Trapped Like a Rat

"You got a lot more muscles since the last time I did this to you." So says the suave, unruffable brute Eli Black as he slams Johnny Deep to the wall and starts feeding chunks of the pretty boy to the paper shredder. Eli sometimes complains that UCW offers him no real competition (though so far he has cannily evaded a one-on-one contest with Axel, his true nemesis). Eli complains, but he doesn't seem really to mind. He's quite happy stomping the internal organs out of lesser talents. It's great to make money hurting people. I'm not certain of this, but I've a sneaking suspicion Eli would do it for free.

Of course, Johnny's wispy innocence is a false front. The guy's a vicious sadist, as I have pointed out before in these pages and as he again demonstrates at about the nine-minute mark of this video. However, Eli encourages him to explore his masochistic side for most of this match. Everything the wide-eyed boy is getting is well deserved, mind you. It's only ironic because Eli's the guy who's serving it up ... again. Eli promises to wear Johnny down slowly this time. He also promises that, when he's done, there won't be much left of Johnny to see. Eli's plan for the next thirty minutes of Johnny Deep's young life is slow and painful annihilation.

It's nothing personal. Granted, Eli might want to destroy Deep for botching Eli's crack at the UCW championship belt*. But that's inconsistent with Eli's psychology, more reptilian than rational. Eli would want to destroy Deep even if Deep had just handed him the keys to a spanking new Alfa Romeo. You cross Eli and he wants to hurt you. You do Eli a favor and he wants to hurt you no less. I'm pretty sure that if you laid Eli out on an operating table and drilled into his skull, you'd find a small thumbnail-sized brain, whose single lobe would flash the same signal over and over: Whup Somebody's Ass. He's a killing machine.

Companies like UCW book Eli for his amazing facility for destruction. Scumbags like Johnny Deep have to be dealt with, but he's too pretty for some of the other fighters to touch. They don't want to muss up that boyish face, that disarming smile. Who can blame them? Still, under all the twinkly charm, Johnny's rotten. Fortunately, Eli doesn't give a shit what a victim looks like. He's an equal opportunity annihilator. And he's back from vacation--rested, relaxed, and ready to rumble. For Eli, "pretty" is just one more layer of an opponent to peel off and feed to the flies. And this match--fairly representative of the man's work in general--is thirty minutes of Eli feeding Johnny, slightly more muscular now, to the flies.

* I'm not sure of the chronology here. Some of the internal evidence suggests this match was shot before Eli's shot at the belt last month (reviewed here).

Images edited on request (17 Feb. 2014)