Height: 6'2"
Weight: 240 pounds
From: Dallas, Texas
Favorite Quote: "This is your Storm Warning!"
Finishing move: The Windfall, Downdraft
Career Highlights: 2002 King of the Ring, Intercontinental Champion (2), Tag Team Champion, Hardcore Champion

The man calling himself the Storm debuted in the World Wrestling Federation at the 2001 Royal Rumble, where he took on Tazz, and absolutely dominated the Human Wrecking Machine.  Prior to his debut, the unseen Storm played psychological games with the WWF superstars, interrupting their ring entrances to taunt them and tell them that "The Storm is coming."

Following his debut, the Storm swerved everyone when he teamed up with Chris Benoit to form "the most brutal tag team in the history of the WWF" and started their destructive rampage by hospitalizing the rumor-monger Just Joe.  They then went on to capture the Tag Team titles and continued their reign of terror.

Whether he's slapping someone in the Hammerlock Necksnapper, flattening them with the Windfall, or just beating them with an ugly-stick, the Storm has told everyone that he doesn't play favorites, because he is "a Force of Nature."

You have been warned.

The Storm's History

Matthew Skinner got his start in wrestling by training in a school in Dallas, Texas, where he also met the woman who would become his girlfriend and partner -- Claire Whittaker. Soon after finishing his training, Skinner was picked up by an independent fed on the West Coast -- California Independent Wrestling (CIW), which was headed up by a man named Billy Rose.

Rose sought to make CIW the West Coast equivalent of ECW, but lacked the funds and the range to do so. To attract attention, he sought to elevate his stars by pushing them to limits beyond the norm of most wrestlers by putting them into further "training" to toughen them up, often being downright cruel. One of his pet projects was Skinner, who refused to go along with Rose's plans. As a result, Rose and the Triumvirate -- Rose, CIW Champion "Victor E." Simpson, and their enforcer "Brick" Dickerson -- sought to put Skinner in his place. When he refused to go down, standing up to everything the Triumvirate and their cronies -- firebug and CIW American Champion "Smoker" Johner, skillet-swinging "Gap-Tooth" Tony Smiles, and CIW Tag Team Champions the Gemini -- threw at him, Skinner earned himself the moniker "The Survivor." Skinner got his own allies -- in tag-team contenders Zed & Zeta, technical wrestler Hal Maxim, and hardcore freak Nate Starr -- and fought back, eventually stripping the Triumvirate and their allies of all of their titles, even becoming CIW Champion himself.

Rose schemed against Skinner, however, and set him up for a fall, isolating him from his allies and crushing him. Soon enough, Skinner's contract in CIW was coming up on its end, and as one final fuck-you, Rose put Skinner in a grueling match against Brick to "break" him. Skinner lost the match and left CIW, recuperated in Dallas with Claire, then took a tour of shows in Japan, where he debuted his new gimmick -- "The Storm." One of the men he wrestled against in Japan was a man who called himself Viper. Viper and the Storm wrestled only two matches against one another, and they split the wins. The Storm gimmick worked so well that it wasn't long before the Storm was picked up by the WWF, and he made his debut at the Royal Rumble in 2001 against Tazz. [[Author note -- the timeline for the fic-series is much different than the current one.]]

The Storm initially had babyface momentum as he arrived in the WWF, but very quickly into his career there, he linked up with Chris Benoit to form a dominant and brutal tag team, becoming fast heels, and secured his first WWF title, the Tag Team Championship, at No Way Out after defeating Edge & Christian in a no-DQ match. One month later, however, the Storm and Benoit lost the titles in a TLC match at WrestleMania against Edge & Christian and the Hardy Boyz, dropping them to the Hardys. The Storm, who was in bad shape after the match, was berated by Benoit and finally struck with a chair, sending him off a table/scaffolding atop some ladders and out of the ring, through a pair of tables set up outside, breaking his arm and putting him on the shelf.

The Storm returned in July to exact his revenge on Benoit, becoming allies with Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Acolytes, and at Fully Loaded, the Storm defeated Benoit in a Submission Match by rendering him unconscious. The Storm, Austin, and the Acolytes then formed a stable called Lone Star, and soon found themselves embroiled in a war with Benoit, Triple H, the Radicalz, Test, and Just Joe, which culminated at Summerslam, where Austin defeated Triple H to become WWF Champion, the Acolytes destroyed Test and Just Joe in a Street Fight, and the Storm defeated Benoit in a Cage Match to become the Intercontinental (IC) Champion.

Over the next several months, the Storm feuded with Benoit and Chris Jericho over the IC title, eventually losing it to Jericho. Lone Star continued its feud with the "Alliance" (Triple H, the Radicalz, Test, and Just Joe) and eventually with Right to Censor. The Storm also ran up against his Japan rival Viper here, who was tangled in his own feud with his former stablemates Venom (Cobra, Python, and Rattler), but soon enough Viper and Venom turncoat Rattler were sidelined when the Radicalz and the rest of Venom injured them. The Storm made a new heel turn as he directed all of his attention toward Chris Jericho, the IC Champion, consumed with regaining the title he'd lost.

Around this time, which was March 2002, Claire Whittaker joined the WWF as "Rain," and immediately teamed up with the Storm -- as on-camera (and off-camera) main squeeze -- to go after Jericho. At WrestleMania, Jericho challenged the Storm to a Last Man Standing Match for the IC title, a match which Jericho lost, though the Storm wasn't too well off after the match, either.

Immediately following `Mania, however, Viper and Rattler returned to the WWF, and Viper immediately made it known he wanted the Storm's IC title. The Storm obligingly gave him a title shot at Backlash in a Hardcore Rules Match, but Viper managed an upset victory. Viper soon formed his own Alliance, with Rattler, Triple H, Test, and a masked man called Soul, and began to make a name for himself, while feuding with the Hardys and his once-girlfriend Lita.

At the end of May, however, things got hairy as Billy Rose -- who had lost CIW to a new committee when money became extra-tight, then went on to establish himself as a wrestler in his own right -- came to the WWF. The Storm, who had never forgiven Rose for the shit he'd done to him in CIW, immediately went after him, but due to a combination of Rose's initial cowardice, his allegiance to the "Faction" (Shane McMahon, Edge, Christian, Kurt Angle, and Rhino), and shrewd booking on the part of Commissioner Mick Foley and Mr. McMahon, he never got Rose in a one-on-one match... until King of the Ring. Both the Storm and Rose had made it through the qualifying rounds, and they went through their opponents (Rikishi and Chris Benoit for the Storm, and Test and the Big Show for Rose) to meet in the final round, where the Storm managed to get some measure of revenge when he pinned Rose to become the King of the Ring.

The next Monday, however, Rose got the upper hand when his old CIW enforcer, Brick, made his own debut in the WWF. Brick, acting under orders from Rose, attacked the Storm and heavily injured his back, shelving the Storm for weeks, then decimated the rest of Lone Star, shelving Stone Cold as well. Rose and the Faction continued to war with the Alliance and cross paths with a vindictive Rain until she got aid in the form of Zed & Zeta -- the Storm's old allies from CIW. Rose conspired to eliminate Rain altogether, but the return of Austin spoiled that, and almost immediately thereafter, the Storm returned as well, challenging Rose to a match at Fully Loaded.

The match was more brutal than anything either had ever done -- a Two-of-Three Falls Street Fight, with the added stipulation that the winning fall be counted under Last Man Standing Rules. Rose and the Storm went all-out on each other, splitting the first two falls, then brawling like hell through the third. Both heavily bleeding and fatigued and injured, they soon fought up the side of the TitanTron, as Rose tried to escape the Storm. At the top, the Storm caught him and hauled him off the top in a falling powerslam (dubbed the "Deathride"), but Rose showed amazing presence and countered the move in mid-air with an elbow to the back of the head (dubbed "Brain Damage"). The landing severely injured both men, and neither was able to answer the ten-count, thus ending the match in a draw.

The Storm continued to follow a secret plan for revenge on Rose, a plan he calls "the system" (as in "it all has a system"). Neither Rain nor Zed nor Zeta had full knowledge of the system, but everything that happened, be it a win or a loss, seemed to be part of it. Finally, after the Storm returned and got some measure of revenge against the Faction, then against Rose by defeating him and Angle in a tag match with Benoit. That defeat caused the Faction to split into two groups: Shane with "Team ECK" and Rose/Rhino/Brick. Then, the Storm named his stipulation for his big match against Rose: Hell in a Cell. Rose grudgingly accepted the challenge, and set about trying to settle all of his various feuds (with the Storm, with the Alliance, with the Hardys) while the Storm took a week off and visited first Connecticut to watch as the Cell was constructed, then San Antonio to pick the brain of Cell survivor Shawn Michaels.

Upon returning, the Storm then picked the brain of Triple H, and finally the Undertaker, both of whom told the Storm he had no idea what he was getting himself into. Rose escalated the feud when he ordered Rhino to brutally attack Rain, but continued to remain one step ahead of his nemesis. Finally, at Summerslam, in front of all of their former CIW comrades, the Storm and Rose collided in the Cell, where Rose showed extreme foresight and controlled much of the early part of the match, but the Storm's resilience shone through and he continually fought back, even managing to keep fighting after taking the big bump off the top of the Cell, through the announce table. At last, as the Storm tried to turn the match around, his "system" became clear. Brick, who had become a target of Rose's disdain after losing a match earlier that night, stormed into the ring and gave Rose the Breaker Chokeslam, revealing his true alliegance. The Storm hit his finisher, the Southern Lightning Driver, and pinned Rose to at last settle his seven-year quest to exact his revenge.