Stealing Thunder

There is no such thing as honor in professional wrestling.

Period, full stop, end of fucking sentence. When two men step into a ring, they aren’t getting into it to respect each other. They aren’t getting into it to “have a good match”. Maybe I respect you and maybe I don’t, but unless your t-shirt matches mine, you’re never gonna catch a handshake from me, brother, and it ain’t got a goddamned thing to do with respect. Every moment of every day that I still have the physical ability to be a professional wrestler, my life is a competition, and I am in that motherfucker to win it.

Honor isn’t a merit. It’s an obstacle.

It’s a lie that someone told you, a long time ago.

See, once upon a time, a bunch of strong, dumb motherfuckers with clubs got hungry and went out looking for food, and they couldn’t find any… antelopes… or whatever the fuck they liked to eat. So they wandered into town, where a bunch of weak, smart motherfuckers lived. And they had food, and fire, and shelter. And all the weak, smart motherfuckers got together, and to keep themselves from being bludgeoned to death by the physical embodiment of Darwinism, they invented honor. They invented religion. They invented a bunch of arbitrary rules that say killing is wrong, and stealing is wrong, and that you never fight with dishonor, because if they didn’t, then a bunch of strong, dumb motherfuckers would have stolen their food, and their fire, and their shelter, and left them to starve out in the cold.

Honor. God. Mercy.

The inventions of the weak, to defend against the strong.

Thousands of years later, and you’re still drinking the Kool-Aid. Playing a game invented by people who believed that God took the sun away in a fucking canoe every night, and brought it back in the morning. And all because you had a weak bitch great great great great grandfather who had a weak bitch son and they kept it on down the genetic line, believing in bullshit like “there’s no substitute for a hard day’s work”. Are you fucking kidding me? Try robbing a fucking bank. It’s WAY EASIER, and you get to POINT GUNS AT PEOPLE.

Newsflash, dickhead: your boss is a criminal.

Your wife cheats on you when you’re out of town, probably with guys like me. Uncle Sam fucks you in the ass and the world isn’t gonna give you a reach around, so why don’t you use that Bible you believe in to smash in the teeth of the idiot wrestling trainer who taught you how to “fight with honor.” There aren’t bonus points in the rankings for being a good sport, there’s no special spot in the Hall of Fame for people who never threw a closed fist, and the record books don’t denote whether or not you “won with honor” in the title histories, you stupid bitch.

I’m a nine time HOW World Champion.

You think I did that by shaking hands and never kicking a motherfucker in the head while he was down? Fuck that. If you’re dumb enough to turn your back on me, I’m gonna cripple you. If you’re stupid enough to stick out your hand and ask me to shake it, I’m gonna gouge your eyes out of your fucking skull. And if you’re arrogant enough to think you can beat me while upholding some bullshit moral code, I’m gonna take your food, and your fire, and your shelter, and I’m gonna leave you out to starve in the cold.

Because I’m a fucking winner.

I have lost exactly two matches in HOW since 2016. Fucking TWO. No pins, no submissions, and no knockouts. No one climbed a ladder and stole my title. No one else was the Last Man Standing. No bullshit technicalities about it– two intention disqualifications marring an otherwise impeccable wrestling record for FOUR MOTHERFUCKING YEARS, and I sure as shit didn’t do it because there was a “place I wouldn’t go”. I’ll kill your fucking dog for countout victory if I have to, because this is what I do for a living, and there is NOTHING. I. WILL. NOT. DO.

This is literally all I fucking have, and I’m proud of it.

I have no other hobbies, no other passions, and no other aspirations. I don’t want to be a movie star, or a singer, or a fucking jazz musician. I don’t want to be a model, or the spokesman for fucking Irish Spring soap. I like to wrestle, I like to talk shit, and I recently wrote a book about talking shit and wrestling, and that’s ALL THAT FUCKING DEFINES ME.

See, I’m my father’s son.

For all the dogshit that Lee Best has tried to impart into me in the ten years since he found he was my Dad, the one thing he’s truly taught me beyond all else is that Karma is a bunch of bullshit. This motherfucker beat cancer. He beat jail time. He’s survived Kostoff for twenty years, and Kostoff is a literal Scandanian God who is also actual death proof. He taught me that the only consequences in this life are the ones that you choose to accept. You combine that with a life lesson or two from Dan Ryan about taking what you want from this world, and you get something pretty fucking dangerous.

You get me.

You get the bulletproof Son of God, whose second coming is what happens when your wife tells him to take the condom off and do it again. You get a man who will stab you in the throat and fuck the wound if it helps him climb two spaces on the rankings, and while everyone thinks I’m just some dip shit coke head screaming at the top of my lungs, let me let you in on a little secret.

This is who I’ve always been.

If you think I’m beyond pretending to be a good person to shoot a couple of loads into a wrestling icon, you’re out of your goddamned mind. I quit cocaine because it was going to kill me, not because I decided to get clean. I went a year without cheating to prove I didn’t need to, not because I had some twisted sense of honor. And when my Dad is on his bullshit, I don’t fight him because I need the fans to love me. I do it because I don’t take any shit, no matter whose sperm were the lucky ones nine months before my birthday.

I have never felt so GODDAMNED FREE.

And you know what? As long as we’re putting it all out on the table, let me finally confess something to you morons that has been riding on the rim of my asshole for over two years now. Something that has chased me through every company, every podcast, and every microphone stuffed in my face since the day that I claimed to have invented the goddamned thing.

Yeah, I stole the knee from Eric Dane.

I KNEED A LAWYER.

Grand motherfucking larceny, folks– I watched him do it, I decided that I could do it better, and I stole it. For years now, Eric Dane has been standing up on apple boxes and preaching to anyone who would listen that I bit his style, I bit his essence, and I bit his mechanics, and he is absolutely right. Why the FUCK wouldn’t I? He had a good thing going for him, and I wanted it.

So I took it.

Because I fucking steal things.

I sure as fuck stole from Bobby Dean. You think I came up with the idea to bite music from The Karate Kid on my own? Fuck no— I watched him walk down to the ring to it back in whatever podunk, backwater company he was using it in almost a decade ago, and I decided it suited me better than it suited him.

So I took it for myself.

I stole from Andy Murray, too. Forcibly removed the crown from his head and made myself the God King of Wrestling, because he had it and I wanted it. Now it’s a t-shirt, and a brand, and in two years nobody is gonna remember that I didn’t come up with it myself. And you wanna know the worst part? The Minister is right about me– I’m gonna get bored with it, forget about it, and put it in a box in two months when I’ve moved on to the next thing. I steal what makes you special, I make it better, and then I move on to the next jingling keys that spark my interest.

So you’re goddamned right I stole your knee, Eric.

Around the fiftieth time I watched you jam your patella into the side of a human skull, I thought to myself… I think I can do it better. I think I can put a little more torque on it. I think I can throw in a snap, and a twist, and use it to kill dreams, if not entire careers. So I stole it, Mr. Dane. I took it for myself, and now it’s one of the most famous moves in professional wrestling. Now, it’s one of the few moves in High Octane Wrestling that have never been kicked out of. I gave it a better execution, a better presentation, a better name, and now it’s on the cover of a sure-to-be best selling book while you’re taking your daily walk from the wrasslin halfway house to the wrasslin soup kitchen. Because I steal things, I make them better, and there is absolutely nothing that you or anyone else can do about it.

I mean shit, I stole a World Title, didn’t I?

I mean, I won it without ever pinning the champion, right? That’s what Eric Dane says, and hey, he’s absolutely right— I didn’t pin my own partner and War Games teammate to win the HOW World Championship. Sure, I handed Andy Murray his first and only direct loss in HOW. Sure, I came out second for my team and outlasted every other participant in the match. Sure, I did a bunch of shit that you might call superhuman. That you might call impressive, or unprecedented. But I didn’t pin my own partner, so Eric is goddamned right. I’m a bad person. A cheat.

A thief.

And you know what, Eric?

No one cares.

Oreo was the offbrand, motherfucker– they stole their shit from Hydrox cookies. Lego copped their idea from some pissant children’s toy company, and now they run the fucking world. For years now, you’ve told the world that I’m nothing but a remix, a mash-up, an offspring, and a copycat of everything that made Eric Dane great, and no one gives a single fuck, because the ripoff is better than the original. That’s why I’m the highest paid wrestler in HOW history, and you’re standing hat in hands like Oliver Twist, begging Lee Best to pay you twenty four thousand dollars a year so that they don’t shut your electricity off.

That’s what we pay Hortega, and he doesn’t speak English.

I get your whole deal, Eric. I understand the position you’re in. You’ve been dealt a shit hand, and now you’re just trying to play it out. That’s why I haven’t spoken about what you did to Lindsay. That’s why I didn’t take you up on the offer to break your fucking nose, for taking her out of action. That’s why I’m not overly aggro about this mess of a tag match we’ve found ourselves booked in this week, either. Because I get it.

You said it yourself, you have no choice.

You’re being punished.

Poor Eric Dane is a victim, guys.

Who the fuck is THIS guy? The Eric Dane that I respected enough to steal from would have told Lee Best to suck his whole dick and skated back out into the free agent pool, happy to sign with the highest bidder. The Eric Dane that I stole from was a leader, not a follower. The Eric Dane that I stole from would have done a lot more than complain that I stole from him— he would have broken both of my knees and made sure I could never do it again.

That Eric was strong.

This Eric is just trying to protect his food.

Because he burned every bridge he’s ever walked across, and this is all he has left. Because last year, he got a little too in his feels over a HOFC match with yours truly, and pounded sand straight out of Dodge. Because he called HOW a goddamned dumpster fire on every wrestling show from here to the Moon, and now he’s a little broke bitch who has to take the bus. Truth is, Eric doesn’t have “no choice” because he’s fucking honor bound to abide by some bullshit, unfair contract. He has “no choice” because he’s a little mouse in Lee Best’s pocket, who makes my Dad a sandwich when he says he wants a sandwich.

Little Ratatouille ass bitch.

How fucking sad.

He’s gonna “drag Scott Stevens down to the ring and carry him through the best match of his career”. I mean yeah, probably. Of course you are. But before you get all fiery and white meat on us, Eric, remember that the reason you’re doing it is because you’re afraid that if you don’t, you’re gonna end up working at a Starbucks, asking middle aged white women if they want whipped cream or not.

You’re afraid, Eric.

And not even of anything cool, like being elbow murdered or eaten whole by a slightly snacky Dan Ryan. I could respect that, for as little weight as I put on the word respect. But you’re afraid of Lee Best. You’re afraid of an aging Pirate Captain who rules through fear, because he knows that he wouldn’t survive four seconds during a mutiny. What do you think, he’s gonna fire you? You think he’s gonna leave money on the table, when he could have pay-per-view headline matches between Eric Dane and Mike Best? Eric Dane and Dan Ryan? Eric Dane and Cecilworth Farthington? Eric Dane and Andy Murray? Do I need to keep naming names, or do you get the fucking picture here? If Lee Best tried to book me against two guys I could make serious money with, in a meaningless tag team match, with Scott fucking Stevens as my partner, do you know what I’d do?

I’d tell him to fuck off.

I’d drag my ass down to the ring, sit in the corner, and watch Scott Stevens get his asshole inverted for seven minutes, and then I’d leave. Because I’m not afraid of him, Eric. Because I wouldn’t have been willing to waste THE FIRST EVER HOW MATCH BETWEEN ERIC DANE AND MIKE BEST OR DAN RYAN BE A FUCKING TAG TEAM MATCH WITH SCOTT STEVENS IN IT FOR SOME REASON.

Did you leave your balls at home?

Are they in the moving truck, and it’s running late?

I spent two fucking months convincing Lee Best to bring you back, and you squander it hitting Lindsay Troy with a pipe and licking the skid marks out of my Dad’s underwear because his regular drycleaner is closed. I’m not even angry at you, Eric, I’m just fucking flabbergasted. I stole from you, Eric. Sure, I’m smarter than you. Sure, I’m more attractive. Sure, if you put a giant H on your forehead, Kobe Bryant might still be alive today. But come on, motherfucker, I puppeted everything you did back when you were a savage, and turned it into a Hall of Fame career. You mean to tell me that’s all you’ve got?

And you wonder why I pretend we’ve never had a match.

You wonder why I put on a fucking mask and pretended to be a Mexican wrestling legend, because I didn’t want my first big match with Eric fucking Dane to be in a shitty highschool gym promoted by a guy who begs for McDonalds money on Tinder. I said it then, and I’ll say it now– you didn’t deserve that match, and you don’t deserve this one. Not with the dogshit attitude you brought to the table. Not being the neutered, sad dog who slinks back under the couch every time that Lee Best grabs a newspaper.

I don’t wanna fight Rescue Eric– I wanna do battle with Eric Fucking Dane.

“I have no choice.”

No, dickhead, your mother had no choice. Maybe if she’d lived in a blue state, I’d have a different finishing move by now. You have a choice, Eric. You’ve always had a choice, and I want you to make it right now. Are you going to put on a pair of matching tights, give Stevens a high five, and become the fucking Lonely Stars, or are you going to remind HOW exactly who the fuck you are? Are you gonna be a strong motherfucker with a club, or a weak motherfucker with a sandwich? Because if you pick the sandwich, I’m gonna spend the next six months eating your fucking lunch. I stole the knee, I stole the title, I stole the gimmick, and this Saturday night at Refueled, I’ll steal your fucking soul and devour it like a four thousand dollar steak.

Not worth it by the way– all that Angus is a little tough to chew through.