On The Matter of Death

Many years ago, when I was a sweet little idiot child, setting up a lil ring in the grounds of Farthington Manor, I never knew how far this would go. All I saw was a sport I loved, that I wanted to be part of, a small oasis in the dry desert of being a child of a British aristocrat. There are, after all, only so many finger sandwiches you can eat, only so much Earl Grey tea you can drink before it all starts feeling a bit meaningless. Oh, yes Dolores, it is raining again, oh it has been a bad few weeks… yes I did see that encampment at the local farm. No, I don’t think the police should be able to shoot them.

Sorry, flashback to the endless functions that the manor used to have. You can start to understand why perhaps it is not a life that people should seek if they value the tiny morsel of sanity that we have been gifted from on high.

I suppose like everything, if you live that “luxury” day in and day out, these events where you feel more of a display piece than a living human, it’s more of a busman’s holiday than a marker of social status. Yet, on the outside, people are always chasing the lifestyle, and I feel sorry for them. People save for months so they can cosplay the lifestyle and sit down for “High Tea” at a restaurant charging a twenty billion percent markup for a tart with some ham and egg in it.

I get it though - everyone has dreams of living a fantasy life. We all convinced ourselves that if we conquered every “what if” that lived rattling around in our skulls, we would finally be content because we would have finally lived the life we desired. Yet, reality, much like Nathan Coltoneaux, is a bitch. See, most humans end up detesting routine, no matter how opulent, no matter how lush, it all becomes monotony. A dream becomes a nightmare when it is all you have. Just look at all the billionaires and millionaires that literally or metaphorically punch themselves in the dick just so they can feel. Sometimes investing many dollars in websites so the widest audience on Earth can line up in the village square to perform a little CBT.

We all seek the greener grass because we all seek more than what we have. Those who claim to have found inner peace, you know that deep down they loathe what they have to do to retain it. Hamsters always tire of the wheel. To be settled, to be content, is to be telling sweet little lies to your own precious brain.

So we chase, we chase thrills, we chase risk, we chase that which makes us feel alive. For me, there was no contentment in being a “member” of the quote unquote high society in which my family had been accustomed to for generations. My race, my marathon, my white whale… she was that ring.

Now, I’m not going to go down the pathway of talking about my one true love again, I’ve accepted that people don’t see it, that people don’t understand love of a different kind. Simple folk like simple understandings, and a man like JCH, he’s something that the average human can, for a lack of a better term, “get”. A lovesick puppy who is constantly getting kicked around by circumstances around him, that makes people root for a man who has literally performed waterboarding on national television and never for a second regretted it. Enjoy that champion, PRIME, worship him, praise him. He is the champion that this company deserves.

You may find that to be a cynical sentence, but stay with me for a moment.

I became a man obsessed with legacy, a man who wanted, ironically, “worth” to be associated with my very name. That child setting up the ring at the weekend to play with his friends, I wanted to make his dreams come true. To be his own man, to carve out his own legacy, to evade the family assembly line.

Chasing the greener grass got me titles, it got my plaudits, awards, rings, allies, enemies and yet I convinced myself that I needed to do more. The legacy was never secure, I was still running on that wheel. My mental health, my physical health, none of it mattered in the name of bringing that inner child the joy he was owed.

Hyperfocus on the one piece of the world that I thought I could control. Perhaps making me a bit ignorant of those around me, perhaps making me aggressive in the ring, perhaps causing me to embrace shortcuts to achieve my goals much more efficiently.

All of this to say, as flawed a man as I am, why must I die?

I ask this sincerely. You see, there has been a lot of conversation about my potential death thanks to Max Kael and yet, instead of people dismissing this idea as absurd on the very surface of it, many people have encouraged it.

That’s where we are now, that is what PRIME is now. I used to call it a clown car, I used to complain that the legacy of the sport had been lost to buffoonery, that pure talent mattered not in this era of the coward.

Yet, not a single person in this company, including the owner, who is supposed to be my actual friend… not a single person has tried to put an end to the death threats I have experienced. Not a single censored post on Jabber, no website edit, no live TV dump buttons. For months, I’ve just had to sit and watch as Max Kael has managed to convince multiple people that I deserve to die.

Why? Is it because I won a bunch of matches through my own talents? Is it because me and my companions in Glue want to have a bit of fun during our work days? Is it because I opened up my heart and created a War Games team that everyone else looked down upon and built them into the winners they deserved to be. That they were always due to be.

Is that the standard of the wrestlers we have in this company? Is this what PRIME is now? I used to think that our Gluey Patriarch, Phil Atken, was a bit miserable, that his mission and vision that brought him to the Universal Title was miserly. His hyper focus on taking out that which he considered impure and mulching it to the stickiest horse paste, it just didn’t seem right to me.

None of this is a joke to me, the sleepless nights are not something I think to be ironically amusing, because this company has enough unhinged people that one of them may just follow through on that death request, whether it be for money, or just because they don’t like my accent. Hell, we’ve got roster members who are mob affiliated and that’s just allowed to be a cool thing we accept.

People will actually try this, and they will not need a lot of motivation to do it.

I’m no fool, I know people can see that I’m rather off the hinge at the moment, but who wouldn’t be in my shoes? Do you know what parading around London and Paris in a massive conga line truly is? Protection. Protection from those who don’t just want to see me lose a match, they want to see me lose my very life. A suspicious medical condition that allows me to always be around others? I think I can give you all a smidge of credit in working that one out.

I have been a passenger for too long now, just like that small child eating those cucumber sandwiches.

No longer, no more.

I’m starting to see a new verdant garden just out of reach. I can't let that boy who stood against his father when he tried to kill his passion down. I must embrace the inevitable, that I am human, that I am like everyone else, that I have just found my new bone to chase.

The stakes just seem a bit higher this time.

I either catch the bone, or I die.