- Event: Chaos 035
You asked me a question, Mr. Townsend.
You wanna know… why?
It’s pretty simple, actually. It’s because Lee Best booked me in a match, and I’m a wrestler. I’m not the CEO of High Octane Wrestling anymore. Not even invited to those meetings anymore, honestly. Lee Best made a match, I found out about it the same time as you did. I’m going to wrestle in it, and I’m going to do my absolute damnest to win it. Truth of the matter is, it sucks a fat one that you’re stuck with Brian Hollywood. You’re right– a handicap match would have been better odds for you. But I mean, what did you expect, man? How did you make your triumphant return to wrestling, after all these years?
You attacked Lee Best.
I mean, what did you expect?
Wrestling is special to me, but it isn’t… special. It’s a job, like any other job in the world. If I worked at Walmart, and I assaulted the guy who was in charge of Walmart, I’d probably be fired. Arrested. Prosecuted. At the very least, you can count on me getting the shittiest shifts with the shittiest coworkers. Forget that the man is my father, Rhys, you attacked the owner of the company. If you think this is about a Final Alliance? Shit, I’ll shoot you straight, bud:
I don’t give a fuck about the Final Alliance.
That’s not a statement of disrespect, or respect, or endorsement, or denouncement. It’s just a statement. I don’t give a fuck about the Alliance, their wars, their friends, their rivals, none of it. I am, officially confirmed by statistics, the greatest champion in the history of High Octane Wrestling, and the only thing I give a fuck about anymore is wrestling. So man, it’s a bummer that you’re stuck with a guy held in such low esteem in the year of our Lord 2023 that he’s the only person Zion is comfortable calling out for a pay-per-view, but…
- You did that shit to yourself.
- That ain’t got shit to do with me.
I’m not interested in attacking you before the bell. I’m not interested in some big beatdown after the match, where the whole Alliance shows up and Solex beats you with a sock full of commemorative Trump coins (Solex is good peeps though, real talk). And if you’re concerned that Jatt Starr and I have some devious plan to work together and screw you over? Well, you’re not generally one to need a history lesson, but if you recall… I fucking blinded his wife. Stabbed her right in her stupid face with a ballpoint pen. She took my Bottomline virginity, actually, and I’m honestly still not even sorry about it. Dude was filling the spot I felt I deserved in HOW, so I took that spot and I took him out of the picture. So are he and I sitting around, having a couple of beers and plotting the downfall of Rhys Townsend? Doubtful. But am I going to do everything in my power to kick your ass, kick Hollywood’s ass, and kick the ass of anyone who tries to keep me from winning that match this weekend?
Fuck right I am.
Because I’m a wrestler.
You remember what that means. America remembers what that means. We’ve got some old heads back around who remember the good old days, and even a couple of young guys who seem to get it, like Conor Fuse. You and I, we had wars. We used to go out there and beat eachother half to death, all over a piece of leather with a gold plate on the front of it, and it meant everything. It was the single most important thing in the world. So I already know that you know that I know that you know we’re gonna tear the house down this weekend and fight like it’s the most important match in the history the universe. Of course we are. We’re wrestlers. Plumbers plumb, actors act, and we beat the shit out of eachother and every other person who steps into our path.
It’s good to have you back, Rhys.
I mean that, sincerely.
It’ll be good to have you back when I do my best to knee your teeth square down your throat, the first time I tag in. It’ll be good to have you back when I bounce your head off the canvas like a fucking soccer ball. It’ll be good to have you back when you have my leg torn halfway out of it’s socket and bent up over top of my skull in a single leg crab, and I’m screaming obscenities at you while I’m crawling toward the ropes. I fucking love to fight, Rhys Townsend, and I especially love to fight other people who fucking love to fight. You and my father, you can have whatever kind of battle you want to have, and I’m not getting involved in it either way. I’m gonna come down to that ring and have a tag match, with Jatt Starr as my partner, and I’m going to do what I have to do to win.
And I know that you will, too.
But hey, look at me, getting all sentimental.
Got so nostalgic for the good old days that for just a second, I forgot about the shitty days we’re living in now. Brian fuckin’ Hollywood, you still work here? Seriously? No lie, I actually asked my dad if you still worked here like two days before he booked this match. Between finding out that you aren’t currently managing a TGIFridays and that your “supreme HOW World Championship reign” was actually managed by three squirrels with a website login instead of under the booking of Lee Best, you’ve been taking L’s like an art thief in the Museum of Right Angles this week.
What do you even get out of this anymore?
Like, when you look at the card– and this is a real question, Brian– but when you look at the card, and you see that you’re literally punishment booking for Rhys Townsend, what goes through your mind? Does it make you sad? Does it fill you with righteous indignation, like you’re gonna go out there and show everyone that you aren’t the joke that you’re treated as? Or, perhaps the most horrifying, do you have the Stevens Syndrome? Do you look at that match and see four elite level competitors, in a banger of a tag team match?
It’s not rhetorical, Brian.
Let me know around 11:59.
See, some of you guys… the ones in that 200-300 point range in the all time rankings, you have this idea in your head that we’re the same. That you’re just down on your luck, but one big roll of the dice away from getting back to the good old days. It’s a level of delusion that I find almost admiral, in a way. But I also find it sad. You held two World Championships across your entire HOW career, which is almost as long as mine has been. Both of them were won during a long vacation taken by Lee Best, which means that even if they count for anything, they assuredly count for less. And across those title “title reigns”, you managed to defend your title one fucking time. One time. Twenty times less than I have defended that same title. You have one more successful defense than Adonis Smyth, Brian. Why do you still do this? Do you think we’re the same?
We don’t even breathe the same air.
We don’t eat the same food. We don’t wear the same sneakers. Our experiences inside of a shopping mall are entirely different. You and I are hardly the same species, and I find the mere persistence of your continued High Octane existence to be equal parts taxing and insulting. I have been altogether too accepting, tolerant, and enabling toward some of you motherfuckers even taking up valuable payroll space around here, and it fucking ends now. Townsend and I squaring up this week? It’s battle. It’s nostalgia. It’s revisiting the good old days in the only way we know how… with violence. But the second he tags stupid as fuck Brian Hollywood into that match?
Well, it’s gonna become a different animal.
The Tolerance Era is over. If you won’t leave High Octane Wrestling from the sheer pressure of your own mediocrity, then you’ll leave it on a fucking stretcher, Brian. And I’m not gonna make a bunch of threats about ripping your leg off and beating you to death with it, either. I’m gonna make say some very specific, very realistic things, and they are things that I want you to take to heart. At Chaos, I have every intention of dislocating your arm and twisting it against the grain until they can hear it snap over the crowd noise. I am going to stomp on your throat until you cannot speak or breathe without the assistance of a machine. I’m not talking about bruises here, Brian, I’m talking about scars. I’m not just talking about the end of your wrestling career, I’m talking about the end of your ability to work for a living. I am tired of your existence. I am bored of your presence. I am annoyed that the same man signs both of our paychecks, when I wouldn’t trust you to competently wash my car four blocks down the road from the fucking Best Arena.
It’s over.
I’m ending it.
No more Sex. No more Money. No folks, this isn’t the first two sentences of Scott Stevens’ suicide note, it’s a promise that I’m making to a man who is about as useful to the sport of professional wrestling as a fake Twitter service where people talk about how their day is going. I still feel like I owe Rhys Townsend for old time’s sake, so if he wants a handicap match this week, then I’ll fucking give him one. A handicapped match. Rhys Townsend and a man who will not be leaving the arena unassisted, versus Michael Lee Best and Jatt Starr. I’d pay to see it. You’d pay to see it. A sold out arena would pay to see it. So hey, Hollywood!
Look on the bright side.
You’re finally a fucking draw.