Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2017 22:13:56 GMT
“Hustle. Hustling at all times. Better Today Than Yesterday, Better Tomorrow than Today.” Jim Harbaugh
As Nighthawk pulls himself up slowly out of bed in the master bedroom of his row house in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, moving like his joints have been superglued and then taped together but nonetheless with a bone-deep joy that is palpable, we cannot help but wonder if this joy has more to do with the idea that he is returning home to the scene of his college triumphs when he teams with his protégé Jayson Matthews to battle the Lost Boys or the fact that he is back in action after a two-week forced hiatus.
Whatever the reason for his joy might happen to be the Chicago native seems eager to get his day started, even if he is moving like a man who has been drugged.
Staggering towards the general direction of the shiny red coffee maker that has taken up residence in his bedroom as a clear sign of just how much he needs coffee when he first wakes up the “Wrestling Machine” smiles as he sees, through bleary ice-blue eyes, a 2-lb bag of something called Black Death next to the coffee maker with a kissy-face scotch-taped to the bag.
Smiling as he prepares his coffee and grabs his black iPhone 6 from the charger next to his bed Nighthawk’s face drops as he immediately presses buttons on the phone.
(Author’s Note: This conversation took place in Russian.)
Nighthawk: “Dmitry, tell me it’s not true. After all we talked about, after you pleaded and gave me that sob story about you just wanting a clean gym, please tell me you didn’t do this.”
Dmitry, sounding crestfallen: “You know the Worlds were coming up. You’ve been there, as a coach, when your country was at its lowest point ever and you remember how people looked at you. Knowing where we are, Tristan, can you blame me for doing whatever I could, whatever I HAD TO, to make sure we were back where we know we belong?”
Nighthawk, his heart clearly breaking for his friend but also understanding that this is a sin he simply will not allow to stand: “Of course I understand, Dmitry. Believe me, if anyone you know understands what it feels like to have your reputation slowly chipped away at, it’s me. But do you know what I did, what I’ve been doing, when that happened? I got better. I didn’t cheat. But that’s not the worst part.”
Dmitry, sounding even more heartbroken than he did originally: “What’s the worst part?”
Nighthawk, a bit of the steel returning to his voice: “You did it in my gym, Dmitry. I told you when you showed up, when you begged me to allow you a place for your guys to train, that I was the proudest of the fact that I run a clean gym. And now, for one of your guys to fail a drug test at the exact moment WADA investigators are conducting a spot check, I'm going to have to explain to them that I know nothing about it.
I have to submit to drug testing, and so do the rest of the guys. And even though I know it’s not one of my guys who pissed hot, it happened in my gym so my reputation for running a clean gym is always going to be dented. That, Dmitry, is the worst part. I’ll see you at the Wrestle Factory. We have to talk.”
Hanging up the phone, Nighthawk glares at his coffee maker before finishing making a cup for himself as he mutters obscenities to himself.
>>>>>>>>>>
Pulling his chopped and stretched Ford F-150 truck into his parking spot Nighthawk gets out of the front door, nearly slamming it behind him, and strides purposefully into the front door where his students are waiting for him eagerly, joined on this occasion by Dmitry and the rest of his Russian students who look entirely put out at being forced to be here.
Nighthawk, a look of absolute zero in his ice-blue eyes as he stares a hole through his former friend Dmitry: “There is an elephant in the room, and I would not be doing my job if I didn’t address it. But before I get to that, I want to praise my regular class of students at the Wrestle Factory.
I know how far some of you have traveled to get here, and I also know why you came. You came because the coaches here told you this was a place, where if you worked hard enough, you could become great. You came here because you wanted to learn from the best, and this seemed like the right place to do it. And maybe, just maybe, you came because this was a clean gym, and you knew that.”
But as Dmitry moves to say something, Nighthawk rounds at him and stares at him with a glare cold enough to freeze molten lava.
(Author’s Note: This was said in Russian.)
Nighthawk: “Now to you, Dmitry. I’m speaking in Russian because I don’t want my students to hear what I’m saying to you, but I want the men under your guidance to know how disappointed and embarrassed I am.
You walked into my gym, told me a story you knew I’d understand & want to help you with, and then you lied to me. You knew what you were going to do the whole time, and you lied to me about it because you knew how upset I’d be. I don’t want to see you anymore. We’re not friends. Leave.”
Dmitry, looking humiliated and almost disgusted: “This isn’t over.”
Nighthawk: “Yes, it is. Leave.”
Watching as his former friend Dmitry leaves, Nighthawk exhales as he lets the anger leave him before turning to address his students again.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
As Nighthawk drops his orange-and-blue USA Wrestling gym bag in the cab of his Ford F-150 as he prepares to take a four-hour drive from Chicago to Ann Arbor, his ice-blue eyes still cold with disgust as he thinks about what his friend just put him through, he slowly closes his eyes. Clad in a University of Michigan hooded sweatshirt, a white Mitsuharu Misawa t-shirt, blue leather pants with maize piping up and down each leg, and black work boots, the “Man of 1000 Holds” sighs and leans against the cab of his truck.
Nighthawk: “I have two homes. Not in the ‘more money than is what is good for me’ sort of way. Rather, there are two places in my life that are vital to how I see myself and the man I want to be.
One of them is right here, right where I’m sitting. I am proud to be not just from Chicago, but OF Chicago. I am a city boy through and through. I grew up here. I wore the blue and gold of the Tilden High Blue Devils in wrestling, and track.
My youth was spent sitting bundled up at the very last seat in the very top row of Comiskey Park so I could watch the White Sox or at Chicago Stadium watching the Bulls and the Blackhawks. This is my city. It is my home. But it is not alone.
I left my first home a scared, and frightfully skinny, 17-year-old kid to go to the University of Michigan. I came home for good 4 years later a 21-year-old man, weighing 185 pounds, in the masters program to become a schoolteacher with 3 All-Big Ten appearances as an amateur wrestler at 197 pounds. Good run, if I do say so myself.
So, Lost Boys, when you step in that ring at Crisler Center against myself and Jayson Matthews you will not be facing the Nighthawk and Jayson Matthews you might find in a half-dozen other cities. The Nighthawk and Jayson Matthews of Indianapolis, or Atlanta, or Dallas will not be waiting for you then.
The men you will see waiting for you will be the men fighting on home turf. And when we beat you, it will be as much because we are defending our own honors than because on that night we will be better than you.
Now I am no fool. I know that, as a team, you have more experience than Jayson and I do. I accept this. But we are defending our home, and because that is true, we will fight you until our last breath.
Come hell or high water, Lost Boys, the last sound you will hear as Sacrifice goes off the air from the Crisler Center is the sound of a sold-out crowd not just singing, but belting out, this song at the Top Of Their Lungs:
Goodnight Gentlemen. May sleep give you the courage to go on.”
As Nighthawk pulls himself up slowly out of bed in the master bedroom of his row house in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago, moving like his joints have been superglued and then taped together but nonetheless with a bone-deep joy that is palpable, we cannot help but wonder if this joy has more to do with the idea that he is returning home to the scene of his college triumphs when he teams with his protégé Jayson Matthews to battle the Lost Boys or the fact that he is back in action after a two-week forced hiatus.
Whatever the reason for his joy might happen to be the Chicago native seems eager to get his day started, even if he is moving like a man who has been drugged.
Staggering towards the general direction of the shiny red coffee maker that has taken up residence in his bedroom as a clear sign of just how much he needs coffee when he first wakes up the “Wrestling Machine” smiles as he sees, through bleary ice-blue eyes, a 2-lb bag of something called Black Death next to the coffee maker with a kissy-face scotch-taped to the bag.
Smiling as he prepares his coffee and grabs his black iPhone 6 from the charger next to his bed Nighthawk’s face drops as he immediately presses buttons on the phone.
(Author’s Note: This conversation took place in Russian.)
Nighthawk: “Dmitry, tell me it’s not true. After all we talked about, after you pleaded and gave me that sob story about you just wanting a clean gym, please tell me you didn’t do this.”
Dmitry, sounding crestfallen: “You know the Worlds were coming up. You’ve been there, as a coach, when your country was at its lowest point ever and you remember how people looked at you. Knowing where we are, Tristan, can you blame me for doing whatever I could, whatever I HAD TO, to make sure we were back where we know we belong?”
Nighthawk, his heart clearly breaking for his friend but also understanding that this is a sin he simply will not allow to stand: “Of course I understand, Dmitry. Believe me, if anyone you know understands what it feels like to have your reputation slowly chipped away at, it’s me. But do you know what I did, what I’ve been doing, when that happened? I got better. I didn’t cheat. But that’s not the worst part.”
Dmitry, sounding even more heartbroken than he did originally: “What’s the worst part?”
Nighthawk, a bit of the steel returning to his voice: “You did it in my gym, Dmitry. I told you when you showed up, when you begged me to allow you a place for your guys to train, that I was the proudest of the fact that I run a clean gym. And now, for one of your guys to fail a drug test at the exact moment WADA investigators are conducting a spot check, I'm going to have to explain to them that I know nothing about it.
I have to submit to drug testing, and so do the rest of the guys. And even though I know it’s not one of my guys who pissed hot, it happened in my gym so my reputation for running a clean gym is always going to be dented. That, Dmitry, is the worst part. I’ll see you at the Wrestle Factory. We have to talk.”
Hanging up the phone, Nighthawk glares at his coffee maker before finishing making a cup for himself as he mutters obscenities to himself.
>>>>>>>>>>
Pulling his chopped and stretched Ford F-150 truck into his parking spot Nighthawk gets out of the front door, nearly slamming it behind him, and strides purposefully into the front door where his students are waiting for him eagerly, joined on this occasion by Dmitry and the rest of his Russian students who look entirely put out at being forced to be here.
Nighthawk, a look of absolute zero in his ice-blue eyes as he stares a hole through his former friend Dmitry: “There is an elephant in the room, and I would not be doing my job if I didn’t address it. But before I get to that, I want to praise my regular class of students at the Wrestle Factory.
I know how far some of you have traveled to get here, and I also know why you came. You came because the coaches here told you this was a place, where if you worked hard enough, you could become great. You came here because you wanted to learn from the best, and this seemed like the right place to do it. And maybe, just maybe, you came because this was a clean gym, and you knew that.”
But as Dmitry moves to say something, Nighthawk rounds at him and stares at him with a glare cold enough to freeze molten lava.
(Author’s Note: This was said in Russian.)
Nighthawk: “Now to you, Dmitry. I’m speaking in Russian because I don’t want my students to hear what I’m saying to you, but I want the men under your guidance to know how disappointed and embarrassed I am.
You walked into my gym, told me a story you knew I’d understand & want to help you with, and then you lied to me. You knew what you were going to do the whole time, and you lied to me about it because you knew how upset I’d be. I don’t want to see you anymore. We’re not friends. Leave.”
Dmitry, looking humiliated and almost disgusted: “This isn’t over.”
Nighthawk: “Yes, it is. Leave.”
Watching as his former friend Dmitry leaves, Nighthawk exhales as he lets the anger leave him before turning to address his students again.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
As Nighthawk drops his orange-and-blue USA Wrestling gym bag in the cab of his Ford F-150 as he prepares to take a four-hour drive from Chicago to Ann Arbor, his ice-blue eyes still cold with disgust as he thinks about what his friend just put him through, he slowly closes his eyes. Clad in a University of Michigan hooded sweatshirt, a white Mitsuharu Misawa t-shirt, blue leather pants with maize piping up and down each leg, and black work boots, the “Man of 1000 Holds” sighs and leans against the cab of his truck.
Nighthawk: “I have two homes. Not in the ‘more money than is what is good for me’ sort of way. Rather, there are two places in my life that are vital to how I see myself and the man I want to be.
One of them is right here, right where I’m sitting. I am proud to be not just from Chicago, but OF Chicago. I am a city boy through and through. I grew up here. I wore the blue and gold of the Tilden High Blue Devils in wrestling, and track.
My youth was spent sitting bundled up at the very last seat in the very top row of Comiskey Park so I could watch the White Sox or at Chicago Stadium watching the Bulls and the Blackhawks. This is my city. It is my home. But it is not alone.
I left my first home a scared, and frightfully skinny, 17-year-old kid to go to the University of Michigan. I came home for good 4 years later a 21-year-old man, weighing 185 pounds, in the masters program to become a schoolteacher with 3 All-Big Ten appearances as an amateur wrestler at 197 pounds. Good run, if I do say so myself.
So, Lost Boys, when you step in that ring at Crisler Center against myself and Jayson Matthews you will not be facing the Nighthawk and Jayson Matthews you might find in a half-dozen other cities. The Nighthawk and Jayson Matthews of Indianapolis, or Atlanta, or Dallas will not be waiting for you then.
The men you will see waiting for you will be the men fighting on home turf. And when we beat you, it will be as much because we are defending our own honors than because on that night we will be better than you.
Now I am no fool. I know that, as a team, you have more experience than Jayson and I do. I accept this. But we are defending our home, and because that is true, we will fight you until our last breath.
Come hell or high water, Lost Boys, the last sound you will hear as Sacrifice goes off the air from the Crisler Center is the sound of a sold-out crowd not just singing, but belting out, this song at the Top Of Their Lungs:
Goodnight Gentlemen. May sleep give you the courage to go on.”
Well howdy there pardner.