Reality

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”– H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu.”

***

In some cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa, it’s considered to be a cure for AIDS for a man to have unprotected sex with a virgin girl.

We live in a miserable, unfair, terrible world, gentlemen. We live in a place where celebrities glamorize a life spent on inanities, followed day by day by the paparazzi they leak their own whereabouts to, and we are told by the personalities on our television sets that we should care about their fifth trip this year to rehab. We live in a country where faking that your child is trapped aboard a weather balloon flying through the sky has a better than even chance of turning you into an over-night celebrity and launching your career on the E! channel. We live in a world where a sex-tape is more effective than an audition tape at making you a star, and in the meantime, half-way around the world, women are stoned to death for having the audacity to report a man in their village for raping them. Twenty-four hour news cycles have us all glued to the television to watch whatever new disaster has rocked some island on the other side of the globe, while we forget that the same number of people die in a month from HIV as were killed in total by the 2004 Tsunami. Genocides happen daily in parts of Africa, butchering whole tribes to settle conflicts that started centuries ago, carried out by thirteen year old or younger children who were drafted out of their homes and have no idea why of for whom they are spilling the blood of their countrymen. And yet still, in this god awful hellhole we call a planet, you hold out hope. You think that there is some sense of justice, some sense of good succeeding over evil. There are those amongst you who think that somehow, someway, you’re going to beat the odds at the Overbooked Extravaganza, that somehow right will prevail and the evil Johnny Kingdom will be dethroned.

Tell that to the seventeen thousand people who’ve died since 1900 from ingesting toothpicks.

This isn’t a fairy tale, this is life. It’s reality, and it’s time some of you got in touch with it. The irony of telling professional wrestlers to “get real” is not lost on me, I assure you, but ultimately it is what is going to have to happen. None of you are going to beat Johnny Kingdom. You will not become world champion. If there is one thing a person can rely on, it is the cold, constant grip of probability, and ultimately that is what is stacked against you now. You have a long road to travel just to get to us. It will take all your effort and all of your fire just to make it out of the gauntlet to reach us. Your bodies will be broken down, your hearts will be riding on a surge of adrenaline from making that last pinfall, but the initial creep of exhaustion will be climbing into your limbs, and that slow ache will only intensify as you turn towards the entrance ramp and see the final verdict that awaits you. Coming down towards the ring will be the most strategically sound, proficient, experienced, and accomplished tag-team this company has ever or will ever see. You’ll feel it in every joint, in every bruise, and in every sore, strained muscle fiber of your being: you’ve already lost. Before we even hit the ring, it is over. It isn’t arrogance, it isn’t pride, and it isn’t looking down our nose at you. It’s simple truth. We could beat each and every one of your teams even facing you fresh. After having to fight just to get to us, you won’t have a chance. And deep down, in your heart of hearts, you will know it.

“But AWOL,” I hear you saying, “what do you expect us to do? Just fall down and let you pin us when you come out to the ring?” No, gentlemen, I don’t expect you to just give up. Frankly, I expect you to fight like hell. In your head will be every great comeback story you’ve ever heard of. You’ll pick yourselves up and you’ll drag your broken bodies to the center of that ring and, in all likelihood, you’ll give us a run for our money. The title brings out the best in people at the same time it brings out their worst. I’ve seen it a million times, competitors lifting themselves well beyond anything anyone ever thought they were capable of to chase the dream of hefting the gold over their head. You’ll push past your limits. You’ll lift yourselves up and keep pressing on with the ever fainter hope that somehow, someway, you’ll accomplish the impossible and become the next champion.

But I have news for you. You are not Rocky Balboa. This is not the last ten minutes of “The Longest Yard.” No members of the Stanford marching band are going to get trampled by the Cal Bears. This is reality, and in the real world miracles don’t happen. In the real world war creates orphans, planes crash, and people who have already spent most of their energy are unable to defeat superior opponents. It just isn’t going to happen, and the sooner you figure that out the less painful it will be for you. It’s physics.

And yet, apparently, your coping mechanism for dealing with this reality is to poke at Kingdom and I from your promos. That’s the big plan, is it? To make us angry? How do you see that playing out? We make our way out to face you, the stinging retort of your one-liners ringing in the back of our minds, and we’re so distracted that we make mistakes and lose? Yes, clearly we’ve demonstrated we have a history of such behavior. Clearly the things you’re saying are original, and in no way resemble the same retarded bullshit we hear week in and week out and, it should be noted, pointedly ignore on our way to defeating you.

Or, hey, better yet, how about you drop the bomb shell that somehow I’ve made a mistake by pairing up with Johnny? No one would think of that idea. I mean, the fact that I was there, personally, the last time Johnny skitzed out on me and broke up the Empir means that this time around I’m unaware of the fact that he’s untrustworthy. It’s a good thing you guys are here, really, to point this stuff out to me. If you hadn’t, lord knows I would have found myself in the middle of the main event, thinking that things were all good, when Johnny would have turned around, smashed me in the face with a chair, and then promptly fell down in the ring to let you pin him and take away the world title…JUST TO SPITE ME. But now, forewarned is forearmed, I will be keeping an eye open for any of this sort of chicanery.

Pfft.

It’s almost as ludicrous as the idea that I’ve somehow made a mistake by pairing up with him because it means I can’t win the world title anymore. Seriously. Some of you have made that claim. Have you even kind of paid attention over the last several weeks? News flash, kids: I don’t want the world title. Number one, I don’t care about holding it. I know I could take it if I wanted to. It’s not a concern of mine. The best competitor in the company has the belt right now, and as he pointed out I’ve beaten him before. If I make up my mind to win the strap someday, I’ll do it. But today, in this match, I don’t want it. I have no interest in it whatsoever. I know this is getting repetitive, but you still aren’t getting it so I’ll say it again: I DON’T WANT TO BE WORLD CHAMPION. And why? I’ll give you a hint: scroll back through all the promos for this match. Watch them all again, and keep track of how many ridiculous cheap shots people take at Johnny. Take a quick tally on the number of incompetents who can’t even hold a candle next to his abilities who have somehow stepped forward and told everyone that not only will they beat him, they’ll beat him easily because he’s inferior to them. Watch competitors that have spent their careers vanishing into the ether at random telling Johnny Kingdom that he’s a fraud. And then, rewind and watch other jackasses jumping him in the middle of the ring and bashing his skull in with a lead pipe. They ought to take the IWC logo off of that belt and put a bullseye on it, because that’s all there really is to it. It doesn’t bring you honor or glory. It just makes you a target, and it frankly isn’t worth the hassle anymore. So he can have it. He can hold onto the belt for as long as he can stomach you people and your bullshit.

But I know that won’t satisfy you, so allow me to elaborate further. Why would I work with Johnny Kingdom? Because I love watching the way you idiots react to him. Let me spell it out so there’s no confusion. I spent months as the commissioner of this federation. I worked over-nights, sacrificing time I could have spent at home, giving up my life and my time with my family, to try and make this place better. I had a dream that I really could take this federation and make it into something that mattered. I even took some of you under my wing PERSONALLY to try and shape you into the best competitors you had the potential to become. But I didn’t count on one thing: you people are beyond saving. This place is built on lies, a federation that claims to promote the best of the best while in reality rewarding mediocrity with a chance at its greatest prize. And they don’t just do this by virtue of laziness. No, in fact it is BECAUSE the mediocre demand it that they are rewarded. They look the crowd and the administration in the face and they say “We have been here for a certain amount of time as active, paid members of the staff. We have put in our time. Regardless of the fact that we lose all of our matches that matter, and any significant victories we’ve racked up came from competitors even worse than us, we have physically been in this place for a certain amount of time, and that means we should be in charge.” And when you don’t get what you want, you band together with similarly mid-grade competition and tell yourselves that this somehow makes you now even more deserving of a top shot. You weigh down otherwise decent programming with your backstage kidnappings, your run-ins from the back, or your hiding under the ring during an otherwise solid main event to help your never-was partner still end up failing to win a mini-rumble. And when people with real talent come out and try to inform you that this sort of behavior, in fact, does not make up for the fact that you are awful, you turn around and say that all we have to contribute is belittling you, and that somehow that makes our comments invalid.

Well fuck that.

You fill the airwaves with promos that are barely comprehendible. If you’re not bragging about your sexual prowess (which, beyond a commentary on your stamina, really has no bearing on anything related to the match), putting together supposedly original promo material where you come up with the oh-so-unheard of concept of an ‘Allison in Wonderland’ parody, or just rambling for fifteen minutes, you’re wasting all of our times with what basically amounts to a series of checklist promos where you go through all of the opponents (in order) and say the same damn things over and over again about them. I tried to point this out to you last time, but again the point appears to have escaped you, so I’ll repeat it: THAT IS THE MOST BORING PROMO ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH. Filling the IWC air with garbage just to try and meet a promotional quota for the match is no excuse for creating bad entertainment. Your job is to entertain people, to put on a show that makes channels change to the IWC and put asses in seats. By putting out what 99% of the promos for this match have consisted of, you have FAILED to do your job, an outcome I saw happen repeatedly while I was in charge. And yet, somehow, I was unable to fire you for this failure, since apparently the majority of the wrestling world consists of similarly awful talent and the rest of you had worked into your contracts that you somehow couldn’t be terminated for not fulfilling your obligations. So, instead, I sat back and tolerated it, tried my hardest to pull a decent product kicking and screaming out of the jaws of your mediocrity, week after week, and tried not to convince myself that it was hopeless.

Maybe I succeeded and maybe I failed. I’m sure since you’re all trying to get under my skin you’ll say that I fell on my face. In any case, I don’t have to deal with it anymore. By the end of my tenure I was completely exhausted of you and only too happy to drop the reigns in somebody else’s lap, and I’m in a position now to wash my hands of you. I want you to fail, IWC. I want this place to close down. It deserves to collapse, if only for being such a goddamned insult to people who are actually capable of thinking. You want a match with me next Riot! Too Mag? Awesome. Another squash match should do wonders for driving away the IWC faithful, and that is what will happen every time you come face to face with me. Let’s keep going, though. Let’s pair up competitors that have already fought thousands of times and make the audience suffer through yet another rematch. Let’s Put Katelyn Buehler in more main events. Hell, let’s do a whole show where we re-run tape of classic matches like Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar, Kane and the Undertaker vs. Kronik, and everything involving Trish Stratus. All the better to kill your ratings, my dear.
So that’s why I’m helping Johnny Kingdom: because he drives you people insane. This match at OBE is a direct result of that. The entire federation is gunning for one man. Between people running out from the back dressed up in his old costume, the stable named after John Hughes characters, and a team that could only come up with the name “Motherfuckers” to describe themselves, you’re all ripping yourselves to shreds to come and get him. You can’t wait. The backstage area is anarchy, and I love every second of it. People don’t know who to trust. Alliances are going to break. Chaos will reign, and ultimately that is what I want. You see, I’m not the type that enjoys a nice, tidy world filled with shiny happy people. I like cities that are being destroyed by rioters. I like to be reminded from time to time that as awful as the world seems with its Britney Spears, John and Kate, and Rush Limbaughs, we’re only one good-sized meteor falling out of the sky from sweet, final oblivion. I cheered for the balloon boy, if only because if the son of a bitch had crashed we would have had to listen to even more media coverage, but I can’t say I wouldn’t have laughed hysterically if a 747 had sucked his little tin-foil dirigible into an engine and led to a violent, flaming plane crash in the middle of a downtown suburb.

I’m very much in favor of the George Carlin philosophy on life, now. When I hear about a disaster on the news I want to drive there and look at the bodies. When there are wildfires in California, I want to find the idiot that forgot to douse their campfire and give them a medal. I want to watch the world burn, to put it bluntly, because I’m tired of its bullshit. It’s time for a new age. This experiment in civilization has clearly failed, and we’re overdue for God to open up the heavens with a forty day flood reset button on this shitty planet. So that’s why I’m working with Johnny Kingdom, kids, because I want to do my part. I figure I can start here, with the IWC, by listening to your wailing when, yet again, despite your thoughts about justice and fairness, you fail to dethrone the most hated man in professional wrestling. Despite your best hopes, despite all of your planning and scheming and striving over the last month, you’ll fail again, and I’ll love every second of stepping on your tiny little dreams and popping them under my boot.

It makes me smile, you see.