The Smartest Guy in the Zoom [#6/#004]

[anthonycaffrey]

GUY COMMENTATOR

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to XHF Xtra! Let’s get into tonight’s two guests as we continue our Run Up to the Rumble. The first is a man many of you know, who many of you have booed over his XHF career spanning AXW, AWF, and now SWAT. His achievements include a 300+ day reign as AXW Undisputed Champion, and now he looks to add the X-Crown to his list of achievements at the Rumble. Anthony Caffrey, welcome to the show!

We see Anthony Caffrey’s Zoom screen change from his name to a live video of him. He is seated at a desk in a cramped hotel room.

GUY

How are you-- oh, you’re muted, Caffrey. We can’t hear you.

Caffrey stops speaking to the webcam and takes off the gamers’ headset given to him by Brendon Adams. He looks for a volume knob to adjust on his headset and stares at it.

GUY

Can you hear me? You might need to join audio. It’s the microphone in the bottom left-hand corner, and then you have to click--

CAFFREY

---can you hear me?

GUY 

Yes! Whatever you did worked. Welcome to the show, Caffrey.

CAFFREY

Man, this is like my second time doing one of these ‘Zoom’ things… if you had told a young Anthony Caffrey growing up that his prime form of communication would be staring at people in boxes Brady Bunch style, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Guy shares a laugh with Caffrey that’s probably at his expense as he turns his attention to the other name on the call. He puts a bit more enthusiasm into introducing him.

GUY

My second guest tonight is a man who’s been described as ‘The Box Office’, and he currently serves as the Vice President of Operations and Communications at the Sands Hotel. You probably best know the former UnYielding champion for his time in the Ascension Wrestling Federation, where he’s been making his opponents famous and looks likely to become the breakout star of 2020, especially as he enters his first Rumble. Cross Recoba, welcome to the show!

Cross’s name is now replaced with a video feed. He can be seen sitting on a red Chesterfield, a pot of coffee sits in front of him as he puts down his copy of the New York Times. He flashes a brief smile as he lifts up a coffee cup to the camera.

RECOBA

Pleasure is all mine, thanks for having me!

The eagle-eyed viewer sees Caffrey roll his eyes at the empty platitude.

RECOBA

Caff, sorry to hear about your technical difficulties, if you’d have let me know I’d have sent you a cheat-sheet for Zoom, using it a lot for work. Surprised you haven’t been using it yourself to keep in touch with your frien-....anyways, we’re not here to talk about computer problems!

GUY

No, we’re not. With under two weeks to the Rumble now, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover and a set amount of time to do so!

RECOBA

Looking forward to it!

GUY

Great, great. Let me get right into the questions, submitted by fans on Twitter. @longothedestroyer asks, ‘What makes the Rumble different than any other match?’

CAFFREY

Has that person never watched a Rumble in their lives?

RECOBA
I’m not sure that’s exactly what they’re asking...

CAFFREY

There’s more than forty wrestlers entering that match from all over the Network. You’ve got fierce competitors like SKY Force from J-ROK, Justice and Death Trap from MCCW, and guys like Timeless and Callahan from SWAT.

Caffrey makes a purposeful point to leave out the AWF. Recoba can be seen nearly choking on his coffee in amusement.

RECOBA
Hang on...gimme a sec...are we just hand-waving Ascension Wrestling from your life now? Do you get shakes if we bring up Draven, Card, or Diamond? I’ll give you a clue for the real threat to fear in the match, he just got referred to as the breakout star of 2020...

CAFFREY

Cross, when you have an accomplishment that is rooted in the AWF or hell, any company in the XHF-- I’ll be open to listening to you on advice about who’s a threat. But let me do you a solid, since you seem to be buying into a bunch of empty hype about yourself ala Ryan Young. For someone who has no inexperience with that match, you have to be careful in there. The ring can quickly fill up with bodies, and that leads to a lot of injuries. You might twist an ankle, or turn around and get rocked with an elbow to the face you didn’t expect. You have to keep your head on a swivel.

GUY

Cross?

RECOBA
What’s next on the list? Make sure not to get thrown over the top rope? Come on, Caff, I might only have been part of the XHF Network for a few months but it’s not my first rodeo. Besides, you might have found it easier if you hadn’t burnt every bridge you’d ever stepped foot on--

CAFFREY

--when you get to be my level, no-- IF you ever manage to do so, you learn very quickly that most of the bridges you’re stepping on have terrible infrastructure, Recoba. They break and fall apart at the slightest bit of friction. Go look at LGBTKO. Best friends in the world three months ago, now they’re blasting each other with chairs and turning on another AS I PREDICTED. And just like you’ll do soon enough with Chris Card. Did he invite you on his million-dollar pandemic escape yacht? I didn’t think so.

Guy Commentator is clearly uncomfortable with the bitter back-and-forth and does his best to get the show back on track.

GUY

Moving along, @weekendwarrior69 asks ‘What do you have to do or have done to prepare for the Rumble?’ We’ll start with Cross.

RECOBA

Obviously, given everything that’s going on you can’t get a perfect training schedule together but you do have to adapt. I’ve been catching up on the XHF Network archive section given that attendance at events isn’t a possibility...then there’s the very fortunate fact that where I’m isolating, there are excellent facilities for keeping in shape and I’ve managed to turn one of the rooms used for live performers into a makeshift wrestling arena to keep up my ring-work Interestingly, I’ve spoken to a few roster members who remember Caffrey from his time there, amongst others…

GUY 

Have they shared any insider knowledge on how to beat him?

RECOBA

Not quite, the common consensus is that he’s worse to listen to than to face. I believe the term ‘like playing Russian Roulette with a full chamber’ was how one person described having to watch his promos!

Caffrey laughs in a very sarcastic fashion.

CAFFREY

Say what you want about my promos, but at least my ego is ACTUALLY earned.

He shoots his sinister smile right back at Cross.

CAFFREY

I’d say watching lots and lots of tape. You want to be prepared for anything the Rumble can throw at you. Granted, you can’t plan things perfectly…

He trails off for a few seconds, thinking of his meeting with Zoran.

CAFFREY

...but you need to come in with an idea of your opponents so you can adapt and overcome. If you become one dimensional, or if you don’t think that even someone like Tarrasque -- an unconventional, wild brute -- has a chance, that’s how you end up dumped out on the floor. I may have beaten Tarrasque in a brutal last man standing match, but the idiots focusing on me instead of a guy who could literally pick them up and use them as weapons against each other couldn’t stop him in SWAT's Rumble.

RECOBA

That’s a bit of simplification isn’t it? I talk as good a game as any but you literally picked the stupidest moment last year to run your mouth! That was your undoing last year, and from the sounds of it, this year won’t be any different!

GUY

Right on. We now have a question from @sexdrugsandvictoryrolls, who asks, ‘Who is the most underrated guy in the Rumble? Who do you think could cause an upset or make an impression?”

RECOBA

You see, this is the thing with a Rumble. Skill and a game plan will get you a long way but the amount of variables you can’t control are immense. So, I think an upset is difficult to predict, I’ve made no attempt to hide my confidence in my ability to win it so I’m not going to contradict myself now. There are some dark horses though, I think Bloodied Fox can definitely raise his profile, and Lord knows he could do with a way to define himself given what’s going on with that faction!

CAFFREY

That being said, I don’t even think LGBTKO is walking out of their tag title defense with the belts at this point. Too much in-fighting between the three of them, and Randy and Nelly Angel are former champions -- who perhaps most importantly, are actively working as a cohesive unit right now. But the answer to that question, and of course Recoba would give an AWF guy because he hasn’t watched an episode of SWAT other than the one he crashed, is probably Call…

He thinks for a few seconds. You can tell he wants to finish his thought, but he changes his mind.

CAFFREY

...it’s Alex Turner. Look at the guy. In November, he was being billed as the Top of SWAT for Hardkore Halloween. Now granted, he doesn’t match up to the billing -- in a span of a month, he lost two World Championship matches. The guy hasn’t been in a main event since October. He’s old news and he knows it. Calling him Timeless at this point would just be yellow journalism.

CAFFREY

But he sees an opportunity, and I’ll give him the credit for fighting like hell to get there. No, the opportunity isn’t winning the Rumble. He’s not dumb enough to think he can outlast me and all the others. Instead, he’s aiming to put on a strong performance and discredit me as much as possible. He’s gone out of his way to attack my looks, my in-ring ability, even my passion for my city even though he’s from some rinky-dink shithole town in Minnesota.

RECOBA

[under his breath] Says the guy from the city that gave us cheesesteaks...

CAFFREY

He wants to put himself in the same conversation as Caffrey. He knows I’m the star of the show, and he knows I’m the reason why more eyeballs than ever, especially those of idiots who had never watched anything but AWF, are tuning in to watch SWAT. Alexe shows up and puts on a good showing, he walks back to management and demands a one-on-one with the guy keeping the championship in SWAT where it belongs: me.

CAFFREY

You have to give that guy credit. It’s a great idea, minus the part where I pin his shoulders to the mat for ANOTHER three count or make him cry like a bitch in The Process and make him tap.

RECOBA

Are you going for a filibuster? Jesus! Do you even hear yourself sometimes?

Cross can’t suppress a laugh any longer.

RECOBA

Seriously, man! That podcast you released was sickening, pandering, and above all - it made me realise something. It took me exactly twenty-two seconds before I realized I’d never heard such a punchable face before! You took thirteen minutes to say what you could have achieved in two minutes! Part of the reason I skim-watch SWAT is because I just can’t escape Death by Caffrey! You realize that your best chance of winning this Rumble is to just talk at everyone until we doze off, be more dead weight to lift but after carting around your misplaced ego, I’m sure you’d manage!

GUY

We have two more questions here. One of them is this, from @dillingentyoungfox, who asks ‘With the threat of mystery competitors in the match, whose music would cause you to rip up any strategy you had?’

CAFFREY

Scorpion. I won his classic back in December of 2018 while Cross was … I don’t know, what were you doing Cross? It certainly wasn’t anything important, that’s for sure. I had to go through three tough competitors, most of them world champions in their own right and then beat the AXW Undisputed Champion on the same night I had a grueling fight with Dylan Black in the opener. But you know the drill. Everyone likes to say I’m fighting nobodies when I’m taking down X-Crown champions like Maverick and Bobby Barratt. It’s the same shit happening now with SWAT and this ‘running away’ narrative.

RECOBA

Sorry, I missed you winning...I think I was headlining in one of five continents, give my publicist dates and I’ll get back to you. The running away isn’t a narrative, Caff, be honest - you’d shit yourself if ‘Timebomb’ or ‘This Corrosion’ roared around the arena and we all know it!

GUY 

Cross, what’d your answer be then?

RECOBA

Part of the beauty of being relatively new is that I haven’t got too much history to worry about but to give you an answer - Kanyon or Steele wouldn’t exactly make my life easy!

CAFFREY

Those who do not worry about or learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

GUY

Our last question: do either of you gentlemen have final words for your opponents or the other man on the call as we head into the Rumble? Cross, we’ll start with--

CAFFREY

--quite frankly, let me just stop you right there, Guy. I don’t need to have final words with Cross. Cross, you meet me in the Rumble, I’ll eliminate you all the same. You can go on ranting about me just like everyone else has. You’ve filled this interview with nothing but petty little remarks -- what I’m more concerned with is this: are you going to be able to back it up when push comes to shove? I don’t think so. I carried AXW for a year, and I will carry SWAT into its new era as the #1 show on the XHF Network. I’m not really concerned with whatever you have left to say. An emperor does not worry himself with the opinion of peasants.

A bitter-sounding Anthony Caffrey disconnects from the call early, leaving Cross to finish. He picks right back up.

RECOBA

As always, trying to get a fair or accurate assessment from him is like asking the Israeli Leader to judge a Palestinian Beauty Contest. As for the rest of the field? It seems that, by and large, everyone looks at me not for how I can win but more how I can help Chris Card to win. I’ve got everything to win and very little to lose. I walk out with the X Crown Title or I walk back out with the assured title shot still in my back-pocket. These are all luxuries that my esteemed colleague on the other end of the call doesn’t have.

Cross sighs and runs a hand through his hair as if picking his words concisely in his head.

RECOBA

Here’s the thing, Caffrey is a man who HAS to be successful to have any form of identity, it’s a coping mechanism for the desperation that eats away at him everyday for fear of becoming even more irrelevant! When I throw him over the ropes, and I intend to do just that, he can take some comfort in the fact it isn’t the biggest fall he could take - that’d be if he jumped from his ego to his actual talent level!

GUY

Well, there you have it. Thank you for your time gentlemen, and best of luck in the Rumble!

RECOBA

Anytime!

______________
Special thanks to Cross for the collab.