Post by RAM on Nov 19, 2024 2:55:54 GMT
It is a pleasant Texas night when Nick Knight stepped out of the Love Field terminal pulling a roller bag with the strap of a leather messenger bag slung across his shoulder. ‘The Hollywood Butcher’ dug his phone out of his pocket to let RAM know that he’d arrived when the younger man pulled up in his new special edition Ford Maverick and jumped out to help Knight toss his bag into the bed.
“Nice truck,” Nick said, climbing inside of the air-conditioned cab.
“Glad you like it. Got a good deal on it from the folks in South Fort Worth,” RAM said as he drove forward. Traffic was a bit on the light side at Love Field, making it his preferred travel point over the larger DFW. RAM took a sip from a bottle of grape-flavored Hint water while navigating through the streets, eventually making the turn to go southbound on I-35.
“For the first time in my life, I’m feeling as if I’m at peace,” RAM said as he and Nicky headed towards Victory Park in Downtown Dallas. “I…I’ve been waking up every morning without needing to resort to the damn depression meds.”
“Good for you, but don’t ever feel like there’s something wrong with you because you need help getting by.” Knight took a bottle of pills out of his pocket and shook them. “I take so many pills a day that I rattle when I walk.”
“Ugh, that’s some serious shit right there,” RAM said as he pulled into downtown Dallas proper and headed towards Victory Park. “Fi once told me that, from now on, when you look an opponent in the eyes? Beat the ever-loving fuck out of him or her like how your uncle beat you. Oh, speaking of which…I’ve got a little something you might want to read. It’s on the floorboard next to your feet.”
“Unnamed Western, A Screenplay by Fiona McFly.” Knight opened up a binder and read the first page aloud. “What’s this about?”
“It’s a Western,” RAM answered. “It’s a project she’d been workin’ on for a couple of years. It’s 1901, and the Old West is dying. A grizzled former lawman teaming up with an up-and-coming inventor to rid the town of Armadillo of its most ruthless gang.”
“The Unnamed Western thing kind of gave that away.” Nick read the first few pages while RAM weaved in and out of traffic on the way to the hotel. “The dialogue is a little clunky and could use a little bit of a rewrite, but this isn’t half bad. What are you wanting to do with it?”
“Why don’t WE try our luck at making this,” RAM announced as he pulled into a parking area outside the American Airlines Center and displayed his parking tag. “For me, it’d be good therapy. For you, it’d be a chance to live up to your nickname.”
At that moment, Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell” began playing from the Sirius-XM app. RAM nodded his head as the song kicked into gear.
“Cowboys From Hell,” he spoke proudly. “That’s our title.”
“If we tried to make this movie it would end up being a steaming pile of shit because neither one of us knows a damn thing about making a movie. Lucky for you I’m technically a part owner of a movie studio and am married to someone who knows about these things.”
“Well,” RAM pondered. “Why don’t we see what she thinks about it…?”
“I’m not sure she would ever be interested in directing a western, but I’ll give it to her to read. Worst-case scenario she produces it and we find another young director to do it, but are you sure that you’re comfortable giving Fi this much control over you again?”
“I kind of doubt Fi would want to direct the thing,” RAM replied as he shut off the truck. “It’d be too much stress on her plate as it is with Retro on hiatus. It would behoove us to consult your wife and see what she thinks. I’m…I’m not afraid of a little rejection.”
“Okay, but we can worry about that later. Right now we’ve got a match to get ready for.”
RAM nodded excitedly.
“Goddamn right,” he said as he shut the driver’s side door and strolled towards the Black Tap Craft Burgers and Beer joint. “You’re gonna love this burger joint. One of the best in Victory Park – and we can promote said match in front of the Dirk Nowitzki statue.”
“I'm more of a Michael Jordan guy, but that works for me.”
RAM gave the thumbs up as he strolled towards the plaza where the iconic statues of both Dirk Nowitzki and Stars great Mike Modano were located. He then looks up to the stars above, perhaps thinking of his deceased girlfriend Rydia.
“Rydia’s probably giggling right now,” he said. “She taught me all she could when it came to programming computers and mainframes. She loved that shit so much…but honestly, I’m starting to fall in love with the road a helluva lot more than I’ve ever done.”
“You need to be careful because wrestling in front of thousands of people every night is like a drug. There is no better high than being inside of the ring, but if you’re not careful it stops being enough for you, which is when you start looking for other things to give you that high.”
RAM bowed his head, perhaps pondering Nicky’s notion.
“I never thought of wrestling being like a drug unto itself,” he said. “That just makes the cocktail of trouble become even stronger than before.”
RAM and Nicky sat down at a window booth inside the burger joint.
______________________________________________________________________________
{ We find RAM and Nick Knight standing in front of the iconic statue of Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki, located outside the American Airlines Center in Dallas’ Victory Park. }}
“Well, well…if it ain’t Survival of the Fittest.
Look behind us, bitches. This statue represents greatness, the heart and desire to face incredible odds and conquer demons. On a personal note, I know it all too well – I was born and raised in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. I could never stop waking up in the morning and hearing about the frustrations the Cowboys cause after shitting the bed on a Sunday to the triumph of the Rangers winning their first World Series. Yet lookin’ at it now, this statue don’t mean SHIT without Dirk being surrounded by a team of capable players, willing to sacrifice a ton just to get a taste of success.
I ask this to the other teams involved in this big-time cage match: are you willing to put your butts on the line for a shot at being the IWF World Tag Team Champions?! And if so…how far are you willing to go in order to escape the cage?! It’s a little something to think about, to ponder inside your minds, as IWF’s annual Thanksgiving tradition draws near. For me…when I look at y’all in the eyes, all I see is that image of my abusive uncle festering like a demon, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Yet come to think of it, I ain’t gonna be alone in stepping up the game here. ‘Cause after all, when all is said and done?
Well…c’mon Nicky, help me out here.”
{ Knight runs his hand over his shaved head and sighs. }
"What the kid is trying to say is that the two people that are leaving Dallas with the IWF World Tag Team Champions are the ones that can best work as a team. This isn’t your typical tag match where one member can do all of the heavy lifting or your run-of-the-mill multi-team match where half the time the winner is the sneakiest team. No, a Dual Escape Match involves team members of the team working in perfect harmony.
Vegas is giving RAM and I the longest odds of winning this match because we’re not really a team, and I don’t blame them. You look at this match on paper and it’s filled with champions, a married couple, and a couple of guys that sorta know each other. Lucky for us matches are decided in the ring or we’d have about as much chance of becoming the Tag Team Champions as RAM’s Cowboys have of winning the Superbowl."
{ RAM closes his eyes and bows his head. }
“Heh, and I’m the one who speaks in code?!
Here’s the deal…did you really think that Nicky and I were simply slapped together and forced to become a team? Seems like Vegas has that kind of attitude as well – dismissing us without taking the time to get to know who we truly are. Y’all don’t think we’ve got the heart and desire to take the eventual beating and escape from that goddamn steel cage. You know something, bitches…you’re probably right. And if you’re dealing with just a kid and a grizzled veteran, they’d probably admit the same thing – that it’s a hopeless cause bein’ out there, in that arena.
Well, listen up and listen good.
Nicky and I are that pairing – the old fart and the young upstart – but a pairing whose been fightin’ hopeless causes throughout our WHOLE DAMN LIVES! We’ve dealt with personal and professional demons. We’ve been told, time and time again, that we ain’t ready for the biggest stages of them all. Yet I’ll say this to you right here and now: if you want a war?! We’ll GIVE you a war that’ll shatter even the most infantile of egos. ‘Cause let’s be frank: none of you are as good as you THINK you are! I dare you to bash our dicks into that fence and prove us wrong.
I fuckin’ DARE you!"
{ Nick pats his protégé on the back. }
"Take a few deep breaths before you have a stroke, kid.
RAM is right though, despite the difference in our age we are cut from a similar cloth. A couple of street kids with absentee parents who were saved by this business, and that's something that binds us tighter than some superficial relationships.
I know Cyrus and Vivienne will say that they are bound by love, as a married man I get that, but you don't see me bringing either of my wives to the ring. I trust them with my very soul, but I'd never force them to have my back and it would be far too painful for me to just stand back and watch them beat on when I'm only a few feet away.
Then there are the two teams made up of friends."
{ Knight smirks. }
"Friendship is a beautiful thing if your factor worker or IT guy, but it has no place in professional wrestling. Sure, you've both won the tag belts, but it's only a matter of time before it all goes down in flames. Trust me, in my twenty-five years in this business I've seen it over and over.
That won't happen with me and RAM though because we aren't friends. We are two men walking the same path for the time being, but we're smart enough to know that one day that's probably going to change.
Until then we are a team united in every way despite what the experts might say. We are the stones in which all other teams will shatter, and when all is said and done we'll be the new IWF World Tag Team Champions."
{ RAM nodded his head before staring straight at the camera. }
“Are you still having reservations about us?!
Are you still so full of your own hubris to know what we are capable of doing out there?!
Then ask yourselves this question: what do you hope to accomplish aside from becoming World Tag Team champs?! Bragging rights?! A sense of justice?! The satisfaction that love and marriage conquers all?! As much as I like to think that those are good answers and shit like that, none of it matters. None of it matters ‘cause, at the end of the day, y’all are gonna receive the biggest whipping of your lives – and you know what, so are we. That’s just the brutal nature of putting a bunch of overinflated loonies inside of a steel cage and saying ‘have at it, y’all!’ When you step inside that cage, and the doors are padlocked, I want you all ask yourselves this simple question:
Is the going up worth the coming down?!
For me, on a personal level?! I’ve known nothing else except for hatred and violence. I’ve only known what it feels like to beat the ever-lovin’ shit out of someone and take the punishment myself. It’s moments like this that help me THRIVE and show this stinkin’ joint what I’ve been blessed with. Teaming up with Nicky, of all people?! It’s just the icing on a cake that I haven’t felt good about tasting in a long, long time. Mark my words, bitches…if you THINK you’re gonna sit there and embarrass us in my home yard?! You’ve got ANOTHER thing comin’ your way!
So step up. Strap in.
It’s time to go to the woodshed.
Where only one of us will walk out as the IWF World Tag Team Champions.”
“Nice truck,” Nick said, climbing inside of the air-conditioned cab.
“Glad you like it. Got a good deal on it from the folks in South Fort Worth,” RAM said as he drove forward. Traffic was a bit on the light side at Love Field, making it his preferred travel point over the larger DFW. RAM took a sip from a bottle of grape-flavored Hint water while navigating through the streets, eventually making the turn to go southbound on I-35.
“For the first time in my life, I’m feeling as if I’m at peace,” RAM said as he and Nicky headed towards Victory Park in Downtown Dallas. “I…I’ve been waking up every morning without needing to resort to the damn depression meds.”
“Good for you, but don’t ever feel like there’s something wrong with you because you need help getting by.” Knight took a bottle of pills out of his pocket and shook them. “I take so many pills a day that I rattle when I walk.”
“Ugh, that’s some serious shit right there,” RAM said as he pulled into downtown Dallas proper and headed towards Victory Park. “Fi once told me that, from now on, when you look an opponent in the eyes? Beat the ever-loving fuck out of him or her like how your uncle beat you. Oh, speaking of which…I’ve got a little something you might want to read. It’s on the floorboard next to your feet.”
“Unnamed Western, A Screenplay by Fiona McFly.” Knight opened up a binder and read the first page aloud. “What’s this about?”
“It’s a Western,” RAM answered. “It’s a project she’d been workin’ on for a couple of years. It’s 1901, and the Old West is dying. A grizzled former lawman teaming up with an up-and-coming inventor to rid the town of Armadillo of its most ruthless gang.”
“The Unnamed Western thing kind of gave that away.” Nick read the first few pages while RAM weaved in and out of traffic on the way to the hotel. “The dialogue is a little clunky and could use a little bit of a rewrite, but this isn’t half bad. What are you wanting to do with it?”
“Why don’t WE try our luck at making this,” RAM announced as he pulled into a parking area outside the American Airlines Center and displayed his parking tag. “For me, it’d be good therapy. For you, it’d be a chance to live up to your nickname.”
At that moment, Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell” began playing from the Sirius-XM app. RAM nodded his head as the song kicked into gear.
“Cowboys From Hell,” he spoke proudly. “That’s our title.”
“If we tried to make this movie it would end up being a steaming pile of shit because neither one of us knows a damn thing about making a movie. Lucky for you I’m technically a part owner of a movie studio and am married to someone who knows about these things.”
“Well,” RAM pondered. “Why don’t we see what she thinks about it…?”
“I’m not sure she would ever be interested in directing a western, but I’ll give it to her to read. Worst-case scenario she produces it and we find another young director to do it, but are you sure that you’re comfortable giving Fi this much control over you again?”
“I kind of doubt Fi would want to direct the thing,” RAM replied as he shut off the truck. “It’d be too much stress on her plate as it is with Retro on hiatus. It would behoove us to consult your wife and see what she thinks. I’m…I’m not afraid of a little rejection.”
“Okay, but we can worry about that later. Right now we’ve got a match to get ready for.”
RAM nodded excitedly.
“Goddamn right,” he said as he shut the driver’s side door and strolled towards the Black Tap Craft Burgers and Beer joint. “You’re gonna love this burger joint. One of the best in Victory Park – and we can promote said match in front of the Dirk Nowitzki statue.”
“I'm more of a Michael Jordan guy, but that works for me.”
RAM gave the thumbs up as he strolled towards the plaza where the iconic statues of both Dirk Nowitzki and Stars great Mike Modano were located. He then looks up to the stars above, perhaps thinking of his deceased girlfriend Rydia.
“Rydia’s probably giggling right now,” he said. “She taught me all she could when it came to programming computers and mainframes. She loved that shit so much…but honestly, I’m starting to fall in love with the road a helluva lot more than I’ve ever done.”
“You need to be careful because wrestling in front of thousands of people every night is like a drug. There is no better high than being inside of the ring, but if you’re not careful it stops being enough for you, which is when you start looking for other things to give you that high.”
RAM bowed his head, perhaps pondering Nicky’s notion.
“I never thought of wrestling being like a drug unto itself,” he said. “That just makes the cocktail of trouble become even stronger than before.”
RAM and Nicky sat down at a window booth inside the burger joint.
______________________________________________________________________________
{ We find RAM and Nick Knight standing in front of the iconic statue of Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki, located outside the American Airlines Center in Dallas’ Victory Park. }}
“Well, well…if it ain’t Survival of the Fittest.
Look behind us, bitches. This statue represents greatness, the heart and desire to face incredible odds and conquer demons. On a personal note, I know it all too well – I was born and raised in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. I could never stop waking up in the morning and hearing about the frustrations the Cowboys cause after shitting the bed on a Sunday to the triumph of the Rangers winning their first World Series. Yet lookin’ at it now, this statue don’t mean SHIT without Dirk being surrounded by a team of capable players, willing to sacrifice a ton just to get a taste of success.
I ask this to the other teams involved in this big-time cage match: are you willing to put your butts on the line for a shot at being the IWF World Tag Team Champions?! And if so…how far are you willing to go in order to escape the cage?! It’s a little something to think about, to ponder inside your minds, as IWF’s annual Thanksgiving tradition draws near. For me…when I look at y’all in the eyes, all I see is that image of my abusive uncle festering like a demon, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Yet come to think of it, I ain’t gonna be alone in stepping up the game here. ‘Cause after all, when all is said and done?
Well…c’mon Nicky, help me out here.”
{ Knight runs his hand over his shaved head and sighs. }
"What the kid is trying to say is that the two people that are leaving Dallas with the IWF World Tag Team Champions are the ones that can best work as a team. This isn’t your typical tag match where one member can do all of the heavy lifting or your run-of-the-mill multi-team match where half the time the winner is the sneakiest team. No, a Dual Escape Match involves team members of the team working in perfect harmony.
Vegas is giving RAM and I the longest odds of winning this match because we’re not really a team, and I don’t blame them. You look at this match on paper and it’s filled with champions, a married couple, and a couple of guys that sorta know each other. Lucky for us matches are decided in the ring or we’d have about as much chance of becoming the Tag Team Champions as RAM’s Cowboys have of winning the Superbowl."
{ RAM closes his eyes and bows his head. }
“Heh, and I’m the one who speaks in code?!
Here’s the deal…did you really think that Nicky and I were simply slapped together and forced to become a team? Seems like Vegas has that kind of attitude as well – dismissing us without taking the time to get to know who we truly are. Y’all don’t think we’ve got the heart and desire to take the eventual beating and escape from that goddamn steel cage. You know something, bitches…you’re probably right. And if you’re dealing with just a kid and a grizzled veteran, they’d probably admit the same thing – that it’s a hopeless cause bein’ out there, in that arena.
Well, listen up and listen good.
Nicky and I are that pairing – the old fart and the young upstart – but a pairing whose been fightin’ hopeless causes throughout our WHOLE DAMN LIVES! We’ve dealt with personal and professional demons. We’ve been told, time and time again, that we ain’t ready for the biggest stages of them all. Yet I’ll say this to you right here and now: if you want a war?! We’ll GIVE you a war that’ll shatter even the most infantile of egos. ‘Cause let’s be frank: none of you are as good as you THINK you are! I dare you to bash our dicks into that fence and prove us wrong.
I fuckin’ DARE you!"
{ Nick pats his protégé on the back. }
"Take a few deep breaths before you have a stroke, kid.
RAM is right though, despite the difference in our age we are cut from a similar cloth. A couple of street kids with absentee parents who were saved by this business, and that's something that binds us tighter than some superficial relationships.
I know Cyrus and Vivienne will say that they are bound by love, as a married man I get that, but you don't see me bringing either of my wives to the ring. I trust them with my very soul, but I'd never force them to have my back and it would be far too painful for me to just stand back and watch them beat on when I'm only a few feet away.
Then there are the two teams made up of friends."
{ Knight smirks. }
"Friendship is a beautiful thing if your factor worker or IT guy, but it has no place in professional wrestling. Sure, you've both won the tag belts, but it's only a matter of time before it all goes down in flames. Trust me, in my twenty-five years in this business I've seen it over and over.
That won't happen with me and RAM though because we aren't friends. We are two men walking the same path for the time being, but we're smart enough to know that one day that's probably going to change.
Until then we are a team united in every way despite what the experts might say. We are the stones in which all other teams will shatter, and when all is said and done we'll be the new IWF World Tag Team Champions."
{ RAM nodded his head before staring straight at the camera. }
“Are you still having reservations about us?!
Are you still so full of your own hubris to know what we are capable of doing out there?!
Then ask yourselves this question: what do you hope to accomplish aside from becoming World Tag Team champs?! Bragging rights?! A sense of justice?! The satisfaction that love and marriage conquers all?! As much as I like to think that those are good answers and shit like that, none of it matters. None of it matters ‘cause, at the end of the day, y’all are gonna receive the biggest whipping of your lives – and you know what, so are we. That’s just the brutal nature of putting a bunch of overinflated loonies inside of a steel cage and saying ‘have at it, y’all!’ When you step inside that cage, and the doors are padlocked, I want you all ask yourselves this simple question:
Is the going up worth the coming down?!
For me, on a personal level?! I’ve known nothing else except for hatred and violence. I’ve only known what it feels like to beat the ever-lovin’ shit out of someone and take the punishment myself. It’s moments like this that help me THRIVE and show this stinkin’ joint what I’ve been blessed with. Teaming up with Nicky, of all people?! It’s just the icing on a cake that I haven’t felt good about tasting in a long, long time. Mark my words, bitches…if you THINK you’re gonna sit there and embarrass us in my home yard?! You’ve got ANOTHER thing comin’ your way!
So step up. Strap in.
It’s time to go to the woodshed.
Where only one of us will walk out as the IWF World Tag Team Champions.”
Well howdy there pardner.