Climbing The Next Hill

[Nick Knight]

Nick Knight is sitting alone on his deck looking out over the Pacific Ocean and listening to the surf crashing onto the sand. His family would not be up for another hour and he should have been in the gym working out, but instead, he just sat drinking his coffee in peace.

“I went to look for you in the basement.” Cin sits down beside him. “What are you doing out here?”

“Just thinking.”

“Anything you want to talk about?”

“I don't know how long I can deal with Roberto Verona's bullshit.”

“What choice do you have,” she asks.

“I wait out the rest of my contract and I walk away with a little bit of pride and dignity left.”

“Then what?”

“I’d probably focus on the school and work some indy dates from time to time. There’s always money to be made by going to Japan or Mexico. Hell, James and I might be able to finally open the company we’ve been talking about.”

“So you’re just going to give up and ride off into the sunset like a little bitch!” The venom in her voice stings him. “Nicky I love you, but stop with the fucking drama. We all have shit at our jobs that we hate. I mean, do you think I like rich old fucks asking me for a happy ending all day?”

“Did any of them try to break your face,” he yells.

“Both of you stop!” Penny stomps out onto the deck in a silk robe. “What the fuck are you yelling about?”

“This asshole is going through the annual woe is me I’m going to quit period,” Cin answers.

“Nicky, what’s wrong,” Penny asks.

“It’s nothing.” The Hollywood Butcher stands up from the table and stomps off in the direction of his basement gym. It was time for him to work out some aggression before he killed Tyson Everest.

___________________________________________________________________________

{There is a distant shot of Nick Knight walking across the private beach behind his Malibu home dragging the Invictus Championship behind him. He moves in the camera's direction in no hurry to reach his destination. Only after more than a minute does he get close to the camera and the operator zooms in on the belt revealing several scrapes on the surface of the gold from the sand.

The shot of the belt fades out and switches to Knight sitting in his electric chair. Gone are the fancy suits and plague doctor masks of ‘The Savior of Professional Wrestling,’ and in their place are a pair of black boardshorts and a faded xXx Wrestling hoodie. The Invictus Champion looks like a completely different man.}

There is way too much suffering in the world for there to be any kind of a god. You grow up in the projects seeing the shit I did you come to that conclusion real fucking quick, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t read The Bible a couple of times because there is nothing better to do than read when you’re locked up in the nut house.

Every once in a while a bit of scripture will randomly pop into my head and I have to go look it up. Every time I think about IWF the past few weeks, a couple of lines come to me and I finally had to go to look up what it is, and it turns out it’s Proverbs 16:18-19.

First pride, then the crash— the bigger the ego, the harder the fall. It’s better to live humbly among the poor than to live it up among the rich and famous.

You know it’s funny that for a year I’ve been talking about saving professional wrestling because I could see that it was slowly rotting from the inside. I honestly believed that the problem was that too much power was being put into the hands of the wrestlers, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. This company will die because of one man's hubris and soon the entire industry will follow it into the grave.

This company has never been more successful than it has been for the past two years, but success wasn’t good enough for Roberto Verona. His fragile ego just couldn’t stand watching his creation reach new fucking heights without him. So like any other narcissist, he comes back to prove to the world that all of IWF’s success was because of him, even if he hadn’t stepped foot in this company for two goddamn years. Mark my words Roberto’s pride will be the fall of professional wrestling.

{Knight looks down at the belt lovingly.}

Verona might not be the only one around here that is maybe a little too proud. I’ve been called a self-centered prick more times than I can count in my life, but I know exactly what it’s like to crash. I fell so hard that it damn near cost me everything including my life, but I’ve learned the value of being humble, and when I say something it’s not just me bragging it’s a promise that I am going to get it done.

The only reason I wanted to be The Invictus Champion was that it was what was best for business. I wanted to be the guy that takes a championship that no one gives a shit about and make it one of the most respected championships in the industry. My goal from day one of my reign was to make IWF stronger, but that was apparently the wrong thing to do because the moment that Verona returned from his long vacation I stopped getting booked.

The one man who stands to gain the most from my hard work has done nothing but shit on it. I have bled buckets for this company and will bleed a hundred more to keep this championship, but he couldn’t care less. This might be one of those cheap plastic toys that you buy off of Wish as far as Roberto is concerned. Well if he’s going to treat it like it has no meaning then so will I.

{Nick throws the belt across the room and the sound of it hitting a wall can be heard in the background.}

Verona and I come from very different worlds. I grew up first in the projects and then on the streets, while he was born with a silver spoon shoved up his ass. I have had to work for every single thing that I’ve earned in my life, and I’ve made sure that my family is well taken care of for the rest of their lives. The biggest reason that I’ve been able to do this is because I was taught how to do business the right way.

I was taught from day one in this business that my only job is to put asses in seats and make the promoter money. The best way to do that has always been to have the best match possible against the top talent in the world. That means facing people like Angel Blake or Caroline Machado, but it’s obvious Verona doesn’t give a damn about the money. I mean, he’s got fuck you money and it seems like he’s perfectly happy wasting six figures just to make an example out of me.

Why else would he be giving championship matches to jobbers week after week? No one gives a damn about seeing me wrestle Mr. Happy or Logan Sky. Hell, you could walk down most alleys in a city and find a homeless guy tougher than Mr. Happy, and Logan Sky is just thrilled to be working somewhere other than a bingo hall. Sadly, things aren’t going to be getting much better this week with Tyson Everest.

{‘The Hollywood Butcher’ lets out a sigh.}

Don’t get me wrong he seems like a nice enough kid and The Kings of Flight are one Hell of a tag team, but one-on-one he’s nowhere near my level. When the shit hits the fan, and it will hit the fan, he’s going to go looking for Charlie Van Ruth and be greatly disappointed when his partner’s not on the apron to be a lifeline. When he’s getting hit with suplex after suplex he’s not going to have enough gas in the tank to absorb the punishment and keep on fighting. Then when I hit Banned In Memphis the match will be over and there’s not going to be anyone save him.

Then when I’m done with Tyson I’m going to walk to the back laughing from knowing that Roberto Verona once again looks like an asshole for sabotaging his show, and it doesn’t matter which one of his little bitch boys runs and tells him because I don’t give a fuck. I mean, what’s he going to do send five guys to try to take me out, or maybe try a little bit harder to break my face this time? He can try anything he wants because I’m not going to back down, and I’m too goddamn mean to die.

Now I just need to know what’s next. High Stakes is in two weeks and I’d happily take on anyone that is truly worthy of a shot at becoming a champion in IWF, but I’m getting really fucking sick of having to run through tag team wrestlers or The Gladiator Division. If Roberto isn’t willing to do that for me I just might have to enter The Roulette and when my contract is up after NOTI leave with a championship belt over both of my shoulders.

{The camera zooms in on Nick’s face and he’s grinning from ear to ear.

The clocks ticking Bertie, choose wisely.

{The scene fades to black.}