Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2017 0:51:46 GMT
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”
As Nighthawk sits in the front pew of the local church near his home, his hands wrapped tightly around a necklace of rosary beads, we see him praying quietly to himself in front of a fully lit shelf of votive candles, the burning candles lighting his face brilliantly.
Standing at the back of the church which makes it near-impossible that we can hear what he is saying we suddenly realize that the Chicagoan might be taking his entry in the Roulette far more seriously than just about everyone else, with the understanding wrapped tightly in that serious and focused approach that this might very well be his last and best chance to get a run at the major singles title which has eluded him.
However, while the desperation literally pours off Nighthawk with every step, it is not accompanied by anything approaching the kind of crazed recklessness one might expect to see in someone reckoning with the very real idea that they may be on the verge of seeing every single avenue towards glory closed to them, and perhaps closed off permanently. Instead, rather than anger in the passenger seat with that desperation, we are seeing the focus and hyper-vigilant attention to every detail, no matter how small, that one might expect to find, if excusing the pun, in a well-oiled machine.
Pulling himself up slowly and carefully, his black-and-red-painted nails grabbing tightly onto an old maple pew that looks very much as though it might crack in half if too much pressure is applied to it, Nighthawk moves as though he is going to leave the church altogether before sighing audibly and moving back towards the pews and crossing himself as though he believes he has to.
>>>>>>>>>
As Nighthawk walks into a local doctor’s office to receive the medical clearance he will need to appear at High Stakes and compete in the Roulette match we see the way in which he is being treated by the other patients in the waiting room and remember, albeit most definitely not for the first time, that his popularity has never waned even with all of his razor-thin losses and failures at the apex of the sport.
In fact, if we are being honest, all of those painfully close defeats seem to have only enhanced the view of so many in the sport that he, above perhaps just about every other man in the Roulette match, truly represents the ideals of sportsmanship and fair play that everyone else chooses to pay lip service to.
Smiling warmly at the gob smacked teenager on his left side, taking a pen to sign the cast on what appears to be her broken arm, Nighthawk finally pulls himself up to his feet when the kindly receptionist waves him in to see the doctor. Walking as quickly as he can, years of hard battles and matches preventing him from striding normally much less at the speed one might expect from someone with his athletic reputation, the “Wrestling Machine” walks into the private doctor’s room and sits in a chair, waiting for his full checkup to begin with a degree of nervousness one might not necessarily expect to see from someone who has spent as much time as he has training for this profession.
Almost as if on cue, the doctor walks into the room and all of the nervousness he may have been feeling clearly leeches out of him. Walking into the room, red hair flowing from out of the back of her cream-colored lab coat is Nighthawk’s sister Siobhan.
(Author’s Note: This conversation took place in Gaelic.)
Siobhan, pulling off a halfway-decent Cajun accent: “Sit down at my table; put your mind at ease. If you relax, it will enable me to do anything I please. I know you’re nervous about High Stakes and the Roulette match, so I figured I’d do a little Dr. Facilier to give you something else to think about.”
Nighthawk, smiling widely as he often does when he is around family: “Nice to see you again, Sis, and I do miss you. Don’t worry, I’m relaxed.”
Siobhan, her thick Irish accent becoming noticeable: “I know you just need a medical clearance, little brother, but we really do need to talk. I know how long you have been doing this, and that you have been doing it since 2002, but your body cannot keep up the pace you have been putting it through. There is going to come a day, and the way you are going it may be sooner rather than later, when you step into the ring and it is all gone. We have seen people like that. Do you want to be that person? Is that what you want your legacy to be?”
Nighthawk: “Of course I don’t. But the truth is that this might be my last shot at winning a major title. I don’t know how long the backstage staff who runs IWF, those men and women, are going to want to see me in title matches if I can’t win any. I don’t know how many opportunities are left for me out there. So it doesn’t matter if I have to crawl to the ring, on my hands and knees. If this is the last chance I’m ever going to get, I want to make the most of it. Please clear me, Siobhan. Let me do this.”
Siobhan, regretful: “I will. You look healthy enough for this last shot. And if you’re not, if they carry you out of that ring, I’ll patch you up the best I can.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>
As Nighthawk packs up his gym bag with all of his equipment, audibly checking off every last thing he might need whether it be his wrestling boots or extra pairs of wrist tape, he leans against his king-sized bed as all of the desperation slowly leaks out of him like a river flowing into one of its tributaries. Clad in a white Chicago Blackhawks practice t-shirt, black leather pants with orange piping up and down each leg, and black mid-top wrestling boots, the “Man of 1000 Holds” slowly closes his eyes.
Nighthawk: “Let me tell you a story. I don’t know why I have to tell it, but I know what it means.
I became a wrestler when no one wanted me to. My advisors in college told me it was probably a good idea if I got my masters and then my doctorate in History, because I would be a good teacher. My first trainer told me, with a cigar in his mouth the whole time, that he didn’t think he could train me because he had never trained someone so small before in his entire life. The first time I left the United States to wrestle in Japan, the head of the Dojo where I lived told me that he was going to beat on me and beat on me until he forced me to quit, because he loved breaking gaijin like me.
And when I decided I didn’t just want to be a TV-friendly wrestler, which is what my trainer told me would be the limits of my abilities, people decided I had to prove that I could do that too. So I did. I went from country to country, each more obscure than the last, but I wanted to learn. I wanted to be taught, to know the feeling of outthinking an opponent.
Why do I mention these parts of my history, you might be asking? The answer’s simple. Because, at every turn, this career of mine was something that I had to prove I didn’t just want, but that I had to prove that I deserved. And every step of the way, every night spent lying in a dingy bed in a dingy motel with ice packs on every inch of bare skin, I proved I deserved the right to call myself a wrestler.
All those towns where I didn’t speak the language and had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get myself fed and to the hotel one step above a halfway house where I was staying the night have led me to this moment have proved it.
The 3 years I have spent in IWF, each title shot getting me closer and closer to the dream of holding a major title, have proved it.
And when I step in the ring for the Roulette, whether I be no 2 or no 30, I will be the last man standing. I will not fall. Until I collapse, until there is nothing left in my body to give, I will keep going. I will not fail at this.
I will not look my friends, men like Andrew Jacobsen, in the eyes and have them think I did less than I could have done.
I will not go and pay tribute to my mentors and tell them ‘I tried my best, I did what I could’ again. I will not look at their graves and know that they handed me the keys to an entire libraries’ worth of knowledge, and I could hand them back nothing but a collection of ‘almost’ and ‘maybe next time’.
I will not fall. I will not falter. I will not lose.
Goodnight IWF. May sleep give you the courage to go on.”
As Nighthawk sits in the front pew of the local church near his home, his hands wrapped tightly around a necklace of rosary beads, we see him praying quietly to himself in front of a fully lit shelf of votive candles, the burning candles lighting his face brilliantly.
Standing at the back of the church which makes it near-impossible that we can hear what he is saying we suddenly realize that the Chicagoan might be taking his entry in the Roulette far more seriously than just about everyone else, with the understanding wrapped tightly in that serious and focused approach that this might very well be his last and best chance to get a run at the major singles title which has eluded him.
However, while the desperation literally pours off Nighthawk with every step, it is not accompanied by anything approaching the kind of crazed recklessness one might expect to see in someone reckoning with the very real idea that they may be on the verge of seeing every single avenue towards glory closed to them, and perhaps closed off permanently. Instead, rather than anger in the passenger seat with that desperation, we are seeing the focus and hyper-vigilant attention to every detail, no matter how small, that one might expect to find, if excusing the pun, in a well-oiled machine.
Pulling himself up slowly and carefully, his black-and-red-painted nails grabbing tightly onto an old maple pew that looks very much as though it might crack in half if too much pressure is applied to it, Nighthawk moves as though he is going to leave the church altogether before sighing audibly and moving back towards the pews and crossing himself as though he believes he has to.
>>>>>>>>>
As Nighthawk walks into a local doctor’s office to receive the medical clearance he will need to appear at High Stakes and compete in the Roulette match we see the way in which he is being treated by the other patients in the waiting room and remember, albeit most definitely not for the first time, that his popularity has never waned even with all of his razor-thin losses and failures at the apex of the sport.
In fact, if we are being honest, all of those painfully close defeats seem to have only enhanced the view of so many in the sport that he, above perhaps just about every other man in the Roulette match, truly represents the ideals of sportsmanship and fair play that everyone else chooses to pay lip service to.
Smiling warmly at the gob smacked teenager on his left side, taking a pen to sign the cast on what appears to be her broken arm, Nighthawk finally pulls himself up to his feet when the kindly receptionist waves him in to see the doctor. Walking as quickly as he can, years of hard battles and matches preventing him from striding normally much less at the speed one might expect from someone with his athletic reputation, the “Wrestling Machine” walks into the private doctor’s room and sits in a chair, waiting for his full checkup to begin with a degree of nervousness one might not necessarily expect to see from someone who has spent as much time as he has training for this profession.
Almost as if on cue, the doctor walks into the room and all of the nervousness he may have been feeling clearly leeches out of him. Walking into the room, red hair flowing from out of the back of her cream-colored lab coat is Nighthawk’s sister Siobhan.
(Author’s Note: This conversation took place in Gaelic.)
Siobhan, pulling off a halfway-decent Cajun accent: “Sit down at my table; put your mind at ease. If you relax, it will enable me to do anything I please. I know you’re nervous about High Stakes and the Roulette match, so I figured I’d do a little Dr. Facilier to give you something else to think about.”
Nighthawk, smiling widely as he often does when he is around family: “Nice to see you again, Sis, and I do miss you. Don’t worry, I’m relaxed.”
Siobhan, her thick Irish accent becoming noticeable: “I know you just need a medical clearance, little brother, but we really do need to talk. I know how long you have been doing this, and that you have been doing it since 2002, but your body cannot keep up the pace you have been putting it through. There is going to come a day, and the way you are going it may be sooner rather than later, when you step into the ring and it is all gone. We have seen people like that. Do you want to be that person? Is that what you want your legacy to be?”
Nighthawk: “Of course I don’t. But the truth is that this might be my last shot at winning a major title. I don’t know how long the backstage staff who runs IWF, those men and women, are going to want to see me in title matches if I can’t win any. I don’t know how many opportunities are left for me out there. So it doesn’t matter if I have to crawl to the ring, on my hands and knees. If this is the last chance I’m ever going to get, I want to make the most of it. Please clear me, Siobhan. Let me do this.”
Siobhan, regretful: “I will. You look healthy enough for this last shot. And if you’re not, if they carry you out of that ring, I’ll patch you up the best I can.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>
As Nighthawk packs up his gym bag with all of his equipment, audibly checking off every last thing he might need whether it be his wrestling boots or extra pairs of wrist tape, he leans against his king-sized bed as all of the desperation slowly leaks out of him like a river flowing into one of its tributaries. Clad in a white Chicago Blackhawks practice t-shirt, black leather pants with orange piping up and down each leg, and black mid-top wrestling boots, the “Man of 1000 Holds” slowly closes his eyes.
Nighthawk: “Let me tell you a story. I don’t know why I have to tell it, but I know what it means.
I became a wrestler when no one wanted me to. My advisors in college told me it was probably a good idea if I got my masters and then my doctorate in History, because I would be a good teacher. My first trainer told me, with a cigar in his mouth the whole time, that he didn’t think he could train me because he had never trained someone so small before in his entire life. The first time I left the United States to wrestle in Japan, the head of the Dojo where I lived told me that he was going to beat on me and beat on me until he forced me to quit, because he loved breaking gaijin like me.
And when I decided I didn’t just want to be a TV-friendly wrestler, which is what my trainer told me would be the limits of my abilities, people decided I had to prove that I could do that too. So I did. I went from country to country, each more obscure than the last, but I wanted to learn. I wanted to be taught, to know the feeling of outthinking an opponent.
Why do I mention these parts of my history, you might be asking? The answer’s simple. Because, at every turn, this career of mine was something that I had to prove I didn’t just want, but that I had to prove that I deserved. And every step of the way, every night spent lying in a dingy bed in a dingy motel with ice packs on every inch of bare skin, I proved I deserved the right to call myself a wrestler.
All those towns where I didn’t speak the language and had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get myself fed and to the hotel one step above a halfway house where I was staying the night have led me to this moment have proved it.
The 3 years I have spent in IWF, each title shot getting me closer and closer to the dream of holding a major title, have proved it.
And when I step in the ring for the Roulette, whether I be no 2 or no 30, I will be the last man standing. I will not fall. Until I collapse, until there is nothing left in my body to give, I will keep going. I will not fail at this.
I will not look my friends, men like Andrew Jacobsen, in the eyes and have them think I did less than I could have done.
I will not go and pay tribute to my mentors and tell them ‘I tried my best, I did what I could’ again. I will not look at their graves and know that they handed me the keys to an entire libraries’ worth of knowledge, and I could hand them back nothing but a collection of ‘almost’ and ‘maybe next time’.
I will not fall. I will not falter. I will not lose.
Goodnight IWF. May sleep give you the courage to go on.”
Well howdy there pardner.