Post by Stephen Singh on Aug 7, 2022 14:59:05 GMT -5
The buildings are a strange juxtaposition: something plain and utilitarian beside something odd and original. It makes relative sense, it’s the museum of natural history standing next to a planetarium. One houses somewhat mundane collections of our everyday existences while the other reaches beyond, daring to push boundaries and imagine not just what is or what has been but what COULD be. That strange, metal silo with an eye to the heavens represents possibility and imagination and the future. It’s man’s ability to re-invent himself and his surroundings, knowing that old, borderline obsolete building can retrace exactly how we’ve all failed our home, begging this natural world to rethink and eradicate our unnatural existence. But man does not sit idly by. Instead, we turn our eyes upward and can rethink, rebuild, and reclaim our legacy.
My brother in Christ, Cleveland suuuuuuucks!
The off-camera voice belongs to Z, a man whose official job at Action Wrestling is “PR Consultant” despite him never having uttered those words. Into the frame steps Stephen Singh, clad in tapered grey sweats (you’re welcome, ladies), white air force ones, and a shirt that he clearly purchased from the museum gift shop that identifies a number of different minerals that reads “Cleveland rocks!” in the middle.
Singh: I will engage in no besmirching of the Mistake by the Lake, Z. And cameramen don’t talk.
Z: Vibe doctor! And you just called it a mista–
Singh: That’s an affectionate, playful nickname that the locals taught me. I am a man of the people! Speaking of the people…are we recording, cameraman? Because I can explain to both you and them why exactly we’re here.
Z: I’m not your cameraman. But yes I’m recording. Did you say that? Always be recording?
Singh: No, I said, always be shooting.
Z: Yeah, like a camera. I’m shooting.
Singh: No, I’m shooting.
Z: You’re recording?
Singh: No I’m shooting, you’re recording. How do you not get this? Just point the fucking phone at me and listen.
Z: Okay but remember, people LIKE Jessie Lee!
Singh: People like Doritos, Z but you don’t tell your three-star Michelin chef that. Now shoot.
Z: I am.
Singh: Me, too.
With a smirk, Singh throws his arms out to either side.
Singh: Hello my Faithful Stephenites, I come to you live and in-living-color from Cleveland’s Museum of Natural History and its accompanying planetarium because my relatively brief Action Wrestling history lies before me this week! Jessica Lee, that Revolution-veteran, the saucy Aussie, is being fed to me AGAIN like a baby to a hungry dingo. I could–should?--stand up here and harp on the relative ease with which I’ve dispatched you not once but TWICE. But look at these buildings. The one concerning the past is boring, plain, uninteresting and whatever other adjectives everyone you’ve ever hit on probably used to describe you. It’s not original or particularly fun to remind everyone that I put you down for the three-count in a prior number one contendership match that would catapult me to a title victory. It’s blasé to point out that I've put on twenty pounds of pure muscle and am at my actual fighting weight for the first since I've been in Action Wrestling. Or gauche to say that while I was winning a title at Evolution against top of the Cruiser heap talent she was...employed
Z: Employed?
Singh: Yeah, as in jobbing. For the very title she’s somehow failed upward into earning ANOTHER contendership bout for. I swear to god, she must have naked pictures of Pasternak or something to get this kind of booking….
Z: Baby boi, EVERYONE has those.
Singh: Even my cameraman has jokes! Great work!
Z: I am a certified specialist in vibecraft, not your cameraman!
Singh: Two things can be true at once, HP Vibecraft. Anyways, while the best predictor of future outcomes is past tendencies, they are not determinative. My WCF-era success doesn’t define me and your Revolution-brand mediocrity certainly doesn’t define you–at this point, I’m sure you’d sell your soul to move up within shouting distance of mediocre. What I’m saying is, even with all that going against her, Ms. Lee has a shot this week. That’s her whole thing, afterall, right? Chaos, unpredictability, etc. etc. It’s a worn fucking work, Jessica. I’ve watched you up close and from afar and your bowel movements are the only thing predictable about you. IBS aside, you’ve shown nothing that isn’t a re-tread of a re-tread. I’d call you two dimensional but that’s an insult to the x-axis. You’re 1-D and that’s absolutely horizontal: the way you end up after every match. Every week you come out and blather on about how much ass you’re going to kick and–no wait, that’s it. You somehow lack both style AND substance. George Poppovich has more insight during third quarter interviews than your insipid fifteen minutes of absolutely vacuous, pointless NOTHING you offer up each week.
And still…STILL I have to take this seriously. You’re going to be desperate for a rematch with Masuda and desperate to avenge your losses to me. I may have long been known as a Golden God but I’m capable of that one fatal error that could hand you ANOTHER undeserved title shot. You could come out with the fight of your life and push me to a place I didn’t think you could. BOTH of those things could happen in this match. And you know what? Even if they did..this match still ends with your shoulders to the mat. Because I’ve beaten a hundred of you a hundred different times before. I’ve watched very MOMENT of your in-ring time here and I see every angle you’ve tried to work. I know you’re capable–I watched you dismantle Desmond Knight who was twice your damn size last week. But you won’t win because I can’t lose. I don’t need to make up for prior in-ring failures, I need to make up for a lifetime full of real world failures. I’ve got the resume everyone wants but I look at it and it makes me seethe. I can’t lose because I HAVE to win this. This Hardcore Division is where I belong, it’s where I can build my legacy of blood and broken bone. It’s where I can pay my penance and
((Make it right? No fucking chance.))
Do it right. For once.
Singh rolls his neck and then walks toward the shining steel structure that houses the planetarium.
While daily life might feel so goddamn mundane and repetitive–like having your brains bashed in by the same Mat Messiah for a third time–in reality we’re hurtling through space at 1.3 million miles per hour, spinning the whole time along some unseen path, held in place by something so much greater than ourselves. Our species hasn’t even explored every nook and cranny of this place but relative to the thing that’s holding us all in place, this whole damn planet is almost statistically insignificant. You can get a million earths inside the sun. The everyfreakingday of it all, the spin of this place on its axis, it seems irrelevant to the point of insanity. But in reality…when we look at the big picture…every single rock on this self-sustaining space ship of ours is a golden goddamn miracle. So I’m here today to remind myself the repetitive, the mundane, and the excruciatingly ordinary (READ: BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF JESSIE LEE) we must find the extraordinary. If I were to allow myself to become bored by this match up–a fully justifiable reaction considering that Helen Keller could see that I’m not just out of your league but out of your fucking solar system–but If i were to allow myself to become bored I put myself in danger. Of losing. To you.
No stop! Don’t laugh, Jessica! I’m being serious! It could happen! Keep the faith! I want you to bring everything you have on Monday so there are no questions that you don’t belong in the Division that I intend to make my home.Everything might be cyclical but it’s not quite circular; our orbit is oblong, held in place by that aforementioned gravity of something greater. Our paths have crossed with relative frequency in our short time here so the Old Kanye–and part of the new Kanye–is tempted to say that you’re revolving around me. The sheer gravity of my person, my charm, my wit, m–
Z: Vibe?
Singh: Golden goddammit. Don’t interrupt a man while he’s shooting, Z.
Z: Why not?
Singh: Because you might just catch a stray bullet you fuckwitted, dissociated, ironically post-ironic wet fart of a PR shitheel.
Z: White flag, bruv! I’m jus–
Singh: Enough, Don Drooper. You “vibe doctors” are just glorified ad men, selling vacuous imagery to the masses who would be better off with you. Call it “Sad Men” after your emo phase and you can star in it as “Pegme Olson.”
The former Cruiserweight Champion fixes his gaze on his off-camera cohort for a time. Finally, the chided Z squeeks out a response.
Z: So is it Don Drooper or Pegme Olson?
Singh: What?!
Z: I’m just saying, those barbs are more effective if you picked just one, otherwise you’re flooding the message and it’s losing the effect.
Singh: Shu–
Before he fires back another insult (he was considering “Bert Pooper” or “Joan Hollogay” but felt they were both just a little weak) Singh actually thinks about what his company-mandated image consultant said.
Singh: Shit, that’s a good point. Tighten it up. Don’t spray and pray. Aim well and fire once.
Z’s off-screen, tanned face has stretched into a smile so wide we can nearly hear it.
Singh: You’re not revolving around me, Jessie. I know that. We’re both circling that Hardcore title at the moment. But even that isn’t at the center. No, the World Title isn’t either. The thing that everybody here is constantly circling is that word I’ve said over and over again: LEGACY. We all want to be remembered, to be known, to try and exist in perpetuity. We all know deep down that one day, everyone who ever knew us, who knew our names and our worth will be gone. And when the last person who ever knew you stops saying you’re name: you’re gone forever. You never even existed.
But with a legacy…With success…With victories piled up on each other like a defiant tower of Babel giving a middle finger to the non-existent God who has failed to strike it down..Your name can be etched not into hearts or minds but into stone. Into the earth itself. Into the thing that came before us and will be here after us. That’s what’s pulling all of us together. I know that. Your “chaos” is a lie, entropy is only defined by its lack of order. In and of itself, chaos is nothing. Just like you, Jessica. My foot on your head keeping you at the bottom of this ladder gives you meaning. My foot placed perpetually, suffocatingly on your throat while I climb can be a footnote in my Hall of Fame entry. Congrats, Jess, your penchant for being in the wrong place at my right time might just get your name etched into what I’m sculpting into a Hall of Fame career. This whole thing is everybody’s Last Chance, Jessie, I just seem to be the only one who knows it. You’re getting one more look at my Animus and then I’m burying you beneath the basement of my monument of blood and violence in this division. Call somebody who has a better way with words than you, Jess: obituaries run on Tuesday.
