London. 4:51 PM Local time. Wednesday.
Outside of a building that looks like it could be an arena in it's own right stands an older, slightly dishevelled gentleman. He looks at what appears to be a Rolex watch and scans the parking lot one more time.
“Hey who the fuck are you guys? You guys that camera crew? You from that company?”
The camera shakes up and down, so the man straightens his tie and does up a button on his jacket to look a little less like he just walked out of a hurricane.
“Then by all means allow me to introduce myself. I'm Bob Mitchell, the manager and professional adviser of one Blade Alexander. He'd tell you all this himself, but he seems to be late. This is what happens kids, when you don't have someone to manage you.”
Just then a glass door to the right shoves open and out walks the man of the hour, Blade Alexander.
Bob: “Well where the fuck have you been?”
Blade: “Inside, in your office, you know... Like we agreed.”
Bob: “Agreed? What the Fuck?”
Blade: “In your office, I came from the gym.”
Bob looks at his phone to find a notification that reads 'Where are you??' then looks at Blade who's still dressed in his gym clothes.
Bob: “Fine. Whatever. At least your keeping focused. Let's get inside it's shitty out here.”
And it is. It's London. It's hazy, it's grey, it sucks. And the wind is picking up. The group head back towards the door Blade came out of with Blade leading the way until Bob jumps ahead to hold the door. He only holds it for Blade though, and the cameraman must be quick to juggle the camera and catch the door before it cracks the lens.
The group continues down a short hallway until the reach the third door on the right, another glass door, this one emblazoned with Bob Mitchell Management on it. They all go through into a rather tiny space, where the cameraman is forced to stay in the doorway so there's enough space for everyone to remain comfortable in the office.
Bob: “Last week was a good start. A good reintroduction, let everyone remember who Blade Alexander is and why they've all been sleeping on you.”
Blade: “Doesn't hurt having a tag team partner that's capable of handling them self.”
Bob: “No, never hurts... Just makes your return all that more dangerous to everyone else who might get in the way. You back, not just for some little tournament, you're back to claim what's yours.”
Blade doesn't respond verbally, just sort of lets out a grunt and a nod as he slips into one of the two big green chairs in front of Bob's desk.
Bob: “Nice touch by the way with all that goth bullshit. I had a hell of a chuckle watching that shit, like how long can he keep that up. Pretty little intro there. You've been gone for years, like that time the big guy with the face paint disappeared and when he came back people thought it was a different guy. Like you've been gone, so who's coming back? Is it the same Blade that was here before? Not by a long shot. That Blade that was in SCW before was a younger, chip in his shoulder, emotional wreck. Don't get me wrong, you had the right idea but you let all those pathetic puppets run around and play their games. This time around no games.”
Blade: “Before it wasn't as much chip on my shoulder as I was bitter. More bitter than driven.”
Bob: “That's why you drifted further and further away. Till I found you. A cast aside diamond with a chip that I turned into a razor's edge that was sharpened by the finest competition this business has ever seen, and now we're bringing that edge back to SCW to cut loose the dead weight and forged it into something better than it's ever been capable of before.”
“And how appropriate that it's in the Blast from the Past tournament. You've come so far from SCW's past I sit and watch these attempts at promos these other SCW whatever-they're-called try to cut and they don't even seem to have any idea who you really are. They have no idea that you were the original Dark Horse of SCW. They have no idea that you championed the idea of professional wrestling in a company so in love with it's own image that it drove you out. They have no idea that SCW was all about putting those who ran it above those who worked in it, that it was so in love with itself that tuning into SCW every week was more like watching a real-life Tumblr blog that you could watch for months before you knew that the W in SCW was supposed to stand for Wrestling. The people that worked for it were more likely to put their own personal dramas, a weekly who's fucking who, on display rather than talk about their upcoming matches or opponents.”
Blade: “And that brings us to one Ms. Brittany Williams.”
Bob: “The SCW princess. The little girl who talks so much about what her father and her mother and her aunt and her step mother have done so much because she's not really done anything to set herself out of their legacy. She talks so much about what she's going to do, but when the time comes she just sits there and does nothing.”
Blade: “The princess who actually wears a crown and carries a sceptre and makes herself a character. She boasts about her families wrestling legacy when he family has never been anything but an embarrassment to the business. She's learned every lesson her family has had to teach extremely well. Drugs and personal identity issues are what she excels at. In the ring she's mediocrity at it's finest. But outside the ring she flip flops from week to week between drug addict to sexual identity issues to a wanna be actress, or is it musician? She claims to be focused on business but she's immediately betrayed by how much she brags about how good her family was and at the same time how awful they were. She in the same breath claims how great her mother was while saying the only thing she learned from her was dug problems.”
Bob: “And what else would you expect from a kid? What she wants in life changes by the minute. She wants kids and to settle down with her little wifey and have twins with stupid names, and you ask me how I know all this? It's a small world princess, and people love to talk. Even the people closest to you. As hard as you want to fight for your little family's legacy, you know it's all a fucking joke. It's a lie you built on a house of cards to make it seem like you belong or fit in. You belong on the Young and the Restless. You fit in on General Hospital... Am I dating myself with these references?”
Blade: “Someone has to.”
Bob screws up his face in a way that says that the joke landed even if it wasn't completely appreciated.
Blade: “But you're not wrong. She's a relic from the past. She's proven time and time again in her short career that when the tough times comes, she goes. She talks about a match that she's still stuck on, even though she claims to be looking forward, that she lost. Might have been a double pin, but you have to beat a champion to be a champion in this business, unlike the short cuts her family taught her all about. The fact that my partner walked out still the champion says everything. Winners find a way to win. Losers like Brittany Williams complain about short notice, injuries, being cheated and everything else they can, and when they come back after they've run away from adversity they claim they've been screwed. No one's screwing you but your girlfriend, Brit. But this time next week after you and your partner find yourselves out of the tournament, you'll find another excuse. Another way it's somehow not your fault.”
Bob: “Funny that the little girl cut such a long promo detailing how many excuses she had for losing against your partner, then accused her of doing just that. She accused Ms. Lukas, who currently carries the SCW Bombshells World Championship where ever she goes, of having no accomplishments to her name. A two-time, reigning, defending champion. Little girl it's time for some serious life re-evaluation after Ms. Lukas forcibly removes those rose coloured glasses you've been wearing."
Blade: “I think it's Mrs. Lukas actually. She's a married woman. You know, respectable, dependable. The kind you can count on as a partner. Unlike other people in this tournament. But let's cover Kale Smith.”
Bob: “Kale Smith, SCW's resident McDreamy. Or is it McSteamy? I'm never sure which is which.”
Blade: “Given the way every woman and some of the guys in SCW swoon over him, probably McSteamy. Good guy from all accounts. Was in SCW before but drifted a bit until he found himself out of a job and in a gym. Now he's back, and what's really different? So he's a capable athlete and a great guy to get a beer with, but that doesn't make him SCW Championship material.”
Bob: “It makes him a tremendous force with big up-side potential. It makes him ones of those guys who has the look even if he doesn't have all the tools. It makes him the type of guy that people in business drool over because he's the kind of guy that young people drool over. You put his face on a billboard and people look at it and want to see more. You put that body in the ring and people want to see it. The good news for this guy is, they want to see it no matter what. People just want to love Kale so when it's all over on Monday and he and his partner are out of this tournament, people will still look at him.”
Blade: “He struggles with the idea of belonging. In a company that's had the same old cross-dresser sing the same old tired songs about cross-dressing for the better part of a decade, a guy who looks like he belongs in a comic book movie wonders if he belongs here. This is SCW, and for now, there's no better place you could be. This company has a long history of people who look like male models prancing around the ring in a bit of pretend graps because SCW has a long standing history of being about looks and character and not at all needing to be any good inside of a ring. That's what I was here to do. People in charge loved to make it painfully obvious time and time again that I served no purpose in SCW beyond making these people that had no business being in the business look a lot better than they really were. Not this time. This time a right a long standing wrong and take everything back from this company that it ever wanted me to give up. I don't have the time or desire to waste my career putting over surfer pretty boys who look good on a poster. It's going to take a LOT more than being a big guy and a decent athlete to beat me. I'm decades in the ring build on wrestling heritage, but unlike Brittany Williams I don't need to go on a long rant out of the side of my mouth talking about what my family has or hasn't done, this is only about what I'm going to do this Monday.”
“Relax Kale, let me be the first to tell you that you belong in SCW, and you have the potential to one day be great. But this isn't that day. This is the day you get into the ring with someone who isn't concerned with what you can do in other sports. This is the day you get into the ring with someone who isn't intimidated by what you can do in a bar fight. This is the day you get into the ring with someone who doesn't give a shit about how nice a guy you are or what shitty bands you know, or anything about your stupid friends. This is the day that's a rare treat for you. It's when you get in the ring with someone smaller, but much more experienced than you. Someone who isn't intimidated or impressed by you. Someone who isn't overlooking or dismissing you. You're stepping into the ring with someone with the ability to teach you and everyone else a lesson in wrestling humility. Someone far more skilled than you in this field of battle who's going to teach you something about the k killer instinct you're going to develop if you want to succeed.”
Bob: “That's the real difference this week. There's been so much chatter about how even this match up is. About these two eager youngsters desperate to prove themselves against the successful young veterans. They talk about how evenly matched and how much of a challenge this is, but the reality is this match is about two kids very much out of their depths who talk about their big dreams all the while showing no real commitment to them have to match up against two very talented, determined, experienced individuals who are killers in that ring who will stop at nothing and are solely focused on their goals. This match-up is really about this nice guy who kind of likes this wrestling thing teamed up with a young girl compelled by her family history to take up wrestling even though time and time again she shows her heart isn't really in it facing off against two other people with history of success bred out of an intense obsession with this business who prove time and time again that not only are they destined for greatness, but they wont accept anything less than being champions in this business because this is their first and only true love.”
“So watch Monday. Tune into Climax Control and the next round of the Blast from the Past tournament and experience what it's like when two well meaning, talented in their own right face off against a team that's nothing short of exceptional. And watch those exceptional people show the rest of you poor, average fools what it's like to talk such a great game only to have themselves exposed as talk. A great potential future that will go unrealized in the face of a dreaded, beautiful, exceptional present.”
Black.
