- Event: War Games 2023
I can’t even believe I have to write this.
I’ve been investigating the identity of the man who assaulted Marvolo for weeks now, and I’ll be honest with you, I’m hitting a brick wall here. The guy is a ghost. A real pro. He left no fingerprints at the scene of the crime, no evidence about his identity or current whereabouts… nothing. I am simultaneously enraged and impressed by his elusive nature. We did receive a few reports that El Hombre Blanco was seen near a Burger King in Southside a couple of days ago, but by the time I arrived on the scene, all that was left behind was a handful of onion rings and a receipt with the debit card info torn off the bottom.
This guy knows what the fuck he is doing.
But a minor update about there being no update is not the reason that I’m writing this open letter to the HOW community today. I am writing this letter because I need to address some accusations I’m seeing out there, and finally put them to bed once and for all.
I am not El Hombre Blanco.
I can understand why everyone thinks so. He’s a good looking dude, and I’m a good looking dude. We’re about the same height. Same build. Same overtly noticeable bulge. And sure, the guy has helped me out a couple of times over the years. He wrestled Eric Dane in a gym once, so that I didn’t have to belittle myself. He was kind enough to smash Lindsay Troy’s knee with a pipe, when I wasn’t legally allowed to put my hands on her before an ICONIC. But think about that. Think about what I just said. If I was El Hombre Blanco, wouldn’t that attack on Lindsay have cost me my match against her? Wouldn’t I have been disqualified? HOW has rules, folks. And what about Eric Dane? If I was El Hombre Blanco, that would mean that I would have wrestled in front of twenty people in a gymnasium for a twenty dollar purse.
Does… does that sound like me?
It just doesn’t make any sense.
I’m not going to pretend that in my younger days, I didn’t reach out for assistance from time to time. Hell, Osama Bin Laden worked for the CIA at one point, but that doesn’t mean that Osama was secretly George W. Bush wearing a fake beard and a turban. That doesn’t mean that he did 9/11– everyone knows it was Dick Cheney. I do regret that I ever associated with this man, but I can assure you that I have never been privy to his true identity, and he and I have not spoken in years. I was as shocked as anyone to see him show up, completely unannounced, at Sunday Night Chaos and insert himself so violently into the War Games qualifying matches.
But the Internet loves its conspiracy theories, right?
I understand that a lot of folks are pointing the finger at me right now, probably out of fear. No one likes the unknown. No one likes to think that he could be… any of us… just hiding in plain sight. So as your CEO, I feel it’s my duty to not only continue my ruthless, tireless investigation, but also to bring some levity to the situation. I’ll indulge you. I’ll play your game, if only to bring a smile to the faces of the roster.
And hey, OJ wrote “If I Did It” after being acquitted of all charges, so fuck it.
Let’s pretend for a second that I was El Hombre Blanco.
Let’s pretend that for some reason, I felt it necessary to literally live a double life for the last seventeen years. That I was wrestling as some cat named El Hombre Blanco in Atlantic City bars, long before I ever came to High Octane Wrestling. Let’s pretend that I was secretly a Mexican wrestling LEGEND on the side, while still being the single greatest wrestler in the history of HOW. That I had developed an entire secondary moveset and learned Spanish, just as a goof. Just to fuck on the whole roster and play a stupid game for my own amusement. If we really close our eyes tight, and pretend, maybe we can figure out what universe that would make any sense in, right?
Okay, eyes closed.
Let me get into character here.
You wanna know the truth?
You wanna know the disgusting fucking truth? I guess it would be because I couldn’t help myself. I honestly couldn’t help myself. I would have tried to stay away. Tried to let everyone else get some food in their mouths, because I have done nothing but binge myself sick for fourteen fucking years. I don’t enjoy wrestling anymore. I haven’t enjoyed wrestling in years now, to be honest with you. Holding a championship above my head means fucking nothing to me. Winning matches is as bland as bread and water. I have done everything, won everything, wham bam thank you Dad, it’s all just a big whirlwind of dunking on you sloppy pieces of shit and I’m so beyond bored with all of it.
But I couldn’t help myself.
No. I’m hypothetically like a big dumb dog who you have to take the water bowl away from, because he’ll keep drinking until he vomits. I’m not even thirsty anymore, but I keep drinking and drinking and fucking drinking. Growling at every other dog with the audacity to get within a country mile of my bowl, because it’s my fucking bowl. I keep trying to let High Octane Wrestling live its life, but I can’t do it. I can’t help myself. I can’t fucking help myself. I am the consummate kid who wants to take his ball and go home, but I can’t take it home with me. I can’t. I’m not allowed. It isn’t possible. I can’t take HOW, and the title, and the accolades, and the whole fucking machine… I can’t just stuff it into my pocket and take it home with me and tell everyone that it’s over. No, I walk away from the court, and you all just keep playing.
You keep playing.
YOU KEEP FUCKING PLAYING.
I won! I won HOW. I won wrestling. It’s over, you dumb motherfuckers. I won ten HOW World Championships. I won every main event pay-per-view match that HOW offers, more than once. I haven’t been beaten in HOFC since the first Obama presidency, I have retired the ICON Title so many times that it’s ADORABLE to hear Jace even put that title’s name in his fucking mouth. I have done. Every. Single. Thing. There. Is. To. Do. In this fucking company, and it is OVER.
I FUCKING WON.
Maybe it would have been so entirely clear to me that people have stopped giving a fuck about HOFC– since no one has the ability to beat me inside of a cage, they’ve just shut off. Just lost interest. No one goes to a casino to watch the house win over, and over, and over again, and it’s obvious that I’m the house now. So where the FUCK is that energy when it comes to the rest of this shit? I WON EVERYTHING, STUPID. There will never be another ten time HOW World Champion. Rhys Townsend tripped and fell into a spiral at five and has never been back longer than a cup of coffee since. I have held Big Red for SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN TOTAL DAYS. That is literally over TWICE the combined total of the next two runners up combined. The HOW World Championship is so legally my fucking property that it was HEADLINE NEWS when America broke ONE of my records.
I STILL HAVE THE REST.
THE REST OF THE RECORDS.
The only belt I haven’t dominated like a piggy in a gimpsuit is the fucking LSD Championship, and let’s be honest, that’s because I don’t give a single fuck about it. Never have. Never will. Lee can pretend all he wants that it was equal to the ICON Championship, but it wasn’t. Never has been. Never will be. A tertiary belt meant for tertiary fucking dudes. No wonder it’s the belt that Jace clings onto like a liferaft to his sinking fucking career. OH NO MIKE IS BURYING A BELT!
I don’t care.
I honestly don’t.
I could go win that LSD Championship tomorrow and make it the greatest title in the history of wrestling. Everything I touch turns to gold, and then that gold turns to rust because people stop fucking chasing me. You think the best champion is the one who gets the most attention? Nah, fuck all that– the best champion is the one that no one wants to fight. The one that everyone wants to avoid. The HOFC Championship is the most valuable belt in HOW right now, because it’s the least coveted. Because no one smart wants to get humiliated inside of a cage with me. I have so locked down a championship that from a marketing perspective, it has become WORTHLESS.
That is domination, motherfuckers.
Maybe. MAYBE. If I was El Hombre Blanco, it would be me trying to prove some kind of a point. That I could do it all again from scratch right? I might debut a finishing move and call it I KNEED A TECNICO. I might try to plow my way through that qualifying match, enter War Games first, and still win that motherfucker. Lee Best wants me engaged, right? Wouldn’t that be pretty fucking engaging? Voya con deez nuts, motherfuckers, Michael Lee Best is so absurdly talented that he can enter the hardest match in pro wrestling with an entirely alternate identity, STILL WIN THE MOTHERFUCKER, and walk away with his eleventh HOW World Championship.
It’s an interesting thought experiment.
Of course, it’s all just fiction. Could you imagine? Drafting an entire War Games team, making them face me in HOFC matches, one by one (minus Conor, fuck Conor), just to join TEAM AMERICA at War Games? Promise that I was done with War Games forever, then enter with a new identity on a technicality, and go all the way? What a monstrous, selfish person I would be. What a disloyal fuck. What a slap in the face that would be, to Stevens and Scotty, to Jace and Conor. What a vote of no confidence that would be in a guy like Evan Ward. What a piece of absolute shit I would be, especially to guys like Xander and Zach Kostoff who are trying to earn their way into War Games the hard way.
Can you imagine?
Well, keep imagining. I’m old, guys. I’m thirty seven years old. My knees are fucked, my back is jacked up beyond repair, and I can’t go the way that I used to. Do you realize that at one point in this era, I was simultaneously competing in a HOFC Championship tournament just to win my own belt back, while also defending the HOW World Championship literally every single week? My knees aren’t boomerangs, folks– you throw enough of them, and they stop coming back. I appreciate that the specter of my existence hangs over High Octane Wrestling like a dark cloud, leading everyone to believe that I could possibly be the perpetrator of a scheme so grand in scale as EL HOMBRE BLANCO, but the truth is… I just don’t have it anymore.
I am but a man.
He… is a machine.
It is my sincere hope that I am able to discover the identity of El Hombre Blanco in time to stop him, before he runs roughshod over this entire War Games match. It is my sincere hope that I can keep him from doing to anyone else what he did to Marvolo. I would hate to see him cost a kid like Zach Kostoff the opportunity of a lifetime. I would hate to see him blitzkrieg through that qualifier and absolutely humiliate guys like Charles de Lacy, Dan Ryan, and Clay Byrd. I would be utterly repulsed and disgusted to see him kick Bobbinette Carey so hard in the stomach that she becomes Pro-Life. If a guy like that was allowed to go unchecked? If El Hombre Blanco was permitted to ascend all the way to the final entrants in War Games, and somehow came away with the HOW World Championship?
To end America’s record setting reign?
I shudder at the thought.
Please know that I am taking this situation as seriously as possible, and doing everything in my power to ensure that the integrity of War Games remains intact. I have assembled an elite task force, consisting of Alexandra Beckman, Gino “The G-Train” Giordano, Sidney Black and Darren Washington of the Best Express, Durango, and the ghost of Rob Michaels to assist me in apprehending this despicable, devious, devilishly talented young man. We are working day and night. I will not eat. I will not sleep. I will not rest for a single second until El Hombre Blanco has been captured, brought to justice, and made to pay for what he has done.
You have my word.
Y mi palabra es mi vínculo.