Hardcore Title RP thread

Four chain-link cell walls.

Weapons hanging from the sides of the enclosed cage, giving combatants free license to explore the limits of whatever their most disturbed first impulse could be.

Me, locked inside the cell with no assurances except that whoever has the strongest will, the most determination to block out every iota of pain and push the body past the limits of fatigue to outlast, would walk out of this crucible the last man standing, the most deserving...

Know what that sounds like to me?

Sounds like a match I innovated in 2004, which lived in infamy, it's merest whisper throughout an entire fed for six years a portent of the ultimate finality... a point-of-no-return that broke so many men, slaughtered so many souls, they once compared it to the black cells of the Spanish Inquisition for the limits of torture that some were willing to inflict.

Namely; Me.

It's a House of Pain match.

That means that you're all walking, with full fore-knowledge of what's to come, into my motherfucking house.

Call it whatever you like.

Pretend it's anything else, whistle past that graveyard/pretend it's a comeback tour-de-force for the King in Black, or a garbage trashcan match for the King of Backyard Deathmatch Bullshit, or, pathetically enough the opening bacchanal for Singh Season.

(Fucksake. Singh Season. I congratulate you on coming up with something so cute. You should lock yourself in a garage and let it fill up with exhaust.)

Every single note of this dance turns on what I'm going to do in it.

From the men like Corey who signed up for it, and signed up for another tour of AW just so they could face me to the lower-tier filth that went quiet until after Corey spoke up because they didn't wanna be the first ones that talked their shit to me and had to eat through a straw.

And the most honest place for me to start by acknowledging that we're entering this "Hardcore Games" pale imitation by acknowledging there's a defined pecking order to this division, and so that means giving even a paragraph-worth of attention to the Robbie Big Dicks and Jessie Lees that infest this division is paying lip service, in essence, to the problem.

The problem historically has been this division needs a damn enema, and most often it's played host to idiots that were handed this shot and think they're hardcore because they swing a chair or bleed in a defense.

They infest this very match like a sickening rot.

Rabble and trash that think calling themselves "Brutal Bitch" or some other stupid misnomer gets them over as tougher. Those parasitic, bottom-feeding lampreys that form the nucleus of our Hardcore division.

When they're locked into this cell and their eyes fix on me, the apprehending fear dawning on their faces will be akin to ants beholding a goddamn hurricane, so out-of-their-depth are they.

And I've asked for this shot.

Fuck, I begged for it.

For every single time a weak paper champion who's about as hardcore as a pit at a Skillet show was handed this belt, I begged for management to put me in.

See, despite my distinct pedigree, I never got those shots that you did, Corey.

Never got to breeze through an XIII deathmatch against a mismatched opponent like Kidsgrove, never was lumped into some stupid fatal fourway where the prize was an empty accolade such as "KING OF THE DEATHMATCH" and the stiffest competition was Holden fucking Ross or Robbie Big Dick.

In that we aren't alike, but also in this.

They never put me in those matches for the same reason, they gave me this one, token, multi-man shot in hopes I'll walk out unscathed, let someone else ride off with the belt, and I move on to bigger things such as Turmoil.

They never threw me those bones because I'm of more value, I'm above trawling for chum and lowering myself to King of Deathmatches against Holden or Robbie.

I'll even weaponize the shoot that you, Stephen, used against Masuda once upon a time, management never gave me a one-on-one shot against Masuda Teijin or Stephen Singh and let me fully unleash the darkest side of myself with the same crushing alacrity with which I caved Johnny Bacchus' skull in.

They think I'm above you.

They think I'm above the Hardcore title, and I should be concentrating on bigger...

I respectfully disagree.

There IS no bigger; the Hardcore title has been my World title for the same reason that the Anarchy title was, that my creation of the House of Pain this stipulation apes was, it forced me to get tough or die.

It forced me to become the man I am and it made me, and I owe everything to it.

See in this match, there is a third of our competitors that know they're wasted in this, and aren't even going to try... and the Hardcore title is going to move away from that model, from being the belt of Vayden, of Bacchus, of Singh. From easy title defenses against Jessie Lee, weak tables matches against Masuda.

We're copacetic on that front, Corey.

And it makes me smile, deep in the pit of my black li'l heart... that you came back for this. For me.

To bear witness to me.

Rubber meets road here, Corey. You've stepped up to me, proclaiming yourself in your new era, your Deathproof era, and you're standing up face-to-face with me in my new era, embracing the fully nihilistic truth of my existence that only stepping into the center of my House of Pain presents.

I'm the living, breathing embodiment of the Khmer Rouge.

And no matter how proof you consider yourself...

That just means you'll give me more opportunities to smash you into the ground in the end.

Four chain-link walls.

Weapons hanging from the cell.

And anything, and everything, I feel like inflicting on you.

Thanks, Jess, for so expertly proving my point with your rote, uninspired listing of opponents capped off with a shitty tagline about "Leethality", you're every bit of that rot that I described that's choked the HC belt since the day Vayden was gifted it two years ago.

Don't bother responding to this with another list, you're really bad at this.

Now..... shut your mouth, adults are talking.

The problem is that we're forced to endure ear-rape every week you're allowed to subsist in this division, with the garbage-in-garbage-out dichotomy of "Jessie Lee spouts off about promises of brutality that are objectively retarded", and yet "Jessie Lee wins some low-hanger-qualifier-match to ensure she gets a fourth title shot she has no hope of winning";

The cheapening of this belt can only, really be laid at the feet of Stephen Singh.

Small wonder you haven't said a word in your own defense yet, you've been fading.

Even if you hadn't just lost your entry into Turmoil last week to Dionysus, you've barely managed to squeak by when you're presented just about the easiest underhanded softball pitches they could throw you.

Ya don't have the stamina for this.

The simple fact is you're little more than an evolution of what Masuda was already doing with the belt... nothing, was out of place, didn't belong there, categorically.

Doesn't matter how you use a thesaurus to punch up cerebral, fifty-buck word witticisms, you'd been out of your depth... sorely lacking the grit needed to be the type of grizzled, scarred gunslinger that defined these types of belts in the aughts.

Who paved the way by sprinting so that you could saunter easily as if you're strolling through a garden.

This brings me right back to you, Corey.

For the longest time, I'd believed the only differences between me and Corey lay in philosophy.

I've historically believed in finding one fed and working tirelessly, never satisfied; taking the victories hand-in-hand with the defeats and emerging stronger until nobody there can dispute I'm the best in the fucking world.

So I congratulate you for going out there dominating when you're up against the Chris Pages and Vhodka Blacks out there.

But here, this fed, where you purport to have MADE this Hardcore division what it was?

You've done less-and-less ever since you were locked out of the World Title hunt in 2021.

To the point where your only actual accomplishments this year were taking breaks between showing up just in time to be put in a World Title ladder match (that you didn't earn), or Havoc (that you didn't earn), or by gathering a crew of like-minded simps to fight back CCP Enterprises (who barely appeared on the shows more than you did.)

You have the unmitigated gall to come out here, run over the same bland ground as Jessie Lee and put my name on the ends of your uninspired list, and ask me what I've done with this year?

I WON Turmoil, the one where you exited the first round because you were beaten, easily by the woman I destroyed in the finals.

I did win the World Championship, defeating Dandy... Ohhh that's right, you didn't defeat Dandy when you got your unearned title match... did you.

I carried two titles for a month.

Almost every title or accolade I've won has gone to record length.

Everyone that's stepped up to me one-on-one I've put down, so hard they didn't come back in most cases.

So you don't get to look down your nose, reductively claim I've grown soft pissing about with Dionysus and wasting the promise I showed at the beginnings of Turmoil;

'Cause that shows you have no idea what's happening on a show you don't watch if you're not appearing on it, with your bootleg CCP-in-dreads act.

But to flat-out claim you created the Hardcore title here is a slap in the face, and demonstrably false.

Don't come in here pretending you shook me. Somehow believing you cowed me into silence by flashing a graphic on the Tron proclaiming that you were "My Downfall".

How's it feel that you haven't said anything that I haven't heard over this past year, Corey? Hell, that feeb Easton Alexander just said the exact same claim about being "my Downfall", and I treated him to three minutes of being murdered with a crowbar.

You think you got in my head, congratulations, you don't want to be there, ten seconds with my demons, bleaker than any Creeping Death you could foist, and you'll be tapping out with both hands.

You think it troubles me that you have some unseen bone to pick with me, I don't actually care;

'Cause you've proven that all it takes to dethrone the Great King in Black is to be a 110-pound girl named Regan or Ash... so I don't exactly fear your reprisals or wrath.

But if you think you're here to step back to the throne and claim "your division"...

It's not, never will be, your division again long as I'm here.

Let's not forget, Corey, you can't claim the good aspects of the Hardcore division if you're forever remembered for it falling into it's lackluster periods because you were too weak to take down QDT. You can't just paper over that failing. I won't allow it.

When I take the title, there won't be any QDT's. No Vaydens. There won't be infinite amounts of title shots afforded to these simps that you or I can use like napkins and throw away.

Again. You're all walking into an environment similar to a match so devastatingly brutal that it shocked an entire generation of my peers. Welcome to a House of Pain.

Walking in as they close that door is gonna be akin to Dante Aligheri's mouth of Hell, abandon all hope.

This, in it's purest form, is going to be my School of Punishment.

Class is in motherfucking session.