“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
-Aldous Huxley

A Brave New B.O.B

2027, the year of our lord... B.O.B.

With a long sigh through my nostrils, I anxiously comb my way through the crabbed backstage area of the former Staples Center. It’s only so dark that you can see a straight line to follow through the halls, and read the propaganda signage if you move close enough. The walls are crusted with black, wintery steel, it collapses on, and squashes me while doing nothing. There’s a stench of burning plastic and garbage that makes my skin rise.

“Goddamnit! Work you stupid thing!” I plead with Betsy’s stone, smacking it in my palm. It’s as lifeless and dark as these hallways. I’m still wrestling with this entire scenario. It’s 2027, and I’m from the year 2021. I’ve traveled here via some fantastical psychedelic slip through this stone and a broom closet.

In this future, all is bleak and without life though people are dragging around everywhere. Just in a straight line to an ignorant death in a furnace. The parody is that there is no parody. Everyone looks identical and trance-like. All of the men resembling Big Money Oswald, and all of the women resembling Jenny Myst. They chant weird propaganda phrases in their unintelligible language. Their synchronicity moving up and down the halls is unnerving. I do my best to follow along, but my normal-looking haircut leaves me sticking out like a sore thumb.

As I march in between these men I feel nothing but abjection. We’re all slaves to a master. Mindless and welcoming of our sordid fate. How could things have gotten this bad? What happened between April, 7th 2021, and MayDay 2021 that swung the course of history into such a hellish nightmare? Had the event, or events already transpired before I was sucked into that broom closet? I thought about the present... well where I was presentley from, or whatever that’s considered to be now.

I thought about my upcoming tag team contest with Demos, the man who saved my life. I thought about Demos’ upcoming Universal Title match with B.O.B’s own, Chronic Chris Page. Demos was a man in the trenches of war. A fight within his spirit to free himself from the chains of Charlie Nickles. I always thought that particular war of liberation was an ongoing struggle within the demos of my age. But looking around to see this cesspool of craven submission, only six years removed, it’s become clear to me that we men and women will never learn from history.

I break line with this aimless march around the Staples Center as an obscure, trafficless hallway becomes a passing view. This hallway is even darker, even colder, the walls even more jagged and narrow. The future Steve Sayors told me that I could find the future Vinnie Lane in the ‘bowles’ of this building, and that’s exactly what this hallway resembled. A cruel and certain ending. Where history enters to be undone and turned into something awful.

After some time of inching my way through the dark, the hall opens up into an ending.


A large and empty room, beaten with shadows from the conflicting ceiling lights opens up. The walls wrap around into a horseshoe and are meticulously covered with flamboyant b.w.o murals and evenly spaced placards. I reach through the darkness and step into the room, to my left I immediately notice a large, celebratory painting of King Doc being murdered at MayDay. The painting is covering something that the wall wore in the past. A new beginning to history claimed by the wicked.

I continue into the room ahead to where the walls meet at the middle of the horseshoe. The bend is still blanketed by shadows, but there’s something hidden. A shameful, accepted and forgotten lie. A monolith to power and control. The shadows fade and I fall to my knees. Even Valhalla has fallen to B.O.B.

THE BWO TOP 50 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. .........

”This can’t be…” my chest becomes heavy, the moment is real. The days of future won from a manipulation of the past, now belonged to B.O.B. I racked at my mind, grimacing in a terrible shroud of confusion. Again I wonder, how could this have happened? Why? Demos and I were on the precipice of taking down Them No Good Bastards, and both of us were to challenge Chris Page for the Universal Title.

I squeeze the mystical stone in frustration, it’s become nothing more than a common pebble. I need to get back to my time and fix whatever went wrong. “Betsy!” I yell into the stone, “Get me the hell out of here!” I have no place in this future, and the future has no place in this present. But only my heartbeats. The stone, the way back home, remains dead. This world has done as it was built to do, it has squashed hope.

I sling the rock into the corner of the room. It skips across the ground and becomes lost in the darkness. I look again at the great lie before me. This is what I’m sentenced to, tackling this gruesome beast alone.

I thought of my father’s eulogy… the man who wanders alone in the wilderness to build a home for those in need.

For those who won’t even recognize it being built...

For those who don’t even realize they need it…

...it was a symbol of building through sacrifice, a place to house the hope of the future.

It’s now my journey. But I wasn't alone.

“Find truth only in ourselves we do not, young Edgar. Yes, hrrmmm.”

He crept from the shadows of a tainted history, old and swollen now. Looking worse for the wear. His knees bowing, back slouched, and bearded. From under his brown tattered robes, he was hard to recognize but his voice was unmistakable...

”Vinnie?”

His blue eyes flicker from inside of his hood as he pulls it back, revealing an old man, his hair chopped and matted. Leaning on staff he brings the stone to his face. It becomes translucent as a six-pointed star swirls into focus from inside of the stone.

”Finally… the balance.”

The Hermit

Within the past, the present, and future he trudges with the burden of truth. A lantern of wisdom and a staff of authority, The Hermit builds upon his mountain. While those around him surrender to self, and to fear, The Hermit holds the truth. But his mountain, his crowing accomplishment has been fractured, the truth weaponized, his wisdom voiceless, his authority usurped.

”It was foretold that you would be here.” he says pulling his eyes away from the juxtaposing majesty of the stone, to look me up and down, ”Though a great misery I watched you suffer. Here you are, flesh and bones. Tell me young, Edgar. What’s it like to travel through time?” I’m first hit with a natural jerk of incredulity, but then I consider his truth, ” It’s like facing the embodiment of human failure.”, ”Ah! But the failure of the past is the great teacher of time.” His truth is universal. I nod as he continues, ”We will use our failures to restore the balance.”

Hermit Vinnie hobbles towards me on his staff, a cooky and eccentric smile breaking away the dirt from his face. “Betsy was right…SHE WAS RIGHT! WOOO HOOO!” he bursts out with an echoing holler of joy, jumping in the air and clicking his heels, as awkward as it is to watch I can’t help but smile. In spite of great failure, hope was alive. Hermit Vinnie told me more about the great Purge. He said that everyone from the XWF was gone. Slaughtered by The Big Brotherhood. He was forced to watch his own wife Roxy be decapitated in the guillotines alongside Kenzi Grey and Sarah Lacklan. The only person who was spared was Robert Main, who Vinnie says is kept locked away in a cage, forced to job to B.O.B members on television every week. But still I wanted to understand…

” What could have prevented this? What happened in the past the paved the way for this future?”

”Many things.” he said without hesitation, ”But it was always about the balance. Leading up to MayDay the balance of authority began to shift. B.O.B grew strong. Their strength justified through the failures and selfishness of the righteous. People retreating to their islands rather than standing to fight. It started when we lost Demos.”

”What happens to Demos?”

”He let the failure of losing to Chris Page consume him. Rather than learn from the great teacher of time, he used failure as an excuse to hide away forever from the truth.”

After losing his Universal Championship match to Chris Page, Demos committed suicide days before we were to team together on Wednesday Warfare.

”So that’s it! I just go back in time and stop Demos from killing himself and everything goes back to normal.”

”It’s not that simple. You’re stuck here, Edgar. Betsy said confronting B.O.B will be our only option to get you back to the past. But now that we have this…”

He says holding up the stone,

”...I feel fate is smiling upon us today.

Duel Of The Fates

With a graceful command, the sound of Vinnie’s staff echoes into the ears of the OsBob plebs causing them to halt their endless marching, making way for us to pass. Hermit Vinnie has led me up from the bowels of the Staple Center, rising like a phoenix of truth before these brainwashed souls, and into the main arena.

The seats are gone and replaced with television screens. The darkness inside begins to part as Vinnie and I walk down the entrance ramp towards the ring. Over to the right, Barney Green is sprawled on a giant sofa being served beer and chewing tobacco by the world’s most beautiful T-Boys, and ahead of us, in place of a skybox suite, there’s a throne with its back turned, flanked on either side by Atara and Osira Themis who sneer out at our presence.

Behind and above the throne is every crown of every XWF King ever known, only it’s missing one… the throne spins around and shock plunges into my heart. Hermit Vinnie stands unfazed, glaring onto The Big Brotherhood with a brave stoicism.

”What’s wrong, Edgar? Were you expecting someone else?”

It’s Theo Pryce! He laughs out, raising his fist covered by King Doc’s Gauntlet.

”So this is it, Vinnie? THIS is what you were babbling about from the basement all of these years? R.L. fucking Edgar? Some “chosen one” you’ve got there, pal!”

Theo continues laughing, being joined by Atara and Osira this time, ”Oh boys!”, he claps his hands and out walks Thunder Knuckles and Bobby Bourbon from either side of his throne. TK looks normal, in fact, he doesn’t look aged a bit. He’s smiling at me with that sly grin of his, slapping a baseball bat into his hand. Bobby Bourbon is wearing a black afro wig that’s braided into cornrows.

”Talk about a dream booking! Vinnie Lane and some nobody hick, versus B.O.B’s newest attraction, Them No Good Playas! Thunder Knuckles and TRAX!”

Before I can react, Trax has leaped from the balcony down to the outside of the ring, smashing the ground sending rubble flying. He’s unharmed fall. TK jumps down as well in the same fashion as the two men encircle the ring. They move with unearthly speed. TK breaks the bat across my left shoulder, causing me to bow in, but before I can even suck air while gasping, Trax catches me on the other side of my head.

WRONG SIDE OF THE TRAX! HAHA!”

The superkick lifts me out of the ring, sending me
crashing into a pile of rubble. The light in Betsy’s stone that Hermit Vinnie is holding starts to flicker in and out. Hermit it Vinnie looks out at me with concern.

”I told you, Lane. This is the Bob World Order. What’s a Hermit to a King?!”

I pull my face from the broken concrete as I feel TK and Trax’s footsteps approaching me. I thought of Hermit Vinnie’s words, about the fight for truth, about the balance… and I was there again. Not in the black, not in the white, I was in the grey. The middle. The balance. It’s where the truth lies, where a man stays free. I grabbed a chunk of concrete from the ground and raise up just as Trax leans over to grab me, and smash it into his face, only there’s no bloodshed.

Behind the flesh of Trax’s face is metal, and smoke, and arching wires. The ground begins to rumble like a great earthquake. The roof of the Staples Center crumbles inward. The skies above shine of wild lightning and rainbows. From out of the doors next to Theo’s throne comes a slew of TK and Bobby Bourbon robots. They walk directly off of the balcony and fall towards me, I’m being surrounded.

A screeching howl cries out from the skies above as lighting strikes down in the center of the arena.”Edgar!” It’s Betsy Granger flying in with Excellence! ” Grab on!" she shouts as she swoops down with her time machine.

I look to Hermit Vinnie, the chaos swelling on the ground and the very fabric of the space-time continuum tearing apart in the skies.


He smiles at me and grips the stone in his hand, causing it to ignite into a great blue laser sword. Theo scowls from his throne and stands. He raises the gauntlet into the air it charges and ignites with a black glow of energy. The men charge at each other as all of the colors in the world are lost, and the grey swells again. Betsy and I fly headlong into the passage.

”So where to next, Al?”

”You tell me, Sam!”

”I’m going to save Demos’ life!”

”Atta’ boy, Edgar.”

end

I’m not having it, I’m not going through the motions any longer with you people over this match. It’s pretty cut and dry. The only team in this field who stands a chance at speaking truth to the power that is Them No Good Bastards is R.L. Edgar and Demos. We’re the only ones capable of putting an end to B.O.B’s reign of terror over the XWF. That’s while we’ll be winning this match. Because it’s not about us, it’s about making sacrifices now for the future.

If that means walking into Wednesday Warfare and kicking the shit out of a few people who have it coming anyway, then so be it. The Dissentients and Avalanche are one and the same. Clowns with the capacity to be dictated by heartless, spineless leaders such as Ned Kaye and The Baphomet.

Those are the types of people that folks like Cooper, Stone, Lycana, and Marf aspire to, those are the types of people they admire for their skill and maneuvering. Laughable! Do you know what would happen if a team of Baph and Ned were to challenge TNGB? It would be an absolute squash. What on earth do you think is going to happen to their slack-jawed, droll gargling, followers? More of the same.

Lycana and Marf already know what it’s like to take on Demos and myself. It’s happened before. It ended with their stupid decision of picking Barney Green as a tag partner being dropped on its head. This is what we’re talking about folks, doe-eyes bad guys who thought they were getting a game-changer for their defunct stable in Barney Green.

Now Queen Green is back with BOB where he belongs and The Dissentients are left picking up the pieces of all of Baph’s bad decisions that they co-signed like the spineless little bitches that they are. Maybe I wouldn’t be so harsh on them if these two would just accept the truth, ESPECIALLY Lycana. She is a living example of trying to hide away history in her fat fucking mouth, digesting it, and turning around to feed everyone bullshit.

Full-stop, quit acting like you’re better than R.L. Edgar. You’re not, and though you should be, given you’re actually built for combat, and I’m just a regular, boring ol’ guy- you will NEVER put my shoulders down on the mat. You’ve had three opportunities, Wednesday Warfare will be just another one that you squander away. So much for a happy ending after a date with your “favorite plaything”, huh?

People like B.O.B. are evil because they have no choice but to be, that type of shit is just baked into their bones. Avalanche? The Dissientents? They’re evil just for the sake of being evil. For shock and all, just like the disgusting scene of Eobard’s, or The Left Hand’s weekly attention-starved show filler. Keep it up guys, you’re both making Jenny Myst and Chris Chaos real proud! Oh! There’s something! You four should combine forces and have Chris Chaos be your stable leader. As horrible as that sounds, it would still be far better than anything you’ve ever done in your miserable careers.

At Leap Of Faith, it’s going to be R.L. Edgar and Demos fighting to save the XWF from this type of mindless rule. We’re the ones chosen to fight in this war. None of the rest of you are capable of pulling off a feat as great as toppling those villains. You’re nothing but fake, way shittier versions of TNGB. It would be a waste of a PPV match. Do you really think The Dissentients are capable of beating the team who took down Continuum? Stop dreaming. It’ll be a tall order for anyone, but in this field, Edgar and Demos are the ones who will make the common man’s dream a reality.

Former:
1x Hart Champion
1x Federweight Champion
April 2021 RP Of The Month Still Waters Run Deep