“So I understand you had a bit of a set-back at the Overbooked Extravaganza.”
“You could say that. My team lost, and managed to lose the World Title in the process.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. That must be very disappointing for you.”
A moment of silence passes.
“Surprisingly…no. It wasn’t my title to lose. It doesn’t make any difference to me, really.”
“Aren’t you concerned for your friend Johnny? I’m sure he’s not taking this very well.”
“Pfft. He’s probably more upset by who he lost it to. I haven’t heard from him, one way or the other, and we aren’t exactly friends.”
“How would you describe your relationship, then?”
“He’s someone I have a lot of respect for, as a competitor. He’s also supplementing my income. It doesn’t really go beyond that.”
“Well if it isn’t bothering you, how do you feel about the loss?”
“I’m not sure. I guess it works for me, really.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’ve had…a change of heart since the last time we spoke. I guess you could say I’ve found a new purpose. I’m not so much concerned with trying to improve the quality of competition in the IWC anymore. I’ve washed my hands of them. I want the place to fail, if only because I think that’s the only way these people will see just how badly they’ve ruined the company I used to love. Simon Cagero as champion wasn’t exactly what I had in mind going in, but I can work with it.”
“That’s…disturbing, Anthony. I don’t feel that that’s a healthy channel for your emotions. You’ll remember we spoke about the stages of grief, particularly the stage of anger. I think that may be what you’re going through now.”
Another long pause.
“Well…you said you wanted me to get more in touch with my feelings. I guess you could say that, finally, I’ve decided to embrace them…”
***
AWOL is leaning against a stone wall, his arms crossed across his chest. His expression is contemplative.
“So here we are,” he begins, “trapped in the fall-out of that…ridiculous match from this Sunday. I’ve not exactly seen anything so poorly designed or considered in my career, really. I mean, teams changing on the fly, people getting eliminated then somehow being spontaneously re-entered into the match by the bothersome management in the back. This isn’t so much directed at Johnny, but at you, IWC management: stay the fuck out of the matches. Once they’re booked, they’re booked. Once you’re pinned or you submit, you’re eliminated. That’s all there is to it. You idiot GMs running around in the back, re-entering competitors into the Gauntlet whenever you felt like it was ri-god-damn-diculous. This is the sort of bullshit you expected in the WCW back in the day, or the worst days of the McMahons interfering in matches in the WWE. Word to the wise, idiots: this garbage does not improve buy-rates. It does do a fine job of illegitimizing what would otherwise be an exciting and interesting main event and, you should be aware, increases frustration and reduces morale of your workers. Every time one of these Dusty finishes comes along you lose members of your audience.” He visibly relaxes. “Of course, I’m not telling you to stop doing it, mind you. By all means, keep going. Sometimes it’s not enough for just the wrestlers to kill a company. Sometimes we need a little help from the back, and thus far you’re all doing a wonderful job of pushing us over the ledge.”
He flashes a derisive smile.
“But, I know one person who was nowhere near as entertained by this as I was, my opponent for this week’s Riot! Johnny Kingdom.” He pauses, looking down at his wristwatch. “Actually based on my previous experience with the guy, he’s probably spent the last seventy-two hours or so morosely brooding, fuming at all of the people who have supposedly wronged him, raging backstage at the writing staff and the management, and ultimately concluding that we’re all out to get him. More than likely I’m included on that list, since I was on the outside of the ring dealing with the two annoying little puppy dogs that have been following me around since I came back to the company and, thus, couldn’t save him from a Christian Savior run-in. Admittedly I knocked Savior’s team out of the match by pinning the obnoxious son-of-a-bitch and, I would point out, won the tag team titles for us in the process, but I’ll more than likely be informed that I wasn’t pulling my weight. As an aside, I also might have won the Cartel Title, though again, the bullshit match booking appears to have jacked me over in that as well. Anyway, I digress, I’m sure this will end up being my fault, though I would love to be proven wrong.”
“Personally, I think Johnny’s as much to blame for this as anyone, and I don’t just mean because he didn’t keep his head on a swivel to look out for a run-in that any of us could have seen coming. I mean, the bottom line is you don’t exactly make a lot of friends, Kingdom. No, that’s not quite strong enough. Let’s say instead that you actively go out of your way to alienate and belittle everyone who could be put against you. You’re not just insulting, you’re dismissive. You can’t be surprised that everyone is gunning for you. You put a whole promo together at the end of last week for no other purpose than to jab at Savior. Admittedly, he had it coming, but when you antagonize the bull like that you can’t be TOO surprised when you get the horns.”
He leans forward, addressing the camera directly now. “I didn’t really want this match. I don’t think either of us did. That said, I don’t have any kind of particular problem with it either. You understand as well as I do that you and I aren’t friends, Johnny. “Business associates” is more like it. Chances are I’m just an employee to you, a pawn on your chessboard, and I’m cool with that situation. It pays the bills and gets me back into the main event and away from people like Max Craven. I’ve got no problem with the way things are, but you know as well as I do that when the bell rings at Riot! all of that goes away. It’s not personal like Paranoia. It’s a match. You’re an opponent. I’m going to do my damndest to beat you, and I know you will do the same to me. There’s no concern there, and frankly once the final bell rings, win lose or draw, on my end nothing necessarily will change. You’re still the most dangerous man in this company, well, besides maybe me. I’ll be happy to move forward with the Empire’s agenda once the match ends. Unfortunately, I really have no idea whether that will even be possible. It’s ultimately up to you.”
“So I’m curious what your response to all of this is going to be. I can see it going one of two ways. We can close ranks, start to re-build, and start working to get the title back from Cagero at the next show. Or, you can flame out, blame me for what happened, and rip the Empire apart…again. It’s really sort of an echo of what has come before. Sadly, given my past experiences I’m more inclined to expect the latter scenario, which is a sad commentary about both of us in and of itself.”
He shakes his head.
“I’m probably supposed to spend most of this trying to pimp up why I’m going to beat you, but ultimately I don’t know for certain whether or not that’s going to happen. We know how things turned out last time we locked horns, so I have that in my pocket. On the other hand, I’ve been out of the ring for years while you’ve been here working. On the other-other hand, you fell for maybe one of the biggest chump-moves I’ve ever seen from Savior on Sunday, so maybe you’re not that sharp right now either. In terms of match-up we’re about equal. What advantage I have in size and power you more than cover in speed and technical ability. I don’t consider it an exaggeration to say that the two of us are some of the greatest minds in this business, so I don’t see a clear advantage there either. So, again, the only real acid test where you and I faced each other ended in you being put on the shelf by me. Maybe that’s not enough to set much of a line in Vegas, but it’s enough for me to at least give myself a better than even chance.”
AWOL shrugs.
”I sort of doubt this thing is going off without a hitch anyway, to be honest. Both of us in the ring is too tempting of a target to too many people to not end the show in some sort of massive donnybrook, likely with at least one of us lying in a pool of blood from somebody cracking our skulls with a lead pipe. But hell, maybe they’ll just let us destroy each other. We’re the two people that have the best chances of pulling it off, after all. Assuming, however, we just have a regular match we can fight, somebody will lose, and that’ll be that. And then, as I said, we can get this out of the way and move on to more important business. Or we can do what we did last time, burn everything down, and go back to the bitter, separate roads we both started out on.”
“It’s really up to you.”
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