Post by The Dragon on Jan 28, 2023 14:32:20 GMT -5
Part 1 - Reluctant Storyteller
Do you ever grow tired of telling stories?
I do.
Do you go through moments where the whole thing seems so pointless, such a feeble worthless exercise?
It used to be super rare, but I have to admit it’s becoming more common, the older I get.
Now, I'm not talking about the whole self-deprecating ‘I'm no good I suck and who's reading it anyway what's the point of all this’ thing, no. What I'm talking about is how fulfilling is this for me.
What a surprise, me making it about me within the first few paragraphs? Well I like to be predictable.
One thing you can expect out of me is longevity. It’s why I’m still here, over a decade later, and in that time? I’ve been let down, a lot.
It starts to get draining after a while.
Now I’m a very all-or-nothing kind of person, if you hadn’t been able to tell. British guys just didn’t make the NFL, back in my day. Even now it’s so rare that it becomes a story in itself. I went all-in, and I made something impossible happen. Football stopped working out, so I went all-in on wrestling. I’ve achieved things that so many, even those who have been active in this sport as long as I have would kill to have on their resume. If I’m in, even if my time is limited, I’m IN. I’m invested. It’s burrowed out a little corner of my heart and when it goes away well FUCK does it hurt like hell.
For every one of me…there’s a hundred who will have a bad day and flake out on you.
There’s a hundred who will pull the plug.
There’s a hundred who will throw their toys out of the pram, stomp their feet and say they’re not doing it anymore.
To those people I say ‘fuck you’.
To those people I say I hate you for trying to pull me down to their level.
To myself I say ‘wake the fuck up’ for letting them get close sometimes.
Wrestling is like a three-tiered pyramid. It has the likes of me, the success stories…and I’m not talking winners as such, I’m talking about the people who get to do this thing we love. Then there's those that put in the effort, they want it so badly, but they don't have the 'look' or the contacts or they can't get their foot in the door. There's only so many spots. We're privileged to hold them, and there's many waiting in the wings who *could* do a job, if they ever got the opportunity.
Then there's the no-hopers.
Those that abandon ship before it even ran aground.
I’ve had many students walk through my doors, and you can tell right away their heart isn’t really in it. They’re laden with excuses…this niggling injury…that thing that stops them keeping to a regular diet…that time in March when they’re going to be really busy and might have to skip a couple of training sessions…I can read the quitters a mile off…
But that doesn’t stop me from trying.
I’m an anomaly.
I was always the put-up-or-shut-up guy.
If I fall, I dust myself off and I go again.
People expect me to be the same hardass with my students as I am with myself, but I’m not.
Even when I know.
Even when they bailed on me four or five times before. I’d let them come back.
I’ve willingly wasted my energy in situations where I know I’m going to get mugged off.
Why?
Well…if I don’t…they’ll move on to someone else, pull the same old shit.
Claim their next victim.
I’ve seen it happen, countless times. I have to sit back and watch, resisting the temptation to warn them of what’ll be coming for them in just a few short months.
A bunch of wasted time, spent energy, and a story left permanently unwritten.
I’ll tell them all, one day. Even if I have to do it myself.
The truth is, not everything can be all perfect all the time. In fact it’s far from it. If you’re trying to break into a sport as intense as ours, if you’re trying to write a novel, paint a picture, learn an instrument. I’m not sure how much I buy into the 10,000 hours to master something figure but sometimes you have to be a fucking realist. This stuff is hard, otherwise we’d all be doing it, living our best lives, doing something we dream of and getting paid for it. There are high ceilings, and they’re thick. It takes a level of commitment to break through and you know what? You have to roll with the punches.
Adversity makes a great story. And in reality, that’s all we’re trying to do as we go through life.
Even for me, ‘Mr. I’m Only In It For The Wrestling’. That’s a story all in itself. People like me…we achieve things…we keep on accomplishing these incredible feats in our fields because…we have to. Success is all we have. It’s what keeps the contracts coming. It’s what keeps the phone ringing. It’s what makes people want to pay money to come and see me, it’s what paints a target on my back. It’s what earns World title shots. It’s what earns World titles. It spins its own yarn, a George and the Dragon story…except we spend the whole time looking around to try and find our George.
My career depends on living up to a narrative, whether I like it or not.
Sometimes that gets to me.
Then I turn to the thing that got me here in the first place. I put my head down and I push through. I bury my head in the sand if I have to, and yet, nothing changes.
I should be Chris Page’s worst fucking nightmare. I take weeks-long breaks from social media. Open the app every now and then just to clear the notifications, stop them from nagging at me, maybe reply to DMs from those select few people who connect with my energy. The types that'll sit with me in a room with me, in silence, just be in that moment with me. Those very few that actually understand what goes on in my mind. Those select couple of people that actually, truly GET me.
Sometimes I don’t want to promote.
Sometimes I don’t want to trash talk an opponent.
Sometimes I don’t want to be present.
Sometimes I don’t want to stand by while watching one of my friends willingly get abused all over again, by the same people that have treated them like shit before.
Sometimes I don’t want to invest in others, and their stories. Not when it all crashing down in a month or so is an inevitability.
That should make me a nightmare for the bottom line…but still…people still want to face me. Companies still want to hire me. Bookers still want to put me on shows. Referees still keep holding my hand up in victory. Fans still chant my name. My face still appears on posters. My phone keeps on ringing. My schedule could look so busy that not even Kayfabe Airlines and a time turner could get me to every obligation. Even when I’m absent, my presence screams from the rooftops.
I’ve transcended.
There’s a lot of people in my life who get treated like shit, regularly. It’s like they’re almost predisposed to it, as if they can’t let anyone in unless they’ve already been a victim of this person, or they’re almost guaranteed to be in the future. I guess I find myself predisposed to worry about them, to be protective of them. After all, why would I want them to go through the whole process, only to get hurt at the end? Guess that’s the hero complex talking, like it makes my cape flap extra hard in the wind.
After a while, that gets fucking exhausting.
I guess I need to make a few changes.
After all, the clock is ticking. My time in this business is finite, it always has been. I didn’t know the timeframe out of hand, at least not at the beginning. I guess I was expecting my knee to blow out at some random point and that’d be game over, time for me to work on my golf swing and live it up in Miami, take a little early retirement, but I know it now. I’m only giving myself maybe a year or so, then it’s game over.
I can’t afford to leave any unfinished business.
I can’t afford to waste any energy in the wrong places.
With people who don’t appreciate it.
On people who never learn their fucking lesson.
People like me…except up until now.
If you thought I was laser focussed before? Well…you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Peter Vaughn had a great 2022, sure.
2023 is mine.
Part 1.5 - Excerpt from a story never told…
The reality was plain as day…I wasn’t him. I would never…no…COULD never be him. That was my weakness, in this situation…and also my biggest strength. I would never damage her heart quite the same, ever. It would never be perfect, that was impossible, but when I made mistakes I would pick up every piece and help glue it back together, make it stronger. I wouldn’t delete myself from her life, because her needs far outweighed my own. I would look into the face of his son and I would step up, not turn tail and run. Even if we would never be joined by blood, I would challenge anyone to doubt he was anyone but my own in spirit.
It would always be a struggle, but I have to accept that I could never be his replacement. That was beyond my capability, we were two complete polar opposites, and the more I kicked myself for that, the more I was going to drive myself crazy. The more I tried, the more I would become something I would grow to hate, to despise. The more I was going to crumble, and falter, and fall…no use to anyone.
And of course…I could always carry on down this path and walk away…’save’ myself…disappear into my own mind, like I already had, run away for good, like I’d toyed with more than ever before, get myself a plane ticket to Europe, and finally head back home to Denmark…finally carry out that threat like I’d always said I would…except this time I’d be doing it alone.
It’d be me, finally drawing a line under that experiment that I’d started when I was just seven years old…signing off Noah and Vera and calling it done in thick black marker…
…or I could accept reality, go all-in with the cards I was dealt, and make the best of it that I can. The situation wasn’t changing, after all, it is what it is. My name isn’t Kelly Clinton, and I can’t fill the void he left.
Instead - My name is Noah Sørensen, and the one thing I can really do, in a situation like this? Is to be a better man than he ever was.
Part 2 - Gothika…the horror movie everyone disliked
I see your monsters, I see your pain. Tell me your problems, I'll chase them away. I'll be your lighthouse, I'll make it okay. When I see your monsters, I'll stand there so brave
Well look who became a crowd favourite overnight, huh? Guess I didn't even need to do that cheap Raider Nation bit after all, they’re already well on board with the DRAGON…DRAGON…DRAGON…what a bunch of fans we have. Yeah of course, we know how it goes, I've said it a billion times. I don't go out of my way to try and draw attention to myself, if it’s not in a ring, with an opponent, and a match to win, but it just goes to show that doing it my way gets the results I want anyway.
I am making myself pretty impossible to ignore.
Peter Vaughan likes to talk about inevitability, and given the year that he had in 2022, I will completely accept that. This roster has a lot of talent on it, but he has the hot hand, his position at the top of the tree since the relaunch is probably pretty justified.
But that's not the only inevitability.
Now it's some ancient proverb that the early bird gets the worm but how about this one? The second mouse gets the cheese, because as of right now, everything is playing exactly into my hands. After all, the World title, to me, should be decided only one way. Two competitors In a ring, in a fight to the death.
The West Coast Rumble was a crap-shoot. An entertaining one, nonetheless, but to get to the point that we both did, the last two men standing, you have to ride your luck as much as you do your wrestling ability. We knew Peter took a certain number of lucky breaks out there, didn't we?
My chance at the title is some two months away. This needs a long game. The foundations are being laid, and it starts right here with my first opponent.
Now Goth…Goth’s interesting to me.
My opponent this week did something that very few people in Sin City Wrestling were ever able to accomplish, and that was to beat me one-on-one. At the time Goth had been out of the game for a little while, and I don't think anyone really knew what version of him was gonna show up, including me. Did I get caught off guard? Not really. I can’t say I was planning on him showing up on top form, but I’d prepared for it nonetheless. After all, there is a very select group of people that can stand together with me out there. They are the kind of people that hold World titles, as he has, and I have. There's a kind of people that push through into the final four of over-the-top Battle Royals. They're the kind of people that make very worthy adversaries for someone like me. The perfect opponent to tool up for that big opportunity with.
I feel like I’ve said this before, but I’m not invincible. Nobody’s invincible, it’s just that we all sit on our levels. There’s this invisible skill ceiling, and there’s me sitting right there at the top, alongside the men and women with the potential to win World titles. That means…if you’re not there already, you have to break through to even have an outside shot. And if you’re standing alongside me? Well then you’d better bring your A-game, or the result is the same.
Okay, maybe that’s a me thing. I challenge you to find anyone as consistent. I don’t know what a day off is. I struggle to sit still. If I so much as think about taking a day off, I’ll kick myself so hard that it’ll be months before the thought even crosses my mind. I’m a well-oiled machine. I push myself, without overtraining. I stretch myself, without going over the edge. This is what I do. This is what I’ve made a career out of, and trust me I’ve got a lot of experience when it comes to preparing for the big opportunities.
Now there are two schools of thought when it comes to preparing for a world title. I've tried them both and I know which one suits me right down to the ground.
There's the easy route: get yourself a bit of momentum by beating a few softer opponents on the way to that big match. Just take your foot off the gas a bit. After all, everyone wants to take a shot at the number one contender, right? Whoever they happen to be. I took a little trip back to Sin City Wrestling a couple of weeks ago and that exact thing happened to me. Milo Kasey, former Roulette champion, looking to use me as his springboard into something more.
You lose 100% of the shots you don’t take, right? Well…he took it. And he lost. And he’s just one in a long line of willing volunteers who step up like lambs to the slaughter as they try, and fail, to prove that they should be in the spot I hold right now. Goth is no different, right? I mean, take out the number one contender, that puts him on the hit-list for the next opportunity that comes along.
Same for anyone. I’m in a lot of crosshairs right now, but I’m used to it. I’m a moving target.
It’s another inevitability with Miles. He wasn’t ready. He even admitted it. Maybe I’ll crash and burn, or words to that effect, and if there’s even any doubt? Well we can call that game over. I feed on fear, dine out on doubt. After all, like I said in part one…narsissist. Believe the world revolves around me, remember? As if I’m ever going to expect anything other than another notch in the win column.
You’re selfish. You can’t see past yourself. You’re a control freak.
Yup. That’s me. I’m the problem, it’s me.
You might ask if Goth is a nightmare pick for me, but far from it. He’s EXACTLY who I want. I need the test. I need to see that I learned from my mistakes, I improved, I’m a more worthy champion now than I was a year or two years ago. It could be the difference between winning it now, or not. It could just be the difference between keeping the belt a month or a year. After all…his manifesto and mine sound extremely similar but I have to ask…what is the motivation?
“I am a man of wealth and taste.”
So why straight-up domination, I have to ask? Goth is not a monster, in the traditional sense of the word. He isn’t hell-bent on taking anything with a pulse and snapping the limbs off because he gets a sadistic kick out of it. At least…that’s not what it seems. I mean looking at him…he seemed like the sort who pulled the legs off spiders when he was a kid…but then again, so did your fucking accountant, so that doesn’t make him special.
It just means that jet black hair of his came from a bottle, not a reflection of the colour of his soul.
To me he just seems like a wannabe in a dark suit.
So why does Goth want to ‘own everyone’ like he ‘owned’ everyone in the company he used to run? That’s kinda…missing the point isn’t it? Did someone gift him Fifty Shades of Grey for Christmas? Another big misunderstanding, one more wannabe ‘domme’ out there who thinks they just have to beat up on a girl enough and they’ll become your possession? No. That definitely isn’t how this works. That isn’t how any of this works. I’ve never signed a contract on the basis of anyone ‘owning’ me. I come here to do a job, there’s a difference. Besides defeating whoever I’m pointed at? I don’t play up to anyone’s whim.
Let me tell you what makes me tick, after all it’s important to be self-aware in this day and age, right? I am a raging narcissist. There, I said it. I believe the whole world revolves around me, and the way I reinforce that is to win a bunch of wrestling matches. I need to work through everyone to feed the narrative, put myself on the top of the tree because that’s where I BELIEVE I belong. That’s my motivation, my inspiration, the fuel that stokes the fire, the thing that keeps me working harder, for longer, than anyone else in the building.
You think I’m going to give up control to anyone, let alone Goth and his misplaced ego?
I won’t be ‘owned’ by anyone. I can’t be ‘bought’. Money doesn’t talk in my world.
There’s no room for anyone else but me, anyway.
Goth may have his aspirations, his talk about climbing all the way to the top, taking out everyone in his way, but all he’s doing is to try and steal my idea. It’s how I started from moment one, my first introduction. It’s how I’ve conducted myself since. It’s how I conducted myself in our previous place of residence, too. World Champion. Blast from the Past winner, twice. Underground champion. Two-time Underground tag champion. Future Hall of Famer, no doubt. The man who, no matter how long I’m away for, can step in at late notice and prove to all comers that I am, and will always be, one of the most dominant forces to ever step in that six-sided ring.
Not today, Satan. Not today.
I’m better at it.
I always will be, until I hang it up.
Until no stone is left unturned, and on my terms.
I’m as regular as Sonya Benson trying to schmoz someone.
I’m as regular as The Punisher doing nothing with his ‘minority ownership’.
I’m more prolific than John Cable’s little side hustles.
I’ve got more chill than Chris Page and his pot habit.
There’s more darkness in my soul than Goth could ever dream of.
Want me to wear a long coat and some eye makeup to prove it?
Mr. Nice Guy, Cross. Well well well…that isn’t going to last forever. After all there’s a whole lot of anger that needs to get purged before my time here is up. What kind of a retirement would it be, anyway, if I went away with a whole lot of pent-up anger, after quitting the only real chance I have to flush that out of my system. The message to Goth is similar to the message to Samantha Voxx. I’m not going out there to be fucking nice to you. I’m not going to lower myself to the kind of level of bowing to you, letting you have the slightest hint of a thought that you have anything over me. Control, a victory, even some semblance of success. You’re barking up the wrong tree, knocking on the wrong door, you name it. I’ll make an example of you, because you seem to want the same things as I do. I’ll make an example of you, because you came close to being where I am, but you fell short. I’ll make an example of you, because you want to assert your dominance over a division that is already mine for the taking.
I’ll make an example of you, because you’re talking of controlling something that was never yours to ‘possess’.
Should have kept your mouth shut.
The World Heavyweight title, the pinnacle. The World Heavyweight title, the thing we all aspire to. We hold it, but we don’t own it. We hold it, but we don’t control it. It’s bigger than one man, and it always will be. We just have to take those chances when they come along, hold onto it for as long as we can.
You’ve done this even longer than I have.
You should have known better.
That was your mistake, your failure, and you’re going to be made to pay for it.
Let go of your ambitions for the World Heavyweight title.
It’ll be mine. Long before yours.
Do you ever grow tired of telling stories?
I do.
Do you go through moments where the whole thing seems so pointless, such a feeble worthless exercise?
It used to be super rare, but I have to admit it’s becoming more common, the older I get.
Now, I'm not talking about the whole self-deprecating ‘I'm no good I suck and who's reading it anyway what's the point of all this’ thing, no. What I'm talking about is how fulfilling is this for me.
What a surprise, me making it about me within the first few paragraphs? Well I like to be predictable.
One thing you can expect out of me is longevity. It’s why I’m still here, over a decade later, and in that time? I’ve been let down, a lot.
It starts to get draining after a while.
Now I’m a very all-or-nothing kind of person, if you hadn’t been able to tell. British guys just didn’t make the NFL, back in my day. Even now it’s so rare that it becomes a story in itself. I went all-in, and I made something impossible happen. Football stopped working out, so I went all-in on wrestling. I’ve achieved things that so many, even those who have been active in this sport as long as I have would kill to have on their resume. If I’m in, even if my time is limited, I’m IN. I’m invested. It’s burrowed out a little corner of my heart and when it goes away well FUCK does it hurt like hell.
For every one of me…there’s a hundred who will have a bad day and flake out on you.
There’s a hundred who will pull the plug.
There’s a hundred who will throw their toys out of the pram, stomp their feet and say they’re not doing it anymore.
To those people I say ‘fuck you’.
To those people I say I hate you for trying to pull me down to their level.
To myself I say ‘wake the fuck up’ for letting them get close sometimes.
Wrestling is like a three-tiered pyramid. It has the likes of me, the success stories…and I’m not talking winners as such, I’m talking about the people who get to do this thing we love. Then there's those that put in the effort, they want it so badly, but they don't have the 'look' or the contacts or they can't get their foot in the door. There's only so many spots. We're privileged to hold them, and there's many waiting in the wings who *could* do a job, if they ever got the opportunity.
Then there's the no-hopers.
Those that abandon ship before it even ran aground.
I’ve had many students walk through my doors, and you can tell right away their heart isn’t really in it. They’re laden with excuses…this niggling injury…that thing that stops them keeping to a regular diet…that time in March when they’re going to be really busy and might have to skip a couple of training sessions…I can read the quitters a mile off…
But that doesn’t stop me from trying.
I’m an anomaly.
I was always the put-up-or-shut-up guy.
If I fall, I dust myself off and I go again.
People expect me to be the same hardass with my students as I am with myself, but I’m not.
Even when I know.
Even when they bailed on me four or five times before. I’d let them come back.
I’ve willingly wasted my energy in situations where I know I’m going to get mugged off.
Why?
Well…if I don’t…they’ll move on to someone else, pull the same old shit.
Claim their next victim.
I’ve seen it happen, countless times. I have to sit back and watch, resisting the temptation to warn them of what’ll be coming for them in just a few short months.
A bunch of wasted time, spent energy, and a story left permanently unwritten.
I’ll tell them all, one day. Even if I have to do it myself.
The truth is, not everything can be all perfect all the time. In fact it’s far from it. If you’re trying to break into a sport as intense as ours, if you’re trying to write a novel, paint a picture, learn an instrument. I’m not sure how much I buy into the 10,000 hours to master something figure but sometimes you have to be a fucking realist. This stuff is hard, otherwise we’d all be doing it, living our best lives, doing something we dream of and getting paid for it. There are high ceilings, and they’re thick. It takes a level of commitment to break through and you know what? You have to roll with the punches.
Adversity makes a great story. And in reality, that’s all we’re trying to do as we go through life.
Even for me, ‘Mr. I’m Only In It For The Wrestling’. That’s a story all in itself. People like me…we achieve things…we keep on accomplishing these incredible feats in our fields because…we have to. Success is all we have. It’s what keeps the contracts coming. It’s what keeps the phone ringing. It’s what makes people want to pay money to come and see me, it’s what paints a target on my back. It’s what earns World title shots. It’s what earns World titles. It spins its own yarn, a George and the Dragon story…except we spend the whole time looking around to try and find our George.
My career depends on living up to a narrative, whether I like it or not.
Sometimes that gets to me.
Then I turn to the thing that got me here in the first place. I put my head down and I push through. I bury my head in the sand if I have to, and yet, nothing changes.
I should be Chris Page’s worst fucking nightmare. I take weeks-long breaks from social media. Open the app every now and then just to clear the notifications, stop them from nagging at me, maybe reply to DMs from those select few people who connect with my energy. The types that'll sit with me in a room with me, in silence, just be in that moment with me. Those very few that actually understand what goes on in my mind. Those select couple of people that actually, truly GET me.
Sometimes I don’t want to promote.
Sometimes I don’t want to trash talk an opponent.
Sometimes I don’t want to be present.
Sometimes I don’t want to stand by while watching one of my friends willingly get abused all over again, by the same people that have treated them like shit before.
Sometimes I don’t want to invest in others, and their stories. Not when it all crashing down in a month or so is an inevitability.
That should make me a nightmare for the bottom line…but still…people still want to face me. Companies still want to hire me. Bookers still want to put me on shows. Referees still keep holding my hand up in victory. Fans still chant my name. My face still appears on posters. My phone keeps on ringing. My schedule could look so busy that not even Kayfabe Airlines and a time turner could get me to every obligation. Even when I’m absent, my presence screams from the rooftops.
I’ve transcended.
There’s a lot of people in my life who get treated like shit, regularly. It’s like they’re almost predisposed to it, as if they can’t let anyone in unless they’ve already been a victim of this person, or they’re almost guaranteed to be in the future. I guess I find myself predisposed to worry about them, to be protective of them. After all, why would I want them to go through the whole process, only to get hurt at the end? Guess that’s the hero complex talking, like it makes my cape flap extra hard in the wind.
After a while, that gets fucking exhausting.
I guess I need to make a few changes.
After all, the clock is ticking. My time in this business is finite, it always has been. I didn’t know the timeframe out of hand, at least not at the beginning. I guess I was expecting my knee to blow out at some random point and that’d be game over, time for me to work on my golf swing and live it up in Miami, take a little early retirement, but I know it now. I’m only giving myself maybe a year or so, then it’s game over.
I can’t afford to leave any unfinished business.
I can’t afford to waste any energy in the wrong places.
With people who don’t appreciate it.
On people who never learn their fucking lesson.
People like me…except up until now.
If you thought I was laser focussed before? Well…you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Peter Vaughn had a great 2022, sure.
2023 is mine.
Part 1.5 - Excerpt from a story never told…
The reality was plain as day…I wasn’t him. I would never…no…COULD never be him. That was my weakness, in this situation…and also my biggest strength. I would never damage her heart quite the same, ever. It would never be perfect, that was impossible, but when I made mistakes I would pick up every piece and help glue it back together, make it stronger. I wouldn’t delete myself from her life, because her needs far outweighed my own. I would look into the face of his son and I would step up, not turn tail and run. Even if we would never be joined by blood, I would challenge anyone to doubt he was anyone but my own in spirit.
It would always be a struggle, but I have to accept that I could never be his replacement. That was beyond my capability, we were two complete polar opposites, and the more I kicked myself for that, the more I was going to drive myself crazy. The more I tried, the more I would become something I would grow to hate, to despise. The more I was going to crumble, and falter, and fall…no use to anyone.
And of course…I could always carry on down this path and walk away…’save’ myself…disappear into my own mind, like I already had, run away for good, like I’d toyed with more than ever before, get myself a plane ticket to Europe, and finally head back home to Denmark…finally carry out that threat like I’d always said I would…except this time I’d be doing it alone.
It’d be me, finally drawing a line under that experiment that I’d started when I was just seven years old…signing off Noah and Vera and calling it done in thick black marker…
…or I could accept reality, go all-in with the cards I was dealt, and make the best of it that I can. The situation wasn’t changing, after all, it is what it is. My name isn’t Kelly Clinton, and I can’t fill the void he left.
Instead - My name is Noah Sørensen, and the one thing I can really do, in a situation like this? Is to be a better man than he ever was.
Part 2 - Gothika…the horror movie everyone disliked
I see your monsters, I see your pain. Tell me your problems, I'll chase them away. I'll be your lighthouse, I'll make it okay. When I see your monsters, I'll stand there so brave
Well look who became a crowd favourite overnight, huh? Guess I didn't even need to do that cheap Raider Nation bit after all, they’re already well on board with the DRAGON…DRAGON…DRAGON…what a bunch of fans we have. Yeah of course, we know how it goes, I've said it a billion times. I don't go out of my way to try and draw attention to myself, if it’s not in a ring, with an opponent, and a match to win, but it just goes to show that doing it my way gets the results I want anyway.
I am making myself pretty impossible to ignore.
Peter Vaughan likes to talk about inevitability, and given the year that he had in 2022, I will completely accept that. This roster has a lot of talent on it, but he has the hot hand, his position at the top of the tree since the relaunch is probably pretty justified.
But that's not the only inevitability.
Now it's some ancient proverb that the early bird gets the worm but how about this one? The second mouse gets the cheese, because as of right now, everything is playing exactly into my hands. After all, the World title, to me, should be decided only one way. Two competitors In a ring, in a fight to the death.
The West Coast Rumble was a crap-shoot. An entertaining one, nonetheless, but to get to the point that we both did, the last two men standing, you have to ride your luck as much as you do your wrestling ability. We knew Peter took a certain number of lucky breaks out there, didn't we?
My chance at the title is some two months away. This needs a long game. The foundations are being laid, and it starts right here with my first opponent.
Now Goth…Goth’s interesting to me.
My opponent this week did something that very few people in Sin City Wrestling were ever able to accomplish, and that was to beat me one-on-one. At the time Goth had been out of the game for a little while, and I don't think anyone really knew what version of him was gonna show up, including me. Did I get caught off guard? Not really. I can’t say I was planning on him showing up on top form, but I’d prepared for it nonetheless. After all, there is a very select group of people that can stand together with me out there. They are the kind of people that hold World titles, as he has, and I have. There's a kind of people that push through into the final four of over-the-top Battle Royals. They're the kind of people that make very worthy adversaries for someone like me. The perfect opponent to tool up for that big opportunity with.
I feel like I’ve said this before, but I’m not invincible. Nobody’s invincible, it’s just that we all sit on our levels. There’s this invisible skill ceiling, and there’s me sitting right there at the top, alongside the men and women with the potential to win World titles. That means…if you’re not there already, you have to break through to even have an outside shot. And if you’re standing alongside me? Well then you’d better bring your A-game, or the result is the same.
Okay, maybe that’s a me thing. I challenge you to find anyone as consistent. I don’t know what a day off is. I struggle to sit still. If I so much as think about taking a day off, I’ll kick myself so hard that it’ll be months before the thought even crosses my mind. I’m a well-oiled machine. I push myself, without overtraining. I stretch myself, without going over the edge. This is what I do. This is what I’ve made a career out of, and trust me I’ve got a lot of experience when it comes to preparing for the big opportunities.
Now there are two schools of thought when it comes to preparing for a world title. I've tried them both and I know which one suits me right down to the ground.
There's the easy route: get yourself a bit of momentum by beating a few softer opponents on the way to that big match. Just take your foot off the gas a bit. After all, everyone wants to take a shot at the number one contender, right? Whoever they happen to be. I took a little trip back to Sin City Wrestling a couple of weeks ago and that exact thing happened to me. Milo Kasey, former Roulette champion, looking to use me as his springboard into something more.
You lose 100% of the shots you don’t take, right? Well…he took it. And he lost. And he’s just one in a long line of willing volunteers who step up like lambs to the slaughter as they try, and fail, to prove that they should be in the spot I hold right now. Goth is no different, right? I mean, take out the number one contender, that puts him on the hit-list for the next opportunity that comes along.
Same for anyone. I’m in a lot of crosshairs right now, but I’m used to it. I’m a moving target.
It’s another inevitability with Miles. He wasn’t ready. He even admitted it. Maybe I’ll crash and burn, or words to that effect, and if there’s even any doubt? Well we can call that game over. I feed on fear, dine out on doubt. After all, like I said in part one…narsissist. Believe the world revolves around me, remember? As if I’m ever going to expect anything other than another notch in the win column.
You’re selfish. You can’t see past yourself. You’re a control freak.
Yup. That’s me. I’m the problem, it’s me.
You might ask if Goth is a nightmare pick for me, but far from it. He’s EXACTLY who I want. I need the test. I need to see that I learned from my mistakes, I improved, I’m a more worthy champion now than I was a year or two years ago. It could be the difference between winning it now, or not. It could just be the difference between keeping the belt a month or a year. After all…his manifesto and mine sound extremely similar but I have to ask…what is the motivation?
“I am a man of wealth and taste.”
So why straight-up domination, I have to ask? Goth is not a monster, in the traditional sense of the word. He isn’t hell-bent on taking anything with a pulse and snapping the limbs off because he gets a sadistic kick out of it. At least…that’s not what it seems. I mean looking at him…he seemed like the sort who pulled the legs off spiders when he was a kid…but then again, so did your fucking accountant, so that doesn’t make him special.
It just means that jet black hair of his came from a bottle, not a reflection of the colour of his soul.
To me he just seems like a wannabe in a dark suit.
So why does Goth want to ‘own everyone’ like he ‘owned’ everyone in the company he used to run? That’s kinda…missing the point isn’t it? Did someone gift him Fifty Shades of Grey for Christmas? Another big misunderstanding, one more wannabe ‘domme’ out there who thinks they just have to beat up on a girl enough and they’ll become your possession? No. That definitely isn’t how this works. That isn’t how any of this works. I’ve never signed a contract on the basis of anyone ‘owning’ me. I come here to do a job, there’s a difference. Besides defeating whoever I’m pointed at? I don’t play up to anyone’s whim.
Let me tell you what makes me tick, after all it’s important to be self-aware in this day and age, right? I am a raging narcissist. There, I said it. I believe the whole world revolves around me, and the way I reinforce that is to win a bunch of wrestling matches. I need to work through everyone to feed the narrative, put myself on the top of the tree because that’s where I BELIEVE I belong. That’s my motivation, my inspiration, the fuel that stokes the fire, the thing that keeps me working harder, for longer, than anyone else in the building.
You think I’m going to give up control to anyone, let alone Goth and his misplaced ego?
I won’t be ‘owned’ by anyone. I can’t be ‘bought’. Money doesn’t talk in my world.
There’s no room for anyone else but me, anyway.
Goth may have his aspirations, his talk about climbing all the way to the top, taking out everyone in his way, but all he’s doing is to try and steal my idea. It’s how I started from moment one, my first introduction. It’s how I’ve conducted myself since. It’s how I conducted myself in our previous place of residence, too. World Champion. Blast from the Past winner, twice. Underground champion. Two-time Underground tag champion. Future Hall of Famer, no doubt. The man who, no matter how long I’m away for, can step in at late notice and prove to all comers that I am, and will always be, one of the most dominant forces to ever step in that six-sided ring.
Not today, Satan. Not today.
I’m better at it.
I always will be, until I hang it up.
Until no stone is left unturned, and on my terms.
I’m as regular as Sonya Benson trying to schmoz someone.
I’m as regular as The Punisher doing nothing with his ‘minority ownership’.
I’m more prolific than John Cable’s little side hustles.
I’ve got more chill than Chris Page and his pot habit.
There’s more darkness in my soul than Goth could ever dream of.
Want me to wear a long coat and some eye makeup to prove it?
Mr. Nice Guy, Cross. Well well well…that isn’t going to last forever. After all there’s a whole lot of anger that needs to get purged before my time here is up. What kind of a retirement would it be, anyway, if I went away with a whole lot of pent-up anger, after quitting the only real chance I have to flush that out of my system. The message to Goth is similar to the message to Samantha Voxx. I’m not going out there to be fucking nice to you. I’m not going to lower myself to the kind of level of bowing to you, letting you have the slightest hint of a thought that you have anything over me. Control, a victory, even some semblance of success. You’re barking up the wrong tree, knocking on the wrong door, you name it. I’ll make an example of you, because you seem to want the same things as I do. I’ll make an example of you, because you came close to being where I am, but you fell short. I’ll make an example of you, because you want to assert your dominance over a division that is already mine for the taking.
I’ll make an example of you, because you’re talking of controlling something that was never yours to ‘possess’.
Should have kept your mouth shut.
The World Heavyweight title, the pinnacle. The World Heavyweight title, the thing we all aspire to. We hold it, but we don’t own it. We hold it, but we don’t control it. It’s bigger than one man, and it always will be. We just have to take those chances when they come along, hold onto it for as long as we can.
You’ve done this even longer than I have.
You should have known better.
That was your mistake, your failure, and you’re going to be made to pay for it.
Let go of your ambitions for the World Heavyweight title.
It’ll be mine. Long before yours.