Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2015 0:45:14 GMT
“I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”
As Nighthawk sits down on a bench inside the expansive training hall on the campus of his alma mater the University of Michigan, his head slumping as he is quite clearly utterly exhausted from his training regimen for Jack Gaither and Warren Kane in a triangle ladder match, one has to wonder if the Chicago native is pushing his still-healing body past what his natural limits in order to prove that he belongs in the same ring, and has earned the right to possibly be called the Invictus Champion.
However despite that very real possibility that he is going to train himself right into the ground it also seems to mark, perhaps, a return to the same rabid dog-esque intensity and psychopathic competitiveness that has defined his career up to this point and which, for whatever reason, has not seemed to be noticeable since his return to the IWF.
But as the “Wrestling Machine” slowly nods off, his body and his mind both having combined to demand sleep and rest, he suddenly jerks awake as he sees the sturdy figure of the legendary Michigan coach Bo Schembechler standing directly in front of him, and his father standing on the other side. Blinking his eyes, instinctually realizing that this is some kind of dream sequence but also not caring all that profoundly, the “Man of 1000 Holds” slowly stands up.
Bo, reaching out to grab the collar of the cowed Nighthawk: “Son, I know you think you’ve been working hard. I know you think you’ve been living up to the ideals, and the spirit, of what a Michigan man is supposed to be. Honor, respect for your opponent, and a willingness to compete harder than anyone else can ever imagine. But you need to do more, work harder. Because right now, when I see you, I don’t see a man worthy of being a champion. I see this man on the other side of me, and there was nothing he wasn’t willing to sacrifice to become a champion. All of the great captains I had, all the great teams they had built, were built on the same singular idea. The bedrock of it all has always been sacrifice. What are you sacrificing? What are you willing to give up to be a champion? I know you think of yourself as not being worthy of this chance, of not having accomplished enough to be in the position that you find yourself in.
That’s not truthful. And you should know, in your bones, that it isn’t. You have proved yourself to be worthy of that shot at a title the second you walked through the door. But if you’re the man I think you are, the man all of your fans want you to be and know that you can be, none of what I say about you earning this shot will mean anything. You’ll keep training, and you’ll keep competing, until you earn it. Have I made myself clear?”
Nighthawk, a steel evident in his voice that we haven’t heard in quite a long time: “I understand. Mr. Schembechler, you were an idol of my coach at Michigan, and by extension, an idol of mine. I hope you understand that I treasured this talk, and I also hope you understand that I never wish to have it again. And after this week, I doubt I will ever need to hear it.”
And with that, the two fixtures in his life fade away and Nighthawk sits up straight as an arrow. Stretching his upper body out the “Man of 1000 Holds” heads back into the gym, cold fire in his ice-blue eyes.
The next morning…..
As Nighthawk pulls his suitcase into the back seat of his chopped and stretched Ford F-150, the “Wrestling Machine” slowly closes his eyes. Clad in a black hooded leather western-style duster, a black long-sleeved Yoshiaki Fujiwara t-shirt, black leather pants with blue and orange piping, and black work boots, Nighthawk opens his eyes and finishes loading the truck.
Nighthawk: “I can hear it. Right now, before you get the words out of your mouth, I hear it. It started out as a whisper, and then developed into something of a dull roar. Everyone’s saying I don’t deserve to be in this match, that I haven’t earned the right to be called a champion.
I’d love to tell you that’s a lie. I’d love to tell you I’ve proven myself time and time again, and I’m worthy of this.
But words, no matter how passionate and intense, cannot change anyone’s mind about that. Anyone who believes that telling you they’ll be the toughest and the meanest means they can make it so is the sort of person who will crumble when the pressure gets intense.
Instead, I will show you what I’m capable of. Deeds matter more than words.
And in that vein, I make you a promise. A promise forged in sweat and honored in blood and tears.
When they ring the bell for the triangle ladder match, I will scratch, scrap, and claw until my final breath. I will not stop, will not falter from my appointed tasks, until my job is done. And when that job is done, I will have earned a thing more important to me than a championship, even one as respected and highly favored as the Invictus Title happens to be. I will have, at least in some small way, earned your respect. All that matters to me is that I know, well and truly, that I have left nothing to chance, left no stone unturned. Because I have a job to do, and that job is simple: I have to save my career. And
if I have to climb a ladder to do it, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
And yet, as I think about this further, I find myself realizing that I have seen my opponents more than once.
Let me start then with the former champion. Mr. Gaither, you say that playing the nice guy got you nowhere. I fear, then, that what you’ve done is conflate being a ‘nice guy’ with actually being an honorable man, and an honorable champion. A ‘nice guy’ of the sort you’re trying to be begs for respect, pouts when he doesn’t get it, and changes his entire worldview in order to try and become what he thinks people want him to be.
A ‘nice guy’ demands credit for that which he has already done, and then pouts when he doesn’t get his way.
An honorable man, on the other hand, puts his head down and continues working when things don’t go his way. Hard work without demanding to be given credit for it, Mr. Gaither, is its own reward.
Now I’m not going to promise a win, or guarantee it, because that implies I have control over that. But Mr. Gaither, I make you this one instead: If you come into this match looking at this as an easy night’s work, and looking at me as an easy opponent, I will make you pay for that delusion and make you pay severely.
You see, you’ve always wanted the stardom, the acclaim, and the recognition. But, and this is a part I’m ok with admitting, you want to be a star while I’m more than okay with laboring in the shadows and simply giving a star’s effort every single night. At the end of this match, you will learn once again that I can do one thing: I can outwork you. And I will.
You see, Mr. Gaither, I’m not the sort of guy who is going to come out here and demand things from you. Rather, I’ll ask.
Please give me your best effort. Give me the match this title deserves. And when the best man wins, if it isn’t you, live with it. Don’t tell the world you choked, and take away their credit because you can’t swallow losing.
And then that brings me to the man who holds it now.
Warren, I know you’re not the same man you were when you snatched that title from my grasp in a ladder match, not unlike this one. Come to think of, that ladder match is a lot like this one.
You have two men who everyone believes are fighting over the title, and then you have me.
Now you’d be well within your rights to believe that you are a better man than you were that night, and since you won the 1st time, you’ll win here. If I was in your shoes, that’s the play I’d be making. But since I’m trying to climb the mountain, and you happen to be standing at the peak trying to knock me off of the mountain when I get up there, I’m going to tell you the mistake you’re making.
To be fair, it’s a mistake a lot of people have made since my return. You’ve assumed I’m not the same guy I was before, that my edge is gone.
This week, inside that ring, you find out for yourself. You get to learn, and tell everyone else in the locker room, if I still have it.
And when this is over, when that bell rings again, you’ll see the old me. You’ll see the guy IWF couldn’t NOT sign, the guy people demanded they sign.
The Machine is back.
Goodnight. May sleep give you the courage to go on.”
As Nighthawk sits down on a bench inside the expansive training hall on the campus of his alma mater the University of Michigan, his head slumping as he is quite clearly utterly exhausted from his training regimen for Jack Gaither and Warren Kane in a triangle ladder match, one has to wonder if the Chicago native is pushing his still-healing body past what his natural limits in order to prove that he belongs in the same ring, and has earned the right to possibly be called the Invictus Champion.
However despite that very real possibility that he is going to train himself right into the ground it also seems to mark, perhaps, a return to the same rabid dog-esque intensity and psychopathic competitiveness that has defined his career up to this point and which, for whatever reason, has not seemed to be noticeable since his return to the IWF.
But as the “Wrestling Machine” slowly nods off, his body and his mind both having combined to demand sleep and rest, he suddenly jerks awake as he sees the sturdy figure of the legendary Michigan coach Bo Schembechler standing directly in front of him, and his father standing on the other side. Blinking his eyes, instinctually realizing that this is some kind of dream sequence but also not caring all that profoundly, the “Man of 1000 Holds” slowly stands up.
Bo, reaching out to grab the collar of the cowed Nighthawk: “Son, I know you think you’ve been working hard. I know you think you’ve been living up to the ideals, and the spirit, of what a Michigan man is supposed to be. Honor, respect for your opponent, and a willingness to compete harder than anyone else can ever imagine. But you need to do more, work harder. Because right now, when I see you, I don’t see a man worthy of being a champion. I see this man on the other side of me, and there was nothing he wasn’t willing to sacrifice to become a champion. All of the great captains I had, all the great teams they had built, were built on the same singular idea. The bedrock of it all has always been sacrifice. What are you sacrificing? What are you willing to give up to be a champion? I know you think of yourself as not being worthy of this chance, of not having accomplished enough to be in the position that you find yourself in.
That’s not truthful. And you should know, in your bones, that it isn’t. You have proved yourself to be worthy of that shot at a title the second you walked through the door. But if you’re the man I think you are, the man all of your fans want you to be and know that you can be, none of what I say about you earning this shot will mean anything. You’ll keep training, and you’ll keep competing, until you earn it. Have I made myself clear?”
Nighthawk, a steel evident in his voice that we haven’t heard in quite a long time: “I understand. Mr. Schembechler, you were an idol of my coach at Michigan, and by extension, an idol of mine. I hope you understand that I treasured this talk, and I also hope you understand that I never wish to have it again. And after this week, I doubt I will ever need to hear it.”
And with that, the two fixtures in his life fade away and Nighthawk sits up straight as an arrow. Stretching his upper body out the “Man of 1000 Holds” heads back into the gym, cold fire in his ice-blue eyes.
The next morning…..
As Nighthawk pulls his suitcase into the back seat of his chopped and stretched Ford F-150, the “Wrestling Machine” slowly closes his eyes. Clad in a black hooded leather western-style duster, a black long-sleeved Yoshiaki Fujiwara t-shirt, black leather pants with blue and orange piping, and black work boots, Nighthawk opens his eyes and finishes loading the truck.
Nighthawk: “I can hear it. Right now, before you get the words out of your mouth, I hear it. It started out as a whisper, and then developed into something of a dull roar. Everyone’s saying I don’t deserve to be in this match, that I haven’t earned the right to be called a champion.
I’d love to tell you that’s a lie. I’d love to tell you I’ve proven myself time and time again, and I’m worthy of this.
But words, no matter how passionate and intense, cannot change anyone’s mind about that. Anyone who believes that telling you they’ll be the toughest and the meanest means they can make it so is the sort of person who will crumble when the pressure gets intense.
Instead, I will show you what I’m capable of. Deeds matter more than words.
And in that vein, I make you a promise. A promise forged in sweat and honored in blood and tears.
When they ring the bell for the triangle ladder match, I will scratch, scrap, and claw until my final breath. I will not stop, will not falter from my appointed tasks, until my job is done. And when that job is done, I will have earned a thing more important to me than a championship, even one as respected and highly favored as the Invictus Title happens to be. I will have, at least in some small way, earned your respect. All that matters to me is that I know, well and truly, that I have left nothing to chance, left no stone unturned. Because I have a job to do, and that job is simple: I have to save my career. And
if I have to climb a ladder to do it, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
And yet, as I think about this further, I find myself realizing that I have seen my opponents more than once.
Let me start then with the former champion. Mr. Gaither, you say that playing the nice guy got you nowhere. I fear, then, that what you’ve done is conflate being a ‘nice guy’ with actually being an honorable man, and an honorable champion. A ‘nice guy’ of the sort you’re trying to be begs for respect, pouts when he doesn’t get it, and changes his entire worldview in order to try and become what he thinks people want him to be.
A ‘nice guy’ demands credit for that which he has already done, and then pouts when he doesn’t get his way.
An honorable man, on the other hand, puts his head down and continues working when things don’t go his way. Hard work without demanding to be given credit for it, Mr. Gaither, is its own reward.
Now I’m not going to promise a win, or guarantee it, because that implies I have control over that. But Mr. Gaither, I make you this one instead: If you come into this match looking at this as an easy night’s work, and looking at me as an easy opponent, I will make you pay for that delusion and make you pay severely.
You see, you’ve always wanted the stardom, the acclaim, and the recognition. But, and this is a part I’m ok with admitting, you want to be a star while I’m more than okay with laboring in the shadows and simply giving a star’s effort every single night. At the end of this match, you will learn once again that I can do one thing: I can outwork you. And I will.
You see, Mr. Gaither, I’m not the sort of guy who is going to come out here and demand things from you. Rather, I’ll ask.
Please give me your best effort. Give me the match this title deserves. And when the best man wins, if it isn’t you, live with it. Don’t tell the world you choked, and take away their credit because you can’t swallow losing.
And then that brings me to the man who holds it now.
Warren, I know you’re not the same man you were when you snatched that title from my grasp in a ladder match, not unlike this one. Come to think of, that ladder match is a lot like this one.
You have two men who everyone believes are fighting over the title, and then you have me.
Now you’d be well within your rights to believe that you are a better man than you were that night, and since you won the 1st time, you’ll win here. If I was in your shoes, that’s the play I’d be making. But since I’m trying to climb the mountain, and you happen to be standing at the peak trying to knock me off of the mountain when I get up there, I’m going to tell you the mistake you’re making.
To be fair, it’s a mistake a lot of people have made since my return. You’ve assumed I’m not the same guy I was before, that my edge is gone.
This week, inside that ring, you find out for yourself. You get to learn, and tell everyone else in the locker room, if I still have it.
And when this is over, when that bell rings again, you’ll see the old me. You’ll see the guy IWF couldn’t NOT sign, the guy people demanded they sign.
The Machine is back.
Goodnight. May sleep give you the courage to go on.”
Well howdy there pardner.