The scene opens very similar to how we left off... in a smoky casino.



Cigar firmly placed in his mouth, Tony Santos sits around a poker table, rather than the video screen he hid behind to bet on horses, or the blackjack table that was basically just him and the dealer. Nope, this time, Tony found himself around real people, betting very real...

...euro?



Belfast, Northern Ireland. It's the night before Wednesday Night Warfare. The whole XWF crew is in town. Unknown Soldier, fresh off his 24/7 cash-in and Universal Championship win on Saturday, prepares himself for a cupcake effort by comparison, as he studies the rule book for his special guest referee role, awaiting the winner, who will face him for his other title. Five men sit in their hotel rooms, watching footage of their four competitors, ahead of the chance to face the Hart champion.

And there is the Hart Championship match itself. Tony Santos, defending his crown of four months against Ned Kaye. It's the main event, as it usually is on Warfare, and in just one night, the crowd will sit down and witness the tale of two warriors come to a glorious conclusion. Two men who have fought their way to headline status within the XWF. Two men who have pushed each and every competitor to the limit, and dominated 2019. Two champions...



...sorry, one champion, and a man holding the 24/7 briefcase, waiting for his shot to overtake the XWF.

But first, Ned Kaye has a shot against the man you see in front of you. Cigar smoke encasing the camera screen, the clanging together of poker chips, like empty Zippos being dumped from a gang of chain smokers. Ned's opponent sits upright at the table, smoke flowing throughout his gums, his teeth turning a lemony yellow from three days of binge... smoking... with little to no dental hygiene in between. Tony had moved from the casinos of Vegas to the casinos of Belfast, with only a 10 hour flight in the way.

Tony is dealt his next hand.



Ace-King, suited. About as good as it gets for a poker player. Tony stares at the chips in front of him. They look intimidating, until you notice that Tony's stack is piled mainly with €10 chips in a €100 per hand game. See, Tony threw down €5,000 at the outset... 9am... and managed to lose it all by 11. He walked away to grab some food, became entranced with an ATM, took out €10,000 more, and had practically lost it all after four arduous hours of play. It took a few risky all-in bets to get him back to just €1,500, before more, and more, and more...

...grinding...

...led him to pick up the pieces...

€500! Great win, lad!

€500. Not €500 in one big hand. €500 was what he won after going in on €250, matching much smaller portions of the allotments of his opponents. See the allure of winning vast sums of money resulted in Tony taking outsize risks. Like every other situation he'd ever faced in his three decades on earth, Tony never took the conservative path. He never measured risk and decided to place some of his bets in one riskier pot, and others in a lower return, more stable pot. Diversification... sanity... caution... were not Tony's strong suit. Instead, he saw an opportunity, and he'd take it.

It was what led him to some semblance of success in his current profession. Hell, he was creeping up on the second longest reign as Hart Champion in the XWF! He was widely respected by wrestlers of old and new! He was a man known for his sharp tongue, and aggressive ring style.

But he was also a man who held the TV Title for one... freaking... month, before practically handing it over to Steve Davids, too inebriated to put up a good fight.

He was also the man, early on in his career, who held the vaunted Xtreme Title, the ticket to an eventual Universal Championship shot, and the second-most revered title in all of the company...

...for 12 days.

The dealer leans his pudgy frame over the table and in Tony's direction. He grabs Tony's chips, taps one against the table, and slides them towards a man in the corner, sunglasses on, whisky in his hand.

Big win for the man in green!

The dealer turns to Tony, noticing Tony's pained, yet vacant, expression.

You win some, you lose some.

The dealer smiles, shuffling the cards with ease in between his hands, before effortlessly, and perfectly, flinging them to each person at the table. The felt carries the plastic coating of each silky smooth card and slides them to their temporary owners. There's a bit of a bump here and there, the casual cigarette burn hole or searing nail indentation the culprit, but Belfast gets it, almost as much as Las Vegas itself.

Tony waves his hand in the air, signaling for another Coke. The waitress takes her sweet time, making her way across the casino to the patrons who have ordered alcohol first... casino's orders to serve the inebriated customers first after all... before making her way to Tony.

The glass is slammed in front of Tony's cards, a lone ice cube sputtering on to the table, landing on...



7x2 unsuited. The worst hand you can get in all of poker, and with Tony's luck, he has the big blind! €100 is the damage, and Tony is left with €20 left on the table. One measly chip falls over the other, seemingly escaping from the pathetic situation it happens to be sitting in. Tony looks at his hand, places the cards back face down on the table, then looks at them again, hoping he just saw his hand wrong.

Nope... a 7-2 split. With not even enough to cover the next round of betting if he folded, Tony knows he has to go all in. Tony looks to his right, the man in the gray... the one who just took that big pot not too long ago, ripping away a significant portion of Tony's chips, sits in his tweed suit jacket, handkerchief neatly tucked in his breast pocket, dark sunglasses over his eyes, unfazed. He simply assesses the situation.

Tony looks further to his right, and sees a woman with short brown hair. She coughs peculiarly near the moment she needs to bet, and Tony senses a bluff. He smiles.

Santos: All in.

Not because he all of a sudden thought he had a winning hand, but hey, you might as well look like you do in the process. Bluff the bluffers, they say...

She coughs again, this time with a little more... oomph in it.

Tony looks to his left.

I'm all in too.

Tony's eyebrows arch upward, followed by a snort. He looks back at his cards, then at the dealer, then back at his cards. Tony attempts to compose himself, focusing on the hand in front of him, the hand that will either be the end of his very long night, or the beginning of an all-nighter. The hand that could begin his redemption for losing literal thousands of euro, or the one that puts a firm rubber stamp on a night of failure. A hand that could set the tone for success tomorrow night, or a hand that will loosen him up for a clear defeat.

The woman coughs again.

And again.

And again.

Alright everyone, let's see the flop.

Tony's hand is still concealed, since the other players aren't all in.

The first card:

♦ 8

The second card:

♦ 6

And the third:

♦ 5

Tony sits in his chair, his eyes pulsating with excitement. He is one red diamond card away from not just a flush, but a straight flush. This is the redemption he would...

*Cough*

...so dearly...

*Cough*

...achieve.

The turn, ladies and gentlemen.

♣ 8

Santos (thinking): Okay, irrelevant, but no big deal! One more card to go and [i]we've got this!!![/i. Just a 9 or a 4 of diamonds. A straight flush is practically UNBEATABLE.

The wheels begin turning inside Tony's head. The odds flow through his brain like crashing waves. Loud THUDS of doubt, and smooth troughs reminding Tony that he's got this. This is his to win, or...

*Cough*

...his to...

*Cough*

His eyelids crunch together, time practically standing still, as Tony turns to the coughing beside him. His eyes blink with the sound of a boulder crashing into concrete, his eyes searing into the woman hacking up a lung. The woman leans over the table, her coughing persisting, the rest of the table unmoved. The dealer checks for remaining bets between Tony's three opponents, and he finds only checks.

The dealer lifts a card from the deck, and Tony stares intently, the rush of a good high hitting him once again. His eyelids pull open as if yanked to a clothesline. His heart pounds, not from the pressure of seven IPAs on the heart, but from the rush of potential fortune. And creases form around his eyes, the anticipation more than he can bear. He's either going to live to fight another hour, or hit the pavement, just like a good blackout. Nothing's fun if it can't kill you, after all. The risk is why we love it. The danger is why it's so much fun.

The dealer drops the card face down with a slow thud. What is a three second sequence feels like three hours. He returns his hand to the deck, grasping at the final card of this hand. Potentially the final card of Tony's night. He lifts the card, turns it over mid-air...

*Cough*

Time stands still. The dealer holds the card, close to placing it on the table, but not yet visible to Tony. The air is quiet, the smoke lays over the room, motionless. Only Tony lets out a breath.



Are you alright, Bud?

Tony looks over to the man in the tweed suit jacket. The man lowers his dark glasses, looks at Tony, and smiles, taking a long sip of whisky. His eyes rotate in and out, his hands shaking.

Brian Sullivan, Tony's father.

*Cough*

Tony looks to the woman coughing to his right, specks of blood sprinkling from through her lips. She pulls out a Marlboro, brings it to her mouth, and lights it. She turns to Tony, and smiles, as she takes a drag.

*Cough*

His mother, Patti Sullivan.

Tony turns to his left, and, oh, you know how this is going. His dead girlfriend, taking a shot at table games. You know...

Shannon: ...when you're dead, it doesn't fucking matter now, does it?

The river.

♦ A

Santos: Hell yes! A flush baby! Winner winner, chicken di...

Tony's father raises his hand in the air.

Brian: Not so fast, Bud.

He lays down two eights.

Four of a kind!

Four of a fucking kind. A straight flush would've done it. Just a 9 or 4 of diamonds, but Tony got a god damn Ace, which left him with a measly flush. Enough to take out everyone else at the table, but not the main man with the tweed jacket and always a slight edge. Never enough to take down the alcoholic he took after. Whether Tony liked it or not, no matter how much he tried to disassociate from Brian Sullivan, one vice after another, he always played second fiddle.

Crippling alcoholism?

At least he was still alive. It caused his father's heart failure.

Smoke a couple packs a day?

Dad smoked five, in an hour.

Develop an addiction to losing money?

Dad would take it from you and give it all away ten minutes later in craps.

Always one-upping Tony, even in death. Always. Tony looks back at the man who'd disappointed him his entire young life. He was looking for a bit of validation in his defeat, but all he saw was a man relishing a victory over his own flesh and blood. A man who spent his earlier days gambling away Tony's measly savings, and when he'd win? He wouldn't recoup those savings... no no, he'd spend them at a strip club, or on one of his five girlfriends, or on the painkillers he needed to make to the next day on the construction site.

Anything but Anthony Sullivan. Anything but his own son.



The sprinkler goes off, someone having set it off with an ill-placed flame. The casino evacuates, but Tony sits at the table. His hair soaked with rancid fire depressant, his eyes curl inward. The camera turns to Tony, no bets to be placed.



Tony is still hunched over, but not on a poker table. Instead, he sits over a jagged rock in a strait outside of Belfast. There is no poker table, there are no dead opponents. There is just a bottle at Tony's feet. A bottle of cheap Bushmills whiskey, at his feet. Tony's sobriety fell apart as soon as he had nothing left to gamble on. Money was hard to find, so he went to the local liquor store, grabbed a bottle, and drank it straight, sobriety be damned. He started in an alley, then progressed to a sidewalk, and finally found himself on a waterfront, readying to use the rock in front of him as the closest thing to a pillow.

Tony was 3,000 miles from Boston, 5,000 miles from San Francisco, but he was fucking home. He was back.

Tony looks at the camera, raindrops dripping from the top of his head, a scowl emerging.

Santos: Ned Kaye, this is it. This is your chance to take me down. I know you want it. I know you need it. But can you do it? I don't think so. I don't think you have what it takes. I haven't believed in you since the moment you were announced as my opponent.

Do you wonder why?

I'm not sure you really care why. But I'm going to tell you.

It's the exact same reason I wrote you off just a few days ago, as publicly as I possibly fucking could. Because you're vanilla. You don't actually give two shits about the work you do. You don't believe in yourself enough to give any match a fighting chance, and you don't have enough pride to speak with conviction.

Instead, you pontificate about your moral superiority over me, while not having the god damn guts to just tell me you think you're better than me. To tell me you've lived your life better than me. To remind me of how superior of a wrestler you are to me.

And why?

Because you know you're not. You know you can't fool me, or yourself, or anyone on the XWF roster, and you sure as hell can't fool the people watching you week in and week out.

So, instead of talking up your own abilities, or confidently reminding the world that you are the man who is going to save the company you see so badly infested with rodents, people who don't meet your high standards, you... just let us know you're going to try. You don't even have the guts to bet on yourself, the savior of all that is wrong with the XWF, and confidently tell the world that you, Mr. Sobriety, will take the title from the alcoholic. Or that a month later, you'll take it from that vile Satanist..

You can't do that, because you're self-aware enough to see your own track record.

Loss... after loss... after loss... after token win... after loss. Ned Kaye wins the matches that don't count, while losing those that do. Taking the moral victories, while losing the real opportunities. Ned Kaye gets "atta boys," while Tony Santos gets gold. Ned Kaye shakes the hands of people better than him, while Tony Santos crushes them. Ned Kaye is the guy you let shake your hand after a win... Tony Santos is the man whose hand others want to shake.

Tony smiles, his face shivering in the cold... summer?... air of Belfast. His lower lip quivers, his breath smells like it could catch on fire if not for the pouring rain. The cracks in his face catch the rain drops, letting them slide down slowly, breaking as they hit the early signs of aging. The man you see in front of you is imperfect, and broken. One vice is replaced with another, weakness patched with weakness. But he sits here, in the pouring rain, drunk, off the wagon...

...but still here.

Santos: Ned, look at me right now. I'm the man you fucking fear. Mainly because I will stretch you from front to back in that ring, making you tap out in seconds, but also because I'm a mirror into your past. I am everything you've worked so hard to leave behind. Every drink I take, you feel just a little knife in your side that you can't quit. Because it fucking hurts.

But because where you see weakness, I see opportunity. Opportunity to harness my fucking anger towards my family, my upbringing, and my vices, and turn them into strengths. You turn them into sob stories. You take the moral high ground, I take titles.

Tony doesn't lose his gaze into the camera, rain pouring over his body. His flimsy hoodie is barely even a t-shirt at this point, and his jeans will take days to dry. Tony looks into that camera harder than his father ever looked into his own eyes, and deeper than he ever looked into the eyes of the woman he loved. Tony Santos loved himself, and the work he did, more than the people who brought him here. But if there was one thing Tony Santos loved more than that... it was gold.

Santos: Ned Kaye, on Wednesday night, you'll face off with the man who personifies everything you've left behind. Everything you've overcome. But everything you've never truly bettered.

On Wednesday night, you'll face every insecurity and weakness you've encountered. You'll face the man who's better than you, plain and simple. Each and every title you've failed to win, and every accomplishment you've come just so short of achieving.

Ned Kaye, on Wednesday night, just think of me as the man who holds your heart in your hands. Your... Hart... champion, who will utterly rip yours out and leave the hollow shell that is your manhood in its wake.

The scene fades to black.

September 2013 and May 2019 Star of the Month
1x Hart Champion
1x Television Champion
1x Xtreme Champion