Post by Eric Dane on Nov 6, 2019 23:07:19 GMT -6
“That’s it?”
I shrugged in response.
“Seriously? All of the hype, all of the hullabaloo, all of the waiting and that was it? Twenty seconds of ga-ga wrapped in a bunch of what I can only guess was supposed to be schtick?”
The flight from New Orleans to Las Vegas had up to that point been an easy one. The air was clear, turbulence was at a minimum, and the one stewardess that came with this particular chartered Cessna mixed a fine whiskey sour, thank fucking Christ.
“Looked like a bunch of bullshit to me,” I replied. “Wrapped up in some other, way more ignorant bullshit.”
Angus Skaaland had been my right-hand man for a lot of years through a lot of situations. He’d gone from lackey to personal-assistant to executive producer under my tutelage, and even though he and I hadn’t been up and down the road much over the past couple of years the minute I offered him an all-expenses-paid trip to Sin City, well, needless to say his ass was packed and ready to go.
“Just look at this nonsense.”
I flipped my tablet around to show him a headline from some dirtsheet or another.
Angus giggled.
“That explains this tweet, then.”
He flipped his phone around and handed it to me. Something posted on Biff’s account by some guy claiming that English wasn’t his native language and that Bifford would try his best to make it to High Rollers.
“I feel like our intel is coming in backward.” Taking a sip from my drink I handed his phone back before diving back into my tablet. I was hoping for something, anything that I could use for promotional material to at least try to make it look like one of us was taking this shit seriously.
“You are taking this shit seriously, aren’t you,” he asked as if reading my mind. “Because if you aren’t then you may as well pack it in.”
Shrugging, I gave the truest answer I could muster.
“I’unno, I guess. He’s not making it easy.”
My compatriot cut his eyes at me.
“He’s not fuckin’ supposed to, Eric, he’s the goddamned Champ.” Angus wasn’t wrong. I considered this for a moment while polishing off the last of my drink. “Listen, man, one of you has to take it seriously or it’s gonna be a goddamned fuckin’ fiasco-”
I cut him off. “Don’t say it!”
He said it anyway.
“Just like pretty much your entire last six or seven months, big shooter.”
Angus had been decidedly against my signing with the dumpster fire. He refused to go on the road with me because of it, and to be honest I wasn’t entirely sure for a while there that the decision hadn’t cost me one of the only close friends I had left.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.
“Look.” I was somewhat exasperated. It was probably the whiskey, of which I’d just been given another. “I’ve been taking this seriously. Every step of the way. And you see what I’ve got to work with, here. The doofus actually thinks that he’s going to win because either he’s got so much more heart than I do, or because I had lunch the other day. I can’t decide which is more preposterous, so I’m kind of just out here, dick in hand, waiting for him to show up with his serious face on.”
Angus frowned and took a deep drag off of one of those ridiculous vaping contraptions, almost filling the cabin with his purple-flavored exhalation of what he swears was steam and not smoke.
“To be fair, nobody ever said he had to take this seriously. He could always just take a DQ yanno.” I visibly frowned at this possibility.
Shrugging, I mumbled: “Yeah, I guess.”
A quiet fell between us. Angus went back into his phone and I scrambled for my drink with a quicker hand than anybody my age should still have.
“I’ll give you one last piece of advice, then I’m gonna try to catch a nap before we land.” He took another drag of the vaping box. “No matter how you think you wanna approach this match, don’t let Bifford’s failures in execution become your excuses for failing.”
I nodded and shrugged, he was right.
Another moment passed.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said.
Angus’s eyes narrowed into slits.
“You ain’t gonna throw me out of this jet, are you?”
Time shifts.
Not much, but enough.
Eric Dane is still very much aboard the privately chartered Cessna Denali that was very expertly negotiated into his GCWA contract by Dickey P. Shooter, attorney at law. Inside the cabin, The Only Star sits cross-legged with a fresh drink in one hand while the other brushes a solitary strand of loose hair back into place.
His smile widens into a toothy grin before he takes a quick sip.
Eric Dane:
Alright, Bifford, let’s chat.
It has become apparent that this promotional consideration is being shot with the camera from a cellular device of some sort. Given that there is an actual executive producer on the jet with The Only Star, one can certainly surmise who is doing said filming.
Eric Dane:
I understand that you’re not used to people talking down to you.
He shrugs.
Eric Dane:
Sorry’n shit. Thing is, the only two things you’ve done in the six months or so that I’ve been paying attention are beating Duce Jones a fuckload of times and win the GCWA World Title. Cool, I guess. I’ve been knockin’ on your door since the absolute moment that I’ve set foot in the GCWA and the only thing you’ve proven to me is that you’re gullible.
And also fat.
We mustn’t forget that part, it’s important.
So anyway, far be it for me to question the Champion’s strategical outlook on this, but do you really think it’s a good idea to telegraph to a twenty-five year veteran just exactly how you’re going to try and beat him with damn near a week’s worth of planning time left before the event? I mean, seriously, Biff?
And considering your substantial heft, do you really think it wise to attempt a move that you haven’t tried in seventeen years? How long do you figure it’ll take you to get your big ass out onto the apron and up the turnbuckle? Six, maybe eight minutes?
I’LL CATCH MY BREATH AND MOVE BY THEN BIFFORD.
And let us not forget that great big ol’ clogged-artery having, overworked, underappreciated heart of yours! That heart, which if this match goes more than six minutes will be in such a state of ventricular fibrillation that the mere idea of climbing the turnbuckle will cause it to spontaneously explode and blow a hole out of your chest because you’re so fucking fat that diabetes is your blood type!
Seriously?
You’re gonna beat me because you have heart?
Do you think you’re the first person who’s ever run that bullshit on me? The second? The two-hundred-and-third? Wake up, Bifford, you of all people should know that a guy like me has zero qualms throwing my feet up on the ropes for extra leverage, or grabbing a handful of tights if it keeps you just upside down just long enough! It’s not about honor and it’s sure as shit not about sportsmanship, it’s about who cashes the big check at the end of the night and who has to convince themselves that they gave it their all or they put their whole heart into it.
The soon to be Champion rolls his eyes.
Eric Dane:
Fuck outta here with that white meat puppy dog bullshit, it’s not a good look on you. But then again, neither is assuming that because I had lunch on Saturday that I somehow figure that’s enough to win a World Title. Are you fucking being serious, Bifford? I’m a goddamned World-Class athlete who has won more World Championships than you have chins and cankles combined! And I didn’t win a single one of them by telling my opponent a fucking shred of my strategy!
But go on ahead, big boy, jump out of a plane to drive home the point that you’re gonna try to win this thing with a Big Splash off the top rope! I promise I’ll act surprised if you ever make it higher than two feet off the ground! Then again, I won’t have to act because I’ll be genuinely surprised that your body somehow found both the energy required and the upward mobility to take that third step!
The End Boss takes another swallow from his glass.
Eric Dane:
I’m coming after you in Las Vegas, Bifford.
I’m bringing everything I’ve got.
I don’t mind bending the rules a touch, either. To be honest I have absolutely no issues with breaking every last rule in the book if that’s what it takes to nail your fat ass to the mat for three seconds. I’ll throw powder in your eyes, Biff, or maybe a fuckin’ fireball. Maybe I’ll take the fork out of my boot and dig one of your eyes out, the details don’t really matter at this point.
It’s all a means to an end.
That end is the World Championship around my waist.
And that belt, I hate to be the bearer of bad news Bifford, but it belongs to me.
A moment passed as Angus tapped and swiped away at his phone.
“Well?”
“Shh!” He shushed me. Another moment passed. “Aaaaaand posted.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d ya think,” I asked?
“It was alright,” he replied as if I were gonna just let that slide.
“The fuck?”
“It coulda been better.” Angus never was one to mince words or kiss my ass. “It was a little too counter-punchy for my taste.”
I stared at him, blankly.
For like fourteen minutes.
“Are you high?” It was a serious question.
“Sort of. I can’t ever really tell anymore.”
“Counter-punchy…” I trailed off. “...made a goddamned career counter-punching…”
His face did a weird scrunchy thing.
“And there was the fat-shaming.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s 2019, dude, s’all I’m sayin’.”
I was getting borderline pissed off.
“You didn’t wanna tell me any of this before you posted that shit all over the internet?”
He nodded.
“If I’d have made you do another take you’d have gotten all shitty about being produced and we’d be here all fuckin’ day. As it stands, there’s still a half-hour till we land and if you’d get the fuck outta your feels and be satisfied with something for once I could get that nap I was telling you about earlier.”
I bristled.
He was right, of course, he usually fuckin’ was. That was simultaneously his best and worst quality. Without another bit of fanfare he donned a sleep mask and was out cold in less than a minute. This left me to drink more, which always ends well, and left me thinking about the promo and the match.
Losing to Bifford of all people would be fuckin’ embarrassing.
Oof.
There wasn’t a lot left to be done about it, though. I’d set the game into motion weeks ago and win, lose, or draw, it was all gonna come to a head at High Rollers. The Biff End was banned and I knew that he was gonna try for the Splash, yanno, assuming he magically escaped custody in Whereverthefuckistan and found himself a way back home.
I rolled my eyes, not for the first time that day.
That’d be a kick in the ass, wouldn’t it? If the fat fuck didn’t show?
Heh, I chuckled to myself.
Whatever, a forfeit paid just as much as a pinfall.
That final thought lingered on the air as I drifted off to sleep myself.
I shrugged in response.
“Seriously? All of the hype, all of the hullabaloo, all of the waiting and that was it? Twenty seconds of ga-ga wrapped in a bunch of what I can only guess was supposed to be schtick?”
The flight from New Orleans to Las Vegas had up to that point been an easy one. The air was clear, turbulence was at a minimum, and the one stewardess that came with this particular chartered Cessna mixed a fine whiskey sour, thank fucking Christ.
“Looked like a bunch of bullshit to me,” I replied. “Wrapped up in some other, way more ignorant bullshit.”
Angus Skaaland had been my right-hand man for a lot of years through a lot of situations. He’d gone from lackey to personal-assistant to executive producer under my tutelage, and even though he and I hadn’t been up and down the road much over the past couple of years the minute I offered him an all-expenses-paid trip to Sin City, well, needless to say his ass was packed and ready to go.
“Just look at this nonsense.”
I flipped my tablet around to show him a headline from some dirtsheet or another.
CHAMPION WRESTLER MISSING, ASSUMED DEAD!
Angus giggled.
“That explains this tweet, then.”
He flipped his phone around and handed it to me. Something posted on Biff’s account by some guy claiming that English wasn’t his native language and that Bifford would try his best to make it to High Rollers.
“I feel like our intel is coming in backward.” Taking a sip from my drink I handed his phone back before diving back into my tablet. I was hoping for something, anything that I could use for promotional material to at least try to make it look like one of us was taking this shit seriously.
“You are taking this shit seriously, aren’t you,” he asked as if reading my mind. “Because if you aren’t then you may as well pack it in.”
Shrugging, I gave the truest answer I could muster.
“I’unno, I guess. He’s not making it easy.”
My compatriot cut his eyes at me.
“He’s not fuckin’ supposed to, Eric, he’s the goddamned Champ.” Angus wasn’t wrong. I considered this for a moment while polishing off the last of my drink. “Listen, man, one of you has to take it seriously or it’s gonna be a goddamned fuckin’ fiasco-”
I cut him off. “Don’t say it!”
He said it anyway.
“Just like pretty much your entire last six or seven months, big shooter.”
Angus had been decidedly against my signing with the dumpster fire. He refused to go on the road with me because of it, and to be honest I wasn’t entirely sure for a while there that the decision hadn’t cost me one of the only close friends I had left.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.
“Look.” I was somewhat exasperated. It was probably the whiskey, of which I’d just been given another. “I’ve been taking this seriously. Every step of the way. And you see what I’ve got to work with, here. The doofus actually thinks that he’s going to win because either he’s got so much more heart than I do, or because I had lunch the other day. I can’t decide which is more preposterous, so I’m kind of just out here, dick in hand, waiting for him to show up with his serious face on.”
Angus frowned and took a deep drag off of one of those ridiculous vaping contraptions, almost filling the cabin with his purple-flavored exhalation of what he swears was steam and not smoke.
“To be fair, nobody ever said he had to take this seriously. He could always just take a DQ yanno.” I visibly frowned at this possibility.
Shrugging, I mumbled: “Yeah, I guess.”
A quiet fell between us. Angus went back into his phone and I scrambled for my drink with a quicker hand than anybody my age should still have.
“I’ll give you one last piece of advice, then I’m gonna try to catch a nap before we land.” He took another drag of the vaping box. “No matter how you think you wanna approach this match, don’t let Bifford’s failures in execution become your excuses for failing.”
I nodded and shrugged, he was right.
Another moment passed.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said.
Angus’s eyes narrowed into slits.
“You ain’t gonna throw me out of this jet, are you?”
Time shifts.
Not much, but enough.
Eric Dane is still very much aboard the privately chartered Cessna Denali that was very expertly negotiated into his GCWA contract by Dickey P. Shooter, attorney at law. Inside the cabin, The Only Star sits cross-legged with a fresh drink in one hand while the other brushes a solitary strand of loose hair back into place.
His smile widens into a toothy grin before he takes a quick sip.
Eric Dane:
Alright, Bifford, let’s chat.
It has become apparent that this promotional consideration is being shot with the camera from a cellular device of some sort. Given that there is an actual executive producer on the jet with The Only Star, one can certainly surmise who is doing said filming.
Eric Dane:
I understand that you’re not used to people talking down to you.
He shrugs.
Eric Dane:
Sorry’n shit. Thing is, the only two things you’ve done in the six months or so that I’ve been paying attention are beating Duce Jones a fuckload of times and win the GCWA World Title. Cool, I guess. I’ve been knockin’ on your door since the absolute moment that I’ve set foot in the GCWA and the only thing you’ve proven to me is that you’re gullible.
And also fat.
We mustn’t forget that part, it’s important.
So anyway, far be it for me to question the Champion’s strategical outlook on this, but do you really think it’s a good idea to telegraph to a twenty-five year veteran just exactly how you’re going to try and beat him with damn near a week’s worth of planning time left before the event? I mean, seriously, Biff?
And considering your substantial heft, do you really think it wise to attempt a move that you haven’t tried in seventeen years? How long do you figure it’ll take you to get your big ass out onto the apron and up the turnbuckle? Six, maybe eight minutes?
I’LL CATCH MY BREATH AND MOVE BY THEN BIFFORD.
And let us not forget that great big ol’ clogged-artery having, overworked, underappreciated heart of yours! That heart, which if this match goes more than six minutes will be in such a state of ventricular fibrillation that the mere idea of climbing the turnbuckle will cause it to spontaneously explode and blow a hole out of your chest because you’re so fucking fat that diabetes is your blood type!
Seriously?
You’re gonna beat me because you have heart?
Do you think you’re the first person who’s ever run that bullshit on me? The second? The two-hundred-and-third? Wake up, Bifford, you of all people should know that a guy like me has zero qualms throwing my feet up on the ropes for extra leverage, or grabbing a handful of tights if it keeps you just upside down just long enough! It’s not about honor and it’s sure as shit not about sportsmanship, it’s about who cashes the big check at the end of the night and who has to convince themselves that they gave it their all or they put their whole heart into it.
The soon to be Champion rolls his eyes.
Eric Dane:
Fuck outta here with that white meat puppy dog bullshit, it’s not a good look on you. But then again, neither is assuming that because I had lunch on Saturday that I somehow figure that’s enough to win a World Title. Are you fucking being serious, Bifford? I’m a goddamned World-Class athlete who has won more World Championships than you have chins and cankles combined! And I didn’t win a single one of them by telling my opponent a fucking shred of my strategy!
But go on ahead, big boy, jump out of a plane to drive home the point that you’re gonna try to win this thing with a Big Splash off the top rope! I promise I’ll act surprised if you ever make it higher than two feet off the ground! Then again, I won’t have to act because I’ll be genuinely surprised that your body somehow found both the energy required and the upward mobility to take that third step!
The End Boss takes another swallow from his glass.
Eric Dane:
I’m coming after you in Las Vegas, Bifford.
I’m bringing everything I’ve got.
I don’t mind bending the rules a touch, either. To be honest I have absolutely no issues with breaking every last rule in the book if that’s what it takes to nail your fat ass to the mat for three seconds. I’ll throw powder in your eyes, Biff, or maybe a fuckin’ fireball. Maybe I’ll take the fork out of my boot and dig one of your eyes out, the details don’t really matter at this point.
It’s all a means to an end.
That end is the World Championship around my waist.
And that belt, I hate to be the bearer of bad news Bifford, but it belongs to me.
A moment passed as Angus tapped and swiped away at his phone.
“Well?”
“Shh!” He shushed me. Another moment passed. “Aaaaaand posted.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d ya think,” I asked?
“It was alright,” he replied as if I were gonna just let that slide.
“The fuck?”
“It coulda been better.” Angus never was one to mince words or kiss my ass. “It was a little too counter-punchy for my taste.”
I stared at him, blankly.
For like fourteen minutes.
“Are you high?” It was a serious question.
“Sort of. I can’t ever really tell anymore.”
“Counter-punchy…” I trailed off. “...made a goddamned career counter-punching…”
His face did a weird scrunchy thing.
“And there was the fat-shaming.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s 2019, dude, s’all I’m sayin’.”
I was getting borderline pissed off.
“You didn’t wanna tell me any of this before you posted that shit all over the internet?”
He nodded.
“If I’d have made you do another take you’d have gotten all shitty about being produced and we’d be here all fuckin’ day. As it stands, there’s still a half-hour till we land and if you’d get the fuck outta your feels and be satisfied with something for once I could get that nap I was telling you about earlier.”
I bristled.
He was right, of course, he usually fuckin’ was. That was simultaneously his best and worst quality. Without another bit of fanfare he donned a sleep mask and was out cold in less than a minute. This left me to drink more, which always ends well, and left me thinking about the promo and the match.
Losing to Bifford of all people would be fuckin’ embarrassing.
Oof.
There wasn’t a lot left to be done about it, though. I’d set the game into motion weeks ago and win, lose, or draw, it was all gonna come to a head at High Rollers. The Biff End was banned and I knew that he was gonna try for the Splash, yanno, assuming he magically escaped custody in Whereverthefuckistan and found himself a way back home.
I rolled my eyes, not for the first time that day.
That’d be a kick in the ass, wouldn’t it? If the fat fuck didn’t show?
Heh, I chuckled to myself.
Whatever, a forfeit paid just as much as a pinfall.
That final thought lingered on the air as I drifted off to sleep myself.
