Post by Chris Card on Sept 16, 2017 21:41:05 GMT
Diana Card: C’mon, honey. It’s supposed to be the woman who takes too long getting ready.
Diana is seated across a luxury hotel bed somewhere in New York City. Attired in a long flowing black dress and with eyeshadow and lipstick to match, she is the very image of the traditional Goth, save her hair which is conspicuously its normal dark reddish brown shade. Diana idly plays with an expensive looking smart phone as she awaits her husband’s application of the finishing touches to his outfit.
Chris Card: 16 years. I thought we had best celebrate properly. It’s just fortunate that I’m wrestling close enough to the Big Apple this week we can recreate the night we first met.
Diana Card: I’m all for the big romantic gesture of this. But will you hurry the hell up and show me what you’ve found to wear. I mean it’s great that we’re revisiting the past. I just want to get out there, get some drink inside me and get partying, y’know?
Chris Card: Partially recreating.
Diana Card: She’s going to freak when she finds out.
Chris Card: She is. I’m hoping it’s in a good way.
The slow creak of the bathroom door is followed by the dramatic entrance of Chris. Made doubly dramatic, sense of theatre that a professional wrestler usually has being in full effect, by the slightly tinny sound of “Rain” by The Cult playing from Card’s own mobile phone (you never get enough bass off those things).
“Hot sticky scenes you know what I mean,
Like the desert sun that burns my skin...”
Card enters the scene dressed in his best, freshly purchased, goth outfit. Though not made up at all, that would presumably be beneath him, Chris has gone full out with a frilly black pirate shirt, figure hugging leather trousers and polished black cowboy boots. Card sings along with his improvised entrance music for this very personal scene.
Chris Card: “I’ve been waiting, for her, for so long. Open the sky and let her come down...”
Diana Card: The first song we ever danced to!
Chris Card: I don’t think the hotel will allow for the appropriate level of dry ice.
Diana Card: The club will.
Chris Card: They’d better. Slip these in your handbag for me, baby.
Card passes a couple of VIP tickets to his wife, bearing the logo for “The Cult Of Lazarus" club night.
Chris Card: This is our night, Dee. It was then and tonight it will be again. Now you did remember to schedule to avoid any… accidents.
Diana Card: Oh don’t worry, baby. She knows it’s our anniversary. Sean does too.
Chris Card: Good. Because I don’t want a voice in my ear all evening that isn’t yours.
Diana Card: Relax, honey. Everything will be fine...
~~~~~
There is something to be said about the role of intelligence within the confines of professional wrestling. A contest wherein two combatants go out and attempt to do as much physical harm to each other, a layman might assume, is one where a man’s smarts is of little to no consequence. Where brutality and a passion for violence will always rule. Where the ability to dole out physical damage to your opponent and where a similar yet intrinsically related ability to absorb such punishment rules the day like a medieval lord rules over his peasant flock. Might makes right. That layman is of course very, very wrong. Professional wrestling is about intelligence. Professional wrestling is about psychology.
Ask The Council. I mean, don’t ask The Council. At best you may end up with a highly incorrect answer to your question and at worst they may decide to grind your face into the dirt for the temerity of posing a question to them in the first place. But I, dear viewer, will offer my own explanation. How did I survive being placed in a situation at Legacy against two of their number, a third watching on from ringside and a fourth man who could have potentially been counted amongst their flock inside the ring with me? I played the mental game, preying on their petty notions of superiority until, though I did not win the match (which I will freely admit was due to an error of judgement on my part), I had them dancing to my own tune. The psychological advantage was the difference between a noble near victory and a long and expensive visit to a trauma ward.
Follow that with my team’s victory at Sacrifice. How could a disparate group of wrestlers such as myself, Mason St. Croix, a man who executes his own plans with military precision because he’s, well he’s actually ex-military, Jayson Matthews, professional wrestling’s finest exponent of potassium powered resiliency and my tag team partner this week Devlin Raine defeat four men who would have had ample time to plot and scheme their way towards an easy victory? We used psychological warfare.
The admiration of Xavier Cross, a man who welcomed my oncoming verbal torrent as if it were a badge of honour to be insulted by my good self is was a clue. It was a concession. Ulf Hednir is hard to place. He either buying into what he’s saying, making him a fool or he isn’t, making him a fraud. Jason Sandman I will get to later. Kole Kaos called me, what was it again, “Dumb as a sack of rocks.” And then went on to try to recruit me. Which is epic levels of not smart. Truly breathtaking. And what did my team do? We parodied them. We viciously lampooned them. All for a psychological edge. And we won.
Let me address this with an air of finality, Council. I’m going to do something entirely for your benefit here. A little friendly advice from a seasoned professional. “Bend the knee or face our wrath,” is a great line for a fiction. I’m sure you came up with it after a long session of watching Game Of Thrones on Kole Kaos’ pirated HBO stream. He does seem the type. But this is reality. You need to start thinking a lot less Mother Of Dragons and a lot more Dragons’ Den (that’s Shark Tank to my lovely American viewers but it’s not as good a line.) What you need is a softer line, a better pitch. You need to use psychology to recruit, not brute force. And so for that reason… I’m out.
Jason Sandman, you will be watching this. You will be watching and praying that my continued psychological torture of you stops. Maybe Chris Card will slip up, he will think. Maybe this week he will be a part of the single worst piece of professional wrestling hype ever committed to film.
Chris Card never disappoints...
~~~~~
Fade in on a corridor in a fairly nondescript office block, presumably still in New York City itself. Walking past a water cooler and towards an imposing brown door is the entirely not unattractive form of Tiffany Jones, the IWF’s ace journalist. Tiff walks up to the door and knocks on it as the camera focuses on a crudely handwritten note, Scotch taped to the door. The note reads “Chris Card & Devlin Raine. Emergency Wrestling Meeting.”
Inside the door is an eye searingly white office, whiteboards covering the far wall. Staring at the whiteboard is Devlin Raine, consulting the numbers, percentages and hastily drawn line graphs that have been scrawled across it. Raine leans across and mutters something to the other man in the room.
Devlin Raine: Look busy. All of these sort of promos look better if we look like we’ve just been interrupted.
The other man, Chris Card, picks up a marker pen and writes some extras numbers on the board as Ms. Jones, walks across the room in a professional manner and addresses the pair of wrestlers at the whiteboard.
Tiffany Jones: Tiffany Jones here, reporting for the Imperial Wrestling Federation.
Chris Card: Welcome, Tiffany. Welcome to the heart of the wrestling war room.
Devlin Raine: Wrestling is a war. And the fight in the ring is won at the planning stage.
Chris Card: Except when it isn’t. But this one will be.
Tiffany frowns a little.
Tiffany Jones: Right.
Devlin Raine: In the grand theatre of war that is the professional wrestling industry, we are the generals. And our plan will be carried out by the greatest soliders.
Chris Card: Who are also us.
Devlin Raine: Also us, yes. And soldiers have been described at times as lions lead by donkeys, we are no donkeys.
Chris Card: So we are lions. Lead by lions.
Devlin Raine: Lions all the way. Definitely lions.
Tiffany’s frown adds a hint of confusion to the condescension.
Tiffany Jones: Right. So, you have a match coming up at Sacrifice…
Card interrupts her before she can finish a sentence.
Chris Card: That’s right, Tiffany. The lions no longer sleep. At Sacrifice, the lions hunt. With the generals. And what a sight it will be.
Devlin Raine: Lions. And generals. All in a glorious hunt. In war. A lion-y sort of war. In what will be the greatest night for the professional wrestling industry ever.
Chris Card: Ever.
Devlin Raine: EVER!
Tiffany Jones: So you’re confident of a victory?
Devlin Raine: Of course we’re confident. Who wouldn’t be confident when you have everything planned out?
Raine gesticulates towards the white board. It’s still covered in random scrawls.
Chris Card: Can you not see the genius of what we have planned? Every move, every step of the way. You see all the numbers?
Tiffany Jones: Yes, but I…
Chris Card: They all add up. They all add up to one thing. Victory.
Devlin Raine: And if they didn’t add up. We. Would. Change. Them.
Chris Card: For this is the greatest plan for a wrestling match ever.
Devlin Raine: Ever.
Chris Card: ...ever.
Tiffany sighs and lets the pair of wrestlers keep on rambling.
Devlin Raine: You see, Tiffany, when you’re against tigers like myself and Chris Card…
Tiffany Jones: You said lions?
Devlin Raine: Both. We are lions AND tigers. At the same time.
Chris Card: And generals.
Devlin Raine: When you look across the ring at General Tiger-Lion #1 and General Tiger-Lion #2 then your chances of winning drop through the floor. You know you’re in well above your heads. And our heads are well above your own heads. Because we have better heads.
Chris Card: With manes.
Devlin Raine: And cool stripes.
Chris Card: And those nifty military caps. With stars on.
Devlin Raine: And while our heads rise, your heads will bow
Chris Card: And your shoulders will fall to the mat.
Devlin Raine: Unless we win by tap out. Which is also a possibility.
Chris Card: Which we will have planned for.
Tiffany Jones: So, ummm, do you have a final message for your opponents?
Devlin Raine: Come Sacrifice, there will be the coming together of the greatest minds in wrestling ever.
Chris Card: Ever.
Devlin Raine: Eeeeeever. And those great minds will dominate, eliminate, subjugate and… umm... masticate.
Chris Card: That’s chew.
Devlin Raine: Chew up the competition in a display of style and skill that will literally knock your socks off.
Tiffany Jones: Literally?
Chris Card: That’s right, Tiffany. The IWF will have to hire people to recover all the lost socks strewn throughout the arena. And our opponents will be left lying in our wake. Sockless.
Devlin Raine: And chewed up. And hunted. And warred. And there’s nothing…
Chris wipes a space clear and draws a big zero on it.
Chris Card: NOTHING.
Devlin Raine: ...that you can do about it. Period.
Tiffany Jones: Thank you, I think, to Chris Card and Devlin Raine.
Tiffany loosens up as the “Interview” draws to a close.
Tiffany Jones: Guys. Seriously? That was the worst, the single worst, interview I have ever conducted in my time as a wrestling journalist.
The giggling from Card and Raine is obvious.
Chris Card: I know, right?
Devlin Raine: We worked hard on making one that bad.
Chris Card: And to be fair, I liked you as the straight interviewer in the situation. That’s why we didn’t send you the script.
Tiffany Jones: I knew there had to be a reason for that.
Devlin Raine: There’s always a reason for everything. Why there’s a reason why the camera crew are still filming this bit.
All three look straight into the camera lens and raise a quizzical eyebrow. Fade to black.
~~~~~
So, we head into another Sacrifice with that, as Xavier Cross stated, most overworn of professional wrestling tropes. The tag team partners that can’t stand each other. Team, as my tag team partner so delightfully christened it during a training session this week, Violent Banana. Two men whose destinies have lead them to match what I will attempt to call unironically wits. One, a violent, dark shadow of a human being, a man who dwells amongst the dark corners of the earth like a haunting Lovecraftian nightmare, a personification of violence itself. And the other, Jason Sandman.
I kid, of course. I’ve spent enough time around the so called “Ultimate Underdog” in our training for our summary dissolution of The Council’s latest session to know that he hasn’t got a shred of evil intent in his body. He’s just a fun loving guy. He’s the hero that everyone can get behind. He’s solely responsible for 8% of the GDP of Ecuador. He’s... nice. He’s also the Invictus Champion and that means he’s not only not ever to be considered less than a threat to win any match he’s a part of, he’s not really to be considered an underdog any more either.
I hesitate to patronise him in such an obvious way lest I open myself to criticism for overlooking him but the kid has heart. The old cliché of “keeps a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’” has never been so appropriately used than when bestowed upon the IWF’s resident Cavendish chomping champion. But his air of idiocy that is so carefully crafted around his actions is designed to lull an opponent into a false sense of security. I mean, do you ever notice how heavily he plays on his image? How it’s so very hard to keep a straight face when he’s around? You’d need to be Mason St. Croix to manage it. I’ve seen it. He did.
Jayson Matthews will be playing off that in our match this week. And I have resolved to not let the fact that he may well be the most entertaining man in the company affect my game plan in the slightest. Because, though Matthews may be a great guy to hang around with and though he may have the most personable approach of anyone I have ever met in the wrestling business I will not hesitate, if the opportunity presents itself to wrench his arm behind his back, grasp my arm around his throat, bend him backwards, drive him to the mat and then attempt to reshape the curve of his spinal column. And unlike his tag partner who would undoubtedly fail to relinquish a hold when in a position of victory, the second I feel the tap of his free arm against me and hear the referee call for the bell I will break the hold and then we can all go for drinks afterwards. I hear yours is a banana daiquiri.
Jayson Matthews, in his own warped little way, uses psychology to make you underestimate him. It’s a daring gambit. Jason Sandman attempts to use the psychology of fear. He uses threats and intimidation. Matthews’ tactic won’t work because I do not plan to underestimate him. Sandman’s won’t work because, at this point, I don’t think it would matter if I did.
“A fool’s error is pride.” Well, I’m not sure if you noticed but that might possibly apply more to yourself than it ever will to me. I can think of a few fools in the wrestling industry who certainly have suffered from that affliction. What you singularly failed to realised, as so few have across my storied career is it is more than simple hubris that drives my bold claims. I my own weaknesses. I know them better than you do. I do not bear my moniker as a sign that I do not understand where my flaws lie. I bear my moniker, that which was bestowed upon me years ago, as a sign that I know how good I was then, how good I am now and how good I am expected to be in the future.
You see, Sandman, I knew I had Cross beat when he refused to even verbally tangle with me. I knew I had Kaos beat when he tried, haphazardly, to recruit me. I knew I had you beat when I heard the line come out of your mouth, “Grab the bull by the balls.” One garbled metaphor. One sentence that summed up more concisely than I could have ever managed that something very deep, very fundamental was wrong. You could have threatened me with any speech you wanted after that but your mouth just let out a metaphor that you had been mentally castrated.
You are lost, Sandman. You are lost inside a prison of your own thoughts and it isn’t even of your own making. Your threats meant nothing to me after you’d said that, Sandman. I heard something that I never expected to come from your mouth. I heard weakness. Because for all your might in the ring, all your violence, all your strength, I knew I was inside your mind. And every nagging doubt that you have about your own abilities now has a face.
Mine.
Diana is seated across a luxury hotel bed somewhere in New York City. Attired in a long flowing black dress and with eyeshadow and lipstick to match, she is the very image of the traditional Goth, save her hair which is conspicuously its normal dark reddish brown shade. Diana idly plays with an expensive looking smart phone as she awaits her husband’s application of the finishing touches to his outfit.
Chris Card: 16 years. I thought we had best celebrate properly. It’s just fortunate that I’m wrestling close enough to the Big Apple this week we can recreate the night we first met.
Diana Card: I’m all for the big romantic gesture of this. But will you hurry the hell up and show me what you’ve found to wear. I mean it’s great that we’re revisiting the past. I just want to get out there, get some drink inside me and get partying, y’know?
Chris Card: Partially recreating.
Diana Card: She’s going to freak when she finds out.
Chris Card: She is. I’m hoping it’s in a good way.
The slow creak of the bathroom door is followed by the dramatic entrance of Chris. Made doubly dramatic, sense of theatre that a professional wrestler usually has being in full effect, by the slightly tinny sound of “Rain” by The Cult playing from Card’s own mobile phone (you never get enough bass off those things).
“Hot sticky scenes you know what I mean,
Like the desert sun that burns my skin...”
Card enters the scene dressed in his best, freshly purchased, goth outfit. Though not made up at all, that would presumably be beneath him, Chris has gone full out with a frilly black pirate shirt, figure hugging leather trousers and polished black cowboy boots. Card sings along with his improvised entrance music for this very personal scene.
Chris Card: “I’ve been waiting, for her, for so long. Open the sky and let her come down...”
Diana Card: The first song we ever danced to!
Chris Card: I don’t think the hotel will allow for the appropriate level of dry ice.
Diana Card: The club will.
Chris Card: They’d better. Slip these in your handbag for me, baby.
Card passes a couple of VIP tickets to his wife, bearing the logo for “The Cult Of Lazarus" club night.
Chris Card: This is our night, Dee. It was then and tonight it will be again. Now you did remember to schedule to avoid any… accidents.
Diana Card: Oh don’t worry, baby. She knows it’s our anniversary. Sean does too.
Chris Card: Good. Because I don’t want a voice in my ear all evening that isn’t yours.
Diana Card: Relax, honey. Everything will be fine...
~~~~~
There is something to be said about the role of intelligence within the confines of professional wrestling. A contest wherein two combatants go out and attempt to do as much physical harm to each other, a layman might assume, is one where a man’s smarts is of little to no consequence. Where brutality and a passion for violence will always rule. Where the ability to dole out physical damage to your opponent and where a similar yet intrinsically related ability to absorb such punishment rules the day like a medieval lord rules over his peasant flock. Might makes right. That layman is of course very, very wrong. Professional wrestling is about intelligence. Professional wrestling is about psychology.
Ask The Council. I mean, don’t ask The Council. At best you may end up with a highly incorrect answer to your question and at worst they may decide to grind your face into the dirt for the temerity of posing a question to them in the first place. But I, dear viewer, will offer my own explanation. How did I survive being placed in a situation at Legacy against two of their number, a third watching on from ringside and a fourth man who could have potentially been counted amongst their flock inside the ring with me? I played the mental game, preying on their petty notions of superiority until, though I did not win the match (which I will freely admit was due to an error of judgement on my part), I had them dancing to my own tune. The psychological advantage was the difference between a noble near victory and a long and expensive visit to a trauma ward.
Follow that with my team’s victory at Sacrifice. How could a disparate group of wrestlers such as myself, Mason St. Croix, a man who executes his own plans with military precision because he’s, well he’s actually ex-military, Jayson Matthews, professional wrestling’s finest exponent of potassium powered resiliency and my tag team partner this week Devlin Raine defeat four men who would have had ample time to plot and scheme their way towards an easy victory? We used psychological warfare.
The admiration of Xavier Cross, a man who welcomed my oncoming verbal torrent as if it were a badge of honour to be insulted by my good self is was a clue. It was a concession. Ulf Hednir is hard to place. He either buying into what he’s saying, making him a fool or he isn’t, making him a fraud. Jason Sandman I will get to later. Kole Kaos called me, what was it again, “Dumb as a sack of rocks.” And then went on to try to recruit me. Which is epic levels of not smart. Truly breathtaking. And what did my team do? We parodied them. We viciously lampooned them. All for a psychological edge. And we won.
Let me address this with an air of finality, Council. I’m going to do something entirely for your benefit here. A little friendly advice from a seasoned professional. “Bend the knee or face our wrath,” is a great line for a fiction. I’m sure you came up with it after a long session of watching Game Of Thrones on Kole Kaos’ pirated HBO stream. He does seem the type. But this is reality. You need to start thinking a lot less Mother Of Dragons and a lot more Dragons’ Den (that’s Shark Tank to my lovely American viewers but it’s not as good a line.) What you need is a softer line, a better pitch. You need to use psychology to recruit, not brute force. And so for that reason… I’m out.
Jason Sandman, you will be watching this. You will be watching and praying that my continued psychological torture of you stops. Maybe Chris Card will slip up, he will think. Maybe this week he will be a part of the single worst piece of professional wrestling hype ever committed to film.
Chris Card never disappoints...
~~~~~
Fade in on a corridor in a fairly nondescript office block, presumably still in New York City itself. Walking past a water cooler and towards an imposing brown door is the entirely not unattractive form of Tiffany Jones, the IWF’s ace journalist. Tiff walks up to the door and knocks on it as the camera focuses on a crudely handwritten note, Scotch taped to the door. The note reads “Chris Card & Devlin Raine. Emergency Wrestling Meeting.”
Inside the door is an eye searingly white office, whiteboards covering the far wall. Staring at the whiteboard is Devlin Raine, consulting the numbers, percentages and hastily drawn line graphs that have been scrawled across it. Raine leans across and mutters something to the other man in the room.
Devlin Raine: Look busy. All of these sort of promos look better if we look like we’ve just been interrupted.
The other man, Chris Card, picks up a marker pen and writes some extras numbers on the board as Ms. Jones, walks across the room in a professional manner and addresses the pair of wrestlers at the whiteboard.
Tiffany Jones: Tiffany Jones here, reporting for the Imperial Wrestling Federation.
Chris Card: Welcome, Tiffany. Welcome to the heart of the wrestling war room.
Devlin Raine: Wrestling is a war. And the fight in the ring is won at the planning stage.
Chris Card: Except when it isn’t. But this one will be.
Tiffany frowns a little.
Tiffany Jones: Right.
Devlin Raine: In the grand theatre of war that is the professional wrestling industry, we are the generals. And our plan will be carried out by the greatest soliders.
Chris Card: Who are also us.
Devlin Raine: Also us, yes. And soldiers have been described at times as lions lead by donkeys, we are no donkeys.
Chris Card: So we are lions. Lead by lions.
Devlin Raine: Lions all the way. Definitely lions.
Tiffany’s frown adds a hint of confusion to the condescension.
Tiffany Jones: Right. So, you have a match coming up at Sacrifice…
Card interrupts her before she can finish a sentence.
Chris Card: That’s right, Tiffany. The lions no longer sleep. At Sacrifice, the lions hunt. With the generals. And what a sight it will be.
Devlin Raine: Lions. And generals. All in a glorious hunt. In war. A lion-y sort of war. In what will be the greatest night for the professional wrestling industry ever.
Chris Card: Ever.
Devlin Raine: EVER!
Tiffany Jones: So you’re confident of a victory?
Devlin Raine: Of course we’re confident. Who wouldn’t be confident when you have everything planned out?
Raine gesticulates towards the white board. It’s still covered in random scrawls.
Chris Card: Can you not see the genius of what we have planned? Every move, every step of the way. You see all the numbers?
Tiffany Jones: Yes, but I…
Chris Card: They all add up. They all add up to one thing. Victory.
Devlin Raine: And if they didn’t add up. We. Would. Change. Them.
Chris Card: For this is the greatest plan for a wrestling match ever.
Devlin Raine: Ever.
Chris Card: ...ever.
Tiffany sighs and lets the pair of wrestlers keep on rambling.
Devlin Raine: You see, Tiffany, when you’re against tigers like myself and Chris Card…
Tiffany Jones: You said lions?
Devlin Raine: Both. We are lions AND tigers. At the same time.
Chris Card: And generals.
Devlin Raine: When you look across the ring at General Tiger-Lion #1 and General Tiger-Lion #2 then your chances of winning drop through the floor. You know you’re in well above your heads. And our heads are well above your own heads. Because we have better heads.
Chris Card: With manes.
Devlin Raine: And cool stripes.
Chris Card: And those nifty military caps. With stars on.
Devlin Raine: And while our heads rise, your heads will bow
Chris Card: And your shoulders will fall to the mat.
Devlin Raine: Unless we win by tap out. Which is also a possibility.
Chris Card: Which we will have planned for.
Tiffany Jones: So, ummm, do you have a final message for your opponents?
Devlin Raine: Come Sacrifice, there will be the coming together of the greatest minds in wrestling ever.
Chris Card: Ever.
Devlin Raine: Eeeeeever. And those great minds will dominate, eliminate, subjugate and… umm... masticate.
Chris Card: That’s chew.
Devlin Raine: Chew up the competition in a display of style and skill that will literally knock your socks off.
Tiffany Jones: Literally?
Chris Card: That’s right, Tiffany. The IWF will have to hire people to recover all the lost socks strewn throughout the arena. And our opponents will be left lying in our wake. Sockless.
Devlin Raine: And chewed up. And hunted. And warred. And there’s nothing…
Chris wipes a space clear and draws a big zero on it.
Chris Card: NOTHING.
Devlin Raine: ...that you can do about it. Period.
Tiffany Jones: Thank you, I think, to Chris Card and Devlin Raine.
Tiffany loosens up as the “Interview” draws to a close.
Tiffany Jones: Guys. Seriously? That was the worst, the single worst, interview I have ever conducted in my time as a wrestling journalist.
The giggling from Card and Raine is obvious.
Chris Card: I know, right?
Devlin Raine: We worked hard on making one that bad.
Chris Card: And to be fair, I liked you as the straight interviewer in the situation. That’s why we didn’t send you the script.
Tiffany Jones: I knew there had to be a reason for that.
Devlin Raine: There’s always a reason for everything. Why there’s a reason why the camera crew are still filming this bit.
All three look straight into the camera lens and raise a quizzical eyebrow. Fade to black.
~~~~~
So, we head into another Sacrifice with that, as Xavier Cross stated, most overworn of professional wrestling tropes. The tag team partners that can’t stand each other. Team, as my tag team partner so delightfully christened it during a training session this week, Violent Banana. Two men whose destinies have lead them to match what I will attempt to call unironically wits. One, a violent, dark shadow of a human being, a man who dwells amongst the dark corners of the earth like a haunting Lovecraftian nightmare, a personification of violence itself. And the other, Jason Sandman.
I kid, of course. I’ve spent enough time around the so called “Ultimate Underdog” in our training for our summary dissolution of The Council’s latest session to know that he hasn’t got a shred of evil intent in his body. He’s just a fun loving guy. He’s the hero that everyone can get behind. He’s solely responsible for 8% of the GDP of Ecuador. He’s... nice. He’s also the Invictus Champion and that means he’s not only not ever to be considered less than a threat to win any match he’s a part of, he’s not really to be considered an underdog any more either.
I hesitate to patronise him in such an obvious way lest I open myself to criticism for overlooking him but the kid has heart. The old cliché of “keeps a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’” has never been so appropriately used than when bestowed upon the IWF’s resident Cavendish chomping champion. But his air of idiocy that is so carefully crafted around his actions is designed to lull an opponent into a false sense of security. I mean, do you ever notice how heavily he plays on his image? How it’s so very hard to keep a straight face when he’s around? You’d need to be Mason St. Croix to manage it. I’ve seen it. He did.
Jayson Matthews will be playing off that in our match this week. And I have resolved to not let the fact that he may well be the most entertaining man in the company affect my game plan in the slightest. Because, though Matthews may be a great guy to hang around with and though he may have the most personable approach of anyone I have ever met in the wrestling business I will not hesitate, if the opportunity presents itself to wrench his arm behind his back, grasp my arm around his throat, bend him backwards, drive him to the mat and then attempt to reshape the curve of his spinal column. And unlike his tag partner who would undoubtedly fail to relinquish a hold when in a position of victory, the second I feel the tap of his free arm against me and hear the referee call for the bell I will break the hold and then we can all go for drinks afterwards. I hear yours is a banana daiquiri.
Jayson Matthews, in his own warped little way, uses psychology to make you underestimate him. It’s a daring gambit. Jason Sandman attempts to use the psychology of fear. He uses threats and intimidation. Matthews’ tactic won’t work because I do not plan to underestimate him. Sandman’s won’t work because, at this point, I don’t think it would matter if I did.
“A fool’s error is pride.” Well, I’m not sure if you noticed but that might possibly apply more to yourself than it ever will to me. I can think of a few fools in the wrestling industry who certainly have suffered from that affliction. What you singularly failed to realised, as so few have across my storied career is it is more than simple hubris that drives my bold claims. I my own weaknesses. I know them better than you do. I do not bear my moniker as a sign that I do not understand where my flaws lie. I bear my moniker, that which was bestowed upon me years ago, as a sign that I know how good I was then, how good I am now and how good I am expected to be in the future.
You see, Sandman, I knew I had Cross beat when he refused to even verbally tangle with me. I knew I had Kaos beat when he tried, haphazardly, to recruit me. I knew I had you beat when I heard the line come out of your mouth, “Grab the bull by the balls.” One garbled metaphor. One sentence that summed up more concisely than I could have ever managed that something very deep, very fundamental was wrong. You could have threatened me with any speech you wanted after that but your mouth just let out a metaphor that you had been mentally castrated.
You are lost, Sandman. You are lost inside a prison of your own thoughts and it isn’t even of your own making. Your threats meant nothing to me after you’d said that, Sandman. I heard something that I never expected to come from your mouth. I heard weakness. Because for all your might in the ring, all your violence, all your strength, I knew I was inside your mind. And every nagging doubt that you have about your own abilities now has a face.
Mine.
Well howdy there pardner.