WL_Yo-yo Champ Transcript

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- Mark Hayward: My favorite part about the show is
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the feeling that I get when I can make an entire room of people laugh and have a good time.

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[yo-yo swiveling]

And that is so special and so magical.

My name is Mark Hayward. I'm a comedy yo-yo man and world yo-yo champion.

My favorite thing about a yo-yo, strangely, is that it spins. There's just something about that that really resonates in my brain.

You can do so many interesting things that seem not real, that are sort of separated from normal reality.
[yo-yo spinning metallically]

My favorite trick is 'Darth Vader.' It's the second most complex trick that I know. A friend of mine taught it to me at a yo-yo party, and, yeah, those things exist. 

It's a picture trick. You make a picture with the string of Darth Vader's face, and then, of course, I get to say, "Luke, I'm your father," and then people know who it is.

I've been very fortunate to get to go to a lot of places because of what I do for a living and also for a hobby. I've gotten to tour all over the United States from coast to coast, but I've also been lucky enough that I have toured in Australia, China. I've been to Sweden, South Africa. I did a tour in Iceland and, of course, Canada and Mexico.

I do have a lot of pretty great resume items. I'm a world yo-yo champion. I have two Guinness World Records, one for yo-yoing, one for spin tops. My juggling team won the International Jugglers Association Annual Competition. So, I'm a world juggling champion. I'm also a spin top champion. I haven't gotten the world title yet, but I have gotten as far as the Midwest Regional Spin Top Championship.
[spin top gyrates rapidly]

Spin tops are something that almost all Americans recognize, but most people have never even seen one spun. So, it's a rounded toy with a point. You wind it with the string, you throw it, and it spins on the point. 
[whirling]

At the level that I'm at with my spin top friends, we throw the top, we generally catch it in our hand or catch it on the string and then manipulate it doing various tricks in the air.
[revolving swiftly]

The newest record I have is for the furthest distance to walk the dog with a yo-yo.
[yo-yo thumps on floor]

It felt so good to get that world record because I've been trying to get it for, I think it was like seven years. So, when I got it, and they told me I got it on camera, and I had friends around me, it was the best.

When I'm at a party, the very first question people always ask when I say that I'm a professional comedy yo-yo man...
The first question is, "What?" The next question is always, "Really? You can make a living at that?" 

And I understand people's reactions when they say that because I have that reaction, too. I know a guy who is a professional jump roper. I know a guy who Is a professional bubble blower. I mean, how is that possible? But I'm a yo-yo guy. I'm in no position to think that what they do is not a real job. 

I think it's an important lesson that, if you can think of it, if you can persist, and you can be creative enough to figure it out, you can make a career out of doing anything.
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