The Weight of Momentum
The gym felt different now.
Not quieter. Not calmer. Just… heavier. Like the air itself carried the residue of recent breakthroughs, hope, tension, pride, fear, all woven into something neither father nor son knew how to name yet. The windows were cracked open, letting a thin line of winter air drift inside, cutting through the usual humidity. The ring sat in the center like an altar, ropes taut, canvas freshly cleaned, the faint smell of disinfectant replacing yesterday’s sweat.
Alex arrived early. He always arrived early. Habit. Control. Fear wearing discipline’s skin. He leaned on the apron, hands braced on the canvas, staring at the empty ring where he and Dylan had found a fragile truce days earlier. He replayed Dylan’s words in his head: “Then teach me how not to burn out.” Alex wanted to believe he could. But a man who had spent half his life surviving flames didn’t always know how to guide someone away from them. Bootsteps echoed across the gym floor. Dylan. Bag slung over one shoulder, hair still damp from the shower he’d clearly rushed through, a fresh bruise blooming along his jaw from a sparring session the night before. He didn’t hide it. He never did. He wore his damage like proof he belonged.
“You’re early,” Alex said.
Dylan shrugged. “Didn’t sleep much.”
“Nightmares?”
“Energy.” He tossed the bag down near the steps. “I just want to work.” Alex’s stomach tightened. Work was good. Work was necessary. But work was also Dylan’s escape, and escapes have edges.
“Alright,” Alex said, forcing calm. “Let’s warm up.” They started slow. Roll-throughs. Drop downs. Technical grappling. The rhythm was good….measured, smooth, controlled. Dylan kept his breathing even. Kept his movements tight. But Alex saw the spark beneath the surface, the fire itching for release. And fire never stays contained. After fifteen minutes of drills, Alex nodded. “Sequences. Standard, nothing fancy.”
“Got it.”
At first Dylan obeyed. Arm drag. Hip toss. Rebound dropkick. Transition to a hold. Clean. Crisp. Correct. But on the next sequence, Dylan pushed speed. Just a notch. Barely noticeable to anyone else. Not to Alex. “Slow it a touch,” he warned.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re pushing your pace.”
“That’s the point.”
“It’s too early….”
“I’m fine,” Dylan repeated, sharper this time.
Alex exhaled, stepping back. “Your call.” The kid hit the ropes again.
This time he exploded.
Speed doubled. Steps sharper. His body moved like it was trying to outrun something only he could feel. The sequence became raw improvisation—exactly the thing they had argued about days earlier. Leapfrog. Rebound. Springboard….his foot slipped. Not enough to fall, not enough to break the flow, but enough for a flash of panic to dart across his eyes before he buried it under adrenaline and kept going. Alex’s jaw clenched. He knew this version of Dylan. He had been this version. The version chasing the high of belonging, the rush of proving something invisible and impossible.
“Dylan,” he called out. “Ease up.” No answer. The kid was trapped in the rhythm now, almost frantic. “Dylan.” Nothing. Then it happened. A simple bump. A basic flat-back. Something Dylan could do in his sleep…but he didn’t tuck his chin. He hit hard. The sound cracked through the gym like a gunshot. Dylan’s body bounced once, awkward, wrong. His breath left him in a violent gasp, and he rolled to his side, a hand clutching the back of his neck. Alex moved before his brain registered the thought. “Hey. Hey. Dylan….look at me.”
“I’m…” Dylan wheezed, trying to sit up. “I’m good.”
“No, you’re not. Stay down.”
“I’m….fine….” He pushed up to a seated position, one eye squinted shut. His breathing was uneven. Too fast. Too shallow.
Alex recognized it instantly. Not pain. Panic. Adrenaline overload. Crash incoming. “Kid, slow your breathing.”
“I said I’m okay….” Dylan’s voice cracked mid-sentence. His hand trembled against the canvas. Sweat poured down his face far too fast for the amount of work they’d done.
This wasn’t exhaustion. It was collapse. Alex swallowed the rising fear. “Look at me.” Dylan didn’t. He stared at the mat like it was moving beneath him. “Dylan. Look at me.”
Finally, the kid lifted his eyes, and Alex saw the truth flash there, raw and terrifying. He wasn’t fine. He wasn’t even close. “I can’t….” Dylan choked out. “My chest…Dad, I can’t….”
Alex’s blood turned to ice. “Lie back. Now.” Dylan tried to lower himself gently but lost control halfway, collapsing onto the canvas with a thud. His legs twitched involuntarily as he tried to steady his breathing, but it only got worse. Short, shallow, rapid. A dangerous spiral. Alex slid an arm behind his shoulders, lifting him just enough to keep his airway clear. “Breathe with me,” he said, voice low, calm, authoritative, but shaking underneath. “Just breathe. Follow my count.”
“I…I can’t.” Dylan gasped. “It…it won’t..stop…”
“I know. I know.” Alex kept his hand steady even as fear clawed at his chest. “In for two. Out for three. Come on. You trained with worse than this.”
The kid tried. Failed. Tried again. His heartbeat thudded through his chest so loud Alex could almost hear it through the canvas. This wasn’t a physical injury. It was burnout hitting the wall at full speed. Too much ambition. Too little rest. Too much pressure, some internal, some inherited. Dylan sucked in another sharp breath, then winced, clutching his ribs as if something inside had seized up. “Dad…..something’s wrong….”
“I know,” Alex said quietly. “I’m right here. You’re not alone. Just breathe.”
Minutes passed like hours. The gym around them blurred into nothing. No sounds, no sparring, no noise, just a father trying to keep his son from drowning in his own body. Dylan’s breathing slowly, agonizingly, began to steady. Not normal. Not healthy. But stabilized. Finally, Dylan’s head fell back against Alex’s shoulder, sweat running down his jaw. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice raw.
Alex closed his eyes. There it was. The apology that shouldn’t exist.“Don’t apologize,” Alex murmured. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I pushed too hard.”
“Yeah……You did.”
“I just… I wanted…” Dylan’s voice cracked. “I wanted to show you I could keep up.”
And there it was, the truth buried under weeks of bravado. Alex exhaled slowly. “Kid… keeping up was never the problem.”
Dylan shifted, wincing again. “Then why do you……why does it always feel like I’m one mistake away from disappointing you?”
Alex felt the words like a punch. Because he’d known this was coming. Known it from the second he saw the kid hit the ropes too fast. Known it when he first saw the ambition burning too bright. Known it for years. “I’m not disappointed,” he said softly.
“Then what….” Dylan broke off, fighting another surge of breathlessness. “Why do you look at me like I’m fragile?”
Alex opened his eyes, staring at the empty gym. At the ring he’d bled in. At the ghosts that never left him. “Because I’ve watched too many people break,” he whispered. “And I don’t want to bury my son.”
Silence dropped heavy between them. Not angry. Not tense. Just real. Dylan shifted again, his breathing finally close to normal, though his body still trembled lightly. “Dad… I’m not going to die in this ring.” Alex didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Because he had once believed the same thing. Dylan let his head rest back against him. “I didn’t know it scared you that much.”
Alex laughed, short, humorless.“Then I wasn’t doing a very good job hiding it.”
“You weren’t,” Dylan muttered weakly.
Alex almost smiled. “Smartass.”
“Runs in the family.” They sat there a long moment before Dylan whispered, “What happens now?”
Alex looked down at him, at the pale face, the trembling fingers, the exhaustion etched into every movement. “Now,” Alex said, “we stop pretending your body can match your ambition without consequences.”
Dylan swallowed. “I don’t want to slow down.”
“And I don’t want to lose you. So we meet in the middle.”
Dylan blinked, confused. “How?”
Alex shifted, moving them both gently to a seated position against the ropes. “By admitting what this is.”
“What is it?” Dylan asked quietly.
Alex looked him dead in the eye. “You’re burning out.”
Dylan tensed, shame flickering through him. “I’m not weak….”
“I never said you were.”
“It feels like failing.”
“It’s not.” Alex placed a hand on his shoulder, grounding him. “Kid… burnout isn’t weakness. It’s what happens when someone gives everything and forgets to leave anything for themselves.”
Dylan’s throat worked. “So what, I stop training?”
“No,” Alex said. “We train smarter.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Then that,” Alex said, tightening his grip just slightly, “is what I’m going to teach you.” Dylan stared at him a long moment. Not angry. Not defensive.
Just… tired. And open.
“Okay,” he finally whispered.
Alex nodded. Because for the first time, the kid wasn’t asking how to win. He was asking how to survive. And that was something Alex had waited years to hear. He stood slowly, helping Dylan to his feet. The kid wobbled but stayed upright. Alex kept a hand on his back until he steadied. “We’re done for today,” Alex said.
Dylan opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again. “Yeah. Okay.” They walked toward the bench together, the gym silent around them. The breakthrough had been powerful.
But this?
This was necessary. Because growth didn’t always come from triumph. Sometimes it came from collapse.
I work with fucking children
”Well… it seems like I touched a nerve”
Alex smiles slowly. Leaning forward, he reaches out and picks up a chocolate chip muffin, giving it a bite and taking a small amount into his mouth before taking a deep breath and giving a small chuckle under his breath.
”I seem to have that effect on the Kasey family. See, a few weeks ago I faced LJ in a one-on-one match, and I told him exactly what I wanted from him. I told him I wanted him to be better than his brother. I told him I wanted him to step up and try and end me. I almost begged him to do it. And he couldn’t. It’s almost like none of these kids want to actually be the stars they claim to be. There is a certain amount of ruthlessness that you need to climb to the top of this business, a killer instinct that boils deep down inside. It is okay to have emotions, it is okay to be empathetic towards your friends and family.”
“But in this business, in that ring, you need to step up. You need to let those emotions and empathy and sympathy all melt away into nothing. You need to be cold. You need to have total apathy toward what people believe and want. It is a lesson that I have tried to teach LJ. It’s a lesson I tried to teach his brother. And going against LJ a few weeks ago, I thought I would be able to beat it into his brain, what he needed to do to become a star. To live that life that he seems to want so badly. Something that his girlfriend has already got half-figured out, that he seems to not be able to figure out. It’s a puzzle box that he stares at blankly because he simply isn’t willing to pull the trigger… just like his brother.”
“So LJ, since I know you and your brother both love to listen to everything I have to say and then bitch, piss, and moan about it, let me tell you this. You have something special. You have something special inside you, and you have this spark that you should take advantage of. And if you ever want to learn, if you ever want to take advantage of that spark, then you should come to me and let me help you.”
“Your brother is too far gone… don’t be like him… a man in denial of the truth.”
Alex pauses and smiles to himself again. He takes a deep breath and adjusts his leather jacket, leaning back in a chair and kicking his legs up onto the table in front of him, looking at the chocolate chip muffin sitting on the plate.
”Truth.... something that I’ve always tried to say. Something I’ve always tried to live up to. Now, each and every one of you has your own truth. But after addressing LJ and offering an olive branch as well as a position at my side, I feel the need to say a few things to his older brother, Miles. And I will keep it short and sweet since he and I are going to be facing each other for the Internet Championship. Miles, I want you to think about the pure irony of you going out to the ring last week and running your mouth about me. You want to sit there and talk about me not saying things to your face when you chose the exact week that I wasn’t there to do the same thing. Because you are a hypocrite.”
“You are a hypocrite and a child. You talk about me feeling like I’m beneath the Internet Championship, you should feel like you are beneath that championship, but you don’t. And the reason why you don’t is because you honestly think that Carter deserves to be the World Champion. He has taken everything from you. He has taken your credibility, your spot, a championship that should’ve been yours, and now apparently he’s also taken your balls.”
“So… I want you to watch and see what I do to Ryan Keys. Because all the marketing for this match is talking about how I’m going on to you for the Internet Championship… but Ryan Keys pushed you to your limits.”
“What a joke…”
Alex takes a deep breath, pushing up from his chair and pacing back and forth, his face twisting as he becomes irritated at everything that has gone on. He closes his eyes and takes a long deep breath again, the breathing exercise to try and calm down the anger that is bubbling up inside.
”And an unfunny one at that. Ryan, you are most definitely out of your depth, a sacrificial lamb being led to slaughter. As I said, all the marketing for this match is billing you as a man who has pushed Miles to the limit over and over again, so now they are putting you in the ring against me. Miles is the Internet Champion. Miles thinks he’s at the top of his game. I know I’m at the top of mine. Since you returned to this company you have been as mid as it gets. Two wins, two losses. You want to reignite your career and you want to stand up and be counted. Well, all that’s going to happen when you stand up to me is that you are going to get slapped down. Hard. You ran your mouth about how you were going to beat Miles, that you were sick of the ‘almost’ tag. I don’t live in a world of ‘almosts,’ Ryan.”
He grits his teeth and continues.
”You ‘almost’ had a career in this company. And who knows? Maybe you’ll be able to do something in the future. But right now, all I see in front of me is a guy who failed the first time he was here and is failing now. You returned and expected to be welcomed back like some kind of conquering hero… but a month-long championship run with the Roulette Title in 2017 doesn’t exactly make any of us give a shit about you. You want to be welcomed back like a conquering hero? You want people to take you seriously? Then you need to do something about it. You need to step up and actually be a challenger the people can respect.”
“But since you’ve been gone, I’m going to give you a little recent history lesson. Because the last eight years have been very important. SCW almost closed down. But it reopened back up, it bought the company that I was in, it loaded me here with a contract, and I became a three-time World Champion here. Cementing my legacy and being able to say that I was in the SCW Hall of Fame. I have beaten the best of the best in this company. And aside from being the World Champion, I have also been the Roulette Champion, and I’ve held that championship a hell of a lot longer than you ever did. I am a former Mixed Tag Team Champion, and I was the leader of one of the most dominant stables this company has ever seen.”
“I am the head of a gym that has produced world champion after world champion after world champion.”
“My DNA is now ingrained in this company. I made a bigger impact than you ever could hope to. You walked out of this company and had to come crawling back after there was nowhere else that would take you. So now here you are, losing to Miles and having people actually believe you pushed him to his limit. And then putting you up against me, giving you some kind of false hope that you are going to come anywhere close to me. Ryan, let me tell you what’s going to happen. You and I are going to go down to that ring. I’m going to beat the hell out of you, I’m going to laugh at you, I am going to walk out with my hand raised as my theme plays. Then, I’m going to forget about you. Just like the SCW fan base did the second you walked out of here the first time. Because that’s all you are, boring, and utterly forgettable.”
