We open up into a bland room. Feel free to color it in to your own liking. View is a bit blurry and out of focus. So toss a lamp where you might fancy it to be, toss in some appliances – the world is your orchard here.

There’s an old man sitting at a type writer though, that I can let you know.


He’s frazzled with stubble all over his face.

Red eyes.

He’s a mess.

There’s a sticky note attached to the desk he sits at.

It reads,

“This is an experiment. Let’s see where your confidence has gone to. I want to see if we can locate the ‘fire’ that has been misplaced. Is it ‘snuffed out’ or is it simply lost? I want you to write for me. Feel free to let all of your emotions out and embrace this ‘bloodletting.’ Just answer me this – ‘Why does Cyren matter?’”

So the Irishman sits and he contemplates.

Knocks back a whiskey.

Smokes a cigarette.

Cracks his knuckles.

Then his fingers dance and his body sways. Feverishly his digits blaze a trail across the archaic machine, creating music.

And this is what he wrote:

Why does Cyren matter? Why do I matter? That’s an odd question to be asked. It is almost a practice in trying to gauge one’s ego. Guess that’s what we’re doing though, isn’t it? Lots of questions offered and not a lot of straight answers provided, so far. Melancholy isn’t it? I like to tap dance around the issue but never confront it. So everyone is stunned that Cyren has fallen down a black hole. None more so then I, that’s for damned sure. I didn’t expect that once I came back and defeated the ‘unbeatable’ Slater, that in the victory, I would sacrifice my own ‘drive.’

It’s almost as if after that epic fight, I was empty. As if I drudged up everything I had left in the tank and at the end of it, I wasn’t even running on fumes. So I’ve been puttering along, ehre and there, trying to kickstart my career into first gear and at least get some kind of traction. It’s been an immeasurable failure, it has. So, where did my hunger go? Why am I so… empty?

That’s a mystery to even myself. I don’t know when I stopped caring when I entered that ring but I did. Maybe it was my own legacy that has gotten in my way – having to live up to a certain standard and in realizing for once I couldn’t do so, decided to tear down my reputation brick by brick and cast myself off into obscrurity rather then bow out gracefully.

I guess that’s me though, right? I wouldn’t be the one to go quietly into that gentle night. I just always expected I’d go out in a blaze of glory and not in a slow, torturous whimper. Is there a way to rectify this circumstance? I don’t know. I have pieces of myself trying to solve that very dilemma. I’ve gotten off of track.
I’m giving excuses for failure rather than addressing the issue that propels this meakness. So, what do I have to say? I guess I SHOULD rattle off my accomplishments, if for no other reason, then to know exactly who I am and what I’ve reduced myself to.

I’m a 4x Universal Champion – to put that into perspective for newcomers, it means that only one man in XWF’s 14-year long history has held it’s ‘TOP TITLE’ more then I have. I have Main Evented the second-most PPV’s in XWF History. I have held essentially every title this federation has ever offered. I founded the Black Order with Shane . I am an official XWF Legend and I AM in the Hall of Legends.

Now I’m struggling to beat John Madison’s slave.

Where the fuck did I go wrong?

Time to hang up the boots? I thought about it man. I submitted the paperwork for retirement to Shane not but a month ago, quickly rescinding it. Something about leaving this place willingly just doesn’t sit right with me. Oh, I’ve been pushed out by management plenty of times, but to leave of my own volition? I don’ t think it possible to do.

I’m stuck in an odd ether. I was trying to push the new ‘Administrator Network’ to let me help behind-the-scenes, to have a managerial presence and to help further the careers of the next generation. My own reputation held that possibility in limbo. I do not have the kind of ‘reliability’ or ‘ reputation’ that would lend to me being a warmly-welcomed hand behind the curtain.

So if I can’t stay in this place in any other fashion then as a competitor, then by god, that’s what I’ll be. XWF is in my blood, man. It runs in my veins. If the only way I can stay, is to be a ‘jobber’, then that’s what’ll happen. If my sins prevent me from retiring with grace, I simply won’t retire.

Why am I here? I have nowhere else to go.

Why do I matter? I don’t anymore.

I’m just hoping my ‘tank’ fills back up, so I can rack up enough ‘political points’ to retire into a role of substance. Until then, I’m hanging out here in the void, swaying with the winds of change which have blown me away.