- Event: Chaos 050
Welcome to the fire(flower)side chat with Conor Fuse.
Let’s debrief.
Last night I was overdosing on chocolate milk. I might have said some things I didn’t thoroughly mean. Maybe they landed, maybe they came across as me forcing the issue. That I think I’m tough and eDgY when I’m a clown shoed secondary player.
Whatever.
Can’t go back.
I think the fundamental things I’d like to lay out for everyone is MY FRIEND FUCKING DIED and I don’t have a lot of old enemies around, either. I get it, the wrestling industry moves on. Hell, I killed one man and ran a couple others out of the company so it’s on me and my amazing in-ring skills, too.
On January 1st, I am leaving.
I could run away forever.
I could sign two weeks later.
Could take my talents to south beach. Anyone got a promotion there?
I could use it as a legitimate break, like others have done before me, even the champion himself. Then return more passionate than ever.
I might also stay until I lose the LSD Title.
Like Kevin Garnette said ANYTHING IS POSSIBLEEEEEE.
I digress. I’m calm, I’m cool, I’m collected. I had my morning bottle. But if anyone thought I was suddenly gonna TAKE IT OKAY that Mike crushed me at the pay-per-view and carry on my merry little way-
I’m a fucking competitor.
And I ain’t, no matter what, over my god damn dead body, going out like that.
So you better be scared, Jatt.
I sure am.
— — — — —
“I don’t know.”
It’s another phrase I’ve been saying a lot lately. My counsellor (yeah, I’m still going even though I told her off and said it was stupid) tells me to rEfRaMe “I don’t knows” since it could mean many different things.
Such as “I DO know.”
Or “I know what will make things worse”. Perhaps, hmmm, see, I could smash the current title in my hands. That would definitely make things worse.
Anyway, yeah, fuck her. The clown asks me for $100 a meeting so she can spell this kind of bullshit advice.
Here I am, walking aimlessly around Chicago, wondering what Monday will bring when I drive over to Nabraska.
Wonder if Lee would like to do a Ride Along. We could film it and everything.
Oh, no, he’s going for this NO HOLDS BARRED SIT DOWN INTERVIEW with his son.
Man they are gonna trigger alotta people by doing that. But if I have a sit down anything goes chat with Blaire Moist, might get myself suspended.
OR A TEXT MESSAGE SAYING “DICK.”
Giggle.
Jatt, buddy, back to you. I think I’ve told enough people how great the morning is but I haven’t had a lot of time to dive into you, buddy.
Maybe there’s nothing more to say. We’ve said a lot.
Well, I have. You mailed in comment #1.
It’s okay. I can keep going.
What makes you think you’re better? What gives you the belief you’ll win on Monday?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Because the day you left me laying in a pool of my own blood back in October of 2020, I have shot WAY past you in about a fraction of the fucking time.
And you’re nothing to sneeze at. You’re legit. Hall of Famer. Respected by everyone in that locker room for blurring the lines between goofy shit and serious threat. And that’s all well and good, it really is, but you haven’t come close to a god damn thing I’ve touched since.
Pretty sure the last World Title shot you had was against me.
WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT TURNED OUT.
Monday: the long awaited tie breaker and with a title on the line, too. I believe you’ve held this one on a few occasions but don’t quote me. Too tired to check the archives.
Bobbie told me that you had something to tell me a long time ago. But ya never did. I wonder what the hell it could be.
Guess I’ll beat it out of you.
I’d like to say I’m going to leave you breathing for ICONIC. I’d love to see you be the one who does it against Mike and Dan, I really would. Nothing would make me happier than witnessing an old man go out on top. Retire at the highest level. Christ, if you’d like we can walk outta this place together.
But I can’t promise what type of mindset I’ll be in on Monday. One minute I’m screaming at every person who walks or jogs past me as I march around the Windy City. The next I’m trying to backtrack on my MOAR outrageous comments.
Bro, I’m really running on fumes ATM. If you wanna end me on Monday, that’s also a possibility. Wrestling breaks you. I’d like to think I’m a strong.
But I’m a reasonably middle-aged athlete, off-and-on exhausted and I work with fucking sociopaths.
Then again, so do you. We share the same space.
I suppose I’ll walk into the arena on Monday and see how I’m feeling. We’re kicking off the show so that can’t be a good thing for one of us.
Then again, DADDY might not be there yet.
Either way, when he arrives, he’ll be informed immediately.
About another Jatt Starr failure.
You would think, after all this fucking time, you’d grow a pair and move on from the Best Alliance. I mean WTF does the Best Alliance do, anyway? Fight the people Lee doesn’t want on his roster?
He signed them to begin with.
Perhaps it’s a dick-measuring scheme. See, counselling has also taught me people communicate through various channels and it’s not always civil like you or I might think.
Some people communicate through anger.
Hostility.
Rage.
Some people enjoy tension to be part of their everyday life. They need to see weakness in people. Witnessing others’ insecurities is actually calming… soothing, if you will. Because it reflects their own insecurities and then it makes them feel secure.
Too deep? I knew this psychotherapy stuff was stupid. I’ll chill out with the deep dives.
To simplify, all I gotta say is I’ve grown tired of my surroundings. I’ve grown tired of listening to you, too. I tried to change up my life and I grew tired of that pretty quickly.
So I doubled down.
Belt in bubble wrap, glass case, HANDS OFF AND DON’T BREAK EVEN IN EMERGENCY.
This Conor Fuse will stroll into Chaos 50 and proceed to no longer get rattled about shit.
Yeah right.
See ya soon and good luck down the road. Thanks for the consistent motivation. It was easy to accomplish my goals and beyond once I lost to you; I evolved so fucking fast. Pray to GOD on Monday I don’t take you out of ICONIC.
Or worse…
That I’m added to the match.
— — — — —
HERE LIES
WALTER “FUCKING” NEWPORT
1927-2023
Okay, the “fucking” isn’t on his tombstone.
…But it should be.
This is where I’ve been walking to every day since I got pasted by Mike. I wandered through a valley, across a couple of parks and over to the cemetery a little outside the city.
I never attended his funeral.
The sad thing? He didn’t have one. Like 97% of the people living in Dearness don’t get funerals because their families have moved on, refuse to spend the money or, in the case like Walter, they have nobody left.
His wife is laid beside him. I see on her side of the tombstone it says she passed away twenty years ago.
Lucky guy, twenty full years of freedom.
He never talked about her. If they were in love, maybe he was heartbroken from her passing. Or, perhaps, it’s exactly like I depicted it.
No kids. At least none that I knew of. He honestly didn’t talk about his life and that always made me wonder.
We simply discussed mine.
This is what kind of friend he was to me. Placed me first. But in wrestling and in the High Octane campaign in particular, friendships don’t matter. We stab each other in the back, we use each other for our own needs.
Mike used me. Many times. He says I’m a good wrestler and he would fight me over and over again but he knew he could beat me and capture another 97. He knew what it would mean to say nice things… pretending to be the swell guy… to come clean…
BUT HE NEVER DOES.
HE ATTACKED ME FROM BEHIND.
I can’t believe good guy talk anymore. Clay apologized to me and proceeded to blindside me with a cast on his arm.
Why we gotta be at each other’s throats every single fucking day? Why can’t there be an honest friendship around here?
Lee. That’s who.
Fosters an environment of ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. Trash talk me to hell.
I hope he enjoys the bullets I sent over to him.
Winky.
I’m sorry, Walter. You don’t deserve any of this. I am standing here, visiting you, for like the 30th time already and here I am going on another one of my whirlwind rants.
Well, at least the other 29 times I wasn’t like this. I was composed. Or crying. Or angry. But it was directly about you.
In some indirect way, this is all about you. I pushed you aside for a goal I didn’t accomplish. Not meeting expectations is okay but running from the friends who actually had my back ain’t dope.
I’m sorry, my friend. I really am.
Perhaps I should be saying this out loud for him to hear me.
“I’m sorry, my friend. I really am,” I try to hold back a tear. “I recognize I’m not in the best headspace right now and I might be walking into some significant problems.”
I kneel down and place my left hand on top of his stone. I look around. There are plenty of residents for him, from left, right, front and back. Some haven’t moved in yet but most are nestled in deep. Six feet, to be exact. As I take a different pathway each time to get here, I always glance around. I can’t help but fixate my eyes on the year each person was born and then the year they died. Any birth below 1940 I can handle. From the 40s to the 60s, I become a little more apprehensive. 60s to 80s, it’s a tough go.
Anything above the 80s, it’s not fair. Period.
I recognize I only have a finite amount of time on this earth. Even so, I have less of it to spend in a wrestling ring. Soon I will become 30… and that’s a scary number. It’s about halfway through my career.
My skills will start to fade. In the worst case, they may entirely fall off a cliff.
But I won’t truly know what I’ve lost until it is taken from me.
“Isn’t that right, Walter?”
I reach down, take a rock on the ground and place it at the top of his tombstone. There’s about twenty rocks there, all by my hand. Nobody from within the DLC is going to make it over.
I was selfish to let HOW get in the way of an honest relationship I built. I’m also an idiot for thinking I could get anything of significance from wrestling. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. It’s a high score or nothing. Why do you think Mike only kicks around HOW and nowhere else? It’s because he takes, takes and TAKES from his daddy.
Conor Fuse is a pawn.
That’s why Mike jumped me when he tried to come clean days beforehand. It’s why Lee got bent outta shape when I broke the World Title. Hold me back, pin me down, and have Conor work for it all over again.
The cycle of wrestling.
“Walter, I’m sorry,” I begin, standing up and patting the tombstone where his name is etched. “I’m rambling, letting anger consume me. But this time I won’t be scared to visit you. I won’t push you away. You’re still my friend. You’re still a part of me.”
I think of what’s to come.
“I gotta go to Nebraska tomorrow,” I say with a sigh and roll of my eyes. “Let me know if you’d like a gift, I’ll bring it back.”
The much colder wind swoops in and sends a shiver down my spine. Soon, it will be winter. It’s already pitch black by 4pm every day. I hate this time of year.
“Hope it’s warm down there, dude,” I say, as I spin around and start making my way out of the cemetery. “Where I’m going, it certainly will be hot as hell…”
— — — — —
I have one last stop to make before I’m en-route to Chaos!
You know, driving up to the ominous structure doesn’t look that scary in daylight. I’m surprised my subconscious didn’t intensify the environment with a serious rain storm or lightning crash. It would’ve made this visit much cooler.
Arriving at the front of the massive gates, I lean out of the driver’s seat and press the intercom button. I also wave for the security cameras like the dipshit I am. As figured, they can tell it’s me by the car and mannerisms in which I am staring at the video lens.
The metal gate doors open and I drive through the winding road, past the various looming trees hanging over the pebble stone pathway- ah, fuck it. Perhaps description doesn’t matter. My dreams can be as vivid or as boring as you’d like them to be. It’s about the blogging. It’s trash talk and tear your opponents down yadda yadda fucking joke trees all around me here we go I’m almost at the real front gate there’s a spot to park my car, too.
So I exit my car and find the entrance. The unit doors are already opened, a crack, as if the guards were waiting for me.
Which is weird because I never told anyone I was coming.
“Conor, it’s good to see you,” Gary, the first guard says as I enter. He sits at the front of the large metal detector everyone has to walk through before entering. Guy has been working this shift for as long as I started to reach stage 4 sleep. Two kids. Wait, maybe three. Happily married. Tells me he didn’t grow up far from Toronto. Swell dude. A++.
Man, I should get to the point.
“Conor!” Jason, the second guard, who’s on the other side of the metal detector greets me with a wave and a warm smile. WTF is going on here? I mean these dudes are nice but they aren’t THAT nice. This is a serious facility. It’s the High Octane Asylum. HOA! It only homes literally EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the roster. Even Mike, despite his special in-out privileges. It’s kept Jatt Starr locked up since the very day I met the man and he wanted to oppose me.
“We weren’t expecting you,” Jason mentions, with a tilt of his head and raise of his eyebrows.
“Well, that’s the thing-”
But I’m cut off by Jake, the third guard. The one who just kinda ‘oversees’ shit for no apparent reason. If there were budget cuts this mother fucker would be the first to go.
And yet I really like him.
I like them all.
He’s chipper and happy along with the others. Is everyone suddenly peachy that my best friend died, I lost the World Title and Jatt Starr is breathing down my neck?
“Conor, wow, Jason’s right. We didn’t think you’d be coming today,” he stands and walks to the right, then he walks to the left, then he stops and does it all over again. Is he glitching out on me or something? Like, dude, you don’t gotta do anything. You’re NEVER expected to shit. Relax and sit there menacingly. I don’t need this place looking dapper, it’s a self-constructed prison in my bloody subconscious.
“So, again, that’s the thing boys I-”
“CONOR!”
The main guard, the one BEHIND the atrium padlocked door, the one I accompany after I’ve gone through my screening, he’s standing there with a twinkle in his eyes.
You four fucks are creeping me out.
“It’s INCREDIBLE to see you!” He bellows. “Who will be at the End of the Hall today? Will it be Bobbinette Carey for trying to split you and Jatt apart? Will it be Jace, because fuck that tittyfaced bum, right? We always hated him around here.”
He stops to ponder even further by placing a hand against his chin. “Mike’s out right now. Lee could be hanging. I don’t think DADDY IS DRIVING yet!”
Then it clicks.
“Jatt, DUH! I’ll tell the others to go prep his cell for your arrival.”
I hold out both arms before he runs off to exert a bunch of energy he doesn’t need to.
“I’m not-” the words are tough to say, but I know I gotta say them. “I’m not here for any of this, that, or the other thing.”
“Oh, well then what are you here for?” The final guard inquires, trying to think a little deeper until a lightbulb goes off. “You wanna talk Grey Cup tomorrow? I have the Alouettes by five, throw in a couple of rouges.”
Roll of my eyes.
“Bombers by fourteen. Not even close-”
Smack myself upside the head.
“I’m not here to talk CFL.”
All four guards, their eyes restfully glisten as they sway mildly back and forth, waiting for me to provide the real reason. Then they’ll direct me to said prison cell.
“I’m done. I do not plan on returning.”
You’d swear I pulled all four of their collective hearts out. Like a Ralph Wiggum YOU CAN SEE HIS HEART BREAKING IN THIS EXACT FRAME.
“I’m sorry, there’s no easy way to put this but I’m not well.”
Trying to fight my own emotions from overwhelming me, I can’t help but have a ton of different thoughts swarm in and out of my brain.
Hard stop.
This is where I put the ADHD to bed. I know what I have to do.
“Yeah, it’s… it’s not working out. It’s not you guys, it’s me.”
Feel like if I was on the dating scene I’d hear this many times.
“I’m not coming back. I don’t want to waste your time further. None of you have to be here.”
I turn to Gary.
“Visit your family.”
I pat Jason on the shoulder.
“You’re excellent at this job, so you’ll be amazing in others.”
And a nod to Jake.
“Not really sure what you do, buddy, but you’re solid at watching over everything. Micromanaging is the rave.”
Jake mouths a genuine and heartfelt “thank you”.
And the main guard, the guy whose name I don’t even know but he always leads the way through cell after cell, enemy after enemy.
I don’t have anything verbal left to say. I merely suggest through my body language how much I appreciate him, too.
“Thank you for the memories. This has been a hell of a time. I should move on.”
I let out the heaviest sign possible.
Saluting the four employees, I close my eyes, lower my head and go back to the entrance in which I came.
“Close it down, boys. The asylum shit is over.”