Social Distance (Rumble Promo #3)
Apr 8, 2020 11:15:43 GMT -5
Mongo the Destroyer, SWAT Team, and 1 more like this
Post by Cross Recoba on Apr 8, 2020 11:15:43 GMT -5
Welcome back, XHF fans, another day or two has passed and yet still some of my opponents for the XHF Rumble seem to take the rising of the sun to mean that they need to inundate us with yet another update on just why they might win the whole shebang. In some cases I can understand it, Rat Bastard will do anything to prove that he can still be relevant, whereas in others you kind of question the logic.
Take Johnny Sniper, for example, a man who hasn’t been seen on the XHF Network since last November when he was too busy licking his wounds from a tag-loss and preparing for the inevitable loss against Eric Dane. Loss might be the wrong term, his absolute capitulation might be more accurate. Now though, now he has returned, and yet no-one, not Gwen, not his best friend Wellington Dunne, has done a single thing to talk him out of it!
Just listen to him, the man is a threat to not only the safety of everyone in the ring but to himself. He talks as if he is shellshocked and in a PTSD stupor but has anyone tried to stop him? Not one single person! Yet here he is, convinced that he could have been the greatest AWF United States Champion we’d ever seen and now thinks that he’ll be doing his service for his country by bringing home the X Crown Title? He’s delusional!
So, in the absence of anyone within his circle telling him the truth, I’ll take it upon myself to deliver it. This isn’t going to happen, Sniper, it wouldn’t happen if you were in a two-man Rumble and the other competitor was on loan from the county morgue. Even in that instance, my money would be on the guy who’d be put back on ice after the match!
You see you lack the basic fundamentals, and that’s before we get into your loftier aims! You’ve got one use and one use alone and that is to pad out the numbers for whoever eliminates you. You can talk about how no-one is looking at the future but you can’t even face up to your own situation! You’re a bygone of a period that Ascension Wrestling would do well to forget about, you managed to hold the belt for six weeks and after that you disappeared until, like a magpie, you spotted something shiny to tempt you back. The issue is that the idea of you becoming the X Crown title is fanciful at best, but being realistic - the closest you’ll get to touching that belt is if you manage to hit the timekeeper’s table as you’re thrown out of the ring and back into obscurity you occupy so well.
There were details that stood hidden in plain sight, that once you saw you wondered how you could ever have overlooked them in the first place. That was how Cross found himself admiring the ornateness of the grandfather clock that stood adjacent to the elevator. The details in the clock face were hand-carved and he wondered if he could find an imperfection in the artist’s craft.
The minute hand rose to the top of the hour and a delicate chime told all around that it was now one in the afternoon. Training had run over, the concept of time in isolation becoming more fragmented with every passing minute of every passing day. Vegas was known as the place where time didn’t exist but this was an idiom fed to tourists but now Recoba was experiencing it whether or not he chose to accept it.
Was it yesterday or this morning when he’d spent time poring over the XHF press release that announced not one, but three new additions to the network? It had to have been yesterday because he’d gone through each new company’s attributes and looked into the history of each of the owners because he’d spent at least three hours making sure he knew every which way to skin the cat when it came to surviving a rumble. He made a note to check the date on the press release when he got back to his suite.
He found it ironic that in all the time training he’d sustained no injuries or tweaks but within five feet of exiting the ad-hoc gym he’d managed to stub his toe on the seemingly abandoned tricycle of a child. The pain was temporary, he was going to have to endure far worse than that if he was to shine at the Rumble.
The silence that had emerged from the singular chime from the clock was interrupted as the elevator doors opened. Cross’ momentarily flashed an aghast look as he saw the occupants inside. There was something about them that just left him cold, was it the blackness in their eyes or just the simple act of dressing like each other’s clone?
There they stood in red dresses adorned with black spots as if Satan himself could tweak Ladybugs into objects of horror. There lay an emptiness behind their smiles, Cross tried to tell himself that it was wrong to lay the sins of their parents on them but he was reconsidering that thought right there and then.
“Cross…” the call came out in a flat unison, “sign this for us!”
As they stepped out of the elevator towards him, their arms stretched out with a pen and selfie-stick each, a sense of dread overcame him.
“We can take selfies forever…” the one with a slight lead on the other intoned.
“Forever and ever…” the second one followed up with.
Cross found himself backpedalling.
“Two meters!...”
His backpedalling became a jog.
“Social Distancing!”
Still the twins came nearer still.
“SOCIAL DISTANCING!!!”
Recoba had hit the top speed he could go backwards, he turned and sprinted for the nearest door.
Then, of course, there’s Rat Bastard, a man whose liver is the only thing worse preserved than his legacy. He can talk about how he’s a living legend, he can talk about how everyone says he’s past his prime but he does it with a straight face. You see, I vaguely remember you at the peak of your prime. I was maybe nine years old when you came into it and by the time I had hit Junior High, it was gone.
Now, sixteen or seventeen years later you’re still here but now it’s like watching a punch-drunk, or just drunk, boxer trying to cling on to what’s left of his talent and wondering why he can’t hit the heights he once did. All you talk about are past glories, all you can cling onto is what you once had and really, looking at what you face - who can blame you? This weekend I’ll be watching, waiting for my slot in the main-event, as you inevitably come up short against Aiden Merric, and yet the only person who’ll be surprised is you. Surprised that, once more, your reach exceded your grasp and wondering which shot in which bar in which decade was the one which truly pissed away what talent you had.
You helped build this place from the ground up but now what do you bring? Everyone is wise to your game because, even at your peak, you were nothing but one-dimensional. A one-trick pony who now needs to be sent packing off to the glue factory. You bring nothing to the table beyond nostalgia-tinged, whiskey-soaked memories of a time that doesn’t exist anymore! Your biggest achievement in recent memory was somehow tricking Lio so badly that he had to take his ball and run off to the hills.
You keep on telling us though that you’re the Revolution, everyone else realizes that any player in that battle has since moved on with their lives and yet there you are, like a Japanese soldier left in the jungle with no clue that the war ended years ago. Now, the only fight you face is one of relevancy and the unfortunate truth for you is that, today, you’re nothing but a footnote, a nod to the history of the place. Why not take the hint and go do the convention circuit, tell those old stories, and have someone else pick up the bar tab while you rehash whatever history you can attribute to yourself. Make no mistake, Rat, the only story that you’ll be able to spin out of this is when you finally had to face up to the fact that not only were your days as a headliner over but that the Rumble was the point where you had to admit that you’re nothing more than a name for nostalgia in the XHF.
Unsure of how he came to be there, Cross found himself perched atop a barstool in the Montagu. Somehow it looked different to how he was sure it had looked before, the lunchtime gaggle was nowhere to be seen. He glanced at his watch and found he’d lost at least an hour since he’d encountered the twins.
Did the bar surface always have some luminosity behind it? Had it always been complemented with accents of regal red and gold? Perhaps it had, he’d always found himself occupying the Chesterfield, his unofficially reserved spot. He turned and sighed with relief as he spotted it in its usual place. Soon he could at least rely on seeing the friendly and welcoming smile of Laura. She’d see him, and pour him a drink from the Rip Van Winkle bottle and all would be well again.
He brought the palms of his hands to his eyes and ran them down his face in exhaustion, pausing as his fingertips pulled down the bottom of his eyes. He’d always considered himself a workaholic and the current pace of life left him with little to do but try and while away the hours until something important came along.
He broke into an involuntary smile as he quickly scanned his eyes around the bar and saw that there was no-one there but his own reflection looking back at him.
“Hi, Laura! … A little slow this afternoon, isn’t it?” A cackle followed his words without much of a beat between.
“Evening, sir” The voice resonated through the empty bar, its owner unsighted.
“I think you’ll find it’s the middle of the afternoon…” Cross retorted, distracted.
The owner of the voice had seemingly materialized in front of him. Cross glanced at him and felt some level of anachronism appeared in the man. His head holding what could be an entire tin of pomade, his uniform of dark velvet red jacket, white shirt and a black bowtie one that was unfamiliar to him.
Cross told himself he was imagining things. He couldn’t recall any male bartenders being employed to work at the Montagu, he’d almost forbade it for being outside of their demographics interests. Then again, this was 2020 and people’s tastes were both varied and accepted.
“Are you new here?” Cross ventured, “I thought Laura had sole responsibility?”
The man’s face remained impassive, the expression neither registered nor acknowledged the question.
“I’m not sure I’m familiar with her…”
He must be new, perhaps signed on to give Laura a break during the isolation.
“What would you like, sir?”
Surely he must know who Cross was? He must be new.
“I’m awfully glad you asked me that. I have three C-notes in my pocket I was worried might be there ‘til next April. Rip Van Winkle, on the rocks, make it a double. I could do with some clarity.”
The man’s face finally registered an emotion but not one Cross had hoped for nor expected.
“It’s a bourbon…” Cross hoped the bartender either had a great memory or caught on quickly.
“I’m afraid we don’t have that, could I recommend a Ten High?”
Losing patience, Cross nodded. Anything to speed along time.
“You set them up and I’ll knock them back, one by one…”
Then, we come to the tragic tale of Michael Storm. At least Rat Bastard has something to cling to, a remnant of the past that fades away a little more with every day that passes and every shot imbibed. Storm, however, still lets the events from January dominate his mind. Tell me, Michael, how does it feel to have Seth Dillinger living rent-free in your head? After months of quiet, is this how you choose to return? Is it because of the lineage of the title or because you want to convince yourself that, on another day, you can be as good as Seth Dillinger?
But wait, you had a fever and you still competed...what? Are you waiting for a medal? Applause? Or just for someone to point out that after hearing you run your mouth every other day, that fever must still be with you. Are you Michael Storm the Atoner, Michael Storm the Trainer or Iron Man Storm?
In truth, you need to fire whoever is advising you on what to say in the lead-up to this match because so far, I’d be asking for a refund. You lord over people by telling them how long you lasted in a Rumble, that was two years ago, and yet….YOU STILL DIDN’T WIN! The shortened summary of the match even flatters you by saying you eliminated yourself, it overlooks the fact that it was one of your own signatures, the Terminal Projectile, that caused you to be eliminated. Just think about this, Michael. You’re shining a light on an event where anyone who watched it saw you unable to control a move that you really should have down and perfected. The short of it is is that you were eliminated by your own hubris!
You’ve been away only a few months from the AWF but so much has changed, for a start - I arrived and that means that you’re now even further from the top of the pecking order. You can question how morally bankrupt I am but what does it matter to you? Surely, if I were to cut some corners to eliminate you it’d play right into your hands. After all, there always is, Michael, but that’s your cross to bear, no pun intended.
When the chips are down, Storm, we both know you’re going to choke. Like you did at Supremacy in January, like you did in that fabled Rumble where you could have watched an Oliver Stone Director’s Cut and still got as close to the X Crown as you did and like we both know is waiting to happen on April 26th!
Take Johnny Sniper, for example, a man who hasn’t been seen on the XHF Network since last November when he was too busy licking his wounds from a tag-loss and preparing for the inevitable loss against Eric Dane. Loss might be the wrong term, his absolute capitulation might be more accurate. Now though, now he has returned, and yet no-one, not Gwen, not his best friend Wellington Dunne, has done a single thing to talk him out of it!
Just listen to him, the man is a threat to not only the safety of everyone in the ring but to himself. He talks as if he is shellshocked and in a PTSD stupor but has anyone tried to stop him? Not one single person! Yet here he is, convinced that he could have been the greatest AWF United States Champion we’d ever seen and now thinks that he’ll be doing his service for his country by bringing home the X Crown Title? He’s delusional!
So, in the absence of anyone within his circle telling him the truth, I’ll take it upon myself to deliver it. This isn’t going to happen, Sniper, it wouldn’t happen if you were in a two-man Rumble and the other competitor was on loan from the county morgue. Even in that instance, my money would be on the guy who’d be put back on ice after the match!
You see you lack the basic fundamentals, and that’s before we get into your loftier aims! You’ve got one use and one use alone and that is to pad out the numbers for whoever eliminates you. You can talk about how no-one is looking at the future but you can’t even face up to your own situation! You’re a bygone of a period that Ascension Wrestling would do well to forget about, you managed to hold the belt for six weeks and after that you disappeared until, like a magpie, you spotted something shiny to tempt you back. The issue is that the idea of you becoming the X Crown title is fanciful at best, but being realistic - the closest you’ll get to touching that belt is if you manage to hit the timekeeper’s table as you’re thrown out of the ring and back into obscurity you occupy so well.
There were details that stood hidden in plain sight, that once you saw you wondered how you could ever have overlooked them in the first place. That was how Cross found himself admiring the ornateness of the grandfather clock that stood adjacent to the elevator. The details in the clock face were hand-carved and he wondered if he could find an imperfection in the artist’s craft.
The minute hand rose to the top of the hour and a delicate chime told all around that it was now one in the afternoon. Training had run over, the concept of time in isolation becoming more fragmented with every passing minute of every passing day. Vegas was known as the place where time didn’t exist but this was an idiom fed to tourists but now Recoba was experiencing it whether or not he chose to accept it.
Was it yesterday or this morning when he’d spent time poring over the XHF press release that announced not one, but three new additions to the network? It had to have been yesterday because he’d gone through each new company’s attributes and looked into the history of each of the owners because he’d spent at least three hours making sure he knew every which way to skin the cat when it came to surviving a rumble. He made a note to check the date on the press release when he got back to his suite.
He found it ironic that in all the time training he’d sustained no injuries or tweaks but within five feet of exiting the ad-hoc gym he’d managed to stub his toe on the seemingly abandoned tricycle of a child. The pain was temporary, he was going to have to endure far worse than that if he was to shine at the Rumble.
The silence that had emerged from the singular chime from the clock was interrupted as the elevator doors opened. Cross’ momentarily flashed an aghast look as he saw the occupants inside. There was something about them that just left him cold, was it the blackness in their eyes or just the simple act of dressing like each other’s clone?
There they stood in red dresses adorned with black spots as if Satan himself could tweak Ladybugs into objects of horror. There lay an emptiness behind their smiles, Cross tried to tell himself that it was wrong to lay the sins of their parents on them but he was reconsidering that thought right there and then.
“Cross…” the call came out in a flat unison, “sign this for us!”
As they stepped out of the elevator towards him, their arms stretched out with a pen and selfie-stick each, a sense of dread overcame him.
“We can take selfies forever…” the one with a slight lead on the other intoned.
“Forever and ever…” the second one followed up with.
Cross found himself backpedalling.
“Two meters!...”
His backpedalling became a jog.
“Social Distancing!”
Still the twins came nearer still.
“SOCIAL DISTANCING!!!”
Recoba had hit the top speed he could go backwards, he turned and sprinted for the nearest door.
Then, of course, there’s Rat Bastard, a man whose liver is the only thing worse preserved than his legacy. He can talk about how he’s a living legend, he can talk about how everyone says he’s past his prime but he does it with a straight face. You see, I vaguely remember you at the peak of your prime. I was maybe nine years old when you came into it and by the time I had hit Junior High, it was gone.
Now, sixteen or seventeen years later you’re still here but now it’s like watching a punch-drunk, or just drunk, boxer trying to cling on to what’s left of his talent and wondering why he can’t hit the heights he once did. All you talk about are past glories, all you can cling onto is what you once had and really, looking at what you face - who can blame you? This weekend I’ll be watching, waiting for my slot in the main-event, as you inevitably come up short against Aiden Merric, and yet the only person who’ll be surprised is you. Surprised that, once more, your reach exceded your grasp and wondering which shot in which bar in which decade was the one which truly pissed away what talent you had.
You helped build this place from the ground up but now what do you bring? Everyone is wise to your game because, even at your peak, you were nothing but one-dimensional. A one-trick pony who now needs to be sent packing off to the glue factory. You bring nothing to the table beyond nostalgia-tinged, whiskey-soaked memories of a time that doesn’t exist anymore! Your biggest achievement in recent memory was somehow tricking Lio so badly that he had to take his ball and run off to the hills.
You keep on telling us though that you’re the Revolution, everyone else realizes that any player in that battle has since moved on with their lives and yet there you are, like a Japanese soldier left in the jungle with no clue that the war ended years ago. Now, the only fight you face is one of relevancy and the unfortunate truth for you is that, today, you’re nothing but a footnote, a nod to the history of the place. Why not take the hint and go do the convention circuit, tell those old stories, and have someone else pick up the bar tab while you rehash whatever history you can attribute to yourself. Make no mistake, Rat, the only story that you’ll be able to spin out of this is when you finally had to face up to the fact that not only were your days as a headliner over but that the Rumble was the point where you had to admit that you’re nothing more than a name for nostalgia in the XHF.
Unsure of how he came to be there, Cross found himself perched atop a barstool in the Montagu. Somehow it looked different to how he was sure it had looked before, the lunchtime gaggle was nowhere to be seen. He glanced at his watch and found he’d lost at least an hour since he’d encountered the twins.
Did the bar surface always have some luminosity behind it? Had it always been complemented with accents of regal red and gold? Perhaps it had, he’d always found himself occupying the Chesterfield, his unofficially reserved spot. He turned and sighed with relief as he spotted it in its usual place. Soon he could at least rely on seeing the friendly and welcoming smile of Laura. She’d see him, and pour him a drink from the Rip Van Winkle bottle and all would be well again.
He brought the palms of his hands to his eyes and ran them down his face in exhaustion, pausing as his fingertips pulled down the bottom of his eyes. He’d always considered himself a workaholic and the current pace of life left him with little to do but try and while away the hours until something important came along.
He broke into an involuntary smile as he quickly scanned his eyes around the bar and saw that there was no-one there but his own reflection looking back at him.
“Hi, Laura! … A little slow this afternoon, isn’t it?” A cackle followed his words without much of a beat between.
“Evening, sir” The voice resonated through the empty bar, its owner unsighted.
“I think you’ll find it’s the middle of the afternoon…” Cross retorted, distracted.
The owner of the voice had seemingly materialized in front of him. Cross glanced at him and felt some level of anachronism appeared in the man. His head holding what could be an entire tin of pomade, his uniform of dark velvet red jacket, white shirt and a black bowtie one that was unfamiliar to him.
Cross told himself he was imagining things. He couldn’t recall any male bartenders being employed to work at the Montagu, he’d almost forbade it for being outside of their demographics interests. Then again, this was 2020 and people’s tastes were both varied and accepted.
“Are you new here?” Cross ventured, “I thought Laura had sole responsibility?”
The man’s face remained impassive, the expression neither registered nor acknowledged the question.
“I’m not sure I’m familiar with her…”
He must be new, perhaps signed on to give Laura a break during the isolation.
“What would you like, sir?”
Surely he must know who Cross was? He must be new.
“I’m awfully glad you asked me that. I have three C-notes in my pocket I was worried might be there ‘til next April. Rip Van Winkle, on the rocks, make it a double. I could do with some clarity.”
The man’s face finally registered an emotion but not one Cross had hoped for nor expected.
“It’s a bourbon…” Cross hoped the bartender either had a great memory or caught on quickly.
“I’m afraid we don’t have that, could I recommend a Ten High?”
Losing patience, Cross nodded. Anything to speed along time.
“You set them up and I’ll knock them back, one by one…”
Then, we come to the tragic tale of Michael Storm. At least Rat Bastard has something to cling to, a remnant of the past that fades away a little more with every day that passes and every shot imbibed. Storm, however, still lets the events from January dominate his mind. Tell me, Michael, how does it feel to have Seth Dillinger living rent-free in your head? After months of quiet, is this how you choose to return? Is it because of the lineage of the title or because you want to convince yourself that, on another day, you can be as good as Seth Dillinger?
But wait, you had a fever and you still competed...what? Are you waiting for a medal? Applause? Or just for someone to point out that after hearing you run your mouth every other day, that fever must still be with you. Are you Michael Storm the Atoner, Michael Storm the Trainer or Iron Man Storm?
In truth, you need to fire whoever is advising you on what to say in the lead-up to this match because so far, I’d be asking for a refund. You lord over people by telling them how long you lasted in a Rumble, that was two years ago, and yet….YOU STILL DIDN’T WIN! The shortened summary of the match even flatters you by saying you eliminated yourself, it overlooks the fact that it was one of your own signatures, the Terminal Projectile, that caused you to be eliminated. Just think about this, Michael. You’re shining a light on an event where anyone who watched it saw you unable to control a move that you really should have down and perfected. The short of it is is that you were eliminated by your own hubris!
You’ve been away only a few months from the AWF but so much has changed, for a start - I arrived and that means that you’re now even further from the top of the pecking order. You can question how morally bankrupt I am but what does it matter to you? Surely, if I were to cut some corners to eliminate you it’d play right into your hands. After all, there always is, Michael, but that’s your cross to bear, no pun intended.
When the chips are down, Storm, we both know you’re going to choke. Like you did at Supremacy in January, like you did in that fabled Rumble where you could have watched an Oliver Stone Director’s Cut and still got as close to the X Crown as you did and like we both know is waiting to happen on April 26th!
