Born into It

The last few weeks have humbled me.

Failure does that.

Failure to become the double champion I promised I would be. Failure for True Society to cement their dominance in this company and the taste is getting all too familiar.

It’s the first cross promotional battle I have been embarrassed in and I had nothing to lose. I wonder what the rest of these guys think of me. That I can’t get the job done? That it didn’t matter enough to me because my Warrior Rising Championships wasn’t on the line.

Sara lit my cigarette as I lay in bed, the Warrior Rising Championship across my stomach, the blankets haphazardly covering me. I take a few drags off the cigarette as she sips her coffee. I pull some blue jeans over my boxer shorts letting the smoke waft around the hotel…. The only place I could find seedy enough to still have smoking rooms.

“When do you think they will tour back to Canada?”

“I don’t know if that will happen anytime soon. Why?,” I asked.

“Just missing my parents a little, you know how hard it is for dad to get around in his wheelchair when it snows.”

To be honest it wouldn’t be the worst thing if she just up and left. She was a distraction more than anything - but I do love her. It’s funny how that emotion can make you less reckless, less ambitious… but I am in no way ready to settle down right now in any way shape or form. I have a few tours of duty left in me.

“You could always go back to visit.”

“I’d rather wait til you have some time off,” she said taking another sip of her black coffee out of a white mug. “I know mom and dad would love to see you again. I can’t wait to see their face when they realize we got back together.”

She cuts through a plume of smoke and plants one on my cheek, it sends a small shiver down my spine -- I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Bash Daddy was trying to force to to do the old school approach, watch tape after tape of Betsy’s dad, brothers, grand dad, distant cousins, family pets and whoever else in their bloodline have stepped into the ring. A lineage so long it comes in a full DVD and VHS set, hell I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their history was etched on a stone tablet.

“I can watch these all day, you and I both know it won’t replicate the real thing.”

Bash nodded and shut off the TV by tipping it over angrily. The old tube television popped and large chunks of glass scatted the floor. Neither of us flinched.

“I know you are trying to help… and I know you have been critical of Voodoo’s approach the last few weeks - but I don’t think watching these tapes is going to cut it either. We know where the real battle is.”

I point to my temple. I pull a cigarette from the breast pocket of my plaid shit and slip back into the recliner blowing a cloud into the ceiling fan so it disburses through the shitty hotel room.

Bash knows what to do on instinct, he flicks the camera on and focus in on the Warrior Rising Championship, one of my fingers tap tap tapping the face-plate every so slowly as he zooms out.

“Betsy Gallagher has been a woman’s champion it seems in every company she has stepped foot in that has said division. But here in Project Honor it’s swimming with the sharks. Open divisions and wrestling at its finest, but I am not quite ready to relinquish this championship and let it fall into the hands of another spoon fed wrestling royalty brat. I hate people like you, cut from the clothe and put on a fast track of predetermined greatness. I know I have alluded to this in the past, but I hate the idea we inherit everything our fathers are -- everything our ancestors were. Some people aren’t lucky enough to trace who they are back to England, Ireland, France… some track them back to mass grave sites.”

I smirk, tapping the ash off the end of my cigarette.

“You are one of the chosen, the one I am sure Project Honor would love to have representing this championship, going on Jimmy Kimmel or whatever the fuck -- but I do love the opportunity people like you present to people like me. The chance to humiliate someone who should be able to tap a fella like me out in their sleep. I know you have tricks up your sleeve,but after a two match losing streak I am just as hungry as when I walked into this company and if you make one mistake… if you slip up for a second I will slip it in and Silence the Lamb.”

I let out a groan and crack my neck slowly back and forth before continuing.

“If you want to represent your entire family, your entire country, if you want to be a role model for these little boys and girls you better know how to pick your head up when I collectively make sure you let everyone you love down at Proving Ground. You have an entire academy, you have every advantage walking into this. You were born into it, bred for this championship for Christ sake.”

I stand up now out of my chair and walk toward the camera, the Warrior Rising Championship held in my hand hanging by my side. I pull it up slowly to eye level and take another drag off my cancer stick.

“A queen needs her crown, that is all this is about, it’s all about jewelry and status for people like you… how are you going to break it to them all that you aren’t good enough? That you couldn’t even take the title that suggests you are the rising phoenix you claim to be. If you thought you wrists were sore after writing autographs wait till I pop it out of the socket. I’m about to take a month's worth of frustration out on you Betsy.”

“This company thinks a few losses are going to put me in my place, knock me off track from my true destiny… establishing this title. You might have been born into wrestling Betsy, but I was born into war, death, murder and that lends itself to a whole other skillset between that ropes. I know what it is like to have to survive, to have to do what I have to do, to break the rules because I wasn’t afforded the advantages of others. Unlike you Betsy, the reason you won’t cheat ia not from moral superiority, it’s the fact people like you have no idea what it is like to struggle. You’ve never been in a position of not feeling powerful, but prepare yourself… at Proving Ground I’ll give you that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as soon as you look at me from across the ring… you'll know you are in danger… and if you refuse to realize that, we’ll Betsy, I have already fucking won.”

I push the cigarette into the faceplate of the Warrior Rising Championship and gently toss the butt into the glass ashtray and the cheap press-board kitchen table.

“Nothing you’ve done at daddy’s academy is going to prepare you for the fight I am going to bring to Proving Ground. While you are busy trying to execute a perfect suplex, I’ll be gouging your eyes, I’ll be dragging you across the ring by your hair, bashing that skull of yours into an exposed turnbuckle hook. You are 20 years too late to be pulling this noble bullshit, it’s a slaughterhouse now. It’s not for the wrestlers anymore…”

I hold up the title belt and point to one word…

“It’s for the fucking ‘warriors.’”

Bash shuts the camera off as I drop the belt letting it hit the tile floor with a disrespectful thud.



His fathers apartment smelled like stale booze and depression. Everything messily organized into loose piles and scattered sheets and scene Special Agent Hancock was accustom to in his youth.

His father was always trying to break the big one, always trying to find a way to be the hero cop. Hancock didn’t feel quite the same, he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. Years working the cases he has learned quick justice often isn’t served in a courtroom.

There wasn’t much mention of Casanova English in the apartment to Hancock’s surprise -- he knew his father has some strange vendetta with the pro wrestler, but they haven’t talked much in years.

Then he pulled open a drawer, it in itself serving as a sort of manifesto. There was English’s old diary and beside it notes upon notes in his fathers writing… laying out everything he has suspected about English killing his own father in a Canadian prison.

Hancock started to read. And for the first time -- he started to hear his father.