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TBS · (11-08-2019)

“Alexa, play James Brown.”

The smooth sounds of James Brown’s “I Feel Good” start to play in my dressing room before I turn the corner and step in. Clearly I like to make an entrance, even when it’s to my own dressing room. I’ve done a lot of big things in my career. I’ve won Universal titles, World titles, I’ve beaten Legends and I’ve become a Legend. But honestly, none of them might have been as goddamned difficult as carrying that forty ton anchor Kris Von Schmuck over the finish line and getting through the first round of this unbelievably frustrating tournament. It was like treading water with a sandbag tied to your feet trying to keep that eggplant above ground tonight. But I did it. And it’s party time. Nothing can ruin my mood tonight.

“Alexa, stop.”

James Raven, who is waiting for me ruins my goddamned fun, as usual. He hasn’t killed my buzz this bad since XX.

Quote:Suicide Kings and Flatline Crew entrances.

DING!

DING!

DING!

For some reason, that dude just hates my entrances.

“Still want me dead?” He asks me through a sly smile.

“Alexa, play ‘We Are The Champions’ Depends, are you gonna kill my buzz again?”

The smooth audible tones of Freddie Mercury fill the room as I break out every single dance move I know from Fortnight. I do the Toothbrush, the Purple Vindication, I even break out The Promotion. I swear, if I had an eleven year old son who constantly mocked me for this kind of thing he would totally be in awe of my awesome dance moves. I promise.

I’d say that James looks to already be losing his patience with me, but let’s be honest, bullshit like this is very plainly laid out in the fine print of our friendship agreement. You can’t be in a room with either one of us without consenting to putting up with this sort of nonsense. Beyond anything else, that is what James and I have in common. When we’re in a good mood we’re two of the most fun, goofiest, self-deprecating, irreverent dudes you’ll ever meet. When we’re not in a good mood – well, I’ve seen James threaten to rip off someone’s leg and beat them with it and he’s seen me try to rip off someone’s leg and beat them with it. We’re bipolar motherfuckers, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Alexa, mute.”

“Alexa, kill him!” Nevermind, he’s annoying and I hate him. He breaks the stoic hard-ass character he’s trying to be with a smile.

“That’s more like it, Shank. Congrats man, seriously, nice win.”

“No thanks to…”

“Yeah yeah, big brother trying to fuck you, rigged game, I got it. You spent too much time with Chad and Rigg, man. Nobody here is trying to fuck you with favoritism, or whatever the hell they call it.” James cuts me off, cheeky bastard.

“Let’s make one thing perfectly clear here, you are not doing that shit to me again. Two weeks from now I get a real tag team partner or it’s going to be fuck ‘Scream,’ no more nineties cheesy horror flick shit for you, I’ll be taking my inspiration from the Jigsaw movies.”

“The drawing hasn’t taken place yet, and I’m not here to argue that shit with you as your boss anyway. I’m here as your friend to congratulate you and to give you a gift.” He points across the room, behind me, and I turn to find two packages sitting on the table. One is a very large box with gold wrapping paper and a bright bow. The other is a manila envelope with a slight bulge at the bottom of it. “Wanna play a game?”

Kids, if I’ve learned one thing in my life, it is to never get into a pop culture reference war with James Raven. You won’t win. He’s too well versed, you can’t get anything past him. I’m convinced the fucker never missed a Conan O’Brien episode in his life. Prick probably listens to his podcast on normal speed like a monster. I digress.

“Big one, I choose the big one!” Instantly I become a kid on Christmas morning going against every lesson I’ve ever learned from TV Game Shows. Maybe I should have watched more Conan, not like Bob Barker ever did shit for me.

“Excellent, great pick.” Raven walks across the room and tosses me the large gift. I catch it, because I’m a freak athlete, and immediately realize it’s significantly lighter than I thought it would be. Another rookie mistake on my part, always feel the package before choosing unless the rules specifically prohibit you from doing so. Unless you’re in a strip club, then always feel the package especially when the rules prohibit you from doing so. If there’s going to be a dick down there you absolutely want to know about it before you go to the champagne room, trust me. I digress, again.

I rip open the box and lying at the bottom of it, to my surprise, I find a brand new ‘Suicide King’ t-shirt.

“Does this mean what I think it means?” I don’t know how he did it, but it seems like Raven has made sure he and I are tagging together in the next round. This ultimately will make things pretty weird in the finals, but I guess when you have enough stroke in the company you get to do what you want.

“It absolutely does. Are you okay with it?”

“You’re goddamned right I am.”

“Awesome. Then it’s official. Go ahead and give that shirt to your new best friend, Kris Von Bonn, and he’ll be the newest member of the Suicide Kings.”

I want to be angry. I want to be disappointed. I want to tell Raven, my friend and boss, to go fuck himself with a wooden spoon. I start to wonder if I can use the shirt to hang Raven with and make it look like a suicide, but the semantics of that are a bit above my mental capacity right now – I did just have a tag team match after all. I want to do a lot of things, unfortunately I don’t get a chance.

“Hello darkness, my old friend…”

Without being prompted, the Alexa starts to play ‘The Sound of Silence.’

“I knew those things always listened, pretty impressive they can read minds now though. Nicely done, Bezos. Also, James, die in a grease fire.”

“It even picked the emo Disturbed version for you Shank, maybe I should put the Alexa in the Suicide Kings too.”

“Fuck you, James.” I grab my bag and start to walk out of the room.

As I walk past him he tosses me the envelope, again like a child in the middle of the eight days of Hanukkah I forget how badly I have it right now and rip open my present. Fuck centuries of Antisemitism and persecution, Jews get EIGHT Christmas mornings.

“Vegas?”

“Vegas.”

In the bottom of this envelope is a key to my favorite penthouse suite in the entire city of Las Vegas. A beautiful seven room suite in the middle of the Aria City Center overlooking the entire strip – just minutes away from the biggest poker games at Bellagio but much closer to the better bars. I know this roller coaster ride is getting confusing, but in this moment I’m a big James Raven fan again.

“We taking the jet?”

“You’re half right, I’m taking the jet. But I can’t get there for a week. You can either go home to Pittsburgh, and I’ll pick you up next weekend, or your car is gassed up in the garage downstairs. You can leave right now and get started in Vegas without me.”

“Bye, bitch. See ya in Vegas. Alexa, play ‘Viva Las Vegas’.” The King plays my exit, like only he can. Thankfully Raven doesn’t write those, so he can’t ruin this shit for me. I hold my fist out for a fist bump and childishly pull it away as Raven goes to meet my fist with his. Some things never change. He smirks as I walk out of the room holding my bag. And yes, I know he’s smirking because he knows I’m hilarious – what other reason could there possibly be?

--

“Now you’re all in big big trouble.” What? Don’t like Adam Sandler quotes? Fine, how’s this?

“Stay off my lawn!” No? Fine, one more.

“You come at the King, you best not miss.” And you motherfuckers just missed me.

You had your chance, I had two perfectly competent opponents and a perfectly incompetent tag team partner. The Lethal Lottery was yours for the taking. This was going to be the shortest comeback in history – even shorter than that one time Hillary was going to run for President in 2020. Wait, that might still happen? Fuck.

Okay, so everything isn’t perfect. But as far as the Lethal Lottery goes, everything is shaping up quite nicely for me, for once. Unfortunately, for everybody else, things ain’t going that great.

They’re definitely not great for you, Kris. You’re welcome, by the way, you can now say you’ve won a match in the XWF. Your name will now ring out amongst other lovable losers in XWF history like Barney Green, Chasm, Peter Gilmour, Honkey Lighthouse. Sometimes the XWF is like a broken clock, it’s right twice a day. Or twice in a career. That’s one for you, Kris. But you ain’t getting number two this time around. You did your part for me last week, you did not completely suck, and I appreciate that. But this time around, I won’t be there to carry you, and there’s no chance in hell you’re getting through me without me. Wait, does that even make sense?

How’s this one: Sometimes you’re the hammer and this time you’re the goddamned nail. In Vegas baby, you’re gonna be the nail. And I’m gonna be the one swinging.

Of course, maybe I’m wrong, maybe your partner will be able to carry you once again. Maybe your partner will be every bit as good as I am and will make you look every bit as good as I did. Maybe your partner will even be able to teach me a thing or two.

Stop laughing everybody. Please. Come on, it’s hard to do this shit with a straight face if you don’t stop laughing.

Fine, sorry Kris, your partner is Peter Gilmour and in case you haven’t figured this out just yet – Peter Gilmour ain’t no Big Shank.

They say if you don’t honor history then history will repeat itself. Peter, do you even remember our history? Let’s put aside, for now, the shit you’ve been up to lately. You and ‘He who I’ve decided I’m not going to acknowledge anymore’ have pulled some shit. Some might argue that you are the perfect second round opponent for me because you might be a big part of the reason I showed up again. Some might say that if they were telling this story in an R-rated movie, me metaphorically fucking you might push this script towards an NC-17 rating and a box office bust. Think about that, we’re living in a world where ‘Deadpool’ and ‘50 Shades of Gray’ got R ratings and what I’m planning on doing to you isn’t going to make the cut. I would NOT want to be you. Then again, who the fuck does wanna be you? I’m pretty sure if you could trade places with a slug the slug would veto that shit.

But I’ve gotten off topic. I’m not dead set on making this about what you’ve been up to lately. I want to focus on history. Years ago I left and you stayed, and you should be commended for that. You stayed and put up numbers and won titles and talked about how hard your dick gets when dudes talk to you. (Alexa, order some Blue Chew for Peter Gilmour.) And you’ve, well that’s about it. But nonetheless, you do get credit for staying when I didn’t. You were loyal to the XWF and I was loyal to me. Credit to you.

Now thank me. Because you’re fucking welcome.

Because when I left this place you couldn’t beat me if your goddamned life depended on it. Ten years ago I looked around and all I saw was people like you, people that couldn’t beat me – fuck, couldn’t even challenge me. And I left. Maybe if you would have been better back then, then our histories would be different. Maybe if you could have made me sweat I might have found some interest and found a reason to stick around. And if I stuck around, one thing is one hundred percent undeniably true, you would not have the resume you have today. We fought ten years ago and I beat you so badly your mother says you still have those boo-boos. You got where you got in this company because I wasn’t here to stop you.

Yes, that’s on me.

But now, I’m here again, and you will get no further.

Because ten years ago I may have gotten tired of beating your ass, but I’m fucking rested now and I’m ready to beat your ass like you stole something.

And don’t get it twisted, I’m not speaking metaphorically here. Not at all. You LITERALLY DID help steal something and I am LITERALLY going to put you over my knee and beat you until you cry for help. Take it from me, Kris is LITERALLY incapable of helping you out and in this world the boss doesn’t stick his neck out to help the henchmen – so I wouldn’t count on getting help from your boss either. Nobody can help you Peter. Fuck Von Bonn, I’m gonna hammer both of you

nails.

Because your best bet was that I might get paired up with someone I couldn’t carry. And that isn’t the case this time around. This time my name came up with a perfectly competent tag team partner. Vita, I’m going to give you the same warning I gave Hammer last week. And by the way, I kept my word. This week, nothing is more important to me than your success. But ultimately there is going to be one winner in this thing, it can’t be both of us. This week, you got me watching your back. But as soon as we put down Sweet Pete and Von Douchebag, there’s a non-zero chance you and I are going to have to go at it. Eventually, and I’m not proud of this, eventually I’m going to have to spank you like the obvious daddy issues you’re carrying around merit. Sorry in advance. Even if you like it.

But that’s an issue for another day. This week is not about putting you down. This week is about pulling you up! This week I get to help Vita Valenteen put on a strap on and fuck Peter Gilmour and Kris Von Bon-Bon in ways that could only be described as pornographic and sadistic. By the way, gentlemen, this is the part where you get to guess: Am I speaking metaphorically now? I guess we’ll find out in Vegas.

I’ll be there.

And this time, Hammer gets to find out what life is like when The Big Shank isn’t in his corner and the XWF Universe gets a reminder of where Peter Gilmour stands in a pecking order than includes The Big Shank. Spoiler alert, this doesn’t end well for either of you.

--

Walking through the Ballroom of Timberline Lodge I can hear the next announcements of the Lethal Lottery being made, but honestly, tonight I don’t give a shit. Tonight I am going to drive to Vegas and enjoy myself. No more bullshit partners. No more bullshit stipulations. No more bullshit. Just me, my latest XWF paycheck (missed those, by the way) and the city that loves me. Fuck everything else.

Except…there’s just one small thing I can’t shake. It’s a fifteen hour drive to Vegas from here, why was I willing to accept that my only two options were the private XWF jet and my car? Did I travel back in time to 2001 when commercial airlines weren’t leaving every city in the country every thirty seconds? Oh well, maybe a fifteen hour drive is just what I need to clear these random musings out of my head. Maybe it’ll be good for me. James usually has my best interest in mind. I think that while I walk into the garage under the building and find my car. And then, as it often does, reality smacks me in the face.

And playing the part of reality is none other than Vita Freaking Valenteen, sitting in my front seat waving at me.

“I’m going to fucking murder James Raven.”

And depending on the next fifteen hours, even that might not make me feel better…

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