Monsters

Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the comedian is the only thing that makes sense. – Watchmen

***

2-13-10

The bat arcs through the air, seeming to slow down with the violence of the motion, before embedding itself…

…in the drywall behind Maya’s head. A softball sized hole immediately crumbles in the white surface, a spiderweb of cracks spreading in all directions. AWOL lets go of the handle and the bat actually hangs in place, the end sticking far enough into the wall to support its weight. He leans forward, eyes glaring steel from out of his ice-cold expression. Maya doesn’t flinch.

Silence hangs for a moment, split only by the quiet patter of dust falling out of the wall from the impact.

“You’re sick,” he finally growls, his nose an inch away from hers. “I don’t know what the fuck you thought you were going to accomplish here tonight, by all you’ve done is make me see what a mistake you were. Pack up your shit and get out of here. We’re done.” Turning away in disgust, he stalks over to a side table, scooping up a highball glass. He tosses a pair of ice cubes in, quickly followed by a pour of bourbon. He drops the drink down his throat in one gulp, quickly replacing it with another, twice as tall this time.

In the background, one well-manicured hand reaches up, pulling the bat free from the wall…

***

So many people in this world do things in the same, old, predictable ways. So many of them are content to walk through their day spouting out the same old garbage in a new form, without thought or care to how exactly the minutia that defines them is spilled out onto the public stage by the drivel they blather forth on a constant basis. They stumble through their lives in a stupor, staring straight on into the camera or into the faces of their friends, the soft gelatin of their sad, cow eyes locked in the same dead, comatose glare that is the only refuge of those trapped in cubicles and fast food joints and every other variety of dead end jobs. These masses, these people without a future, they are content to do things in the same way, day in and day out. They exist through their routines, defining themselves by their reliability, their mastery of the mundane. Because they are so ordinary and fit in so well with their hum-drum, repetitive, every day existences, they hold this up as some kind of victory. Emplyee of the month. Humanitarian of the year. They think these minor accomplishments makes them excel. They think that they can elevate themselves to king of the ant hill if they just keep staying the course and doing everything they can to stay one step ahead of the Jones’s.

But you, Josh Hudson, were supposed to be different. That was what I was told to expect. When I asked around, trying to find out who you were, I was told that you weren’t like the others. I was told you held yourself to a different level. There were people who even said that you were a lot like me, a fact that you should take as a compliment, though I am certain you won’t.

So I had high hopes for this match, Hudson, and the build-up leading to it. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve had to listen to weeks upon weeks of Christian Savior’s drivel, but I thought, perhaps, this time around things would be different. I was truly anticipating seeing what your promos had to offer, especially as they were supposed to be so very similar to my own. I thought “Finally, for the first time in as long as I can remember, maybe I will see someone who actually has something novel to say, something worth listening to.”

I was wrong.

Oh, on the surface you are indeed a true horror to behold. A violent criminal mind backed up with the heart of a true sociopath is what you possess, and clearly you have gone to great lengths to demonstrate this fact to us. Most of the wrestlers in this business, at some point, have taken the opportunity to show up at a house show and squash some sort of local talent to demonstrate how tough they are, how far above their opponent they truly have risen. It is a rare individual, however, that picks up a helpless hooker off of the street and proceeds to beat and rape her to prove the same point. However, the objective remains the same mundane, predictable drivel in both cases. The fact that your pretty was not even as capable of protecting herself as the average local yokel does not inspire awe, I’m afraid. To put it bluntly, I am not impressed, Josh Hudson.

I am, in fact, disappointed.

This of course was followed up with the same nonsense I hear on a week to week basis. “AWOL’s a stupid name.” Well I was AWOL before I put on my first pair of wrestling boots, son, and I’m not likely to change a nickname my platoon mates gave me because some wrestling up-and-comer makes fun of it to try and build a reputation for him or herself. If you have a problem with it, feel free to use Anthony. Everyone else does, after all, when they’re trying to sound patronizing. I see no reason why you should be any different. As a word of advice, though, I suggest you move on to a different topic. Insulting my name or my gimmick has never worked and succeeds ultimately in only making me angry.

And, of course, there’s the old chestnut about how you’ve gotten “in my head,” that I’ll be so angry when we step into the ring together that I’ll just walk into whatever cunning ploy you have prepared for me and will ultimately be unable to defend myself because of my blind, all-consuming rage. Well yes, Hudson, yes, you have succeeded in making me mad. As you pointed out, my company’s main event scene is currently dominated by the people who managed to graduate from your shithole of a company. I was in the process of doing something about it, and then you came along and locked me to a goddamn guard rail in mid-match. You let Christian Savior eliminate the only IWC competitor with a chance to make it into the main-event, and you did it, why, because it amused you? Or because you wanted to make a name for yourself?

I was a bit unclear on that point, actually. I asked for an explanation, and all I got was a rambling rant about “the spirit of competition” as a means of saying why. Spirit of competition? What competition would that be? Biggest asshole? Because, to my mind, ruining an in progress match and allowing an inferior talent like Savior to make it to the main event of a pay-per-view he doesn’t deserve to be in sort of runs opposite to the spirit of competition. I don’t accept your explanation, in short, and I demand a better one. I’ll be looking forward to it, but if you don’t feel the need to explain yourself on the airways, perhaps I’ll simply beat it out of you in the ring. Your call…

So yes, I’m angry. I’m furious. But if you think for even one second that somehow this gives you an advantage, you are sorely mistaken. I love when people get the idea that somehow I’m a bumbling hulk, that one spark sets me off and drops me into a red-haze. The “Me Smash” phrase is particularly amusing, as you can well imagine. I think, however, that you’ve missed the joke. Anger doesn’t blind me, it brings everything into very sharp focus.

People who make me angry don’t just win or lose matches, Hudson. People who make me angry lose their careers. They get their ankles snapped between chairs. They get thrown from very tall places or get their skulls crushed in by very blunt objects, and they never recover. Making me angry doesn’t make me sloppy or reckless, it makes me focused. It gives me motivation to come up with new and exciting ways to hurt you, Josh Hudson, and it ultimately is only going to result in your becoming a permanent addition to my highlight reel.

So I guess, in a way, that will help you make a name for yourself after all.

You aren’t special, Hudson. You aren’t different. How many people do you think I’ve met that have promised to not just beat me, but hurt me in the ring? How many times do you suppose I’ve been promised that I was going to be picked apart, slowly, by an opponent? Do you think that saying those things makes you novel, Hudson? Or hey, how about the old gem where I apparently am a lumbering clod that can’t wrestle his way out of a paper bag, despite being one of the longest holders of the submissions championship in my company’s history? I’ve certainly never heard that one before. What a clear way to differentiate yourself from the pack.

Frankly, if I didn’t have a score to settle, I wouldn’t waste my time on you. You’ve overplayed your hand and revealed yourself as nothing but a brutal, violent thug that ultimately has nothing meaningful to contribute. You’re cheap tricks and shock value covering up an internal layer with no substance. It doesn’t make you a strong man to show that you can rape a woman. It shows that you’re pathetic. To be honest, I’m embarrassed that they compared me to you, and at the Two for One Special I’m going to see to it that people see that this comparison is never made again. It is an insult to me that we are lumped together. This Sunday I settle the score, and then I send you crawling back to your miserable hole of a company.

With any luck, Savior and Zero won’t be too far behind you.

***

AWOL takes another sip from the drink, staring at his reflection in the glass countertop, when he hears the first blow land behind him. He spins around at the sound of a sickening thud, watching in shock as Maya pulls the bat away from a clearly shattered eye socket. She lifts it back up, smashing it crosswise against her nose. Blood starts to trickle immediately after the snap of the cartilage breaking fills the room. The pain makes her gasp and stagger, but she raises the bat back into the air, preparing for another strike. He crosses the room in an instant, snatching it out of her hands, but the damage is done. Her right eye is already turning black.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he shouts, tossing the bat behind his back.

“My problem?” she says, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the carpet. “I don’t have a problem. What I have is a solution for your problems.”

“What…” he stops, running a hand over his head, clearly flabbergasted. “What the hell are you talking about?”

She reaches up with her left hand, grabbing the bridge of her nose and, with a sharp twist, popping it back into place. Tears well at the corners of her eyes, but she barely seems to notice them. “Look, babe, I get it. You were the big scary monster guy before, and you don’t want to go back to that again. Maybe you don’t want to, or maybe you just don’t have it in you anymore. Either way, I understand. We all do things we’re not proud of to get ahead, and I know that better than anybody.”

She walks forward, stepping right in front of him, eyes locked with his. “But the bottom line is, the fans don’t want to see soft, caring Anthony. They want AWOL. They want the monster, not the man. So, if you can’t give them what they want, I’ll do it for you. I’ll go out in public with heavy makeup and sunglasses. I’ll play the victim. It’ll be so easy, babe. You’ll see. I won’t have to say a thing, just walk in front of the TMZ cameras and let the court of public opinion make its own ruling.”

“Jesus Christ,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re out of your goddamned mind.”

“I’m not-“

“YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR GODDAMNED MIND!” he shouts, snarling into her face. “I’ve heard enough of this. I told you once already. Get your shit and get out of here.”

He starts to turn away but she grabs hold of his arm, holding him in place. Her eyes well up with tears. For a moment, her lower lip trembles. “I just wanted to help you. I just wanted to try and show that I could help you get the title back. And this is how you thank me?”

He looks incredulously at her as, almost as rapidly as it appeared, the crying is replaced with a cruel smirk.

“Or at least that’s what I’ll tell them at the police station if you throw me out, anyways.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, wouldn’t I?”

“They’d never belie-“

She laughs. “Never believe what? That an angry man with a history of violence would take his frustrations out on his girlfriend? The world just watched you chase Josh Hudson out of the arena with the same baseball bat. The same baseball bat, I might add, that just did all the damage to me. It’s an open and shut case, and nobody is going to believe your word over mine.”

He blinks, trying hard to recover from the sheer madness of the situation. “Why would you do this?” he finally asks. A look of honest sympathy appears on Maya’s face, and she drifts forward, draping a hand onto his shoulder.

“Look big guy, I didn’t get with you to watch you piss away your career and then retire back to poverty with you. I got with you because you’re a winner, a champion. This isn’t about me, it’s about helping you, like I said I was going to do. It’s time to face reality: no one in the IWC is afraid of you anymore. You’re not the Big Crazy Bastard that commanded immediate respect anymore, but with my help you can be again. We start out small, see, a little trip down to a gas station or something. We start the rumors up quietly, and then we let them grow from there that you’re starting to slip, starting to lose control. Eventually we’ll have to escalate things, of course, maybe start doing some Steve Austin stuff around the arenas at the shows, but we’ve got time before then. For now, I think we just play it up quietly. Let people wonder what you’re doing to me. Make people try and guess how long it will be before you snap completely. Trust me, babe, the hype machine is going to jump off the tracks once they see some of the things I have in mind for you.” She leans forward, planting a kiss on the side of his unresponsive cheek. The blood leaves a mark in the shape of her lips there as she slips past him, walking over to the sink.

“If the fans want AWOL back,” she says, “That’s what we’re going to give them. Whether you’ll admit it or not, this is the best thing for both of us.” She starts to dab at her nose with a white towel before turning, flashing a blood-soaked smile his direction. “You just hit the jackpot.”

And for maybe the first time in his career, AWOL is left speechless.

***

The horror, the horror…

Starting to Thunder...

The Gauntlet Games Lincoln Ice Bowl League is heading into it's 6th week of play. This winter, I'm trying out a different team, Orcs, and to say that the season had a rocky start might be a touch of an understatement. However, after spending last week pounding the faces of some small goblins (rumors that they caused more casualties than us are greatly exaggerated) Da Thunder'n Waaaaaagh! rolled into the store last Tuesday to play last season's champion playing a new team, Dark Elves. Things looked initially grim, with the Dark Elves sprinting to an early 1-0 lead after only a few turns of the game. However, some long, well executed grinding as well as clutch play by team mascot/lead scorer Grek Unodos (a TD and a Casualty for the little bugger) led the Orcs to the playbook 2-1 victory that is typically their goal against agility teams.

Try outs have been initiated this week for a new thrower for the team (someone apparently whispered in their ear that ball handling might help with the scoring difficulties the team has struggled with) have helped prepare the team for this week's match with Skaven rat men. With any luck we can get a team photo at some point this week.

Madness in Ravenloft

So, with the re-dedication of the blog to my numerous incredibly geeky activities, I thought the first thing to do would be point people towards my primary creative outlet, GMing a 4th edition dungeons and dragons game set in Ravenloft. I'm essentially running through the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft module published from 3.5 D&D, with alterations to make it more to my taste and less bad. I could go into great detail about what has occurred in the game so far, I could just save time and point you to my page on Obsidian Portal . The adventure logs are the most flushed out part of the wiki so far, but I hope to keep adding to it as the campaign progresses. Give it a look, and comments are appreciated.

What It Takes

It is impossible to describe in words what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then, they are enemies to be feared. They’re…truly enemies. – Colonel Kurtz, “Apocalypse Now”

***

2-21-10

A gentle ringing, and the gas station doors slide open. AWOL and Maya step through, entering without a word. They barely look at each other, AWOL snatching his pair of sunglasses from his face and walking towards the bathroom. Maya turns down an aisle in the convenience store, walking slowly towards the refrigerators at the back, opening them and releasing the billowing cloud of smoke from inside. She reaches in, pulling out two bottles of water. She clutches them in one hand as she closes the glass door. A loud “Thwunk” signals the closing and reestablishing of the airtight seal. The white cloud stops almost immediately.

She does not remove her sunglasses.

She walks to the front of the store, quietly, head hung low. Without a word she drops the bottles down on the check-out counter, fumbling in her purse.

“You have gas?” the attendant says, not even bothering to look up at the customer. A moment passes, stretched out just a few seconds too long, and the old woman behind the register looks up, seeing the silent curses on Maya’s lips as she fumbles for her wallet inside the gold leather confines of her purse.

“Gas?” the old lady repeats, an inquisitive look on her face.

“What? Oh, um, yeah, pump three,” Maya mumbles, finally finding the wallet she’s looking for.

The old lady peaks an eyebrow at the delayed response. As she reaches over and starts wiping the barcodes of the bottled water past the laser reader, her eyes pass silently from the gray, cloudy day outside and the still covered eyes of the woman before her. She sees Maya’s hands, shaking slightly as she digs for cash. She spies one of the fingernails, broken off and jagged, standing out in stark contrast to the nine intact, perfectly manicured ones surrounding it.

“Everything alright, honey?” she finally asks.

“Huh?” Maya looks up, her train of thought clearly derailed. “I’m sorry?”

“Is everything alright?”

Maya looks confused for a moment until she follows the old woman’s eyes and notices her trying to peer around the edge of the sunglasses. She starts in realization but fails to respond.

“Look,” the attendant says, reaching with a nobby fingered right hand towards the phone. “The sheriff’s office is just down the road. If you want, I can call, have a squad car here in a few minutes.” Temptation clearly rages for a moment behind Maya’s eyes. She opens her mouth to respond but pauses, suddenly snapping her mouth shut.

AWOL is standing near the door to the gas station, arms crossed, a deep scowl across his face.

“No,” she finally answers, “No everything’s fine. Here.” Maya flips a fifty out of her wallet, snapping it shut and tossing it back into her purse. She snatches the bottles of water off of the counter and turns, hurrying towards the door.

“You forgot your change!” the attendant shouts out, the price on the register clearly indicating “$32.57”.

“Keep it,” Maya says, hustling out through the door. The bell rings again as AWOL holds it open for her, watching her movements with unblinking eyes. Finally, that grim gaze turns towards the gas station attendant, fixing the old woman in place with its intensity. There is a threat there, a promise, but just as quickly he turns and follows Maya out to the car.

***

So.

How long ago did you decide you were tired of life, Josh Hudson?

It’s a bit of a dramatic question, I suppose, but I can’t really think of many other reasons for you to be foolish enough to interfere in my match on the last iteration of Riot! besides just being tired of your existence and looking for an easy way out. I suppose, ultimately, your motivation could come from a number of sources. You might be trying to set yourself up with some easy publicity for the match at 2 for 1. You might be a stooge for Savior, hoping to pick up some scraps from his cast offs. You might have one of a million other reasons to try and fuck with me, but ultimately your motivations are irrelevant. The outcome is going to be the same, you are going to walk into the ring at the next show and I am going to put you through hell until I eventually tire of pummeling you.

If you did this for the publicity, then I suppose this is a victory for you. Congratulations, you’ve rescued yourself from the 10 on 10 clusterfucks they’ve filled the rest of the card with. I suppose I should thank you as well, frankly, because this ridiculous feud with the Five Star Society has left me in nothing besides those type of horrible matches for months now. However, unfortunately, the result of your interference is that Christian Savior is now in a position to win not just one but his choice of two world titles on this show. Despite all the work I’ve gone through to try and drive that piece of shit out of this company and back to the SCW shithole the two of you crawled out of, now the son-of-a-bitch may end up being king of the hill in both companies.

I’m almost more upset about that than I am at having my own shot at the world strap taken away.

More importantly, however, this will be yet another ridiculous fucking screw-job victory that he’s going to hold up in front of my face and taunt me with. I really, really can’t tell you how much this annoys me, Hudson. I’m not sure if you’ve faced him before or not, but the man is, in a word, insufferable. To put it concisely, I would like nothing more than to slam his head repeatedly into the ring post until he has to spend the rest of his life being fed through a fucking tube, and now, because of you, that’s another win that the prick will be hanging over my head for years. This is your fault, Hudson. You did this to me.

So, consequently, I have a problem with you, sir. There is a debt owed between the two of us. We are going to settle that debt on the next pay-per-view, and you will learn firsthand just exactly what the consequences are going to be. This is the part where your typical wrestling performer would go into great detail about what exactly they’re going to do to you, but I don’t need to get into those sorts of details. My career speaks for itself. If you want to know what you’re in for, just rewind to some of my old matches. Watch what I did to Andre Bates in the first ULW Weapons Lair. Go back and check on how well it worked out for Shawn Hall after he slammed my head repeatedly in an ambulance door. I think that piece of shit Hunter is in your company, so why don’t you go find him and ask him how things went after he decided to insert himself into my business.

Or don’t bother. You clearly didn’t strain yourself thinking this through before getting involved in my life. If you had, you would have attacked Johnny Kingdom or someone else more likely to just beat you rather than cause you permanent bodily harm.

I am so fucking sick of this bullshit. Months upon months of interference, run-ins, and every other goddamn thing that people have pulled on me since I came back to this company. I don’t think I’ve been in a match with a clean ending since I returned, and you’re just the most recent one to come along and add to the pile. Unfortunately, for you, I am just done with it now.

You’re going to be the message I send to the roster. You will be the sign to everyone who crosses my path in the future of what exactly the consequences are for fucking with me.

***

2-13-10

Maya is sitting on the couch of an IWC dressing room, a white fleece robe wrapped around her lithe frame. The television is replaying the segment from late on Riot! with AWOL chasing Josh Hudson out of the arena. She chews thoughtfully on a fingernail, the gears clearly turning in her mind, until she is startled by the sound of the dressing room door being kicked open.

AWOL storms in, the baseball bat still clutched in his left hand. He throws the dressing room door shut behind him. Maya stands up, quickly shutting the TV off with the remote, as the Big Crazy Bastard stands motionless, eyes closed, veins straining in his forehead and throat. He breathes deeply, exhalations coming as long snorts from his nostrils, before finally turning and, with a primal scream of rage, throwing the bat into the floor to ceiling mirror on the wall behind him. The glass shatters and he drops to his knees, hands clamped angrily over his eyes. Maya walks forward, timidly, a hand resting onto his shoulders.

Maya-Are you alright?

AWOL gives a bitter laugh.

AWOL-Am I alright? No, Maya, no. I’m not fucking alright. I’m not ok. That son-of-a-bitch Hudson just cost me…

He stops, shaking his head angrily.

AWOL-I’m going to murder him. I’m going to FUCKING murder him.

Maya-So…you don’t get a shot at the title now?

He looks up, staring her in the face.

AWOL-No, I don’t get a shot at the title now. More importantly, Savior does. That bastard gets to prove everything I said for weeks wrong. He gets to walk into Two for One and, hell, let’s be honest here. He’ll probably win. He’ll have the whole goddamned arsenal set up and ready to find some way to screw Zero out of the belt, and all we’ll hear about for weeks is how this was some kind of master plan on his part that has finally come to fruition. I can’t stand it. I can’t…fucking…stand it. I would rather walk away now than have to watch him strutting around with the belt and acting like somehow he earned it.

Maya squats down next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

Maya-Well, I don’t get it. They cheated, didn’t they? It’s right there on the camera that you were handcuffed to the rail. Why don’t they just disqualify him and give you the shot?

AWOL-That’s not the way things work here, and they never will. You don’t get ahead by working hard or putting out a quality product. You get ahead with cheap tricks, stupid gimmicks, and every other ridiculous thing that bastard does.

Maya-It isn’t fair. You should be getting that shot, not him. You’d be a much better champion.

AWOL-I don’t even really care. I’m just tired of seeing Savior win. He’s pissing in the faces of everyone in the IWC every week and they fucking reward him for it. I just can’t believe it.

Now a confused expression appears on her face.

Maya-What? How can you not care? It’s the world title, and you deserve to have a shot at it.

He turns and gives her the same confused glance.

AWOL-I don’t need it. It’s not why I’m here. I’ve seen what it takes to win the belt. I’ve sold my soul for it before. I don’t want to do that again. I don’t want to be that person anymore.

Maya-But you deserve it! You’re the best competitor in this company, and you have every right to that belt. I don’t understand why you’re fighting so hard to keep Savior away from it if you don’t care to win it for yourself.

AWOL-I…I just can’t stand that son-of-a-bitch getting ahead by resorting to…to…

The fury is building behind his eyes, before Maya reaches forward and grabs his chin, turning it to face her.

Maya-To the same sort of things you used to do?

The fury is replaced quickly with incredulity.

Maya-Oh, come on, don’t give me that look. I’ve watched your old matches. Who are you kidding? You’re no saint. You sliced off a man’s face with razor blades to get ahead in this company before. You twisted Shawn Hall’s wife and turned her against him. You ended Andre Bates’ career and nearly ended Johnny Kingdom’s as well. You know what it takes to succeed, and you know that you’re capable of it.

AWOL looks like he’s going to argue, but she cuts him off with a disgusted shake of the head.

Maya-Or maybe they’re right. Maybe you’re not the monster anymore. Maybe you actually can’t hack it.

AWOL-What the fuck is your problem, now?

She stands up, adjusting the robe and walking away from him. She stops at a receptions table, picking up a bottle of water and unscrewing the cap.

Maya-You were a monster, once. You were AWOL, the Biggest, Craziest Bastard in this industry. Now I’m not sure. I mean, a guy handcuffs you to the rails in your title match, and you, what, chase him out of the building on a four wheeler? Oooh, scary.

AWOL stands, picking up the bat in his free hand with the same motion. Maya continues to talk to the wall, taking a sip from the bottle.

Maya-I mean, it’s been how many weeks now and you have how many people in your face between the Society, the Motherfuckers, and the Generation, and you’ve done what to stop them? These people understand one thing, AWOL, terror. If you want them to stop, you show them what the consequences of attacking you really are. But no, no, you can’t do it anymore. You’re too busy being a nice-guy and ranting about fair play.

AWOL stands right behind her, face turning an ugly shade of crimson. She turns around to look him in the face.

Maya-I mean, I’m standing right here, insulting you to your face, and you’re going to just stand there and take it? Maybe you have gotten soft like they say.

AWOL lifts the bat up.

AWOL-Would you rather I hit you with this?

Maya-At least then you would be acting like somebody who actually has some balls. Then you’d be acting like somebody that can actually beat Christian Savior, rather than just talk about it.

The bat actually creaks from how hard he’s gripping it.

Maya-Swing. You know you want to. Swing the fucking bat. Silence me. Show me that the monster is still in there, somewhere, ready to come out and take this company over.

His face twists into a snarl, and for a moment, he hefts the bat into the air, looking to bring it down onto her skull. However, he stops, holding it, shaking, in mid-motion, before finally dipping it back to the ground.

Maya-That’s what I thought. Fucking pathetic.

With a snap of her arm, she tosses a stream of water out of the bottle into his face. In an instant his eyes alight with rage and he pulls his arm back into the air, bringing the bat crashing down in one smooth motion towards her face.

***

You have to have men who are moral, and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion…without judgment, without judgment…because it’s judgment that defeats us. – Colonel Kurtz, “Apocalypse Now”

The Point

Another grainy image comes into hazy half-focus, this time showing AWOL’s garage. At least, we can presume that this is the room we’re seeing, but the identification is made much more difficult due to the fact that everything is currently upside down, including the Big Crazy Bastard himself who is perched on the hood of his car, shaking his head in disappointment. It is clear that he has simply unplugged the webcam from his study, carried it to the garage workbench, and has for some reason chosen to knock it over onto its side.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” he says to the assembled masses watching him through their computer and television screens, “You really have no idea. I tried to convince myself that you were just spinning the facts, trying to make yourself come out clean in the final analysis and work your way around the volume of facts that are stacked against your actually managing to defeat me. I thought, ‘He’s got to be at least moderately intelligent. He has all these people snowed, after all. He convinced Douglas to give him all that power in the company. He's got a whole list of title belts he's won. Christian Savior can’t really be as dense as he unwittingly makes himself out to be in his promos, can he?’”

He sighs, apparently still oblivious to his currently topsy-turvy orientation. “But then I saw this last effort of yours, Christian. And yes, in this case I will use the word ‘effort,’ because unlike you I can tell when an opponent has actually put some time and thought into his work. For instance, the parody of Cruze’s affliction that you did was actually amusing. Maybe it’s just the lowered expectations I have for your promos, but I honestly thought you were going to try to sell yourself as having your own new crippling affliction, and I was honestly wondering ‘Why doesn’t this doctor know how to pronounce “subdermal hematoma?’ But then you spun it, pulled the curtain away, and showed that you were just mocking our former co-owner. I was honestly amused. I may even have laughed. Try not to faint when I say it, but that part of the promo was a well thought out, well executed example of what parodies are supposed to be.

“It probably would have made more sense if you actually did it against Cruze, of course, but you know, baby steps.

“However, in this case, the fact that part of your promo was actually intelligent only serves to reinforce and ultimately paint in a tragic light the sad, pathetic effort you’ve seen fit to inflict upon the viewing audience with the rest of that tripe. It’s sad because I finally had to stop denying the truth to myself and admit that, at the end of the day, this is in fact the best you can do. Tiny, mocking, belittling insults about me are all you can really come up with. A cacophony of half-thought out attempts at mockery, an attempt at building character drama that even you couldn’t get through with a straight face, your girlfriend wandering in and giving you a high school football coach pep talk, and an attempt to try and reinvent yourself by, what, changing your wardrobe? This is the best that you, the might Christian Savior, once the most feared man in this company, can throw against me?”

“Oh, yes, and of course we wouldn’t want to forget the copious insults thrown out against MY promo style. Let’s put aside for a moment that a man who thinks calling Johnny Kingdom “Kingdumb” is clever and who believes that starting his personal talk-show by quoting, verbatim, Serling’s monologue from the opening sequence of the Twilight Zone is creative somehow feels he’s qualified to make any sort of criticism about another person’s choice of promotional expression. Those sorts of arguments would work with logical people, which we’ve established you clearly are not. However, you seem to be operating under a dangerous delusion Savior: that I somehow believe I have something to prove to you. Here’s the truth: I don’t write them to entertain you. I don’t write them to keep your interest. The sole and only purpose of my promotional videos is to mock you. You are, without a doubt, the most ridiculous specimen of a human being I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across in my career in professional wrestling. You embody a sort of dangerous combination of sociopathy and dissociative disorder that leaves you completely unaware of what is going on in reality, operating under the mistaken belief that somehow the rules of the way the world works apply to everyone else but somehow, just by being you, you’re exempt and no sort of consequences will ever come for you in response to your actions. No matter what happens, no matter how many matches you lose, no matter how many times the world title that you claim not to care about slips through your grasping, desperate fingers, somehow you’re still the best there is at what you do in this business and anyone would be a fool to think otherwise."

AWOL reaches forward, twisting the lens of the webcam and taking it further out of focus. “You say that my promos feature me talking to a brick wall? Congratulations, champ, you can be taught, because as I’ve said on a number of different occasions that’s basically what promoing against you is like. There’s no give and take with you, no back and forth. There is simply the real world and Savior world, and the few places where these two alternate versions of reality intersect are twisted so thoroughly by you as to be unusable. You're honestly going to complain that in my promo all I could talk about was things that happened on the last episode of Riot! and the things you put in your promo last week? News flash, jackass: that’s all I have to work with. You would have to give me something somewhere before an hour prior to the first promotional video deadline in order for me to talk about anything else. What do you expect me to do? Follow you on Twitter? That would be riveting! ‘@CSavior says ‘Eating a ham sandwich now, is very tasty.’ Clearly this shows how much better I am than him.’ That’d get the viewers to tune in!

“I don’t really get the point of your complaint, anyways. It’s not like you’re actually listening, is it? Anything I say that makes a point is immediately ignored unless you can find some way to twist it out of context so that it favors you. I’ve been doing this a long time, as you’re fond of pointing out, and I’ve literally never seen anything like it. It would be truly remarkable if it wasn’t so goddamned aggravating. It’s like living in a constant Catch-22. You won’t accept that I’m better than you in the ring because I can’t get a clean win over you, while at the same time you ensure that I never get the opportunity for a clean win by having your associates interfere in all our matches. You point out that you were fighting me tired from fighting a match earlier in the night, but you conveniently leave out the fact that, by the time that sensational clusterfuck of a match was finished, it was essentially a 3 on 1.5 handicap match slanted in your favor. Your team intentionally disqualifies themselves on last week’s Riot!, and you hold that up as some kind of achievement. Like somehow, despite the fact that you lost the match intentionally, ensuring that I never actually had the chance to put you away, this gives you any kind of right to rub it in my face that I couldn’t overcome the odds to pin you. As ironic as the statement truly is, you hold up losing by disqualification, cheating in other words, as a 'moral' victory.

"No, Savior, I’m sorry. I can’t go with you on this one. Wins matter, and you lost. The fact that it was intentional doesn't change that fact. You were fighting me in a match where I was first saddled with a partner whose brain literally exploded mid-contest and was quickly replaced by another person who blindsided me and walked out of the ring, and yet, despite all of this, you STILL couldn’t beat me. The deck wasn't just stacked in your favor, you literally had the whole fucking deck in your hands and you still came away with an L. And somehow, someway, you want to portray that as a victory for the Society? You’re either more desperate than even I could have imagined, or you’re clinically insane. I can’t make up my mind which."

He shakes his head in exasperation. “But the circular logic doesn’t end there, folks. No, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how now, suddenly, the reason for the chronic late arrival of Savior’s promotional videos is actually because he puts so much more time and effort into his work than I do. Oh, clearly, that must be the case. It’s certainly not because it’s easier to lie about someone and defend your logical fallacies when you know ahead of time that there’s no way for your opponent to craft a rebuttal. Why didn’t that occur to me before? Oh, wait, perhaps it’s because, on the last edition of Riot!, Savior’s final promotional video spent the entirety of its length discussing the things that Cruze and I had said in our previous promos…earlier that day. So tell me, Christian, did part of the “time and effort” that went into that promo consist of buying a Ouija board or a crystal ball to see into the future? Because otherwise I have a hard time believing that you weren’t literally sitting in your office or hotel room or evil underground lair, wherever it is you spend your free time, watching the feed on IWC.com and waiting for Cruze and I to promo so you could throw together a response at the last minute which you knew we wouldn't be able to respond to. All of which, of course, has no bearing upon anything since, as you’ve pointed out, winners are determined in the ring. In the final summation, the only thing the IWC airwaves are good for is winning popularity contests. I just point it out because, one assumes, the IWC marketing department would prefer it if your promos could maybe run for more than ten minutes prior to Riot!'s scheduled start time every week.”

AWOL leans forward, intentionally screwing up the blocking by moving half of his face out of the shot. “And that’s just the point that you’re failing to grasp, here, Savior. I don’t give a shit about popularity contests. I don’t care if fans cheer for me or boo. I promo because it's my job to promo, not because I think that somehow it'll allow me to win friends and influence people. The fans will cheer me when I’m in the ring with you anyways whether I promo or not, and they’ll cheer all the louder the more savagely I brutalize you. I’m not going to pretend that it isn’t nice to have their support when you’ve got it, but ultimately who they chose to rally behind isn’t my concern, and it never has been. I would turn on them tomorrow if it meant advancing my career, and I would laugh at the boos right in their fat, stupid faces. I don’t care how many t-shirts I sell or how many votes I get for Superstar of the Year. I care about one thing: victory. I am here to win, and winning is what I’ve been doing since I came back to this company, like it or not. Despite your insistence that I somehow need to spend more time focusing on the match, of the two of us, I’m the one who comes down night after night to wrestle while you, Savior, are busy running around the arena dressed up in Halloween costumes or kidnapping IWC officials. You’re the one who is ditching your suit and including your middle name and trying to pretend like, somehow, this makes you no longer the man who has thus far failed to dislodge me from his path back to the world title. You’re the one spending your promo time ranting about my promo style, and you’re the one reenacting general hospital in yours, while I’m content to sit here and just tell you straight to your face that I’m better than you in every aspect of being a wrestler and a human being, and I’m going to beat you on Riot! to prove it. I neither want nor need help. I made that very clear when I told Cruze to stay out of my business and walked out to face you and Porno Lad alone on the last show. I don’t need to have one half of the ownership in my back-pocket. In case you haven’t noticed, Johnny’s not exactly been sprinting out to my aid any of these previous weeks as it is, and I wasn’t exactly rushing to his defense when your masterstroke was falling to take away his title last week either, so your notion that somehow I’m riding his coat tails is once again proven to be patently false. I don’t need a personal referee. I don’t need a stable. All I need is to walk down to that ring each and every night, look you straight in your wormy-little eyes, and slap you in the face repeatedly until someday you’re forced to admit that, no matter how much it may bruise your ego, I’m just better than you.

“You want to get on my case for putting together uninteresting promos? You may want to listen closely the next time you watch one. If you really focus, you may hear a slight whistling sound in the air, as if something had just flown over your head. What is it? It’s the point, Christian Savior, and that whistling is the sound of you missing it again. My promos against you are intentionally uninteresting. I make them that way to mock you for pointing it out, because I know it aggravates you, and because, frankly, I don’t consider you worth the effort to put together anything better. If I write War and Peace or hire Industrial Light and Magic to do the effects for an action promo, you’ll still ignore it and cherrypick the parts you like the best to mock in your own half-baked response, won't you? I don’t need a script to make you look like a fool. You do that well enough on your own. I can literally grab any device, anything that can record my voice and/or image, stand in front of it, point out how much of a jackass you are, and then go about the rest of my day merrily disinterested in anything you say or do with the knowledge that, ultimately, the intelligent IWC fans (both of them) can see who among us is shooting straight with them and who is putting reality through the ringer every promo just to try and make themselves sound like they’re still relevant.”

AWOL smiles as he reaches forward and drapes a cloth over the camera, blocking out the picture entirely. “So yes, Savior, my promos do not have a clever plotline. There are no actors here who will fail to read their lines properly. I’m not going to drag my personal life in front of the camera for you to see and deride, and I’m not going to hang some office staffer up by his ankles in front of the camera just to prove how tough I am. Putting on a different set of clothing? Coming up with a new name for your grand plan after Project: Shatterpoint hit a big, crazy snag on the last Riot!? Harping about how you’ve reinvented yourself in just one week’s time? Here’s a tip, Savior: if you’re trying to convince people that you’re not desperately trying to curb the downturn your career has taken, completely redefining your entire character on a whim isn’t the best way to go about it. Of course, other than your outfit choice and your insistence on repeating that ridiculous middle name, I’ve yet to see anything out of Savior 2.0 that would lead me to believe he is anything besides the conniving weasel we all know and hate, but I digress. None of those things matter. Wins matter, and despite your efforts to color them to the contrary, I have more of them against you than you have against me.

“Somewhere soon, I have to believe that even you will have to acknowledge the reality of your situation. Your house of cards is falling apart, Savior. You’ve made a mistake when you think I need to go on the offensive and resort to your level of backstage chicanery to beat you. I just have to keep on beating you to beat you, and the world of the IWC is starting to take notice. What few allies you have that you aren’t tying to the roof and pretending to split open with an axe are, soon enough, going to start realizing the fact that despite your big talk and despite your dismissal of me, you don’t have what it takes to get rid of me. You’re already starting to bicker with the talking penis. Robin Brooks is more interested in making Hurse’s life hell than doing you any favors. While the Alpha Generation, the Empire, and the MOUSA don’t exactly get along, the one thing we can all agree on is the fact that we’re sick to death of you and would like nothing better than to be rid of the Five Star Waste of Space once and for all. The walls are closing in on all sides, Savior, and bit by bit your world is getting smaller while mine gets bigger. After I beat you and that other guy they’re sticking into the match with us, whoever he is, it’s on to take back the IWC title from Zero and, unlike your boy PL, I have enough self-respect to keep what I’ve earned for myself rather than just hand it over to my stable-leader like a loyal dog. And the best part? You’ll be there for that moment too from my understanding, moaning and gnashing your teeth and wondering why, oh god why, can’t anyone but you see how incredibly terrible and uninteresting I am and how much better of a champion you would make than me. But it won’t matter, Savior, because the time for games has past.

“This is the IWC now, and there is simply no room for you in it any longer.”

The promo ends, though the only indication of this is the fact that the soon-to-be-champ is no longer speaking.

False Savior

[The image is grainy, as if recorded from a cheap web-cam. AWOL sits at his computer desk, bleary eyed, tired, looking somewhat beaten down from the previous iteration of the IWC Riot! program, but with a smug smile firmly entrenched upon his face.]

AWOL-So, as much as I hate to admit it, Christian Savior, you have actually managed to draw my curiosity about a certain point. I’ve labored for a good amount of time trying to come up with anything interesting to talk about in the blind for this match, since I’m sure you won’t have anything to contribute until later this evening and Riggs will likely manage not to show up at all. In this case, I’m aided by the fact that we faced each other just last week, so I can simply continue the back-and-forth volley we began before the tag match last week on Riot! However, I simply don’t have the inclination or inspiration to put together anything more elaborate than a simple direct address, and seeing as how I’m currently of a mind to rant and I have this handy web camera here to record it, this will be what I’m releasing to the IWC public at large. You’ll have to excuse the somewhat cheap production value. We can’t all afford the extras budget to have constant sex going on in the background like Porno Lad.

[A shrug of his broad shoulders.]

AWOL-And you’ll have to excuse me as well, Riggs, because this promo is basically not going to be about you in the least. You see, while you and Psycho have managed to fuck up a number of my matches, you’ve actually not managed to prove anything to me that would lead me to believe you have any business being in a match of this caliber. To put it bluntly, Riggs, this is a match for the number one contendership and a spot in the cross-promotional match with the IWC. What I’ve seen of you since my return has solidified exactly three facts about you into my mind that cannot be refuted: first, that you are apparently only capable of managing to be the third most notable or respected wrestler in your stable, falling behind “top draws” like Jackson Adams and Psycho; second, that you were the tomato can they threw into the ring for Cagero to beat down and establish his “legitimacy” as the IWC champion; and third, that someone in the home office, for whatever reason, seems to believe that you are far better than you actually are and has a fondness for tossing you into the deep end with no life preserver. All of these things lead me to the conclusion that you ultimately have no place being here.

Let me make something inescapably clear to you, Riggs: you are out of your league. There is exactly one person in your newly reformed Alpha Generation who even remotely deserves a place in this match, and that is Jackson Adams. I might want to pop his fucking skull like a pimple, if only because he gave the Society some ability to brag about a win over me when he slapped Johnny Kingdom in the face with a chair, but the bottom line is he’s the only one from your group who’s actually accomplished anything in recent weeks. He screwed the Empire at Extinction, he reformed the Alpha Generation, he recruited you and Psycho, and he even managed to get the drop on me last week on Riot! Like him or not, he’s a man on a mission. He’s taking some initiative, which is more than I can say for most of the people in this place. You, on the other hand, seem content to ride the coattails of your betters and let them carry you on, and who can blame you? You’ve managed to finagle a world title shot and a chance at the number one contendership out of talking to invisible ghosts, hanging out with people who actually occasionally do something with their career, and wearing some face-paint Sting threw away in a dumpster behind the TNA arena. Meanwhile, your stable leader, JA, is stuck on the opposite end of the ever-so-compelling “pair the champion up with the guy who took his title” tag team match with absolutely nothing on the line and no reward for winning while you reap the benefits his labors. That’s justice folks. That’s the IWC. Welcome to it.

[A disgusted sneer, quickly replaced by neutrality.]

AWOL-But you, Christian Savior, you I am honestly curious about. You see, this week’s Riot! had to be a singular event in your career. I would go so far as to characterize it as a defining moment for you, an evening that almost embodies a microcosm of your entire existence. All that is Christian Savior was displayed proudly on the Riot! stage for the all the world to see. And what did we observe on this evening of evenings? We saw you, a man who claimed to not care about the world title anymore, dress up in costume to pretend to be another superstar on the roster, steal their world title shot, force a referee to count a pinfall for you after you cheated your way into even participating in the match, and then subsequently be defeated by the man who you were imitating. So in a matter of seconds, you illegitimately stole the world title you claimed to no longer have an interest in and then had it taken away by none other than an SCW escapee, Jason Wheeler. Now, for most people, that would be a full night’s work, but not you Savior. No, no, you had to come out later on and face me with your Porno Stooge, and somehow, despite having a numbers advantage at the beginning of the match and facing my tag team partner whose brain apparently exploded mid-contest, you managed to lose that match as well. Was it shady? You bet it was. Was their outside interference? It was an IWC main event, so that should go without saying. But we established last week Savior that a win was a win, and so by my reckoning that leaves things at 2-1 in my favor between the pair of us.

[He leans forward. The grainy image fails to resolve the sheer intensity of his glare.]

AWOL-Yes, that’s right. You’ve lost to me again. The big dumb bull, the brainless powerhouse, the one who you think just wanders down to the ring and bumbles through things has beaten you once more. I told you once, Savior, that I’ve made a career out of people underestimating me, but the message apparently seems to have failed to sink home. I’m not terribly upset about this, you understand. Frankly, go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing. Pick my promos apart for the points you can twist around in your favor while ignoring the things that make you look foolish. Tell people that you’ve won more IWC titles than me as if that proves something when, in reality, I’ve been in the IWC for only a few months so obviously there’s no way I could manage to equal a year-long reign as world champion. Try to sell me as a brainless clod. Try to convince people you’re better than me. Twist the truth. Lie. Do all the things that you’re best at, and then keep on walking down to the ring and losing to me anyways. It just makes it that much sweeter when the three count falls and, yet again, Christian Savior’s brilliant plans have unraveled around his ears.

[He leans back, a satisfied smile on his face.]

AWOL-Tell me, Savior, how did it feel that night when you went back into the locker room? How did it feel when you had to take off your Zero costume and look at yourself in the mirror? Were you proud of yourself? Did it make you feel like the most dominant force in this company to know that you have to dress up as another man to even get a whiff at a World Title shot? Because I’ll tell you what it looked like to me: pathetic. Fucking pathetic. What I saw in the ring on Riot! was a man whose career, despite his delusions, appears to be on the downturn. What I saw in the ring was a man who has to resort to subterfuge and chicanery to get what he wants, because he knows he doesn’t have the juice anymore. I mean let’s face it, Christian, you’re not exactly news these days. Everything you have, people have handed to you. Porno Lad won your Cartel Title for you, Dan Douglas handed you all the power of authority you hold in the company, and you had to imitate a masked-man to even get the opportunity to take the world title away from Johnny Kingdom. And to top it all off, the real Zero showed up a moment later and took the belt away before you’d barely even had a chance to hold it. You know what all that says to me? That you’re irrelevant, Savior. The world of the IWC has passed you by. You might be a big deal in the SCW, and that should basically surprise no one given the talent pool in that place, but you simply can’t cut it here anymore. There are too many people who are better than you now. Sure, when Johnny Kingdom and I were out of the picture you won a bunch of titles and established a legacy for yourself in the IWC, but now that we’re back look what you’re reduced to. Costumes? Really? That’s the best you can do?

[Mockery. Derision. All of these things adorn the big man’s face.]

AWOL-And look who you have on your side. Look at your allies, Christian. Porno Lad is the best wrestler in your Five Star Society. I’ll repeat that so it can settle in: Porno Lad is the best wrestler in the 5SS. After you get past him, you have Katelyn Parkwood, a pregnant Robin Brooks, and a bunch of other whores, hangers-on, and nobodies who don’t even deserve to be drawing a paycheck for themselves here. How do you look at yourself in the mirror and feel anything but disgust for the leeches you have hanging off of yourself? How do you wake up in the morning and feel anything besides self-loathing at the ridiculous lengths you have to stoop to to achieve even the smallest modicum of success here?

I honestly want to know, because as an outside observer your recent stint in the IWC has been almost sad enough to inspire pity from me, and it’s beginning to show in the quality of your promos. You’re flailing, presumably because you’re desperate. You toss out random insults and hope that one of them strikes home. You think you need to explain an allegory to me? News flash: calling someone the weakest link is a metaphor and, I would like to add, a cliché. It is not an allegory. An allegory would be like writing a long promo where you use character representations to try and emphasize a point about the people you’re trying to mock, like L. Frank Baum did when he wrote the original Wizard of Oz to try and argue for the introduction of the silver standard for currency in the United States. Ironically, the concept of allegory is the very thing we’ve been trying to convey to you for months now about why your “parodies” fail to even accomplish their title objective of parodying the people involved in them. But I guess that’s the simple reality of our situation, isn’t it? You’re only interested in the things I say that you can exploit, and the rest goes in one ear and out the other.

“Said but true,” I believe is the way you put it.

Why do I not talk about your style? Well, putting aside for a moment the fact that you typically don’t bother mentioning it either, I frankly don’t see the relevance of the point. We’re not having a wrestling match when we write these lovely little exchanges; we’re conducting a very different type of war: a war of propaganda. Your mischaracterization of me as some sort of lumbering clod that barely knows how to execute a wristlock serves no purpose here besides portraying me in an inferior light, and you know it. In truth, I don’t talk about your style of wrestling because from the ring experience I have with you, I’m not certain you have one. Essentially, you’re a master of the catch as catch can, “whatever shortcut can get me a victory right now” style of wrestling, and beyond that point you don’t have a technique preference. So what is the purpose of commenting on it? I watch film. I prepare, the same as you do. Listing off your top ten move choices and how I’m going to counter them will do nothing besides tip my hand to you before we get in the ring and bore the audience to tears. Moreover, I’ve fought you before, which gives me the best sort of preparation of all. Whether or not I mention to the fans what I’ve seen of you will have exactly zero bearing on the outcome of the match from the moment the bell rings. Sure, I could play the sort of game that you do and try to make something up about you to make people believe that I have an edge where there isn’t one, but I don’t really feel that that’s necessary or even required. People can see what happens when we get in the ring together. Let them make up their own minds.

Basically, I’m beyond the point of even bothering to take what you say seriously, and I think the average IWC fan is getting to that point as well. Every time I see one of your promos against me they sound more rushed and more frantic and less sensible, if that’s even possible, than the last. As I said, you’re just swinging now and hoping to connect with something. It stinks of desperation, Savior, and it’s getting more and more pathetic by the minute. The longer this goes on and the harder you try to spin things, the more wretched it starts to look. Honestly, Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann, and Rush Limbaugh should look to you for tips, because I’ve never seen someone before who was quite so skilled at taking a situation that was clearly not in their favor and, by sheer denial and force of willpower, somehow was capable of finding a way to reshape reality to maintain the illusion that, somehow, someway, despite all points to the contrary, they were in fact somehow still relevant to the world at large. Even now I can hear the enthusiastic clicking of your keyboard as you type out the words in the script for the promo that, you believe, will somehow serve as a rebuttal to the obvious truth of what I’ve said. I have no illusion about this fact. Sometime around 11:59 PM EST this evening there will be another scathing retort from the Savior camp flying across the IWC airways portraying me as some sort of shaved baboon that the federation has cruelly forced to compete against his betters in a triple threat match for the IWC title number one contendership. I look forward to it, really. They make me laugh, as most flat out ridiculous things do. But the problem is, Christian, that with each and every week and each and every lie, the illusion starts to wear down. With every defeat it gets that much thinner, and week by passing week people are starting to see through it.

Soon enough, Savior, you’re going to realize that you’ve lost this thing. Maybe you’ll quit, maybe you’ll let yourself slide into obscurity in the Submissions Title division, or maybe you’ll just keep on persisting despite all common sense until you’re just too broken down and beaten to carry on, but one day soon the Society’s mandate in the IWC is going to end. Project Shatter-Point, whatever the fuck it’s supposed to be, is dead before it even begins, and it’s dead because I’m in the way. I’m going to be the IWC number one contender. I’m going to win this match, and at the cross-over event I’m going to beat Wheeler for the title. It’s as simple as that.

I look forward to your response.

[With a smile, AWOL reaches forward and deactivates the camera.]