- Event: Refueled XLIII
Prologue
Brief line of commentary meant to catch the eye.
One line follow up.
This whole thing could have been one sentence…
…but I’m a lazy, formulaic little bitch who realized awhile back that stacking my shit like beat poetry makes me seem artsy and deep, instead of a generic knockoff of a bunch of people who already do this better than me.
For real, for real.
This was pretty fresh back when I actually didn’t give a fuck, but then it stopped being 2019 and now I’m trying so hard to seem cool and laid back that I have become exactly the thing I was making fun of. I came in second place in an ICON Battle Royal once then just kept writing that same promo again and again forever, so anyone half worth a fuck that I’ve faced recently has smashed me like a table at an in-ring contract signing. My credibility has gone Up In Smoke like the Snoop Dogg tour that was popular the last time I held a title for more than seven business days.
Poof.
Lucky for me, I’ve got a really great hook this week. I’m gonna puff out my chest like a big hero, pretend that Max Kael and I were best friends, because when I was taking advantage of your mentally ill brother in an effort to sell more merch with stupid fucking eggs on it, I gave him a cute little nickname. I’m gonna stare at his picture on my wall that definitely wasn’t there two weeks ago, and then I’m gonna have the audacity to tell YOU not to patronize ME.
Stop. Smell that hypocrisy, folks.
Intoxicating, ain’t it?
I should have stayed a fucking eGG Bandit.
—
You’re right, Jiles.
My brother is dead.
No sense in sugar coating it, or making it any more flowery than the truth– Max Kael is dead. Time of death was called on a dirty concrete floor, surrounded by a bunch of medical technicians who didn’t even really try to revive him. Most of them probably didn’t know his name.
I begged him to stop.
I fucking begged him. I pleaded, and I sobbed, and I did everything that I could possibly do to stop it. I tried to pin him, but Stevens wouldn’t count it. I tried to walk away, but there was nowhere to go. I fucking tried, but it was too late. I barely got out of the way when he rushed me… can barely remember what even happened, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch it back and find out. The next thing I knew, I heard this awful fucking sound, and…
He was six days short of his 46th birthday.
They said he probably didn’t feel it, but they’re wrong. I heard him laughing. Heard him screaming. Watched him slump to the floor like a wounded fucking animal, and there was nothing I could do to save him. Nothing anyone could do. On October 24, 2020, Maximilian Wilhelm Kael was pronounced dead, and seven days later I was supposed to walk down to the ring and give his eulogy.
Or at least, I tried.
How do you do that, Jiles? To try to put into words what it feels like to not only lose your family, but to watch them fade right before your eyes. Nothing you can do, no way to take it back, just… watching. Helpless. This was what was weighing on me, as I made my way out from behind the curtain. This was all I could think about, as I closed my eyes and walked out into that arena. My home arena, in my hometown, to face a crowd full of people mourning the loss of my brother almost as much as I was.
Maybe it was selfish of me.
Maybe it wasn’t the right time, or the right place. Maybe I shouldn’t have come out to the ring, and just watched the show from the back. Maybe I should have just stayed home entirely, man. I don’t know. I’ll never know. All I know is that I never got the chance to say what I needed to say. Never got the chance to honor my brother the way that he deserved to be honored. They let Jatt Starr celebrate my brother’s death on national television, didn’t they? They let Scottywood stand at fucking catering and call my brother an asshole though, didn’t they? They let you fucking idiots drop eggs all over the ring and brawl at a fucking memorial show though, didn’t they?
But yeah, he was your friend.
Because you invoked his name like Shooter McGavin proclaiming that he was “playing for Chubbs” this week. You insufferable little cunt. You didn’t even watch the fucking match, Jiles. You wanna talk about me blaming the fans, and me playing the staff, and me blaming everybody but me– you don’t even fucking know, do you? Don’t think for a second that I have absolved myself of my brother’s death, because I know who I am and I know what I did, but this man you pretend to admire and respect and mourn the loss of, and you didn’t even watch his FUCKING MATCH. You didn’t watch, as I begged him not to do it. You didn’t watch, as he threw the deathblow you claimed he never would have thrown. You didn’t watch, as I barely moved out of the way, and he impaled himself on a rusted fucking IV stand and took his own life. You didn’t watch, Jiles, and then you used his fucking death to organize an ambush on Doozer and make his memorial show all about an eGG Bandits reunion.
I could end you for that alone, and feel NOTHING.
But this is the luckiest week of your life.
The old Mike Best would have found a way to blame you, and make it all your fault. He would have picked apart your lazy work ethic over the last couple of months, and told you that you didn’t belong in the company that Max Kael literally died for. He would have come up with a snazzy new catchphrase and a new way to kill a human being with some mixture of a patella and disrespect. But like I said, it’s the luckiest week of your life, Jiles. Because you’re not facing the old Mike Best.
You’re facing the NEW one.
You’re facing the Mike Best who has had his eyes opened recently to exactly what this industry is, and who our fans are. You’re facing the Mike Best who has witnessed and experienced firsthand how fucking little we matter to anyone. To the industry, to the company, to the management, and right down to the fans. You don’t matter. I don’t matter. We’re disposable heroes, all of us— baseball cards they collect for a few years until they’re bored of us, and then they’re happy to stick us between the spokes of their fucking bicycles until we die useless.
You and I? We’re consumer products.
I walked down to the ring to deliver the eulogy for one of the only human beings that I have ever loved, and they chanted “MURDERER” at a grieving brother until he broke down. They don’t care about us, Jiles. They never did. This week they cheer, next week they’ll boo, and before you know it, they’ll stop reacting to you altogether. Because you’ll be used up. Because they’ll have gotten tired of you, and it’ll take more and more to get a rise out of them. It took a literal deathmatch to make the fickle masses give a fuck about the greatest fued in HOW history, and as soon as it was over, they called me a fucking murderer.
It’s a joke to them, Jiles.
Our lives are a fucking joke to them.
Some big fat neckbeard in a Bob Jared t-shirt probably laughed about it on the drive home with his buddies, talking about how funny it was to watch the HOW World Champion cry. They demanded a blood sacrifice, and when we gave it to them, they decided that they didn’t want it anymore. And it isn’t just them– it’s the company. It’s the industry. It’s the network. Everyone is so quick to say they didn’t want to see a fucking deathmatch on HOTv, but did Lee Best pull it from the show? Did the sponsors abandon the product? Did the fans fucking change the channel? No, they cashed the fuck in, Jiles, because that’s what this industry does. That’s what this company does. They make money off our fucking corpses.
Anything to make a fucking dollar.
Even as I type these words, the monkeys over at the HOAX are foaming at the mouth to market this. “NEW Mike Best”, let’s slap it on a t-shirt and feed it to the all-consuming masses. Looking for a way to monetize it, so they can pay me 3% a year on my own intellectual fucking property.
But then I’m preaching to the choir, aren’t I?
After all, you were an eGG Bandit.
You were the most essential cog in the marketing machine. T-shirts, bandanas, foam fingers, foam eggs, REAL eggs. Fuck’s sake, Jiles… did you know that last year, I had to stop them from releasing a full run of action figures with you guys dressed up as the Easter Bunny? Not since the discovery of the ACTUAL EGG has there been a more exploitable, easier to digest, family friendly product brought to market. A staple of the modern wrestling fan’s home. Six months ago, they were selling Memorial CBD’s on the HOW website, in memoriam of the death of a cardboard cutout of a wrestler who is still alive.
And it all started with me.
My greatest creation, the High Octane Ad eXchange. No more outside sponsors. No more sixty forty cuts in shitty Made in China action figures. No more outsourcing to publishers or media companies. Everything done in house, destined to pull HOW out of the financial hole and turn us back into the thriving company we were back during the wrestling boom. Not a catchphrase we wouldn’t monetize, not a livelihood we wouldn’t cash in on, not a mortal life we wouldn’t exploit, and we paid you pennies on the dollar for the fruits of your labor.
I created a fucking monster.
Yesterday, a prototype came across my desk for a limited edition Max Kael action figure. Five points of articulation, three swappable heads, and a rusty IV stand accessory with real eye stabbing action.
Real eye stabbing action.
Read that again, dickheads.
REAL EYE STABBING ACTION.
Ten days ago, Maximilian Wilhelm Kael died wrestling me in a literal deathmatch on an island that used to be a maximum security prison. We had a fucking memorial show for him this week, and they used it to SELL DIGITAL RE-RELEASES OF OUR OLD MATCHES. There were fucking COMMERCIALS ON THE SHOW. And I come in to the office yesterday, to find a prototype action figure that allows children to re-enact the death of my older brother for fun and fucking profit, and that was it. That was the end. I walked into Lee Best’s office, I put my resignation on his desk, and I will never step foot into that building again for as long as I live.
Like I said, bud, luckiest week of your life.
Because I’m not gonna murder you.
I’m gonna finish out my contract, and then I’m gonna retire.
I have dedicated every waking moment of my life to a business that will never love me back. I bled and sweat and cried for this business. I lied, and cheated, and stole for this business. I put my life on the line, time and time again, and I have literally killed for this business, and for what? I’m the highest paid wrestler in HOW by a giant margin, and I no shit make less money than the construction manager on a job site. I make less money than an air traffic controller. At thirty bucks a pop, HOW can pay my entire salary selling a little under five thousand shirts with my fucking face on them, and then they pay me a shit percentage for the merchandise that I WAS FUCKING DESIGNING.
So no, Jiles, you’re not my enemy.
You’re my wrestling opponent. You’re a guy pulling down sixty grand a year to make a living for himself and get by, and this week, you have a tremendous opportunity. A shot at the HOW World Championship. Your job is to walk away with that title, and my job is to stop that from happening, and this week we’re both just two guys looking to do our fucking jobs. I don’t want to try and put you in the hospital. I don’t want to see if you can survive the elbows. I don’t want to put on a wrestling clinic, or even a good show, to be honest.
Who the fuck we putting it on for?
We putting it on for High Octane Wrestling? I single handedly won War Games this year, and HOW made over a million dollars on the gate. I got stabbed in the face and had to pay for my own stitches. They’ve made over two million dollars profit on ticket sales alone this year; you seeing any bonuses in those paychecks? I’m sure as fuck not. We don’t owe this company, or this industry, any more than we’ve already given to it.
We doing it for the fans?
What a joke. These are the soulless miscreants who literally started a riot and set the ring on fire at Rumble at the Rock. The same people who cheered for Chris Kostoff to murder me in 2016. The same people who did it again a week and a half ago, screaming their little heads off at the prospect of my brother ending my life. These are godless savages, cowards who pay for blood sports because they don’t have the balls to step into a ring themselves and find out what it’s like. We don’t owe them a goddamned thing either.
We gonna do it for ourselves?
To be blunt… why? I’m the nine time HOW World Champion, Jiles. Nine times. Literally no one is even close to matching the records I’ve set in this company, and I have nothing left to prove to them, to you, or to anyone else. I’m without dispute the best active wrestler on the planet, and you can say otherwise if you want to, but everyone already knows. It’s not some well kept secret. I don’t need to do it for me, bud, and I don’t think you need to try and do this for yourself, either.
Let’s just be honest, man.
You know who you are.
You told me not to patronize you, so I won’t. I’ll shoot you straight– you should have stayed a Bandit. No expectations. No need to put your body on the line for a bunch of savages who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. You come out to the ring, make a couple of jokes, throw a couple of eggs, and everyone goes home happy. No one is expecting you to come down to the ring and put on a clinic with me, Jiles. No one is anticipating a title change this week. I’m the status quo, and that’s a curse that you will never have to bear the weight of, because they already accepted you for you who are. They already accept you as the top of the bottom, and they love you for it.
No patronizing. Just the honest truth.
You’re not a top guy, Jiles.
Never have been. Not in the entire time that I’ve known you. Not in DREAM. Not in the WFWA. Not in HOW. Your brief stints into the upper card have been spot fillers. Placeholders. Temporary moments of mediocre greatness between believable champions. That LSD Title reign was fun, I’ll give you that. It was cool to watch you break the mold for a couple of minutes, and show that you can still go. You beat a submission legend by countering his own move, and it was a feel good moment for the world. But if you look deep inside, I think you know the truth, and there’s no shame in that. I couldn’t set an Olympic record in the hundred yard dash with a gun to my head, and some people out there could do it effortlessly. Doesn’t make me less of a man, or less of an athlete. We all just have a station in life.
I’m a champion, and you aren’t, and that’s fine.
I have it, and you don’t, and if you did, you’d have done it by now. We’ve been here the same number of years, and you’re just getting your FIRST shot at a belt I’ve held NINE TIMES. It doesn’t matter how you frame it, bud. It doesn’t matter how much you try to weaponize my brother’s death like an opportunistic little cunt. It doesn’t matter how much beat poetry you write, how many puns you come up with, or how many lukewarm takes you can think of. I patronize guys like Zion and Stevens because everyone loves an underdog story, but you’re not even that, Jiles.
You’re a fuckin’ midcarder.
You’re lazy, you have no worth ethic, and you’re not reliable. You come and go from this company, and no matter how many times you swear it’s gonna be different, you just end up back down a rabbit hole throwing eggs with the other losers who don’t feel like trying anymore. You’ve become a novelty act, and you’ve lost so many matches in the last two months that I half suspect you’ve just given up even trying. Fuck’s sake, you ended your Epilogue with a fucking gay joke. GOD only knows why you dropped your first name and go by Jiles these days, bud, cause from where I’m sitting?
Cancer is the perfect word to describe you.
A malignant growth on the underside of HOW that keeps coming back no matter how many times we treat it. An ego that reproduces exponentially while continuing to serve no functional purpose on the roster. A lump on my fucking taint that has only survived for the last ten years because it took me awhile even notice you were still there. Fuck you, Jiles— I’d rather shave my fucking head bald and stick my dick directly into an X-ray machine than watch you take the HOW World Championship off me for nine days before you drop it to whoever Lee decides you’re gonna lose your smile too next.
I’m holding this belt until I retire.
Not because I have a compelling reason to. Not to “honor my dead brother”. Not to turn his death into a new fucking gimmick. Honestly, Jiles? I’m gonna do it because I can. Because I wanna remind you why you’ve never had a shot at this title before. Because I’m sick of your stupid face and your weak shit modern art promos. Because the HOW fans would love nothing more than to see you succeed against me, and I want to give them whatever the opposite of what they want is.
I’m gonna hold on to this fucking title out of spite.
I’m gonna beat you this week out of spite. and I’m gonna do it in the least satisfying way I can fucking think of, because I don’t owe you, the fans, or this company a match worth watching. People seem to forget that before I was the “deathmatch guy”, and before I was the “knee guy”, and before I was the “cocaine guy”, I was a pretty good fucking wrestler. This week, I’m gonna remind them. This week, I’m gonna show them just how unmarketable I can be. No murder. No knockouts. No surprises. I’m gonna out-wrestle you, you eggy little cunt, so get ready for chin locks.
I can hold this title for as long as I want, and unless I get bored of it, no one is ever fucking taking it away from me. Because you’re right. I’m not a Star Maker.
I’m a Star Destroyer.
Fortunately for you, you’re not a fucking star.