Internet, because 1) I’m pretty good at the Internet and 2) it’s way easier to not get shoot-murdered this way. I’m not a wrestler. I’m not training to be one. I’m not secretly Sami Zayn over here writing under an assumed identity. What am I supposed to do when a gigantic screaming guy starts spitting in my face and pushing me around without me being all, “yeah, no, sure, it’s fine, beat me up, I think that’d be cool?”
I’m going to give “saying it in public” a try. Or, you know, worst case scenario I’m going to chicken out and record a YouTube rant with bad sound. I just wanted to put this all out here in case I end up dead for real, and Burnsy’s suddenly writing the Raw report.
