By repeatedly breaking wrestling’s hallowed creed, the stars of the 1990s certainly ushered in a renaissance of the business, a deep penetration of the American mainstream after years on the fringe of culture... Unfortunately, that was a fast-burning fuel supplied by the rise of the internet and the rapid spread of information.
For over two decades now, wrestlers have had to work amid the dying embers of that once-roaring fire, desperate to stoke them into a renewed blaze within which they can forge narratives that will stand the test of time. They want to tell stories like in the old days, when tens of thousands of fans under the same roof yearned with their whole hearts for a Good Guy to give the Bad Guy what he deserved.
Telling those kinds of stories is their job. But honestly, how can they do their job when a legion gathers outside the boundaries of the ring and ceaselessly pulls our gaze away from what they’re trying to do?
Backstage at AEW Revolution 2021, Dasha Gonzalez asked Christian Cage what he thought of the way he debuted for AEW, coming in barely a month after his surprise appearance in WWE’s Royal Rumble. His comments echoed those from other masters of this craft, but we'll talk about most of those another day… for now we’ll just stick with these:
“Complete transparency, our initial conversations were me coming in being a surprise… The thing is, wrestling fans can be fickle, especially on social media. They want the backstage scoops. When you make a [mystery] announcement like that, you have people who want it to be their pick. They’re always going to be people super happy or super disappointed. All you can do is control what you can…
But after kayfabe got killed 25 years ago, how much remains to be controlled? Those glory days gave way to our current era where fans act insulted when a talent tries to work them, despite that being the point of the whole damn thing. Nobody wants to look like a “mark”, even though it’s marks who have all the fun and still feel the magic.
Even the "Teleporting Man" gimmick is a bit played out at this point.
What can the workers do to pull off a work in this day and age?
Well, first they might warn us they know quite thoroughly how we think.
MJF, after winning the AEW championship at Full Gear 2022:
You people are fickle. Pretty soon you’ll be saying stuff like, 'I am sick of MJF. He’s so boring. He’s so repetitive. All he does is talk. He never wrestles. He’s a coward. He constantly makes his opponent’s jump through hoop after hoop just to get a match.'
Great!
Because you know who’s gonna keep tuning in week after week? You!
[The championship] will be rarely defended and I will wrestle very rarely.
They also know we won’t take stock of certain things, like BTE 259 "Extremely Violent People". Two months before CM Punk’s arrival in their company, the Bucks get pissed at Rey Fenix for his minor interruption of the EVPs’ promo. What happens?
The EVPs ambush and attack him by a Pepsi cooler…
They know we’ll forget all about how they treated Dark Order on BTE 263, just over a month before CM Punk’s arrival in their company.
Bucks:
We’re pissed off!
John Silver & Colt Cabana:
What did we do??
Bucks:
What you did was wrong! You dug up old emotions… not cool. This goes back eight years… I don’t appreciate you guys going into business for yourselves! You know why? We’ve done enough for you guys already!
First you take over BTE, now you think you’re gonna take over AEW? Nah, enough is enough. Time for a change…
You’re kicked off the show!
It's been repeated ad nauseum by now: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” I guess we’ve gotta give credit to the devil for pulling that one off, just like we would for any great magician. But remember, the greatest magicians always rely on one thing to pull off their biggest tricks:
Misdirection.
You see, sleight of hand works best when the mark thinks they can’t be fooled. They have their eye on the spot where they just know the illusion comes from, and then it happens elsewhere. Is pro wrestling so different?
MJF spoke with Sam Roberts shortly after All Out, in a great interview I strongly encourage everyone reading to give a listen when you have time. As we all know, if the camera is rolling, MJF is working, so considering that...
Sam:
You come out at the end of the show. CM Punk is world champion. You're one of two guys in AEW who's ever beaten him. To me, the story has been being told. That was act one, right?
MJF:
100% right.
Sam:
So you're there and he's got the title finally and you're there to spoil the moment... The fact that you stole his fans in that moment...
MJF:
In Chicago.
Sam:
In Chicago, is even more of this story! Maybe an injury happened. Don't know. Hasn't been on TV. Titles been vacated. All this drama that has nothing to do with what's happening on the AEW television show... The story that is being told through what you do in the ring, it is not that story that we started to see an inkling of at the Pay-Per-View.
MJF:
Honestly, I hear the word 'story' and I find it interesting.
To me, this is just reality.
When it comes to someone like MJF, reality is always a matter of perspective, therefore, subject to manipulation. This doesn't make him unique, as the core product of wrestling is essentially manipulation on a grand scale... he's just better at it than others (and they know it).
Wrestling as a whole is an industry built entirely on lies, and such a structure is perpetually on the verge of collapse. To safeguard against that danger, the foundations must be reinforced with elements of truth, the materials handled, measured, and poured only by those you trust and with whom you vow to chase the same vision.
A vow to stick together can cross immeasurable distances, scale the highest walls, and unlock the most sternly forbidden doors...
The bonds formed between a group of people tend to elevate them all. So often, I am amazed by what one close-knit group can accomplish, even if at first glance...
... They seem unfit to manage a Target.
Getting everyone on board, everyone manning their station, ensuring there are no leaks in the hull of the ship... Given what we know about the past three decades of the business, isn't that what "wrestling purists, analysts, observers, and journalists say cannot be done or will ever be done again"? In and of itself, to do that now would most certainly be "pretty unprecedented stuff", but what it would allow them to do is even more unfathomable.
When it comes to the magic of it all... the who, what, when, where, and why of something, that we constantly obsess over and have consumed endlessly for close to thirty years... maybe that's the misdirection. If that is indeed what they've got us focused on, knowing us, knowing our myopia, knowing we'll do most of the work for them... then they can hide the big reveal in plain sight.
____________________________________________________________
I’m reminded of someone else who had trouble doing his job thanks to outside factors... I'm reminded of the way in which he solved his problem… And I'm reminded of words from a work in a stalled out medium, a work concerned with a stale character, a stale character who used to be a hero...
"It wasn't so long ago, we had heroes."
"The Dark Knight Returns", written and drawn by Frank Miller, was first published by DC Comics in 1986. The story follows an older Bruce Wayne, who has long since retired as Batman, being once again forced to don the cape and cowl to save Gotham City from a new breed of criminal.
Aging and aching after nearly a decade away, Wayne’s return to vigilantism comes when Gotham is threatened by a new gang called "The Mutants”, who are being led by a mysterious figure. He eventually discovers that Harvey Dent is pulling their strings. Previously known as Two-Face, Dent had undergone intensive behavioral therapy and even plastic surgery to try reentering Gotham society, only to be shunned and then disappear. Upon dispatching the Mutants and saving Gotham from a bomb threat, Batman realizes Dent’s mind has been completely consumed by the Two-Face persona and there is no hope for him.
Batman’s return to Gotham and his clash with Dent awakens his longtime nemesis The Joker, who had long been catatonic within Arkham Asylum. The Joker kills several people after manipulating his way onto a talk show, and Batman begins to feel deep guilt under the impression his return lead to so many innocent deaths. Batman vows to permanently stop The Joker and during their confrontation, he paralyzes his mortal enemy… But he still cannot bring himself to kill. Fully incapacitated but unable to goad him further, the Joker plays his final card: snapping his own neck, so that once Gotham PD arrives at the scene it appears Batman has murdered a defenseless man.
Gotham PD, now led by a new Commissioner, labels Batman a threat to society and initiates a manhunt to find him. On top of that, he has to deal with a shambolic federal government which sets its sights on Batman as an enemy of the state. Batman cannot continue pursuing Gotham’s criminal element without facing off against the government's new weapon, Superman, who has been gaslit into serving the government's interests.
After weakening Superman with the aid of Green Arrow, Batman seems poised to ultimately defeat the most powerful being on Earth… until the old man has a heart attack. The caped crusader is exposed as Bruce Wayne and the vast wealth and holdings of his estate disappear. At the funeral, while Bruce lays in a casket, Clark Kent hears the faintest heartbeat and then winks at Robin, acknowledging he understands what has happened:
The whole thing was an elaborate staging, a grand ruse that would allow the Dark Knight to continue battling Gotham’s enemies undeterred.
The greatest trick The Batman ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist he’s dead.
Why? Well, it was the only possible way he could keep doing his job and it was the only way to rejuvenate a decades-old icon. "The Dark Knight Returns" is widely credited with returning Batman to the American mainstream, a renewed interest which saw the release of the blockbuster film Batman only three years later in 1989.
If a wrestler’s job is to make us believe and rekindle the magic we all felt watching our heroes do suplexes back when we were knee-high, isn’t their highest hurdle the incessant deluge of information storming around backstage? The way Gotham PD hunted for Batman when he was just trying to do his job, we run to dirt sheets and social media for crumbs of talk that rarely have anything to do with the product we watch on-screen. There is 24/7 exposure and a fanbase consumed by rumors, real-life drama, and a relentless need to peek behind the curtain… so maybe the streets of our Gotham can only be saved by setting fire to that curtain, leaving nothing to peek behind.
Maybe that’s a stretch on my part. But then again, maybe it’s not.
August 20, 2021 – Nine hours before Rampage: First Dance
Surely, it must be exhausting to have every single thing you say or do be scrutinized by people who don't know you personally and "report" things about you they've only heard secondhand at best. More than that, it must be damn near impossible to tell a compelling story when people build careers on obsessing about everything other than the story you're trying to tell.
Some wrestlers don't hide their feelings about it.
Often, people seem to conjure things out of thin air as a way to sow division and trip you up.
Wade Keller of PWTorch & Jason Powell of ProWrestling.net in May 2021:
Keller: "There's gonna be a book written someday by some of these [AEW] EVP's or someone else closely observing and we're gonna learn about a lot of dysfunction. We're gonna learn what a very short honeymoon period there was between certain key people in the company, who aren't even talking to each other anymore. I think we're gonna find that out. I know there are people in other wrestling companies saying The Bucks and Cody and Kenny... it's not gonna be long at all before they want to have nothing to do with each other. The honeymoon period is going to be short. It seems like it is. It seems like there's some disengagement and people going off into their own that is showing up in certain ways."
Powell: "If that is not happening, they need to clear up that misconception. I do think it's happening. There's a would-be difference maker who could go there that has that opinion, that there's all this in-fighting and this person -- for that reason -- is hesitant to go there."
Within six months of this conversation, CM Punk, Adam Cole, Bryan Danielson, Thunder Rosa, Ruby Soho, Andrade, ReDragon, and Malakai Black signed with AEW, among dozens of others. As if that wasn't enough to prove this rumor unfounded, why not words from an EVP himself? Cody addressed it only a few weeks afterward, on May 27, 2021, during the media call prior to Double or Nothing.
Bleacher Report's Chris Mueller:
"We've heard some rumors, unsubstantiated so far, that you and the EVPs may not be on speaking terms… is there anything you can lend to that or provide?"
Cody:
"Well, when I saw that story was floating around, it's one of the things I chalked up as: we've been very successful with AEW. And with NXT losing the 'Wednesday Night Wars', there's a lot of anger. I understand that there's a lot of hardcore NXT and WWE people out there and that's why those stories don't surprise me. I think people need to cling to something.
As sexy as that story is, I talk to Matt and Nick every day. I talk to Kenny very often. I support their projects fully, they support mine. Tony's the boss, but we would not be able to put this show on the air if the four of us were not functioning as one team. Unfortunately it's not very sexy to say, but there's no truth to that. As we expand, we will remain one team."
Cody wasn't surprised by such a juicy rumor emerging, nor was he surprised by it making the rounds among internet wrestling fans who cling to such drama. These wrestlers know us far, far better than we know them. When they don't perform, behave, or react how we expect them to, we immediately turn against them. When recklessly drunk on what we've read in dirt sheets and what we've decided among ourselves, we create stories in our minds -- we fantasy book -- and when things don't transpire that way, we deem them poor quality. There's a pretty apt term for what we are...
1/27/19 - Daniel Bryan successfully defends his WWE Championship at the Royal Rumble
Backstage, he tells Cathy Kelley:
“These fans... these people… They are fickle! They cheer one minute, they don’t care the next… I’m not out there to impress the people. I’m not out there to make them cheer, I'm not out there to make them boo. I’m out there to change the world.”
3/7/21 - Christian Cage debuts at AEW Revolution a month after being in WWE's Royal Rumble
Backstage, he's asked, "What did you think of the way you debuted for AEW?"
Christian:
"Complete transparency: our initial conversations were me coming in being a surprise. The thing is, wrestling fans can be fickle, especially on social media. They want the backstage scoops. When you make a [mystery] announcement like that, you have people who want it to be their pick. There's always going to be people super happy or super disappointed. All you can do is control what you can, and trust Tony’s vision."
11/30/22 - A newly-crowned AEW Champion arrives at Dynamite
MJF predicts the future:
“You people are fickle. Pretty soon you’ll be saying stuff like, “I am sick of MJF. He’s so boring. He’s so repetitive. All he does is talk. He never wrestles. He’s a coward. He constantly makes his opponent’s jump through hoop after hoop just to get a match.
Great. Because you know who’s gonna keep tuning in week after week? You."
For the most part, wanting on-screen events and stories to go a certain way is harmless even if it's annoying to the wrestlers crafting the stories. What's not harmless, however, is when we take as gospel what wrestling journalists peddle about the real lives of these performers.
9/26/22 - While taking a hiatus to attend to his mental health, Malakai Black sounds off
On a live stream from his Instagram:
“Alright so, guys, how many times do I have to tell people if you can’t even get the years of my contract right, which is a very minuscule detail, then how are you expecting or how are people expecting that these guys know very intimate and private details in regard to my private business?
It is all bullshit, it is all lies...
In a time where I’m supposed to take care of myself and kind of wind down, I have to deal with this stupid bullshit from people who are not in the business and pretending that they are in the business with all their sources... You wish death upon a person because of what someone else has said, and then say that it’s confirmed? It’s not confirmed. Clearly, it’s not confirmed. None of it’s confirmed! All this stuff has been cleared up like weeks ago! All this stuff was weeks ago.
It’s mind-boggling!
If this isn’t enough incentive for you to stop believing these people, then I don’t know what is... What I hate about it is that none of these dirt sheets will take responsibility, none of these guys will take accountability and say, ‘Oh shit! We fucked up, I’m sorry. We should have probably not said that. Oh, he’s going through some stuff... Maybe we should not make all these baseless assumptions.' Because, again, as it turns out, it’s not true! Not one single thing of it is true...
Guys, stop believing these things. It is all unbelievable.”
Malakai's words came only three weeks after the All Out media scrum. Wise though they are, can you confidently say we have ever taken heed to them? Have we followed his advice at all?
In favor of rumor merchants, we ignore so much of what wrestlers tell us directly. In many cases, they've practically been slapping us in the face, and yet we still don't listen...
Following The Elite's return from their administrative suspension, Kenny Omega gave a rare candid interview with Sports Illustrated and reflected on the aftermath of Brawl Out.
“This isn’t Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks against CM Punk. It is people trying to show off their craft. You can boo Kenny Omega, or the Young Bucks, or CM Punk.
But I hope people don’t forget we’re human beings struggling to show our art...
...We still have a lot of goals to show the possibilities of wrestling.”
If at any point in this lengthy saga you've thought "Brawl Out" was just too crazy of a thing to be used for such ends, well I can assuredly say it isn't even close to the craziest thing a pro wrestler has tried in service of that goal. Nearly three decades ago, someone figured out what Bruce Wayne discovered in Frank Miller's comic book: use the wildest things people will peddle and will believe to create something capable of dancing fluidly between fact and fiction. When you have that... well, you can do whatever the hell you want.
Let's travel to the '90s once more, long before any pipe bombs ever exploded, to a brief moment in time where the whole world of wrestling stared straight down the barrel of a Loose Cannon...
In early 1996, Brian Pillman began acting increasingly erratic. He started using backstage jargon during promos, got into heated confrontations with executives at WCW, and had a stiff fight with Kevin Sullivan on the SuperBrawl PPV before grabbing a microphone, saying "I respect you, Booker Man!", and walking out on their match. Four Horsemen stablemate Arn Anderson got sent out in street clothes to finish the match with Sullivan, making the broadcast seem in total disarray.
Schiavone, Heenan, and Dusty had no idea how to react to what they were seeing.
Pillman became the talk of professional wrestling and -- according to the dirt sheets -- had nuclear heat with everyone at WCW. It seemed only logical he would be fired, but when Eric Bischoff let Pillman out of his WCW contract, it was specifically so he could go to ECW and ramp up his "Loose Cannon" persona under the assumption he would return to WCW with more buzz than anyone had seen in years.
When Pillman turned up at ECW CyberSlam on February 17, 1996, he cut one of the most influential promos in the history of wrestling, shooting on Bischoff, wrestling fans, and the wrestling business in general, before declaring his only purpose in the "hell-hole" of ECW was to piss in the middle of the ring. Joey Styles abruptly cut him off before security forced him out of the arena… but he kept coming back and with each week, the buzz around him grew exponentially. In the midst of The Outsiders invading WCW, Brian Pillman was the hottest act in the business.
Bischoff clumsily overplayed his hand, however, granting Pillman a shoot termination instead of a worked one, then offering a massive contract to return to WCW while insisting on multiple out-clauses as a hedge against the smashed ankle he sustained in a car crash. Vince McMahon seized the opening, signing Pillman to an unprecedented deal that granted him retention of all his merchandising rights, the ability to continue appearing on ECW shows, as well as being fully guaranteed (only the second such contract in company history at the time).
Just after signing with WWF, on June 23, 1996, the very same night "Austin 3:16" was coined, Jim Ross got a full blast from the Loose Cannon:
"While you crown a King of the Ring, the leader of a new revolution ascends to his throne! I'm gonna rape, pillage and plunder this entire federation!"
Five months later, he poured gasoline on the hottest feud in the company: an intense, violent clash between his long-time close friend Bret Hart and his old "Hollywood Blondes" tag partner, Steve Austin, which gave us one of the most iconic moments in wrestling history…
"When Austin 3:16 meets Pillman's 9mm Glock, I'm gonna blast his ass straight to hell!"
Enveloped by immense heat from this controversial segment (that completely worked A LOT of people, from fans to advertising partners), Austin went into Survivor Series two weeks later and emerged from his match with The Hitman as a bonafide headliner. As the year rolled over to 1997, the feud between Stone Cold and the Hart Foundation with their ally Pillman set the stage for Austin turning face at WrestleMania XIII, an event which catapulted him to superstardom by the end of the year.
Seems like a lot can come from someone slipping out of their contract and turning up elsewhere, doesn't it? In Pillman's case, he became a direct catalyst to the Attitude Era.
As evidenced in my last two posts, the generation of today looks to such landmark events in wrestling history for direct inspiration. So let's quickly revisit the last true feud of a wrestler in the company he helped establish... the last true feud before he slipped out of a contract and turned up elsewhere...
Dynamite 9/29/21 -- After weeks of Malakai Black beating Cody to the point of near retirement...
Arn Anderson:
"Cody, stop talking! Stop talking! July 7th, Malakai Black came into our life. He has systematically destroyed every one of us, he used me to get to you, but it's your fight. The first time, he totally destroyed you, you started taking your boot off, what's that all about?
We didn't talk about that.
You come back for number two, 'I've got this', you finally get him hurt, what do you do? You roll out of the ring to see about me, to hell with me, it's not about me! You should have finished that fight! Malakai Black is an assassin... I would step in to take the fight, but I'm just too damn old…
There's big differences between you and I, Cody. You pull up to a red light, a man jerks your door open and says, 'Outta the car, I'm taking your car!'. You say, 'OK, take it! Just don't hurt me!'
You know what I'd do? I'd pull out the Glock, put it on his forehead, and spill his brains all over the concrete!
A week later, Arn continues from outside Cody's home and gives us a hint at what's coming:
"Cody has just gotten too Hollywood… Malakai Black, coming in an unlocked door, to AEW. [Arn sees Cody standing on the balcony of his mansion and mocks him] Ohhhh, you finally realized I'm here! What are you gonna do? Come on down, Cody. You finally realized I'm here? Well, it took you long enough!
Cody, in disbelief:
"You snuck into my house… What are you gonna do, shoot me?"
But Arn is simply fed up with how his protege lets others hijack what he built.
"Why don't you just paint a star on your face? Then everything will be cool...
You threw us away, damn it!"
Three months later, Cody Rhodes threw away more than anyone could have imagined.
These days, however, an allusion to something as significant as "Pillman's Got a Gun" still isn't enough to point us in the right direction and key us into the story being told. We're just too easily distracted...
Perhaps the only solution is to weave the biggest possible distraction into the story itself... Perhaps you do, in fact, have to set the curtain on fire.
Remember what I highlighted in the foreshadowing "locker room fight" from BTE 300, five months before Brawl Out?
Nick Jackson:
Why would we have a bloodbath match here, right now?
[Nick looks at the camera]
Why would we do that? Why have a bloodbath here?
Well, ever since CM Punk returned to wrestling, one wrestling reporter in particular keeps popping up and serving as a useful tool to get things where they need to go, to help us trace where things originate...
Nick Hausman asked CM Punk his very first question in AEW, the night of First Dance.
Nick Hausman was the launching pad for Punk's rant at the All Out media scrum.
Nick Hausman got the dish on Punk's masked run-in from 2019
Nick Hausman got Punk's first comments after winning the WWE lawsuit in 2018
Nick Hausman got some juicy, yet VERY out-of-nowhere, comments about Punk
To answer Nick Jackson's question, "Why have a bloodbath?", we'll go to something Nick Hausman -- former Chicago-area wrestling manager -- conveniently brought up three weeks earlier during the media scrum for Revolution 2022.
During the press conference, Hausman refers to the recent Esquire profile detailing Punk's youth:
"It showed a different side of you that I never expected you to put out there..."
Curious about this different side of Punk, I read the piece which was indeed remarkably thorough for a person as guarded as Phil Brooks typically presents himself. While reading, one thing stood out to me in particular: July 1993.
That summer, Phil and a bunch of his friends from a local comic shop decided to have a backyard wrestling show. On the day "Chick Magnet Punk" was born, the "Lunatic Wrestling Federation" drew a decent little crowd, inspiring them to keep at it and instilling a passion that eventually became a legendary career.
The name of their first event?
"Bloodbath"
If we accept that modern talents are desperate to tell a wrestling story like in the old days when the magic was still there, if we accept they'll use our distractions in their favor and use the dirt sheets that have so long undermined them to advance that story, the only thing that remains to be done is coming up with a story that's worth telling in the first place.
The best stories not just in wrestling but in culture overall may seem immensely complex at first glance, but on closer inspection and once we peel back the layers, they're often something quite simple. They're often stories that have already been told a thousand times in one way or another. But almost always, at their core, they are stories we know intimately and have seen played out in our very own lives. With that in mind, what story could be more universal and more relatable than the simple act of going home.
Being The Elite #204
"Hangman" Adam Page:
"Maybe I should go home? I don’t know. The thought itself bloomed inside my brain like a malignant tumor… uninvited, unwelcomed, but growing just the same. It would be ridiculous to go home right now. Because out here I can’t get infected and I can’t infect anyone else. I mean, we’re all in this together.
It’s not just some "Kumbaya" platitude regurgitated over a soft melody during a Subaru Forester commercial. It’s a biological reality of an exponentially spreading infectious disease and it feels irresponsible to go back to my house. Even now, I would never know if I overreacted coming out here to live, but I would forever live with the pain of knowing I didn’t do enough. And to be honest, I’ve been kind of enjoying living out here. I got good company, and I know you can’t see them right now, but they’re everywhere. It’s not just people either. Two days ago, I swear a raven winked at me. As I sat there, I watched this eagle start preening her tail feathers in her nest, and I thought: 'Maybe I should go home?'
I don’t know. Why did I think that in the first place? Honestly… I mean, it feels selfish, but there is a large part of me that wants to march right back up the front steps and slip off my boots and let them dry…
… stumble right through the front door with a sheepish grin hoping nobody noticed I had left in the first place. And as nice as it is out here, truthfully the past few months has left me feeling pretty damn worthless.
Like, I used to know more, but living in a house is kind of all I understand now. And maybe most selfishly, I feel like I want to go back home because I was on the run of my life in that house. I was learning to eat as much toast as I wanted... I nearly won the prestigious “Man of the House” award in May. I teamed up with our broom to clean the house better than ever... And I feel like I might have been starting to… patch up the holes of the house… the holes in the walls that made the house what it was in the first place. Everyone was loving what I was doing in the house and it made me feel more validated than I ever felt in my life. And I felt like maybe I was on my way back to winning the “Man of the House” award, the thing I had promised to win on Day One.
But I…. I’ll never get that momentum back.
I mean, does momentum even exist in a house that’s empty?
Or maybe I’m just a fucking brat.
Really… it seems unfair that I get to live out this Snow White woodland fantasy while Cynthia from Food Lion has to go back to her apartment every morning. I mean… am I the bad guy here?
"I used to wake up every morning, look in the mirror and ask myself: Am I the bad guy? I never really had an answer… Of course, I don't truly believe that anyone thinks they're the bad guy in their own story…" -- CM Punk
Either way I look at it, I’m the bad guy in my own drunken monologue here... I mean, maybe that is just the way the world has conditioned me to think when the choice was never mine to begin with, I don’t know. All I know, is that I can’t shake the feeling that the world is about to fuck me dry one more time. And for the first time ever, I have the chance to put on lipstick first. I mean… I know I need to go back home. Home is still there. I have bills to pay, a mortgage to pay… But honestly what I want to do is climb back on my horse and ride off into the sunset and just say to hell with it... Maybe this little rant is all I have left…
… Just throwing my leg over a saddle with a broken tree… Kicking a horse I know has long been dead… and the horse just collapses… and I’m sitting back here in the same spot wondering:
“Why did I want to go home in the first place?”
CM Punk at the First Dance media scrum, moments after his return to wrestling:
"When I left Ring of Honor, and this is serious, I did not want to go. But I felt I couldn't stay and you can't really explain that to people. It's just something you live through. And then [in WWE] when I was sick and tired and hurt and I realized that these people wouldn't care if I died today, there'd be another show tomorrow… I knew I had to remove myself from the situation. I didn't know how long it was going to take for me to heal. Then this came along and… it reminded me of places I used to work where I loved, where it was more about the spirit of the thing. Instead of feeling like a house, it felt like a home."
Cody Rhodes after his final AEW match, with just a cameraman and some travel cases to hear:
"There's so many elephants in the room... This is an insane week in wrestling. People think that the Sean Ross Sapp story is BS. It's not. I am working here without a contract. I'm not even on payroll anymore. I'm working here on a handshake deal… that is 100% legitimate... But I can tell you this, I have never felt more at home than under those lights, wrestling for the TNT title, a title that will never, ever be secondary.
Old school promoters will tell you the title can make the man, or the man can make the title. At this point, we don't know which is which… I absolutely wish I could go home to my baby girl, to my family, and say, “Hey! TNT Champ once again!”... A belt that was synonymous with my name… I'm slow when it comes to rematches, but maybe I won't be so slow on getting my rematch on this one…
For now, I'm going to take a beat, get with Arn, who’s been there for my whole career. I'm going to think about it again — an insane week where I have heard the most wonderful crazy things from all walks of the wrestling world on what it is that I do next.
But like I said, I've never felt more at home than wrestling for that title in front of a crowd like that."
If the story is worthwhile, the last thing you'll need to pull it all together is a big enough stage on which to tell it. That... Well... That's easier said than done.
It's a big gamble. If you sit at the table for high-rollers, you need to be ready to go All In.