Kingdom Come With a Ball and Chain He used to tell me, “It's that ninety-seconds, Boy. That moment everything is happening, your adrenaline is pumping and your heart is racing; you're in a rush,” it was here, he said, “that's when you’ll blink and that's when it happens. It will just take off and go,” he finished, “when you stop trying so hard to control it.”
Boy, had it ever, but that was life as he had always been told, in this business any way.
December 12, in Greenville, seconds after interrupting a match to choke-out Alan Envy in the center of the ring, Heathen Jones burst back through the curtain. Drenched in sweat, it rushed from under his straw orchard-hat, ran down his cheeks and formed streams flowing through the “grizzly” on his chin. Rushing, he chugged half of a bottled water and dumped the remainder over his face. He hunched over, for only a moment, trying to slow his pulse.
“Let's go,” he gasped.
“Baby,” he stood to find Hickey absolutely beaming, “you have to read this.” She had her arm outstretched as she charged with his Galaxy in hand, “Look here!”
“Meh have uh-...” she cut him off, shoving the mobile device deep in his beard.
“#uBKingCobra #Season3 Ur in okay,” his uncle, “Fat” Saul Swinechop, had texted him.
Hickey gave him a kiss on the cheek before taking his cellular and dropping it in her stage bag. She handed him his end and, while she secured herself within the chain, he turned around directly into Millennium's General Manager, Gianluigi Vaccaro. Vaccaro backed away and dusted himself off. Heathen was filthy and put up a cloud of dust on their collision. When Vaccaro's eyes met the empty voids of Heathen's, Vaccaro flinched. Then, neverminding Heathen's scowl, Vaccaro glanced past him to Hickey.
Heathen blinked.
“This,” the dollar signs danced in his eyes, “this, is going to sell a shit ton of tickets. Everywhere.”
There was no time for any of this because, when the feed returned, he had a match. More than that, he had a statement to make. Heathen shook his head and walked away with Hickey in tow. Literally.
And, just that quickly, quicker than he had even realized, it had taken off on him.
While it wasn't the wispy tale of honeymoon romance, a whirlwind of media and promotional appearances had a similar rush; and, was likely just as exhausting. Costumes, staging, posing and flashbulbs. Microphones, questions, insinuations and allegations. There are far more judgements for the underdog and not many want for him to win.
Heathen ponied up and played his part.
If Vaccaro was going to allow the homestate blood feud with Envy boil over, Hallie Savell was going to make it look good. It's her job. She was also going to do all that she could to capitalize on the uniqueness of this particular duo. Her leverage, Heathen wanted to use the heat he was building on the east coast to promote his competing in the Crown of the King Cobra.
And she had the perfect compromise.
The next week, in North Carolina, Heathen announced that he would be representing Millennium in the Crown of the King Cobra. Not to mention a resulting brawl with Envy, this announcement presented a whole new challenge for Savell. She had to hire a speech pathologist to teach Heathen to say “Millennium”. However, when the talk show interviews boiled down to this being the first singles main event of his career, she had given him the backing to raise his stock opposite AJ Morales on the Lights Out poster.
Meanwhile, t-shirts are selling and fans, nowhere near Louisiana or Texas, are picking sides. With other seasons coming to an end, time to headline the beginning of his own. NFL playoffs and college rivalries be damned, Heathen has his own tournament upset to make. And, it's about time the “bad guy” won one, right?
Heroes and Legends can be brought to their knees.
Their supporters, the fans, that crowd could all cry.
He would make them all suffer.
From the darkness of nowhere the villain strikes, breaking the hero. He takes control with unreasonable force. His antics ridiculed by those that boo him as he eliminates all that stand against him. Like you have been told, there are those that get joyful glee in watching the world burn. “And,” the “cha´ching” in any promoter's pulse, “this one drags a girl around on a chain!”
However, not everyone was selling foam-beards clean off of the shelves, getting showered in garbage or collecting the payouts that came with it all.
Jealousy and judgement followed him everywhere or met him wherever he was going, whether it was a shock-jock podcaster or a ring rag journalist, one or the other turned up the pressure of his first singles main event. He had to explain several losses to Envy while teaming with The Beast and “Paid to Pummel”. There was a major loss to Envy on a Lonestar Championship Wrestling pay-per-view featuring several of the Championship Wrestling Coalition's unique characters, including and because of Johnny Matthews. He did not have a main event win and he had never competed one-on-one at the top of any card.
As if the fever didn't already bead heavily on his brow.
Envy went out in front of tens of thousands and insinuated that not only had Saul helped Heathen into the tournament, but also the main event. That spread like an infection through the rags, online and on the rack. As much as it crawled in his skin, the fact that it had followed him home really dug in deep, Matthew Gamble dared to say something similar to him at Saul's on Christmas morning.
And, it festered within him.
Despite the fact it was Christmas, someone just had to say something. Despite the fact children merrily ripped away and tossed about paper with glee, someone just had to make a mess of things. Despite the fact he had just learned he would now be working both sides of The Pond on a somewhat consistent basis, and the fact that Saul hadn't helped him sign with TransAtlantic, he still had to hear about it.
Truth be told, Saul hadn't helped him with any of it. It didn't stop the old man from having an opinion about it though and, on the flight to London for Relapse II, Saul cut into him “Can't believe ya left him hangin’ like that.”
“Ain't fightin´ `im in-uh tweet,” Heathen shook his head as he looked at his boots. “Gots no reason be `tractin´ all dat `tention.”
“Ya better have somethin´ for `em on Saturday,” Saul encouraged, “they ain't gonna be familiar with y'all, ya know?”
“Fuck dem…”
Saul swatted from the seat on Heathen's left, burying the back of his hand deep in the beard and busting Heathen's bottom lip.
“Project that all ya want, Boy,” Saul warned, “never believe it. They gonna change ya life.”
“Fuck him den,” Heathen winced, licking the blood from his lip, “AJ dunno meh. Gonna ask how many title duh-Heathen gots. None. Meh match wit´ `im gonna be what, num´ twelve? Thirteen? Dat’d be somethin´…”
“Don't tell Ol´ Saul, save it for London, Boy.”
While they may not have been main event matches, thus far in his short career, he has had some marquee matches. While he may not have any title reigns dangling from the chain, as the thirteenth challenger to Jack Tillman's CWC Junior-Heavyweight Championship, he left the retired Dog of War with wounds to lick.
None of it made any difference to the UK fans, unlike the rabid fans in the States, they allowed him to rant an entire monologue. Heathen finally acknowledged his round one opponent before cutting up on Finn Whelan, Mikey Svarro and Danny Colt. Tears swelled in Hickey's eyes as he drooled over Lisa Seldon and Kaelan Laughlin. He declared the Crown of the King Cobra Tournament his own personal Arena of War and warned that they would all fall at the feet of his throne to kiss his ring. Intrigued, confused or, most likely, lost in translation, by the time he had finished, they had forgotten all about the little girl chained to the ring post.
Unbeknownst to any of them, this was the second major appearance in a row that he had stretched her rules; all they may have noticed was that he choked up for a moment. He was well-aware of what he had done because he had not forgotten she was out there. Had he not left her chained to the ring the week before Christmas, maybe she could have shaken his words from her mind. Had Envy not cut her loose on a live broadcast, this blatant disregard for her rules may have been ignored; back at their hotel room however, her emotions got the best of her.
“You ain't supposed to talk about them women like that,” she poked her finger into his chest, “that was part of the agree…”
“`t was duh heat o´ duh-mo…”
“You ain't s'posed to leave me chained out there either, EVER” she reminded with a pout, “And, but you did!”
If only the crowd at the Royal Albert Hall had been this hot with him. If only he hadn't unintentionally bent her rules of the chain. With her on his lap in the chair by the bed, he allowed her to completely blow up; their first trip anywhere from home soured as she feverishly reminded him of everything they had agreed to. When she finally tired out, he wrapped his arms around her and she fell asleep snug in his chest.
Post by RevolutionJones on Jan 2, 2019 20:11:59 GMT -5
We start with an unfocused shot, filled with glitters of gold. Slowly, the front plate of the King Cobra Championship comes into a focus, and soon after, the camera pulls back a little, revealing the full belt hanging on a wall, sitting to the right of a Union Battleground Championship belt with the name “EMERY LAYTON” engraved on the nameplate.
“Legacy.”
Our view continues to pull back and to the left, first revealing a Trench War title belt, then a whole host of Emery’s belts and trophies from not just Union Battleground, but XWA, IYHWF, BGDF, and more.
“What defines a wrestler’s legacy? Is it the matches they win? The championships they hold? Their signature moves? Their words? Their connection to the crowd?”
And finally, with all those awards behind him, “The Revolution” A.J. Morales steps into the frame.
“I know I didn’t expect to be grappling with my wife’s legacy at this stage in my career. I figured me and Emery would be taking on the world together until we were both in our forties, at the least. But then last month, she went into a three-way elimination match with her career on the line, and...well…”
His voice trails off, and though he doesn’t actually say it, the fact of her retirement is all too obvious.
“Honestly, sometimes even I have trouble believing it. But now we both have to deal with her legacy in some way. So on New Year’s Day 2019, the Layton-Morales Academy opened its doors for Em’s first crop of students. Every time they walk in here, they’ll see these belts on the wall, and they’ll know that they’re learning from the one of the all-time greats.
“But while she nurtures the future, I’m signed up to wrestle with the past, ‘cause I’m back in Union Battleground to run the same gauntlet she did last year and bring home one more of this belt right here. And to do that, the first thing I have to do is get through Heathen Jones.”
A.J. takes a second to flip his long, split-colored hair back out of his face before he keeps going.
“Heath, lemme get one thing straight, ‘cause I already know what certain uninformed people are gonna say. They’re gonna say that this rookie’s only getting the main event at his first L!ghts Out because his Uncle Saul’s on commentary, and that Saul must have put the fix in to make that happen. But I’m not gonna feed into that bullshit, ‘cause we both know that’s not true. You’re not in the main event because of nepotism. You’re in the main event because of me. And all the things you’ve faced in Lonestar and Millennium, all the people you’ve gone toe-to-toe with so far, trust me, it wasn’t even remotely enough to prepare you for what’s about to happen.
“Oh, sure, you’ll come down to the ring, dragging your girlfriend on a chain, looking like the biggest, baddest demon ever to walk out of a Louisiana swamp, and you’ll get that old-school “throw trash in the ring” Southern heat from the crowd like you always do. You seem like a business-savvy guy, so I can almost understand if that’s why Hickey agrees to humiliate herself like that every time you have a match.”
A.J. holds up his right thumb and index finger to the camera, keeping the tips just inches apart.
“Almost.”
He lowers that hand and then keeps going.
“But when that bell rings, you’re gonna be facing one of the most dominant luchadores on the planet, someone with the striking game to go blow-for-blow with you at what you’re best at, plus the speed and athleticism to do it faster and from more angles than you can. And while your biggest trophies in this sport are all the ones you gave yourself, I’ve racked up 15 title reigns in the past year and a half. I haven’t gone a single day in this sport without holding gold somewhere in the world since August 2017, and the Yin Yang Championship I’m bringing with me to Charleston is the one I’ve held my share of every single day that those belts have existed. Matter of fact, every single belt I’ve had, I’ve been some combination of first-ever, longest-reigning, most title reigns, and most title defenses with it, because when I get a championship, I don’t let anybody take it from me until I’ve done the absolute most I can do with it.”
A.J. has to stop for a moment to catch his breath before he keeps talking, and he takes that moment to conveniently gesture towards that black-and-gold cobra on the wall.
“And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? We’re both on this road, the one that goes from Charleston to Philadelphia to the Bronx to Atlantic City, because there’s a King Cobra Championship at the end waiting for somebody to grab it and see if they can live up to the legacy Emery built with it. That means one thing above all else: call your shot like she did, cash that belt in when the time is right, and become the world’s undisputed Union Battleground Champion. And there is nobody in this tournament—not you, not whoever the winner of this faces in Philly, not anywhere in the bracket—that knows Emery’s legacy like I do, because I’m the one that carries it with me every time I step in the ring. I’m the one that saw where her mind was at for all the ups and downs of all three of her title reigns. I’m the one that helped move all the championships and awards that help make up her legacy out of our apartment and into this building. So if there’s anyone in this bracket can take that torch and run with it as the King Cobra Champion the way she did, make no mistake, you’re lookin’ right at him.”
A.J. starts to lean back on the wall, arms folded, but this time, as he speaks, he slowly creeps closer to us, the passion in his voice rising sentence by sentence.
“And Heath...look, dude, it’s not that you’re a bad wrestler. It’s not that you don’t have potential. Hell, maybe in a few years, when you’ve proved yourself and hopefully found a way to connect with the crowd besides being creepy as hell, you’ll be giving a speech like this to someone else. But right now? If it’s you versus the guy Union Battleground called up when they needed a headliner for Arena México? If it’s you versus the guy who’s ended careers and brought entire factions crashing down? If it’s you versus the heir to the Best of the Battleground? Then I’m sorry, man, but your big break’s gonna have to come from somebody else, ‘cause the Revolution ain’t here to be your stepping stone. The Revolution is here to carry on a legacy…”
A.J. lunges in, grabs the camera, and spins us around, then lets go and steps back a little. There’s no more gold behind him, only a wrestling ring.
“...and from that foundation, build up one of my own. Brace yourself for it.”
A.J. gives the camera a fist bump, then lightly smacks the side of the lens, just enough to spin it around and get it focused back on the cobra on the wall. The camera zooms in again, and it goes back out of focus until all that’s left is an ocean of black.
