- Event: Chaos 043
Dear Michael Lee Best,
Before we get started, it’s okay to just call you Mike, right? No need to stand on formalities, is there? Saying Michael is so rigid, like some private school toff. Calling you Mr. Best makes you sound like an elbow-patch wearing librarian. Would you prefer the Son of God? Christ, that’s probably a bit much. To tell you the truth, if I don’t call you Mike I’ll just end up calling you Mitch.
It’s strange, despite you being a Best, despite me being historically a goody-two-shoes crusader for all which is right in wrestling, the heart and soul of Ground Zero, blah, blah, blah… Our paths haven’t crossed all that often, have they? An LSD title shot here, a World Championship match there, a couple of big group cluster fucks like War Games, sure. But given our respective pedigrees you’d have expected us to clash more often, more meaningfully. Strange. It feels like we’re a lot more acquainted than we are, like we should know each other better than we do. That’s expected, I guess. Some might say we’re two sides of the same coin or some other cliche bullshit, but they probably haven’t watched the show in a decade…
Anyway! How’s it going, Mike? Keeping well? I would say I am but, you know, my leg’s still buggered and I’ve got this asshole of a boss who seems to be going out of his way to make my work life a living hell. You know how that is, right? After all that bullshit with your son getting bullied by the bosses over in that other place, I’m sure you know how it is. Because that was definitely them fucking him over, not just a kid out of his depth who went crying back to his daddy and granddaddy to get setup in his own little jobber playground to be gifted a tittle… shot which he lost. It definitely wasn’t that, it was definitely the bosses screwing him over.
So you know how it is, don’t you? You have this boss who inexplicably hates you. And he has a bunch of cronies who are feeding off that hate and feeding back into it, who just want to see you burn on a stake while they pelt you with rotten tomatoes. All this talk about how you don’t matter, how you’re totally meaningless in the grand scheme of things and yet they can’t get your name out of their mouths. Typical soft-as-fuck bully bullshit, right?
And, honestly, Mike? I wouldn’t have it any other way right now. Papa best is gunning for me big time, setting all his lackeys on me in an ever growing line of desperation to get me out of the game. I get he’s pissed for the douchebag shit I pulled when my brain was exploding, but that can’t be all there is. Usually he sets a dog on a dude who disrespects him and that’s it, he moves on regardless because the lesson has be learnt: don’t fuck with the Bests. But this obsession with ending my career makes me think there’s more to it. It makes me think he’s worried about me, that I’m such a threat to him, to the Alliance, that he’s just got to take me off the board at any cost. Any cost at all.
And it’s costing him, it really is. He sent his number two, his right-hand man, Steve Solex, after me to finish the job he failed to do at War Games. It should have been simple, I was totally defenseless and any competent hitman would have murdered me. But he shat the bed, didn’t he? I embarrassed him. It cost me too, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I outright decimated him, but any time you walk into the ring with a dude stuck in a wheelchair, who can’t even raise a fist, and still get your ass kicked is a total fucking embarrassment no matter what scale you’re looking at.
So… that didn’t work. Then he sent his big gun. His enforcer. A dude whose job is to bring the hammer of god down on the enemies of the Best Family, it’s literally his job description. He was sent to inflict Lee’s wrath upon me and boy were his words to me so wrathful. You could bathe in the amount of bile he was spewing at me. Dude was so blinded by his hatred for me that he talked all kinds of shit about how awful all the Hall of Famers were and forgot most of his teammates were Hall of Famers. He actually wanted to decapitate me, apparently. But he didn’t. Dude twice my size, fighting a half crippled high flyer who can’t fly anymore, and he failed. He took the L like he had a ticker tape parade scheduled for his inevitable victory when he returned home.
Now it’s come to this. Lee has wheeled out you, Mike, in a ladder match for the LSD Championship. It can’t escalate much further, can it? At least not on a weekly show. Mike Best murders bitches. It’s what you’re known for, the man you face in a normal match and are grateful if you leave with your limbs attached. When Lee really wants to maim someone and nothing else quite does it, he inevitably rolls out a big gimmick match with you sat on top. When he needs the job done and everyone else has failed him, he turns to you. To steal a phrase from a mutual acquaintance, some might call that #Predictable.
I’m not sure what he expects of me, though. Does he expect me to shit myself and run scared? Or does he expect me to see that shiny gold carrot hanging above the ring and get distracted? Honestly, Mike, both of those are far off the mark. I was always expecting to face you sooner or later, after all I am working my way through the Final Alliance and there’s only so many of you in it. I hadn’t expected it to be so soon but, yeah, I’ll take it. Right now I’m not concerned about the LSD title, I’m not concerned about the legacy of Mike Best, the pinnacle of HOW Wrestling, the Best there ever was. My entire focus, Mike, is solely on beating you and giving you a taste of the banquet Lee laid out for me with this match.
Honestly, I feel like this is an amazing opportunity to give my new style a good, solid trial run. A stress test. If there’s one man in the industry today whose style most closely resembles what I’m trying to achieve, it’s probably you, Mike. The vicious, technical decimation of an opponent’s body combined with high impact strikes and suplexes and a flagrant disregard for the rules, it’s the sort of thing you’re known for. We get to see how my fledgeling style stacks up against a master of his art, a British variation taking on an American variation. I wonder who will come out on top? Place your bets on the HOG now.
I’m not fool enough to think I can entirely eliminate you in this match, that I can end your career or otherwise grievously injure you. You’re not like Dan, you actually have coherent thoughts in your head, you have strategy and tactics. You’re not just going to rant on and on about ripping my head off and shitting down my neck like some brain dead lug, whose only tactic is to lob me around like a sack of spuds and hope that leads to victory. You’re more refined… more cultured in your violence. I’m under no illusions. It will be a difficult, close fight. Like I said, I won’t be sending you scurrying off with your tail between your legs this week… But I will take something important from you.
No, I’m not talking about the LSD Championship. I know, I know, Mike. I know you have a stick up your ass about people saying they don’t care about titles and I get that and that’s not what this is. I care about titles and championships, I particularly care about relieving the Final Alliance of their gold. I care about them, but chasing after them is just not my goal at this exact moment. Again, I’m sure you can understand this. I’m a man on a mission, Mike, so going around throwing out challenges to champs and climbing the ranks to be in contention isn’t top on my to-do list… But being able to sweep up a belt or two on my quest to snap the fingers off the Final Alliance is the cherry on the cake. It’s very exciting to get the chance to win a belt as a by-product of giving you a beat down, I’ve got to say.
But no, I wasn’t talking about taking the LSD Championship off you. I doubt you particularly care much about keeping it, given how it looks like you’re on the road to World Championship 11 when you beat Fuse In God’s House. Losing a title always stings but I can’t see the great Mike Best losing much sleep over it when your eyes are on the bigger prize. Nah, Mike, I’m going to do my damndest to take something you value a hell of a lot more: Your record. Your streak. Your ability to look down that crooked little nose at the roster and boast that no one in this federation is good enough to beat you.
You’re a Best. Some would say you’re the Best. Your whole persona, your entire being is all about being better than all the rest. If you can’t say you’re better than anyone you’ve ever met, then what even are you, man? Having that 7 (or 10 depending which stat you’re looking at) in a win column is meaningless if there’s a 1 in the column next to it. It says, yeah, you’ve won a lot, but you’ve also lost. If one person can beat you, anyone can beat you. The illusion that you’re untouchable is gone. At least Dan had a big asterisk next to his 1 loss because that was a loss to STRONK! and, honestly, that’s not really a loss because everyone loses to STRONK!… Well, except Fuse, but you know.
And I took that asterisk away from Dan last week too. Two of the top dogs in the Final Alliance, with their aura of invulnerability imbued upon them by God himself, were shown to be mere mortals on Chaos. This week another one falls. Some would say the most important one. The lynchpin of God’s Groupies. The last of the immortals, brought crashing down to earth where all the apostates will feast on your desiccated flesh… Hang on, I’m getting my metaphors confused with zombies. Either way, it’s not a good outcome for you.
Like I said, I’m not expecting this to be easy. For all the recovery I’ve done over the last few weeks, I’m fully expecting to fall a few steps back. It’ll be an intense match and I’d be fooling myself if I thought I’m coming out of it unscathed. Taking you down a peg or two will definitely be worth it, though. I’m not going to let my current physical handicap hold me back. I sacrificed this leg to beat Solex and I’m more than happy to do it again to beat you.
For all you can say about me, that I’m a douchebag, that I’m a two faced rat, a traitor, a self serving shithead… whatever anyone says, you have to accept that my tenacity knows no bounds. Do what you like, I’ll keep getting up. I’ll keep fighting. It’s always been like that, hasn’t it? When I was a rookie I kept looking to the future, always getting up and resolving myself to do better. But I’m not a bright eyed and bushy tailed, naive little kid anymore. This isn’t some baby faced, optimistic, one more push and I’ll win and the crowd will cheer sort of tenacity.
This is the sort of tenacity of Voorhees, of Kruger. You keep knocking me down, stabbing me, setting me on fire, drowning me, but it’s not enough. Every time you think I must be dead after choking the life out of me and spilling my brains on the mat, and you start climbing that ladder to the prize, you’ll suddenly feel a hand gripping your ankle and dragging you down, like an unrelenting undead ghou… for fucks sake, it’s that bloody zombie metaphor again, isn’t it? That’s so stupid. Why are you doing this to me, brain?!
Anyway, you get the idea, Mike. It’s not just about winning a match, it’s not just about winning the LSD title. It’s about beating the pride of the Final Alliance, their top competitor, the prime team member, if you will. You can suplex me, drop me on my head, knee me in the face, I’ll keep getting up and keep working those limbs, working those joints, and keep wearing you down until something goes snap, crackle and pop.
This match may have been set up to weigh the odds in your favour and put me at a disadvantage so you can do the job both Solex and Dan failed so miserably at, but personally I find it ideal. No pins, no submissions. I can work you over until you’re just lying there on the mat, incapacitated and flapping like a bloodied fish as I scale that ladder and claim my prize. Nothing you can do except lay there and watch as I claw my way up to the top, as that horrific 1 gets drawn on your stats right before your eyes.
See you on Sunday, Mitch.