Michael Oku remembers Mad Kurt.
In December of 2023, it was announced that Kurtis "Mad Kurt" Chapman had sadly passed away at the age of 26. The loss was felt throughout the wrestling world, but nowhere more so than in the UK independent scene. In memory of Kurt, 'Mad Kurt Forever' has been set for March 5th, with all proceeds from the event going to the Chapman family.
One man who knew Kurt very well is British Heavyweight Champion Michael Oku. During a recent interview with Fightful's Corey Brennan, Michael shared a story involving banana bread that became a running joke between the two friends.
"Yeah, for me, the most positive memory that I have is that he was a great friend. I've got a story about like banana bread, and that's for some reason in my head, it's been in my head recently in these last few days, because we'd always try and see if we could meet up if there's like either a show happening or even if there's not a show happening, we'd make sure that we'd bring him from Portsmouth to London. I'd always be like, 'listen, I'll even half on a hotel with you. I could stay at mine, but I'll half on a hotel with you.' I probably shared more hotels with Kurtis than anybody in this world. Then like, we'd make sure we go get some good food to get some breakfast and we saw a place that said that it had banana bread. I'm trying to remember why we were so fixated on this place being a good place. We're like, if a place has banana bread, they have to be a good establishment and then we ordered the banana bread. It was in a place in Brixton. We waited, went for the banana bread. He ordered it, not me. I said, 'I'm just going to get normal food,' and he said, 'I'm going to get banana bread.' I had like a Hollandaise egg omelet thing. It was the smallest slice of banana bread ever. That from there on in, and the next few years, if we saw anything to do with banana bread, we'd just send that photo to each other with no context, no caption. That would be us just knowing that he was swindled out of life. Because it was like eight pounds as well. So that's why he thought it would be like a full meal. So he got absolutely scammed with banana bread. I just remember taking the photo of him, him being disappointed at his slice. Of course, we both make fun of... We're the ones that were OK to make fun of each other being small and skinny. So it's like, well, we're not with a with a breakfast like that. You know, no wonder. No wonder you're not getting any bigger. No wonder you're not putting on any size. So, yeah, that's one of the memories that I was just recently thinking about in the last few days."
Michael would go on to touch on how Mad Kurt was someone that always made the locker room around him smile.
"There's just a countless number of things that people could think of that makes you laugh about him and he really was that guy that when you saw him, you was just was so happy to see him because you knew you're just going to smile in a locker room. I think that's the idea of what the show is going to be to tribute him. We're going to give all the proceeds to to his family to help them and to support them. But also it's going to be an idea of just to remember like how fun he was and make sure that we have the silliest show in in his honor."
Mad Kurt Forever is scheduled to take place on March 5th from 126 Grosvenor Street in Manchester. Lio Rush, Michael Oku and more names have already been confirmed for the show. You can read more about it here.
Elsewhere in the same interview, Oku discussed his match with Will Ospreay at this weekend's RevPro High Stakes event. You can read more here.
