Post by Spencer Adams on Aug 20, 2022 19:41:15 GMT -5
2012.
It’s been more than a decade since the dawn of Linsanity. Surely, this isn’t too hard to follow, right? The name who wasn’t one emerged from nothing in lottery fashion. Jeremy Lin was plucked from obscurity and dropped in the middle of everything. Autographed rookie cards were going for five figures as opposed to a few dollars as they would have prior. Jerseys were flying like hotcakes. Lin was only clinging to a roster spot, because the Knicks had well..nobody. They were a floundering team lost at sea.
New York Knicks, meet Pure Championship. Jeremy Lin was literally sleeping on Landry Fields’ couch in pursuit of a role. Jeremy Lin, meet Johnny Bacchus, your perfect match pro wrestling counterpart who dwarfs in comparison and whose time holding any portion of the world in the palm of his hand gave way to curling up at bedtime in the niche. The homies’ couch is replaced by a self dug hole and an identity crisis. Trying to climb out when it’s raining is unwinnable, so what does one do? Reach up towards the one who made it rain in the first place.
CJ: Would you judge me if I told you I was nervous right now?
Spencer: Why?
CJ: I want to do this. I want this for both of us so fucking badly, man.
I look at the ground and towards my own hand twiddling anxiously in my pockets while CJ paces around anxiously in the generally quiet tenseness of the moment, save for the dialogue.
CJ: I don’t know, man. Maybe it’s just gametime butterflies.
Spencer: We can..no…we will do this, CJ.
CJ: I just don’t want to slip up and let you down, let down people who count on us or look to us as something important in their lives.
Spencer: You’re committed to this. We both are.
I continue to fiddle around in my pocket, letting my finger run over its contents once more..the feeling of black velvet.
I don't like you, Johnny. In fact, I fucking loathe you. I loathe this whole idea of the guy wearing an underdog mask and parading around like a grinder when in reality, you were someone who could barely wrestle when you stepped foot in an AW ring and to this day, is still cucking out on his former "convictions" (ya know, if you can call them that) and sucking on whichever teet will provide enough siphoned muscle milk to drag a YMCA athlete up towards the upper ranks of the biggest company on the planet. It's not just lame, it's not just bush league. It's fucking gross. YOU are fucking gross.
I'm so sick and fucking tired of you trying to make you happen. I'm tired of this AW mark turned nose in the air anarchist act. Johnny Bacchus, the guy who claims the role of riot boy who wears tear gas as cologne when you and I both know that you wouldn't walk a block in John Blacks’ shoes if given the choice, because for all your posturing and finger wagging like you’re the Dikembe Mutumbo of moral high ground, you’d care too much about the looks that you’d get the second you walked into your local Co-op.
If there’s a part of you that used to care, which I struggle to believe ever existed, that Johnny Bacchus is long gone. He would’ve died the second you even started to entertain the thought that “maybe SOME members of the evil organization aren’t THAT bad”, but no. I’d say old Johnny would smack new Johnny in the fucking mouth if he saw him now, but there’s no separation. The two are one in the same. This shit is novelty for you, nothing more than a fucking game to shoot you up the ranks. Imagine acting like you adamantly oppose Philidor only to go join a “CU:LT” the next year, but what can I say? It’s clear that this shit means nothing to you and carnies gonna carny, huh?
Perhaps the hardest pill to swallow for you is that you came to AW to cut your teeth as someone who was going to do it all right, do it from the ground up and stick to your guns as someone who gave a damn about people giving a damn, about people supporting someone who supported the right things. Those teeth you tried to cut have rotted right out of your equally rotten skull. You recognize that Ash Blake was dominant and so you gave into temptations that shouldn’t actually be temptations. Congrats, John, you’re made up of the exact same stuff as the cartoon character following their nose as it lifts them up into the air after the scent of the pie in the open window sill. It’s even worse, because you know it’s filled with arsenic and you go to it anyway.
I expect you to come out with a bladder full of vinegar, to brandish a water pistol and aim it at the messenger. I’m fine with that. I’m okay with being the guy who tells you here and to your face that you’re a fool at best and an absolute sewer dweller at worst. You’re a man whose best case argument for this little redemption arc is changing your business card to a “Silian Grail” font that reads “JOHNNY BACCHUS: PROFESSIONAL MORON”. It’s that you’re playing the role of the abused “I can change them” partner with Ash while she puts you on the Hustler’s University path to empty pockets while the worst case is that you’re everything I’m telling you that you are and more.
You don’t spark a revolution alongside Elon, you fucking moron. Nobody with a brain would ever think to aim for a more progressive world by getting MC Blood Emerald Billionaire on the track and that’s what you’ve done with Ash, because you want nothing more than to be a hitmaker like those who hold the competitive real estate above you. Some blood can’t be washed from the hands that wear it. Through this union, you continue to be a fucking virtue signaling fraud. You are no voice of reason, you’re a cunt. End of story. You aren't the revolution, Johnny. The one thing you’ve managed to successfully do in this company is take that concept of revolution and rebellion, close it up in the palm of your hand, and crush it.
You are the hammer.
You are the nail.
You are the coffin.
You are the cadaver.
I’m sure it makes you..”seethe” to think that here you are, in front of the fucking best fresh off a loss to Downfall that only further cemented that you’re no closer to the main event than the next two dozen guys. Don’t get it twisted though, I DO take this seriously and I know how badly you want this, how badly you NEED a reason to still call yourself an AW star. Netting a fifth tag title reign means that I have to fight my way through desperation, that CJ and myself have to be willing to snuff out somebody who is willing to trade in everything, willing to throw a previously carefully crafted image out the window for just a shot at being deemed upper tier in Action Wrestling.
You are a dog. If you weren’t, your other half wouldn’t have been prepared to join forces at all. Isn’t that right, Ash? The other side of the coin is somebody with nothing to lose and everything to gain from saddling up next to Johnny Bacchus. He got the necessary glimpse as did you, two snakes peering back into the others’ eyes, seducing each other with the rattling of tails. You’re more than happy to fly that Insurgentsia flag, because it means that you don’t have to fly the white one anymore. You’ve always been evil in Spirit Halloween attire, but now, you get to take form again. You’ve become a more physical presence again.
I remember how tough it was, how much of a war it was trying to usurp the usurper Ash Blake for months and when the smoke of the Philidor fire grew thin and showed that it was finally dying out, the rest of us did rejoice. No matter how much Insurgentsia might prefer us to forget, CJ Phoenix and Spencer Adams have not. I remember what it felt like to be in the eye of that storm and I’ve come to accept that I wasn’t the one to rid AW of the cloud that loomed over it’s head for pretty much the entirety of the last year.
I was there when you rolled through every challenger they could throw at you in the chamber just like I was there when you and your former lap dog turned successor Carter Shaw had to exhaust every avenue of two on one shenanigans to maintain what had become your new status quo, the reign of Ash Blake and Philidor. I was that guy and I have the scars to show for it, scars that I’m here choosing to wear with pride rather than disgust, because I fucking SURVIVED and made it all the way to right here and right now where my brother and I can stand next to each other and wave on the challenge of making things right and preventing whatever you want to call this attempt at a sequel from taking more dangerous form.
This is where contrast shows, contrast between the likes of King Shit and Insurgentia. This is CJ and Spencer standing for something, because it doesn’t matter how many times either of us fell short in our goals once upon a time. You two are here, because you enjoy the fight and you enjoy the ruthlessness of it all. It’s maybe the one thing that binds you, the thing that neither of you left behind. That’s what makes this match a scratching and clawing affair for King Shit, but where’s the edge, you might ask? It’s the fact that you two are partners solely as a business arrangement. CJ isn’t just my tag team partner, he’s fucking FAMILY. He’s someone I’ve shed blood both with and against, someone who picked me up when I was down. King Shit isn’t just some handshake agreement..
It’s real.
This match is real.
King Shit saving this division and those belts because they matter?
THAT..is real.
That’s…commitment.
CJ: You know..if someone told me a couple years back that I’d be here, that I’d be teaming with Spencer Adams and that we’d be one win away from tag gold, I would’ve thought they were full of shit.
Spencer: A good thing takes time. They aren’t just plopped in front of your feet. It’s brick by brick, brother.
CJ: You’re doing it tonight, aren’t you?
Spencer: What are you talking about?
I could feel the corners of my lips curling upward as I inconspicuously slide my hand out my pants pocket.
*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*
CJ returned the smile himself and went for the door.
CJ: You know, I should get going myself. I’m SUPER busy, too.
Adilene: Oh..okay.
He walked backward, winking behind her back with a target locked thumbs up. As the door closed, my fingers reached one last time. One last reach for the black velvet whose touch had been running through my mind for as long as I’ve had it. This was it. This was commitment.
