Post by Downfall on Jan 14, 2024 14:18:37 GMT -5
The winter sun beat down on the hood of the Corvette, parked outside of the little diner; At 57, the temperature, amazingly, felt like a blast of springtime, compared to the frigid winds coming off the bay.
As Rumiko fiddled with the handle of her coffee cup, sitting in the old-fashioned, upholstered booth, she marveled at this; What it was like being on the road, I-5 north through California, all the way to Seattle. Was this what it was like being a wrestler's road wife?
Her reverie was interrupted by the dual arrivals of a waiter, the only figure bustling around this vintage, off-road greasy spoon, a sunken, dead-eyed husk of a man who had indiscernibly Hispanic features, and the arrival, from the bathroom, of Danny, shaking his hands rather than using a towel.
"You ready to rock-n-roll, kid?" he asked, not untenderly, and leaned down to kiss her. The waiter, gruffly, cut his eyes at Danny, but refilled Rumiko's cup.
"Mm, gimme a minute," Rumiko said. Danny slid into the booth, across from her, holding her hand.
"The waiter keeps giving you a stink-eye," Rumiko said sotto voce, smirking but puzzled, "Have you been here before?"
"Eh, another life," Danny said, laconically, and he cadged Ru's coffee cup, taking a big sip of black coffee.
Rumiko's brows knit; finally coming out with it, "I'm worried about you, Daniel... Ever since Christmas, you've had a... manic energy about you. You made your declaration that the last World Title match you lose will be your last, but..."
He held the coffee cup, both hands, looking at the Corvette, jaw working.
"When I talk about how stories have natural ending-points, I mean that. Everything has it's time to go, when we hang on to something or bring ourselves back out of ego, we lose a vital chance to let life happen. To end a phase of ourselves, and start over new. Don't you agree?"
Rumiko gently took the plain ceramic, then took his hand, understanding, a bit more, what his conversation with Chelle on Thanksgiving had been about. "It seems like you deep-down... want it to end. So, why not simply hand it over? Why not just let someone like Shadowlove have a moment since you agree your moment has come, and moments don't last?"
His gaze sharpened, "The ending-point, to me, is that I'll walk away when, and if, I decide. Nobody gets to take it from me until I decide I'm ready."
"I get that."
"And someone like Shadowlove. Nah. Fuck that. He reminds me of someone I once knew..." Grinning, he looks over at the waiter, who, sulkily, is scrubbing a countertop with a grime-covered rag. "This person was the absolute worst that humanity had to offer. Gleefully, woefully scum... but convinced that he was a hero to the people, deep down, despite his "polarity"... He was such a mismatched cavalcade of bad ideas and execution, that he once challenged me to my own House of Pain match, with no time limit."
"I see... and what happened to this person?"
"He could never come to understand the idea of endings. He forced his way into situations he was never prepared to deal with, and burned all of his bridges. When it was time for him to go, he didn't get his dignified ending."
"No? What happened?"
Cracking a grin, Daniel side-eyes. "Someone stronger than him put him in a hammerlock and broke his arm in twenty seconds, and we threw him out the backdoor of the arena into the snow..."
Rumiko has to laugh, if only in schadenfreude. Danny is grinning fondly at the memory.
"Anyway, this is just a lesson you learn in this industry. You have to know what your time is, and use it accordingly."
"I do see... and... is that why... you've invited me along?"
Danny muses, then takes the ceramic again, draining the coffee in one last swill. "Mmmm. Maybe I just wanted you to see what this life's about one time before I decide to hang it up."
Rumiko touches his arm, tenderly. "Thank you for sharing."
She gets up, groaning at the weight of her growing belly. "M'gonna go pee then we can hit the road, kay?"
He smiles, distantly, and watches her go. Then, finally, he stands, slapping his knees and groaning.
A hand slaps a dollar on the counter. "Your coffee tastes burned, maybe take the pot off. But... good to see you again, Boca."
The zombified, deadened and gnarled human slowly picks up the single dollar with a red penis scrawled in Sharpie on the back, lifting it up. He glances across the diner, squinting with unrelenting hate.
Danny and Rumiko pay him no mind, chatting amiably about the next stop in Portland as they wend their way north.
The chili-flecked name-tag on his Polo shirt reads "Scott."
"I hate this fucking job," he mumbles.
Show of hands, everyone who went into this week groaning inwardly about how it all shook out.
That the war of words that took place between me and Shadowlove turned ugly after I decided to film a video mocking him was an understatement; if any small smidgen of credit goes to the man who never met a thesaurus.com search bar he didn't like in that.
As I see it, my shitting on Shadowlove - was never even about Shadowlove himself.
I was a hundred percent honest, I care nothing about him, even as he seems to persist in a mindset that he's dug his way under my skin; I could face him in a deathmatch wearing a blood pressure cuff pumped around my bicep, calmly raining fists down on him until his orbital bones cave in, and my BPM wouldn't rise above 100.
My entire argument, was about the consistent overusage of tropes that've cheapened Action Wrestling, handed down by fiat, that allows shitheads like Shadowlove to get over.
To fall backwards off of a banana peel into title shots they didn't earn.
I will not stop calling those tropes out, because if you have even the basest understanding of story, it's adding pads for no reason.
I do not expect Shadowlove to understand this distinction. He's smiling so broadly, thinking he's been given everything he wants for so little work, it's as if he's struck a goldmine.
I don't expect Shadowlove to have even the slightest hint of awareness of the road I've undertaken to bring me here, even if he studied my tapes and pored over my bio, absolutely no confidence he'd comprehend it.
Giving him Cliff's Notes of why I've fought for over two years to take the long way, establish my credibility as a killer, fight through every obstacle presented me in singles competition until nothing stopped me from claiming the World Title, is akin to handing a road map to a lost pigeon.
The pigeon's just going to tilt its head, coo brainlessly, and shit on the map either way.
Exactly what you get when you read a Shadowlove promo.
If I was to clue Shadowlove in on one - juuust one - story-beat that I thought he could digest it's this: I'm often given shit for the way I bring a crowbar, this deadly implement of cold-rolled steel to the ring.
My detractors view it as the nadir of my authoritarianism.
That Tyrant Downfall rules over AW, lording his supposed superiority, stabbing all of his friends in the back, cheating to win through brute force and surreptitious use of his blighted crowbar, the ultimate rat-bastard move.
Except that the only people I've faced in two years who have earned this fate, truly merciless murder-by-crowbar, are those who've earned the utmost disdain from me, for their arrogant presumption. You know their names, Bacchus, Black, Dion...... and now, you, Shadow.
(Such company you keep.)
Remember, you named the terms of this. Upon analyzing your challenge I have no doubt you think you've played yourself an Ace.
You think you've got me exactly where you want me.
Might, even, somehow, believe ya got me to punch myself out. If you've weathered that, you'll face off against a gassed-out, confused, and defeated opponent with nothing left to say.
The problem isn't just that there's more to work with, it's that your character, if such can be termed, is the equivalent of an all-dressed chip.
How something can be everything and nothing at the same time.
You, Shadow, are a terrible callback to wrestlers I used to come up with. Tell me, have you heard of the tragedies of Adrian Slayer? Darkdragon? Boca Del Inferno?
I'm not naming names from the past, as you do, so I can brag that I got some non-title victory over them in a match people don't remember and do not care about; To proclaim that they, "velveteen", "doughy" wrestlers learned to fear me.
Their names are relevant because, like them, you layer so many ill-fitting, disparate pieces to what can laughably be called your persona that you come off like a little boy who, growing up, played pretend astronaut, but also called first to play President and the world's strongest millionaire.
The problems I see in you's that you're every bit as slapdash, every bit as part of a lesser whole, as the tragedy that was Boca Del Inferno, and in the end, you will flame out after a series of embarrassing losses and pack your bags badmouthing, just as Boca did every few months.
I have zero illusions, you're not here for a long haul, Shadow.
You're here to eat two or three pins, get your shit pushed in when you try to start flame-wars on the Internet Board, make your excuses, and blow.
And when you do, more power to you, don't let the door hit ya in the ass.
Despite everything I've said to you, you still seem to be confused about your importance so let me explain this to you as if you were a child.
Your public persona isn't shocking, "polarizing", controversial, or any of the many, many qualifiers you've given.
You're practically the most boring fucking thing that's ever been done in wrestling, a generic cishet man who trained in martial-arts, has a flat NPC cast of transient yes-men, throws around money and affluent, aristocratic wealth and some, supposed Hollywood fame that we're always told about (but never shown evidence of).
"Supervillain" "superhero" "supermodel"?
You are a cartoonishly unserious person, not worthy of even a token of respect.
You self-apply an entire dictionary's-worth of adjectives to yourself every time you walk to the ring for your "Epic Nine Minute Entrance" that was so needlessly, blandly dull that I don't blame Billy for getting up and getting a hot dog.
Not even taking into account the way you seem to believe sociopathy and psychopathy are just mindsets you can "snap into", you term yourself every adjective under the sun to play yourself big league, promote yourself with a cheesy grin as arrogant, erudite, "charismatic" (which doesn't show at all), "felicitating", self-righteous yet also somehow vainglorious;
I could continue listing adjectives 'cause, in all honesty, you never met an adjective you didn't try to cram in there, even if you didn't know the definition...
But picking'em up one by one and saying "this one means the opposite, this one's a negative connotation, this one is misspelled, and it doesn't mean that you're intellectually-superior to know these words, it just means you're fulla shit" doesn't stop you.
I told you that wasting my time with bottom-tier attempts at "wit" was a cardinal sin punishable by the beating you'd asked for, and you, then, tried, to proclaim yourself The Cardinal Sinner;
Because you never met a tired, old cliche you couldn't rape a little more.
End of the day, all you are's a fucking clout-vampire.
That's why you continue to remind me that you "saved me" from Gerard in the first place, and why exchanging blows with me on "anti-social" media (brilliant satire there, Kierkegaard) actually titillates you. Even when you're coming off as punching way above your weight-class, in your mind, you've accomplished something.
Even when I point out that you never deserved to be inserted into a six-man match for the World Title because you did nothing to earn it.
It's a slap in the face that Tatiana Jolee has to fiddle-fart around with The New Brotherhood instead of Brady Bolt simply booking a fucking one-on-one match; In your mind, my invoking your name is justification for your presence.
You didn't even earn this shot, Shadowlove.
I gave you everything, even by engaging you in back-and-forth for a week.
I allowed you credibility precisely so that I could shred it like a napkin and prove handily that you AREN'T worth being in this conversation.
Amazingly, you wouldn't even jump to the obvious bait at your ego at first, you had your whore do it for you in the closing moments when you were being pulled away by security.
But there, far away from me, that's where you bare your teeth and imitate the action of the tiger.
(Or was it supposed to be a lion? ...Wouldn't know, according to you, I'm not nearly the Apex Predator you apparently are.)
But this is where I strip you of all of the illusions you're laboring under because when the bell sounds, I want absolutely nothing you can glance to save you.
No Miyamoto, no nameless Japanese underworld henchmen, none of your faggy cheapshit moves like the airplane-spin-that-transforms-into-an-Autobot-midmove-and-ends-in-a-rollup, nothing.
But being honest even if you HAD all that going for you, you're still outclassed.
I'm not sure how the fuck you expect a wrestling match (An IRON MAN MATCH, no less, you fucking idiot)[/b] with no referees to go, but by naming your terms, by playing this trump card you obviously had, you delivered only yourself into the worst fucking beating I've dished out.
You've earned your concussion-protocol-checkup-post-crowbar, you hack.
It isn't even going to last sixty minutes, Shadow. If you want nobody around, even an official to stay my hand...
To pull me off of you after I'm finished caving in your supposedly "Handsome" moneymaker...
Until bone turns to powder and eyes squelch like jelly, then you're just going to last as long as you do.
Until I feel like stopping.
Those are the terms you've named.
Observe now, the tragic one-act play of Shadowlove, who flew too close to a sun he wasn't even capable of looking at directly, and was immolated for his assumption.
I can promise you this, when you leave, after yet another disappointing string of losses; When we mention your name, in past tense, like Boca's; Just another soft, empty narcissist in this game who tried to be all but ended up as nothing, it won't be with pity.
Nor wistful contemplation of what could've been with you.
Let this serve as nothing but the cautionary tale it always was.
As Rumiko fiddled with the handle of her coffee cup, sitting in the old-fashioned, upholstered booth, she marveled at this; What it was like being on the road, I-5 north through California, all the way to Seattle. Was this what it was like being a wrestler's road wife?
Her reverie was interrupted by the dual arrivals of a waiter, the only figure bustling around this vintage, off-road greasy spoon, a sunken, dead-eyed husk of a man who had indiscernibly Hispanic features, and the arrival, from the bathroom, of Danny, shaking his hands rather than using a towel.
"You ready to rock-n-roll, kid?" he asked, not untenderly, and leaned down to kiss her. The waiter, gruffly, cut his eyes at Danny, but refilled Rumiko's cup.
"Mm, gimme a minute," Rumiko said. Danny slid into the booth, across from her, holding her hand.
"The waiter keeps giving you a stink-eye," Rumiko said sotto voce, smirking but puzzled, "Have you been here before?"
"Eh, another life," Danny said, laconically, and he cadged Ru's coffee cup, taking a big sip of black coffee.
Rumiko's brows knit; finally coming out with it, "I'm worried about you, Daniel... Ever since Christmas, you've had a... manic energy about you. You made your declaration that the last World Title match you lose will be your last, but..."
He held the coffee cup, both hands, looking at the Corvette, jaw working.
"When I talk about how stories have natural ending-points, I mean that. Everything has it's time to go, when we hang on to something or bring ourselves back out of ego, we lose a vital chance to let life happen. To end a phase of ourselves, and start over new. Don't you agree?"
Rumiko gently took the plain ceramic, then took his hand, understanding, a bit more, what his conversation with Chelle on Thanksgiving had been about. "It seems like you deep-down... want it to end. So, why not simply hand it over? Why not just let someone like Shadowlove have a moment since you agree your moment has come, and moments don't last?"
His gaze sharpened, "The ending-point, to me, is that I'll walk away when, and if, I decide. Nobody gets to take it from me until I decide I'm ready."
"I get that."
"And someone like Shadowlove. Nah. Fuck that. He reminds me of someone I once knew..." Grinning, he looks over at the waiter, who, sulkily, is scrubbing a countertop with a grime-covered rag. "This person was the absolute worst that humanity had to offer. Gleefully, woefully scum... but convinced that he was a hero to the people, deep down, despite his "polarity"... He was such a mismatched cavalcade of bad ideas and execution, that he once challenged me to my own House of Pain match, with no time limit."
"I see... and what happened to this person?"
"He could never come to understand the idea of endings. He forced his way into situations he was never prepared to deal with, and burned all of his bridges. When it was time for him to go, he didn't get his dignified ending."
"No? What happened?"
Cracking a grin, Daniel side-eyes. "Someone stronger than him put him in a hammerlock and broke his arm in twenty seconds, and we threw him out the backdoor of the arena into the snow..."
Rumiko has to laugh, if only in schadenfreude. Danny is grinning fondly at the memory.
"Anyway, this is just a lesson you learn in this industry. You have to know what your time is, and use it accordingly."
"I do see... and... is that why... you've invited me along?"
Danny muses, then takes the ceramic again, draining the coffee in one last swill. "Mmmm. Maybe I just wanted you to see what this life's about one time before I decide to hang it up."
Rumiko touches his arm, tenderly. "Thank you for sharing."
She gets up, groaning at the weight of her growing belly. "M'gonna go pee then we can hit the road, kay?"
He smiles, distantly, and watches her go. Then, finally, he stands, slapping his knees and groaning.
A hand slaps a dollar on the counter. "Your coffee tastes burned, maybe take the pot off. But... good to see you again, Boca."
The zombified, deadened and gnarled human slowly picks up the single dollar with a red penis scrawled in Sharpie on the back, lifting it up. He glances across the diner, squinting with unrelenting hate.
Danny and Rumiko pay him no mind, chatting amiably about the next stop in Portland as they wend their way north.
The chili-flecked name-tag on his Polo shirt reads "Scott."
"I hate this fucking job," he mumbles.
Show of hands, everyone who went into this week groaning inwardly about how it all shook out.
That the war of words that took place between me and Shadowlove turned ugly after I decided to film a video mocking him was an understatement; if any small smidgen of credit goes to the man who never met a thesaurus.com search bar he didn't like in that.
As I see it, my shitting on Shadowlove - was never even about Shadowlove himself.
I was a hundred percent honest, I care nothing about him, even as he seems to persist in a mindset that he's dug his way under my skin; I could face him in a deathmatch wearing a blood pressure cuff pumped around my bicep, calmly raining fists down on him until his orbital bones cave in, and my BPM wouldn't rise above 100.
My entire argument, was about the consistent overusage of tropes that've cheapened Action Wrestling, handed down by fiat, that allows shitheads like Shadowlove to get over.
To fall backwards off of a banana peel into title shots they didn't earn.
I will not stop calling those tropes out, because if you have even the basest understanding of story, it's adding pads for no reason.
I do not expect Shadowlove to understand this distinction. He's smiling so broadly, thinking he's been given everything he wants for so little work, it's as if he's struck a goldmine.
I don't expect Shadowlove to have even the slightest hint of awareness of the road I've undertaken to bring me here, even if he studied my tapes and pored over my bio, absolutely no confidence he'd comprehend it.
Giving him Cliff's Notes of why I've fought for over two years to take the long way, establish my credibility as a killer, fight through every obstacle presented me in singles competition until nothing stopped me from claiming the World Title, is akin to handing a road map to a lost pigeon.
The pigeon's just going to tilt its head, coo brainlessly, and shit on the map either way.
Exactly what you get when you read a Shadowlove promo.
If I was to clue Shadowlove in on one - juuust one - story-beat that I thought he could digest it's this: I'm often given shit for the way I bring a crowbar, this deadly implement of cold-rolled steel to the ring.
My detractors view it as the nadir of my authoritarianism.
That Tyrant Downfall rules over AW, lording his supposed superiority, stabbing all of his friends in the back, cheating to win through brute force and surreptitious use of his blighted crowbar, the ultimate rat-bastard move.
Except that the only people I've faced in two years who have earned this fate, truly merciless murder-by-crowbar, are those who've earned the utmost disdain from me, for their arrogant presumption. You know their names, Bacchus, Black, Dion...... and now, you, Shadow.
(Such company you keep.)
Remember, you named the terms of this. Upon analyzing your challenge I have no doubt you think you've played yourself an Ace.
You think you've got me exactly where you want me.
Might, even, somehow, believe ya got me to punch myself out. If you've weathered that, you'll face off against a gassed-out, confused, and defeated opponent with nothing left to say.
The problem isn't just that there's more to work with, it's that your character, if such can be termed, is the equivalent of an all-dressed chip.
How something can be everything and nothing at the same time.
You, Shadow, are a terrible callback to wrestlers I used to come up with. Tell me, have you heard of the tragedies of Adrian Slayer? Darkdragon? Boca Del Inferno?
I'm not naming names from the past, as you do, so I can brag that I got some non-title victory over them in a match people don't remember and do not care about; To proclaim that they, "velveteen", "doughy" wrestlers learned to fear me.
Their names are relevant because, like them, you layer so many ill-fitting, disparate pieces to what can laughably be called your persona that you come off like a little boy who, growing up, played pretend astronaut, but also called first to play President and the world's strongest millionaire.
The problems I see in you's that you're every bit as slapdash, every bit as part of a lesser whole, as the tragedy that was Boca Del Inferno, and in the end, you will flame out after a series of embarrassing losses and pack your bags badmouthing, just as Boca did every few months.
I have zero illusions, you're not here for a long haul, Shadow.
You're here to eat two or three pins, get your shit pushed in when you try to start flame-wars on the Internet Board, make your excuses, and blow.
And when you do, more power to you, don't let the door hit ya in the ass.
Despite everything I've said to you, you still seem to be confused about your importance so let me explain this to you as if you were a child.
Your public persona isn't shocking, "polarizing", controversial, or any of the many, many qualifiers you've given.
You're practically the most boring fucking thing that's ever been done in wrestling, a generic cishet man who trained in martial-arts, has a flat NPC cast of transient yes-men, throws around money and affluent, aristocratic wealth and some, supposed Hollywood fame that we're always told about (but never shown evidence of).
"Supervillain" "superhero" "supermodel"?
You are a cartoonishly unserious person, not worthy of even a token of respect.
You self-apply an entire dictionary's-worth of adjectives to yourself every time you walk to the ring for your "Epic Nine Minute Entrance" that was so needlessly, blandly dull that I don't blame Billy for getting up and getting a hot dog.
Not even taking into account the way you seem to believe sociopathy and psychopathy are just mindsets you can "snap into", you term yourself every adjective under the sun to play yourself big league, promote yourself with a cheesy grin as arrogant, erudite, "charismatic" (which doesn't show at all), "felicitating", self-righteous yet also somehow vainglorious;
I could continue listing adjectives 'cause, in all honesty, you never met an adjective you didn't try to cram in there, even if you didn't know the definition...
But picking'em up one by one and saying "this one means the opposite, this one's a negative connotation, this one is misspelled, and it doesn't mean that you're intellectually-superior to know these words, it just means you're fulla shit" doesn't stop you.
I told you that wasting my time with bottom-tier attempts at "wit" was a cardinal sin punishable by the beating you'd asked for, and you, then, tried, to proclaim yourself The Cardinal Sinner;
Because you never met a tired, old cliche you couldn't rape a little more.
End of the day, all you are's a fucking clout-vampire.
That's why you continue to remind me that you "saved me" from Gerard in the first place, and why exchanging blows with me on "anti-social" media (brilliant satire there, Kierkegaard) actually titillates you. Even when you're coming off as punching way above your weight-class, in your mind, you've accomplished something.
Even when I point out that you never deserved to be inserted into a six-man match for the World Title because you did nothing to earn it.
It's a slap in the face that Tatiana Jolee has to fiddle-fart around with The New Brotherhood instead of Brady Bolt simply booking a fucking one-on-one match; In your mind, my invoking your name is justification for your presence.
You didn't even earn this shot, Shadowlove.
I gave you everything, even by engaging you in back-and-forth for a week.
I allowed you credibility precisely so that I could shred it like a napkin and prove handily that you AREN'T worth being in this conversation.
Amazingly, you wouldn't even jump to the obvious bait at your ego at first, you had your whore do it for you in the closing moments when you were being pulled away by security.
But there, far away from me, that's where you bare your teeth and imitate the action of the tiger.
(Or was it supposed to be a lion? ...Wouldn't know, according to you, I'm not nearly the Apex Predator you apparently are.)
But this is where I strip you of all of the illusions you're laboring under because when the bell sounds, I want absolutely nothing you can glance to save you.
No Miyamoto, no nameless Japanese underworld henchmen, none of your faggy cheapshit moves like the airplane-spin-that-transforms-into-an-Autobot-midmove-and-ends-in-a-rollup, nothing.
But being honest even if you HAD all that going for you, you're still outclassed.
I'm not sure how the fuck you expect a wrestling match (An IRON MAN MATCH, no less, you fucking idiot)[/b] with no referees to go, but by naming your terms, by playing this trump card you obviously had, you delivered only yourself into the worst fucking beating I've dished out.
You've earned your concussion-protocol-checkup-post-crowbar, you hack.
It isn't even going to last sixty minutes, Shadow. If you want nobody around, even an official to stay my hand...
To pull me off of you after I'm finished caving in your supposedly "Handsome" moneymaker...
Until bone turns to powder and eyes squelch like jelly, then you're just going to last as long as you do.
Until I feel like stopping.
Those are the terms you've named.
Observe now, the tragic one-act play of Shadowlove, who flew too close to a sun he wasn't even capable of looking at directly, and was immolated for his assumption.
I can promise you this, when you leave, after yet another disappointing string of losses; When we mention your name, in past tense, like Boca's; Just another soft, empty narcissist in this game who tried to be all but ended up as nothing, it won't be with pity.
Nor wistful contemplation of what could've been with you.
Let this serve as nothing but the cautionary tale it always was.