Post by Deleted on May 28, 2016 16:00:37 GMT
“Nothing burns like the cold.”
As Nighthawk pulls a pickup truck into a small cabin deep in the woods of Minnesota to prepare himself for the qualifiers for the tag team turmoil where he and his protégé Desmond Thomas have a chance to win Joker in the Pack contracts one has to wonder if the Chicago native’s recent run of bad luck is partly the reason why he has left not just his hometown, but the entire state, to properly prepare himself for the match that may very well change his IWF history. For while his recent run of attempts at victory have not yet borne fruit in the way that he would have hoped anyone who has watched him perform will freely admit that he is only one good strain of luck away from reminding the world just how good he actually is, a fact that appears to be keeping him motivated even as his losing streak extends itself week after week.
However, as the “Wrestling Machine” gets out of the front seat of the car, and moves to grab a USA Wrestling duffel bag from the cab, his iPhone 6 rings. Looking at the phone quizzically with his eyebrows raised, he nonetheless wraps the duffel bag around his left shoulder as he answers the phone.
(Author’s Note: This conversation took place in Spanish.)
Nighthawk: “Honey, what’s going on? Did something happen?”
Sin, her voice thick with tears and sorrow: “It’s Jorge. He passed away in his sleep last night. His family wants you to read the eulogy at the funeral on Friday. Do you think you can get down to México by then?”
Nighthawk, shell-shocked: “Yeah I can. I’ll see you down there right?”
Sin: “Of course, baby. I loved Jorge too.”
As Sin hangs up the phone, the “Master of 1000 Holds” sags against the truck before slumping to the ground as his entire body heaves with sobs over the loss of his trainer, closest mentor, and father figure Jorge Rivera.
Friday morning…..
As Nighthawk steps in front of a lectern at a massive Catholic church in Tijuana, which is packed to the brim with mourners and family celebrating the life of Jorge Rivera, resplendent in a bespoke 3-piece suit straight out of Savile Row, you cannot help but notice the pain and sadness pouring off him. For while he, objectively, might have expected this day to come it is quite clear that he did no preparation, of any kind, for it whatsoever and is thus in more pain than someone else burying a trusted, but aged, confidante might be.
(Author’s Note: This speech took place in Spanish.)
Nighthawk: “When they told me what happened, I was shocked. Not because, on a logical level, I didn’t ever think this would actually happen. I knew someday Jorge would pass. However, not like this. You hope, when it is someone that we all loved and cared for as much as we all did Jorge, that they get the luxury of dying how they lived. Jorge packed more life, more hours of living up to his fullest potential, into the years he spent on earth than just about anyone in this room.
However, I will not remember Jorge like this, like the man in the coffin. <Nighthawk gestures below him, where the coffin is.> That is an insult to who he was, and all that he accomplished when he was alive. I will remember Jorge, and I hope you do too, as the man he was when he lived. Jorge was the man who, even when he could no longer walk without a cane, routinely stepped in the ring and would walk a student through a hold they were having trouble understanding. That was because he loved teaching, and would do anything he could to make sure every student he had learned as much as they could no matter how he had to teach it to them.
I will remember Jorge as the man who stepped in the ring for one of the most violent matches of his career, and his life, knowing what it would do to him. I know the reason why he did it, too. He did it because he could no longer look at himself in the mirror and believe he was the man he wanted to be if he didn’t fight his enemies with everything he had. That man he fought, that enemy he thought he had, loved him like we all did. He is here today, and I am sure he is grieving too.
But above all else, when I would want to tell anyone about what Jorge was I would tell him about a night in Manchester, England. I was competing on a national team of Jr. Heavyweights against teams from Canada, México, England, and Japan. And after the tournament was over, and we were all in the bar talking about what had happened, Jorge, who was coaching Team México, came over and talked with everyone about strategy late into the night. That is the Jorge I always want to remember. Someone who loved teaching so much, and learning equally so, that he would talk late into the night with anyone who might be willing to listen to him.
If you want to pay tribute to his memory, to honor the man he was, do that. Be willing to teach, be willing to learn, and find meaning in it.
Thank you. And Jorge, if you can hear this, I vow to be the man, the wrestler, and the champion you always thought I could be.”
Walking off the lectern, and directly right into the arms of his wife Sin, Nighthawk again breaks down as the stoic exterior of the “Wrestling Machine” falls away from him once and for all.
The next morning….
As Nighthawk sits on the patio of the hotel room he is staying at in Tijuana, taking a look over the city in general, he slowly closes his eyes as tears begin to pour down his face. Clad in a light-blue Team México t-shirt, black leather pants with orange and white piping up and down each leg, and black mid-top work boots, the “Wrestling Machine” opens his eyes and looks as focused and determined as we have ever seen him even as tears continue to pour from his eyes.
Nighthawk: “I can speak to something very few people on the roster can. Loss, and the clarity of purpose that it can bring to you if you let it.
I lost my 1st father to the bottle, because for all of his strength, he wasn’t strong enough to beat it. He held it to a draw, and he kept holding it at bay for as long as he could, but the damage was already done. I spent most of my career trying to fight for him, trying to be the sort of man he would want to be, until I made the decision that being the sort of man who lives only to avenge the defeats of another would not be what I wanted to do with my life, and not what he wanted either. In that way, I let my first glorious purpose go because it was beginning to define me in ways that I didn’t want it to.
And then, just this week, I lost my 2nd father. I didn’t lose him to a bottle, or a traffic accident, or a robbery gone bad. Nothing that painful. I just lost him. And while I’m not trying to avenge his defeats, because he didn’t have that many, I am now once again burdened with glorious purpose.
And in between crying over the people, and the lives, that are lost to me forever I came to a conclusion, something of an epiphany if you mind the overused cliché. My purpose, the only thing I have left to do, is to make my 2 fathers as proud of me as I could possibly make them. Every time I step in an IWF ring from this point forward, every single time a match card is released and my name is on the poster, I want there to be a certain level of performance you grow accustomed to expecting.
I no longer want the words ‘He wrestles well, but he loses all the time’ to be what you think of when you think of me. I want you to think ‘He wrestles with honor and dignity, and he wins’ when you see my name on the poster for the show you saved for and sacrificed to attend.
That is my purpose now, and I will be damned if I am going to let anything and anyone stop me from living up to it. And this week, when I step in the ring with two teams who want nothing more than to have a shot at the biggest championship in the world, that purpose is going to be brought into sharp focus.
First of all, let me talk to you Mohamed Al-Thani because I have the increasingly strong perception that it appears you no longer have a purpose. When you arrived, you told the world you wanted to be the Imperial Champion. It was the thing you demanded to become, and you used just about every grey and black-market trick in the book to get yourself in a position where that could happen. And yet, Mohammed, here we are.
Because for all of your undeniable talent, for all of the skill that made some of us believe that you might actually be able to back up some of the boasts you made, there’s a flaw, an Achilles heel if you will.
It’s your focus, or more accurately, your temper. Because, Mohammed, you are the sort of guy who gets distracted easily.
You got distracted by ego, and having to prove you were smarter and better than everyone else on your own team, at Survival of the Fittest. What did that distraction cost you? A chance to win a championship, and being checkmated by Spike Kane to boot.
You got distracted by ego again when you faced Desmond and I, when you could have had the chance to win a guaranteed title shot. Why? Because you refused to show even the most basic level of teamwork to achieve a common goal.
And so here you are, Mohammed. Seeing me again. Looking across the ring from me again. Do you know what they call insanity, Mohammed? Doing the same thing and somehow, magically, expecting the result to change. This week, you will have the same results as you have had before now. You will walk into that ring, all full of bravado and aggression, and you will see me standing there.
And the guy who’s ‘too small’ to belong in the ring with you will tie you in knots, run circles around you, hit you harder than you expect, and tap you out.
And then that brings me to the man to whom I have the most respect for, and that’s you Hooligan. I wrestled you mere moments after you were jumped from behind by Cyrus Daniels, and you still gave me one of the hardest matches I have had in IWF ever. You should be commended for the man you are, and for the wrestler you have the potential to become.
And it is this respect that makes me uncomfortable with what it is that I find myself having to do. I wish this weren’t so. I wish I didn’t have to set a blowtorch to your dreams to keep mine alive.
But alas, that is where we find ourselves.
So, Hooligan, when you step in the ring with me and my student, I can make you this promise: We will wrestle you with honor and dignity. We will not take cheap shots.
But, and I want to make this clear, we will wrestle you as hard as we possibly can. I can speak for myself that I am willing to walk through the fires of hell to get this done, because I don’t know how many more chances at this particular apple I can expect to get. I’ve been in the ring with the Imperial Championship on the line once, and I couldn’t get the job done when Alex Jones was holding the belt. If I have to hurt someone I respect, if I have to make you suffer to get one more chance at the one thing that has eluded me in IWF, I will.
I won’t like it, but I will.
And then that brings me to the two clown princes in this match, Todd Williams and Teddy Steele. If there is more of an example of wasted potential, I have yet to see it.
The two of you, at various points, appear to have been stars. Not in the ‘whatever it takes to get on television’ sort that so commonly pollutes this business nowadays, but the actual kind of stars whose charm, and personality, are in step with their actual achievements. But that is not now. Now, you two each are the sort of people who are coasting on past glories instead of new ones. And since you step into the ring, and try to take from me and mine, I have no choice but to take from you and yours. You will step in the ring with me, and you will fall.
I want another shot at the Imperial Championship, and my student wants to turn himself into a superstar. None of you, no teams in this match or in the next one, will stop us. I will fulfill my purpose, through hell or high water.
Goodnight IWF. May sleep give you the courage to go on.”
As Nighthawk pulls a pickup truck into a small cabin deep in the woods of Minnesota to prepare himself for the qualifiers for the tag team turmoil where he and his protégé Desmond Thomas have a chance to win Joker in the Pack contracts one has to wonder if the Chicago native’s recent run of bad luck is partly the reason why he has left not just his hometown, but the entire state, to properly prepare himself for the match that may very well change his IWF history. For while his recent run of attempts at victory have not yet borne fruit in the way that he would have hoped anyone who has watched him perform will freely admit that he is only one good strain of luck away from reminding the world just how good he actually is, a fact that appears to be keeping him motivated even as his losing streak extends itself week after week.
However, as the “Wrestling Machine” gets out of the front seat of the car, and moves to grab a USA Wrestling duffel bag from the cab, his iPhone 6 rings. Looking at the phone quizzically with his eyebrows raised, he nonetheless wraps the duffel bag around his left shoulder as he answers the phone.
(Author’s Note: This conversation took place in Spanish.)
Nighthawk: “Honey, what’s going on? Did something happen?”
Sin, her voice thick with tears and sorrow: “It’s Jorge. He passed away in his sleep last night. His family wants you to read the eulogy at the funeral on Friday. Do you think you can get down to México by then?”
Nighthawk, shell-shocked: “Yeah I can. I’ll see you down there right?”
Sin: “Of course, baby. I loved Jorge too.”
As Sin hangs up the phone, the “Master of 1000 Holds” sags against the truck before slumping to the ground as his entire body heaves with sobs over the loss of his trainer, closest mentor, and father figure Jorge Rivera.
Friday morning…..
As Nighthawk steps in front of a lectern at a massive Catholic church in Tijuana, which is packed to the brim with mourners and family celebrating the life of Jorge Rivera, resplendent in a bespoke 3-piece suit straight out of Savile Row, you cannot help but notice the pain and sadness pouring off him. For while he, objectively, might have expected this day to come it is quite clear that he did no preparation, of any kind, for it whatsoever and is thus in more pain than someone else burying a trusted, but aged, confidante might be.
(Author’s Note: This speech took place in Spanish.)
Nighthawk: “When they told me what happened, I was shocked. Not because, on a logical level, I didn’t ever think this would actually happen. I knew someday Jorge would pass. However, not like this. You hope, when it is someone that we all loved and cared for as much as we all did Jorge, that they get the luxury of dying how they lived. Jorge packed more life, more hours of living up to his fullest potential, into the years he spent on earth than just about anyone in this room.
However, I will not remember Jorge like this, like the man in the coffin. <Nighthawk gestures below him, where the coffin is.> That is an insult to who he was, and all that he accomplished when he was alive. I will remember Jorge, and I hope you do too, as the man he was when he lived. Jorge was the man who, even when he could no longer walk without a cane, routinely stepped in the ring and would walk a student through a hold they were having trouble understanding. That was because he loved teaching, and would do anything he could to make sure every student he had learned as much as they could no matter how he had to teach it to them.
I will remember Jorge as the man who stepped in the ring for one of the most violent matches of his career, and his life, knowing what it would do to him. I know the reason why he did it, too. He did it because he could no longer look at himself in the mirror and believe he was the man he wanted to be if he didn’t fight his enemies with everything he had. That man he fought, that enemy he thought he had, loved him like we all did. He is here today, and I am sure he is grieving too.
But above all else, when I would want to tell anyone about what Jorge was I would tell him about a night in Manchester, England. I was competing on a national team of Jr. Heavyweights against teams from Canada, México, England, and Japan. And after the tournament was over, and we were all in the bar talking about what had happened, Jorge, who was coaching Team México, came over and talked with everyone about strategy late into the night. That is the Jorge I always want to remember. Someone who loved teaching so much, and learning equally so, that he would talk late into the night with anyone who might be willing to listen to him.
If you want to pay tribute to his memory, to honor the man he was, do that. Be willing to teach, be willing to learn, and find meaning in it.
Thank you. And Jorge, if you can hear this, I vow to be the man, the wrestler, and the champion you always thought I could be.”
Walking off the lectern, and directly right into the arms of his wife Sin, Nighthawk again breaks down as the stoic exterior of the “Wrestling Machine” falls away from him once and for all.
The next morning….
As Nighthawk sits on the patio of the hotel room he is staying at in Tijuana, taking a look over the city in general, he slowly closes his eyes as tears begin to pour down his face. Clad in a light-blue Team México t-shirt, black leather pants with orange and white piping up and down each leg, and black mid-top work boots, the “Wrestling Machine” opens his eyes and looks as focused and determined as we have ever seen him even as tears continue to pour from his eyes.
Nighthawk: “I can speak to something very few people on the roster can. Loss, and the clarity of purpose that it can bring to you if you let it.
I lost my 1st father to the bottle, because for all of his strength, he wasn’t strong enough to beat it. He held it to a draw, and he kept holding it at bay for as long as he could, but the damage was already done. I spent most of my career trying to fight for him, trying to be the sort of man he would want to be, until I made the decision that being the sort of man who lives only to avenge the defeats of another would not be what I wanted to do with my life, and not what he wanted either. In that way, I let my first glorious purpose go because it was beginning to define me in ways that I didn’t want it to.
And then, just this week, I lost my 2nd father. I didn’t lose him to a bottle, or a traffic accident, or a robbery gone bad. Nothing that painful. I just lost him. And while I’m not trying to avenge his defeats, because he didn’t have that many, I am now once again burdened with glorious purpose.
And in between crying over the people, and the lives, that are lost to me forever I came to a conclusion, something of an epiphany if you mind the overused cliché. My purpose, the only thing I have left to do, is to make my 2 fathers as proud of me as I could possibly make them. Every time I step in an IWF ring from this point forward, every single time a match card is released and my name is on the poster, I want there to be a certain level of performance you grow accustomed to expecting.
I no longer want the words ‘He wrestles well, but he loses all the time’ to be what you think of when you think of me. I want you to think ‘He wrestles with honor and dignity, and he wins’ when you see my name on the poster for the show you saved for and sacrificed to attend.
That is my purpose now, and I will be damned if I am going to let anything and anyone stop me from living up to it. And this week, when I step in the ring with two teams who want nothing more than to have a shot at the biggest championship in the world, that purpose is going to be brought into sharp focus.
First of all, let me talk to you Mohamed Al-Thani because I have the increasingly strong perception that it appears you no longer have a purpose. When you arrived, you told the world you wanted to be the Imperial Champion. It was the thing you demanded to become, and you used just about every grey and black-market trick in the book to get yourself in a position where that could happen. And yet, Mohammed, here we are.
Because for all of your undeniable talent, for all of the skill that made some of us believe that you might actually be able to back up some of the boasts you made, there’s a flaw, an Achilles heel if you will.
It’s your focus, or more accurately, your temper. Because, Mohammed, you are the sort of guy who gets distracted easily.
You got distracted by ego, and having to prove you were smarter and better than everyone else on your own team, at Survival of the Fittest. What did that distraction cost you? A chance to win a championship, and being checkmated by Spike Kane to boot.
You got distracted by ego again when you faced Desmond and I, when you could have had the chance to win a guaranteed title shot. Why? Because you refused to show even the most basic level of teamwork to achieve a common goal.
And so here you are, Mohammed. Seeing me again. Looking across the ring from me again. Do you know what they call insanity, Mohammed? Doing the same thing and somehow, magically, expecting the result to change. This week, you will have the same results as you have had before now. You will walk into that ring, all full of bravado and aggression, and you will see me standing there.
And the guy who’s ‘too small’ to belong in the ring with you will tie you in knots, run circles around you, hit you harder than you expect, and tap you out.
And then that brings me to the man to whom I have the most respect for, and that’s you Hooligan. I wrestled you mere moments after you were jumped from behind by Cyrus Daniels, and you still gave me one of the hardest matches I have had in IWF ever. You should be commended for the man you are, and for the wrestler you have the potential to become.
And it is this respect that makes me uncomfortable with what it is that I find myself having to do. I wish this weren’t so. I wish I didn’t have to set a blowtorch to your dreams to keep mine alive.
But alas, that is where we find ourselves.
So, Hooligan, when you step in the ring with me and my student, I can make you this promise: We will wrestle you with honor and dignity. We will not take cheap shots.
But, and I want to make this clear, we will wrestle you as hard as we possibly can. I can speak for myself that I am willing to walk through the fires of hell to get this done, because I don’t know how many more chances at this particular apple I can expect to get. I’ve been in the ring with the Imperial Championship on the line once, and I couldn’t get the job done when Alex Jones was holding the belt. If I have to hurt someone I respect, if I have to make you suffer to get one more chance at the one thing that has eluded me in IWF, I will.
I won’t like it, but I will.
And then that brings me to the two clown princes in this match, Todd Williams and Teddy Steele. If there is more of an example of wasted potential, I have yet to see it.
The two of you, at various points, appear to have been stars. Not in the ‘whatever it takes to get on television’ sort that so commonly pollutes this business nowadays, but the actual kind of stars whose charm, and personality, are in step with their actual achievements. But that is not now. Now, you two each are the sort of people who are coasting on past glories instead of new ones. And since you step into the ring, and try to take from me and mine, I have no choice but to take from you and yours. You will step in the ring with me, and you will fall.
I want another shot at the Imperial Championship, and my student wants to turn himself into a superstar. None of you, no teams in this match or in the next one, will stop us. I will fulfill my purpose, through hell or high water.
Goodnight IWF. May sleep give you the courage to go on.”
Well howdy there pardner.