- Event: ICONIC 2020
Lee Best doesn’t believe in you.
Hey, this is awkward, I know. I didn’t want it to come from me, but someone has to fill you in. And this isn’t a general “you”, either: I’m talking to you, Lindsay Troy. You, Dan Ryan. You, “High Fiber” Jack Charmin– only the softest tissue for the hurtingest butt in HOW. Lee Best doesn’t believe in you, and I’m very sorry that this is how you had to find out about it.
He doesn’t see the potential in you. He doesn’t admire your work rate. He isn’t eager to see you get into the ring with a microphone in your hand and cut a seven minute promo. The truth is, to the man behind the Ninety Seven Red curtain, your High Octane future is no different than Santa Clause or male feminism– he doesn’t believe in it, he just tells you that it’s real because it makes you feel those happy feelings that keep you quiet and well behaved all year.
He sure does believe in me, though.
Not because his dastardly sperm railed into my mother’s Ovarian Tower 7 in what may or may not have been a controlled demolition, either– the fact that I’m his demon seed has proven no more than a tool in his arsenal over the years. A tool to extract control. A tool to exert his will. At the greatest heights of my career, he has latched on to my golden teet like the supple little cash cow I am and suckled until I was empty. Don’t buy the dog and pony show– Lee Best doesn’t want me to come home because he’s concerned about his son.
He’s concerned about his money.
It’s not like the man hunted me down in my teens to tell me that he was my father. Like a true deadbeat dad, Papa Lee waited until my fruits were ripe for the plucking before he plopped that DNA test down on the table and asked for a Father’s Day card. He’s an opportunist. He picks you up when you’re hot, he makes you feel like you’re the cock of the walk, and then he drops you like a hot rock when he’s squeezed the last of the blood out of you.
Right now, the eMpire is making the bacon.
Sorry about your luck, little piggies.
When Lee Best came out to the ring at the end of Refueled XII, and he emasculated, embarrassed, and humiliated me in the middle of the ring, I bet you all sat in the back and had a good laugh– Mike Best is finally getting his. But you shouldn’t have been laughing. You shouldn’t have been smiling. In truth, you should have felt as emasculated and fucking worthless as I did. You should have felt that same embarrassment. You should feel passed over, and used, and underappreciated.
Because you’re the fucking reason he did it.
Because it was proof that we’re all he believes in.
Let’s face it, kids– this is Dan Ryan’s last chance to beat Cecilworth Farthington. He couldn’t get it done in a ring, so he got it in a cage. He couldn’t do it in a cage, so he got it in a fucking infirmary. And now? Now, he’s got ninety-seven minutes to win the HOW World Championship, and by minute ninety-eight no one is ever going to want to see that match again. Dan Ryan is one of the best in the history of professional wrestling, but the sad truth is that he is outmatched and outclassed against Cecilworth Farthington, who I think may legitimately turn out to be the greatest of all time.
He doesn’t believe in you, Dan.
But not just you. How about ol’ Salty Jack, the man ranked fortieth in a company with, what, twenty people on the current roster? Harmen has taken so many pins in 2019 that I assume his gimmick is just being a shitty voodoo doll, and the only reason he’s facing Max Kael at ICONIC is because the main event is thinner than a book entitled “Important Matches That High Flyer Won This Year”. Is he the bastion of hope that is going to carry HOW into 2020, marching to the ring with the look of disappointment that he inherited from his father?
No, he doesn’t believe in you either, Jack.
And of course, Mary Sue ran off to find herself after being pinned by my brother at Rumble at the Rock– it wasn’t a ragequit, of course. It was just an abrupt exit from the company immediately following a loss in a match she thought she was going to win. But it wasn’t a ragequit. More of a rage-cation. She’ll be back for the LBI like clockwork, still talking about her father’s legacy like anyone gives a fuck, while continuing to accuse me of getting by on my Daddy’s name. I guess she dropped out of college before her first semester of Irony 101.
So yeah, boo hoo, Mary Sue, Lee Best doesn’t believe in you, too.
But surely he believes in Lindsay Troy, right?
For an entire decade, I have watched my father drool over the prospect of watching Lindsay Troy put her name on the dotted line and become a wrestling in High Octane Wrestling. Literally salivating, as he screams her name on the HOR, begging her like the appropriately resurrected Keith Sweat to become a member of the roster. I was on a plane with him once, and I swear to fucking God he was mumbling her name in his sleep.
She is his dream. Fucking. Signing.
He must believe in her, right? She marched into HOW with the rest of the quickly abandoned Best Alliance with a chip on her shoulder and a strut in her step, and he nutted so hard in his pants that he… promptly forget she was fucking here, didn’t he? Lindsay has been such an afterthought in the big wrestling brain of Lee Best for the last year that I sometimes wonders if he remembers to sign her paychecks. I sure hope that she has direct deposit.
Ol’ phone-it-in-Troy, always a bridesmaid, never a contender.
You didn’t win the Tag Belts, and you didn’t lose them. There was a match somewhere there in the middle, where someone shoved a belt into your chest and said “here, you need a pay-per-view match”, I guess. But you didn’t get the opportunities Harmen got, did you? High Flyer got an LSD Title match. High Flyer got ANOTHER LSD Title match. High Flyer got a shot at the HOW World Championship. Dan Ryan has lost five straight matches to Cecilworth Farthington, and his reward was a sixth shot at glory at ICONIC. But what about you, Lindsay? When you marched into his office and you told him that you didn’t want to be passed over in this fucking company, what did he give you?
An ICON TItle shot on a weekly show.
The same ICON Title match that you limped away from in a fog of rage, pain and disappointment, because the eMpire works together in a way that the Industry can’t figure out how to do. It did what the eMpire does, and Lee is VERY aware of what the eMpire does. You had Cecilworth Farthington dead to fucking rights, because you are a once in a lifetime talent, and yet you never had a shot in the world.
He sold you out, Lindsay– he waited two more weeks to put an embargo on the attacks. He put the HOW Tag Team Championships on the line while you were out of commission, from an attack he never fired anyone for, that was carried out by a man whose knee pads LITERALLY SAY “YOUR FACE HERE” IN SPANISH. So you kids go ahead and laugh and make fun of me for being humiliated by my father on live television for six minutes, because he’s been quietly distancing himself from you lot and humiliating you for six fucking months.
Because he doesn’t believe in you anymore.
For almost a year, Lee Best has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the eMpire, in an effort to destroy it. Back to back title defenses. The creation of maybe the most powerful Best Alliance in history. He’s painted false narratives that Max Kael and Cecilworth Farthington outright wanted HOW to die, pretending like he doesn’t understand subtext, context, or sometimes outright fucking text. But time and again, like a brilliant little fucking cockroaches that we are, we have survived. We clean swept War Games. We clean swept Rumble at the Rock. And in his heart of hearts, Lindsay, I think he’s terrified that we’re going to clean sweep ICONIC, too.
We are warriors. Friends. Brothers. We are a seamless team who does not disagree, does not in-fight, and does not fail. We are an unstoppable, unfaltering fucking machine, and despite his best efforts to control and destroy us, we hold every single championship in High Octane Wrestling. Lee Best didn’t come out to the ring and embarrass me in front of the world because he wanted me to fail, Lindz.
He did it because he wanted me to succeed.
I could have wrestled you for the HOFC Championship at ICONIC. He could have recognized my weeks of hard work, gave me a patronizing little pat on the head, and told me to go have fun. We would have had a hell of a match. But instead, he marched down to the ring and he called me an embarrassment. He called me a failure. He told me to come home. But more importantly than that, Lindsay, he put perhaps the biggest prize in the history of HOW on a plate, and he handed it to us at ICONIC.
The rights to choose your own LBI group.
This is literally unprecedented. The holiest HOW tradition is the seeding of the Lee Best Invitational, the ultimate proving ground. The holding of one’s breath, as they cross their fingers and pray that they don’t wind up in the Group of Death™. Scott Stevens and Michael Best and the almighty Jatt Starr himself are equals in the eyes of GOD when the brackets begin, and yet for the first time ever, the winner of our match will get to choose their own fucking group.
Do you realize what that means?
It means you get to hand select your first four fucking opponents, and all but guarantee yourself a smooth ride to the knockout stage of the LBI. Lee Best is so fucking thirsty to play at my pride and my ego and my desire to be the best that he’s offering me a full ride to the finals– the one fucking thing that I have never accomplished in HOW. He’s handing me the keys to a match against the HOW World Champion. He’s handing me the keys to a match with Cecilworth Farthington, because he doesn’t truly believe that ICONIC is going to be Dan’s night any more than you do, if you’re truly honest with yourself.
There are only so many combinations of ways that Cecilworth Farthington can snap one of your arms like a Slim Jim before the crowd gets bored and changes the channel. Only so many times that Max Kael can stand over one of your unconscious bodies and say “LONG MAY HE MAIM” before they feel like maybe they’re watching a rerun. Michael Lee Best versus Cecilworth Farthington is the biggest money match he has left, Lindsay. Do you think he wants to roll the dice on selling out arenas on the same tired Industry versus eMpire matches that have plagued the latter half of 2019?
He really fucked us both this time, Lindsay.
We had maybe the hottest match at ICONIC– two of the greatest to ever lace up their boots, in a once in a lifetime dream match that should have made him bust more nuts than a squirrel in one of Mr. Peanut’s Forced Labor Camps, and he’s turned it into nothing but an obstacle to my next big thing. Nothing that you have ever meant to him– no amount of faith that he ever used to have in you– means a fucking thing next to him needing me to face Cecilworth Farthington at March to Glory in Rome. He wants me to beat you, he wants me to cash in for the easy ride through the LBI, and he wants me to fulfill my destiny.
Because he needs the eMpire to destroy itself.
Because we’re all he has left to believe in.
Lee Best will march down to that ring, week after week, and try to get into my head. And eventually, he will succeed. Everything that I have achieved in this life has been through pride, selfishness, and self-preservation– Lee Best has worked me like a puppet for so long that sometimes I don’t know whose voice is coming out when I open my fucking mouth, and it’s only a matter of time before he wins. So two weeks ago, I stood in the eMpire locker room, looked Cecilworth Farthington in the eyes, and told him that I thought we needed to fight. I told him to trust me, and I told him that I have a plan.
And boy, is it a doozy.
Are you listening, Lindsay? Do you feel sufficiently disrespected, and angry? Do you feel like the man who signs your paychecks doesn’t take you fucking seriously? Because you should. All of your years in this business, all of the things that you’ve accomplished, and this is where you are. Lee Best, serving you up as a side dish so that he can get his money match.
And it’s your own fucking fault.
You, and Dan, and fucking Harmen. MJF, wherever she’s hiding out, pretending like 2020 is going to be her clean fucking slate. Eric Dane, at whatever shitbag backwater promotion he’s found at the bottom of the barrel, just so he can say he’s a main eventer again. You did this to me. You’re the reason Lee has set the wheels in motion to destroy the only thing I’ve ever loved in this business outside of myself. You’re the reason that he’s decided that the eMpire has to die. And if it’s going to die, then I’m fucking taking you with me.
I’m going to fucking destroy you at ICONIC.
I’m going to step into the ring, and I’m going to knee you as hard as I fucking can in the face. I’m going to beat the ever loving shit out of you, in front of a live audience, and I’m not going to quit until my body physically will not carry me anymore. No stones left unturned, no stops left unpulled. And if at the end of the night, if I have survived, and if my music is what’s playing in that arena, I am going to choose the truest fucking Group of Death in the history of the LBI.
Lindsay Troy. Dan Ryan. Jack Harmen. And Mariella Jade Flair.
Maybe Cecilworth is the greatest that there has ever been. Maybe he’s better than me. Maybe I’ll make it to the finals, and we’ll find out once and for all. Maybe we can survive it, and maybe we can’t. A lot of maybes, but there is one certainty– brothers do for brothers, first and foremost, and I’m going to make sure that even if I die in that fucking ring during the LBI, that I do it with the sacrifice play that keeps all but one of your motherfuckers from advancing to the knockout stage.
You don’t earn respect from Lee Best, you fucking take it. Whether he believes in me, believes in you, or believes in anything doesn’t fucking matter– I can tell you from experience that the greatest feeling in HOW isn’t winning the World Championship, or even making it into the Hall of Fame. It’s sticking one straight up Lee’s asshole, against all odds, and coming out on top. It’s defying your expectations and not seeing fit to sit in the pigeon hole he’s jammed you into. Lee Best has decided that the eMpire must die, and proving him wrong will be my greatest accomplishment yet.
I’m making this LBI all or nothing.
Now there’s something you can believe in.