Robbie Bourbon defends his Tag Team Titles alongside the mysterious, possibly non-existent Arby Beef at the next Warfare.

WHY FIGHT IT?

We open backstage following the latest Savage Saturday Night. The road crew is busy at work, packing up the whole show and getting ready to take to the road for another night of slam-packed wrestling action. Crewmen continue to wrap up cables, and the ring crew is rapidly deconstructing the ring, which is skeletal now without a canvas, mat, or ropes, just a steel frame in the middle of an otherwise empty arena. The massive XWF Savage Saturday Night entrance ramp and stage is gone, and a truck is backed into the arena in it's place where all the crew continues to put the pieces of SSN away.

We see a figure walk into view from out of nowhere. Robbie Bourbon, bandaged and bruised from his recent fracas in the cage with Bearded War Pig, makes his way down to where the men are working. Most of them pay him no mind at all, some occasionally turning to say hello.

"This is why I do this, isn't it?" Robbie touches his bruised face, winces, then smiles. "Maybe I'm just a masochist, maybe I kind of like the punishment and the abuse, but then again, it isn't like I'm sitting in some pit somewhere, jamming glass in my eyes and setting myself on fire. These guys, all earning a paycheck, feeding their families, barely getting the chance to go home and see their kids, this is why I do it. The people need it, and the people deserve it." Robbie says something which is barely audible, and the road crew shrugs and disperses. Robbie starts to work on taking apart the ring itself, doing their work for them. "Now I'm the goddamn President, too. Representing the whole free world. Those guys can go enjoy a night off. Call their wives, tell their kids good night, or hell, just sit around and smoke crack and drink bleach if that's what they do. It's a free country, and their freedom, their will, shit, it's my burden now. It always has been my choice to make it my burden."

"This is the story of talent, of power, of magnitude, and the responsibility that comes with it, isn't it?" Robbie starts to take the ropes and turnbuckles and fold them to carry them more easily. "I didn't ask to be born the way I am, bulletproof. Is it my fault that those guys can get shot, that black kids in the streets have to fear being shot, that cops get shot, that soldiers get shot? Is it my fault when someone pulls the trigger? I dunno. I don't know what causes that. I just know that if I duck away, hide, and refuse to do something about it, I'm not embracing life and my world. I'm not living." Robbie tosses all three sets of ropes over his shoulder and begins to march them towards the truck. "I can't believe how heavy these damn things are. Shit, how much have I bled between you fucking things, anyhow?" He hauls them up a ramp and into the truck. A moment later Robbie is out of the truck, walking down the ramp, and towards the deconstructed ring in the emptiness of the dimly lit arena, the ghost of the happenings of Savage Saturday Night.

"This is the story of fame, of glory, of having a voice and a means to broadcast it, and the responsibility that comes with it, maybe?" Robbie grabs a wrench and begins the task of loosening the bolts supporting the crossbeams of the ring. "I know I'm opinionated, and have a thing or two to say about a thing or two. When I walked into the XWF it was a racist, sexist, murderous, and vile hellhole. Nowadays, it is a massively less racist, albeit strangely still sexist, a touch less murderous but far more rapey vile hellhole. There's no changing that I'm here in the dregs, a place where there is no sun, there is no joy, there is no hope shining like a beacon to call for us somewhere better. The XWF is as good as it gets. The thing is, as silly as I may be, all the whimsical fuckery I love the do in my promos, the fact that someone can walk through what they've walked through here, having the humility to know that as long as they keep walking and talking someone will be fed, someone will be contented, that as long as I can keep taking all the smashes, bashes, piranha, stabbings, stabbings, I've been stabbed a lot it feels like, so fuck being bulletproof, but as long as I keep coming out here, making the people happy, being joyful, mocking the very fruitlessness and, oh, what's the word, I guess pointlessness of misery. Of accepting defeat. Of looking at the world and seeing nothing worth fixing, worth saving, or worth correcting, because if you see that all around you, you see that in yourself. Fuck that. I have a duty to the fans, to the boys in the back, to the American people, and to the world itself to sound the way I do, every day I do, because I am that beacon of light, the sound of hope, in the XWF. Not pious, not self-righteous, not corrective of anybody else, simply showing that someone else's nasty demeanor doesn't have to be mine. Well, that and my nasty demeanor is nastier than many others in the XWF. It isn't like I've been going down to the ring to wrestle technical clinics so much as try to smash the hell out of them with my bare hands and shorten their careers by a couple years from severe spinal trauma. Heh." Robbie notices the bolts he's trying to work on are actually welded within those five seconds. He walks over to the middle of the ring. His bruises and cuts seem to have healed quite a bit since we first saw.

"Could be this is the story of determination, of willpower, of staying steadfast in your path when everything is pushing you off your trail, if not pushing directly against you." Robbie puts the wrench to the bolts in the middle of the ring, and starts turning. "I've done a lot of wild shit around here, and a lot of folks think I'm just going off in random directions sometimes. Hell, some idiots on Twitter want to call me a panderer, a whore, a clown walking around just trying to please everybody. Well, shit, that's the name of the game of life right there, to build yourself, to become what you need to be, to grow into what the situation calls for. I have never betrayed myself, because I have never betrayed the people. I was right when I came here and called everybody assholes. Most of us are, even myself at times, big fucking deal. I was right when I didn't give up and forfeit my first opportunity at the Intercontinental Championship, even though I was doomed going into the match. I was right when I teamed up with Trax, when I teamed up with TJ, and when I joined the Black Hand, because it was the best way for me to bring the fans something they had never seen before." Robbie realizes these bolts are welded as well within three seconds. "Jesus, how are all of these welded? I don't know how to take this thing apart, is there a booklet or manual somewhere?" Robbie glances around under the steel skeleton of a wrestling ring. His wounds and bruises have completely healed in some miraculous sense. He picks up the entire structure of the ring, posts, supports, and all, and actually presses it over his head. "Easy, easy does it, don't fall apart on me here." Robbie carries the ring to the truck and notices it is definitely not going to fit in the trailer in the state it is. "This is definitely not going to fit in the trailer in the state it is." Robbie grunts, his face turns beet red, and the veins in his neck bulge as he strains and hoists the whole damn thing to the top of the trailer. Once it's atop the trailer, he takes a deep breath, hops down from the ramp into the trailer he was standing on, and grabs a roll of duct tape.

"The thing is, all of this shit, this is the story of me." Robbie starts to climb on top of the trailer, peeling back the tape and attaching it to the ring as it straddles the sides of the truck. "This is the story of Robbie Motherfucking Bourbon. That's the diggity, right there. I've done this shit, I'm not done doing this shit, and I don't know I'll ever be finished. Seems like everybody who's come to take a crack at me has had something to say about my methods, about what I choose to do, about what I am and who I am. I'm still here. Nothing has routed me, nothing has redirected me, and nothing will. I'm smarter, I know more, but I'm still the same guy I was when I first got here. I think differently from most." Robbie repels from the top of the truck with the roll of duct tape in hand, laying a strand of it against the side of the trailer. "I think outside the box, I see things a way that nobody else can." Robbie ducks and crawls under the trailer with the roll of tape, and once on the other side, he unfurls a long strand of it and tosses the roll on the roof. He then walks to the back of the trailer and climbs to the top of it, grabbing the roll. "I do me because nobody else is going to, because nobody else can, because nobody else will. And that's shitty for them, I guess. Every time I go out into that ring, whether I'm facing death, or torture, or even some wacky shit that Frodo comes up with like feces laced with that weird chemical that lets you absorb something by your skin, what was that? The Dead Kennedys did a song about it. Anyway, every time I go out there, and feel the energy that those people give me. The fans, obviously, but the ring crew, the timekeeper, the announcers, the ring announcer, and even my opponent, contributing to the thrumming that rattles my soul, contributing to my every breath, beating in tune with my heart as my pulse becomes the direct result of everything happening around me." Robbie connects the tape to the beginning, and tears it off. "There, I think that's good. Besides, that killed the roll."

A member of the road crew reappears, and stops dead, looking shocked at the sight of the ring crudely duct taped to the roof of a tractor-trailer. He turns and hollers something unintelligible, and the rest of the crew comes running back. They all point at Robbie, and seem to be yelling at him. Robbie looks back, wide eyed. "Look, you guys wanted time off, I gave you that, I have no clue what the fuck I'm doing with this shit." Robbie's thoughts don't seem to match the movements of his mouth, as we can barely make out the fact he's apologizing to each of the men. Robbie hops down off the top of the tractor, rolling with the fall and getting to his feet in front of the guys. He puts his hands up and a group of Secret Service agents enter the arena. Robbie points at them, and they start to work with the rest of the road crew in getting the ring off the top of the XWF trailer.

"Bringing people together, no matter what I do. If I never found those belts, do you think D'Ville or Soldier would give two shits about the tag team championship? Nope. They got off their ass when they heard Robbie Bourbon got the titles. Maybe they were too arrogant and thought I couldn't be a champ because I wasn't more like them, maybe they were annoyed and thought I cheated my way into having them, but no matter what their thoughts were, they just knew they had to have a piece of me." Robbie starts to walk out of the empty arena, leaving the road crew and the Secret Service to clean up the mess he made. "Like they would've gone after a vacated title, heh, not on your life they wouldn't. Most likely because it's the kind of thing I'd do, and only I do what I do."

The audio goes normal as we leave the thought space of Robbie Bourbon.

Great work, guys, I'll order you all some pizza for the extra effort, and an extra seven grand for each of you come next Tuesday.