Post by stratford on Sept 12, 2020 18:07:05 GMT -5
Day by day its clearer than ever that Anicka Swan is fucking liberated by being a part of the Syndicate. And I’m no fan of Stylez, Buchannan and the rest of them, but it speaks fucking volumes about the weight of being a Wolf.
They’re all fucking toxic, incestuous, suffocating each other with this faux sense of nobility and pride, fucking Instagram filter fable that they force-feed us week after week, living in their own fickle fantasy whilst the world falls apart at their feet.
Blind to it, they’re all so wrapped up in this happy families sing-along that they can’t see the forest for the trees. The cult is falling apart, but still they break bread like its nothing, like they can paper over the cracks of the failed experiment and pretend that the end goal isn’t to give everyone a cup of cyanide in their commune in Guyana and be fucking done with it already. They’re already cooped up in a complex somewhere off-grid, watching over what everybody does, who they speak to, probably a document in a cabinet somewhere that outlines all of their kinks and fetishes and arranges regular swap sessions to keep everybody suitably amused.
But whilst that narrative holds up, let’s look at the facts.
Because despite the weight of the world being lifted from her shoulders, she’s bound by another force. Since Highway2Hell, she has fought for her Immortal Championship three times, and there can be a strong case to be made that she should have lost on all three occasions.
And that’s the overbearing pressure from the guy she chooses to spend her life with, trying to impose his own idea of freedom on her. He suffocates her from afar. She doesn’t know which way to turn because she’s trapped either way.
The first week I was here, I told you that I was coming, Swan.
Just because I pity you, nothing about that has changed.
I strongly believe that once you’re free, you’ll find a new lease of life and you’ll flourish again. But for now, in this moment, you’re drowning. Whichever direction you turn, you’ve got expectations as long as your list of previous sexual conquests.
You look lost, you fight like you don’t care, I get the distinct impression that you’d throw in the towel if you were promised a happy ending where you can float off into the sunset with marshmallows and barbecues forever. You haven’t got the appetite for this anymore, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you know it to be true. You’re lost in your spiral, your downward spiral of dejection. Exposed by X at Highway, embarrassingly. Finally, the ol’ dog can get put out of her misery and shot at Stairway.
So I’m coming for you, but what I’m going to do to you will set you free.
You see, for me this isn’t just about bearing a grudge against someone who wronged me, this is about realising something that I always strived for and never had the chance to achieve. More than you will ever know, this has never been just about sticking a knife into that house of cards you call a family.
No, its a personal journey too.
I don’t look back on my career and call it a failure. I reached heights that few do in this industry. I’ve main evented pay-per-views, I’ve been on billboards, magazine covers, people speak about me in folklore, about the epic battles with Bryan Dyamond or Damon Riggs, Smokin’ Shawn Stevens, Jason Jarrett, Chris Cage, Stallion, whoever, wherever. Forever.
I don’t lament for much when it comes to my wrestling career.
But I never stood at the top of the pile with the championship held aloft, acknowledged and respected by my peers as the champion.
And for that, I do lament. For that, I yearn.
I was always close, but I never won one.
I often wonder if it was the personal growth, or the purposeful stifling of said growth, that held me back?
So many feelings that I stuffed down deep and never dealt with, suppressed, tried to swallow and forget. What if that is the reason I am so numb now, and the reason I couldn’t quite attain the heights I strived for back then? It would certainly make sense.
When I look at myself in the mirror as I do right now, I see a faded, old, greatest-hits version of the person that I wished I could have become the first time around. There are bits of me that hang in not-quite-the-right way, there are creases and folds that betray a defeat to the victor of all men and women alike - father time. We all want to live in neverland and hide from time, but he catches all of us without mercy.
When I was young, dumb and full of, yeah… I guess it would be fair to say that I saw myself differently from my peers. I liked being pretty, I liked makeup, I liked feminine clothes, I coiffed my hair, wore rouge on my cheek and painted my manicured nails with bright colours. In time, and with societal pressures being what they were, this pushed me to a counter-culture where I found some level of acceptance. But it wasn’t quite right. Sure, I guess you could say I was ‘a goth’, if you want a label, but we all know that nobody completely fits rigidly into any label. I definitely wasn’t a Hot Topic magazine goth, I wasn’t short on attention and just crying out to be noticed, I just felt different to how I looked - inside and out.
Exploring this came with its own growing pains. Being a teenage boy who liked to wear dresses and paint his face, of course, had its challenges. And like I said, I wasn’t really part of this subculture of people who did it for the sideways glances or to try to bang girls in Marilyn Manson skinny tees, I couldn’t really explain it to anybody. My parents thought it was a phase, I didn’t correct them. My fellow alumna thought I was a freak, and I didn’t correct them either. People often accused me of being gay, or a ‘gender bender’, or worse, and I never denied any of it. The truth is that I myself was confused. I looked at myself with frustration because I didn’t understand. When I looked around me, in magazines, on film, in music, I didn’t see anybody like me, I didn’t feel represented, I didn’t have a label that actually fit me, so I just let people think whatever they wanted to think, there was no need to argue about it. I wasn’t exactly sorry for being who I was, I didn’t conceal it, I just didn’t know what I was. I was just me, and I just existed in this vacuum of identity, where nothing was defined, nothing moved, nothing touched me or was touched.
And then I met Demi, and everything came alive, I flourished, I was on a warpath professionally and I was growing personally, comfortable in my skin. She understood me, she allowed me to breathe, she didn’t demand answers from me about things that I was still trying to figure out. She was the kind of person who loved me for what I was, without pushing for a definition.
And we had a great number of years together, travelling the world. Us against the rest. We were both on a trajectory for greatness, I was exploring myself, trying to figure out what these feelings meant, what I was or who I was.
Labels for what was really going on didn’t exist then, unlike today. A male embracing his feminine side, not chasing bravado and machismo, shunning typical masculine jock stereotypes was labelled a weirdo and not much else.
The truth is, until I met her, I felt like I didn’t belong, like an alien. I wasn’t a man, I wasn’t a woman. I was something in between, but none of that mattered with her, because I was ethereal, otherworldly, alive.
Then she left, and I was back to where I started. Confused, alone, lost.
There wasn’t a blazing glorious argument that ended in spat venom that couldn’t be retracted, there was never violence or aggression, there was fullness and then emptiness. And I fell into the abyss, lost myself. Became a hollow shell, not even a greatest hits tribute act to the Once-Great (but never “The Best”) Stephen Stratford.
I spent a while wandering aimlessly in the woods, the same woods we used to go in on our ‘adventures’, but it made the pain worse. Seeing markings in trees that we’d carved to pass messages to one another when trying to find each other or misdirect the other depending on the game we were playing that day, like children, only reminded me of the innocence that we had in that honeymoon period of our relationship. Where nothing mattered but spending time together, we had no cares or worries. Why not go play hide and seek in a storm, not coming back for hours and hours, soaked to our soul and close to pneumonia?
It wasn’t like that when you left. It was heavy, there was an unspoken tension, you were withdrawn. I just thought you were a bit tired of the road, and we were looking forward to an extended break after that campaign against Riggs. But then he overstepped the mark, and you slipped out of our hotel room in the night, without saying bye. It had been weeks of slow withdrawal, it had been a struggle for me, too. The relentlessness of the road was eating at us, we were a little short-tempered with each other, maybe took each other for granted, but that was life right? Fast-paced, shit-faced, low-maintenance? Spend more than we make, but that’s life, right? Night after night we lived like it was our last, and we were on the same page until one day that wasn’t life anymore.
I don’t know about you, Demi, but for me, it came out of the blue. It ripped me apart to my very core, and I took off into the wilderness, never wanting to come back again. But after weeks wandering the woods, sleeping outside, scavenging for food and water in the wild, I slumped at our doorstep. Defeated, ready to finish it.
I sat in front of our window, lit our candles, and filled a glass to the top with Hennessey - your favourite. And when I was done, I poured out a bottle of painkillers onto the window ledge and grabbed a handful, rolling them between my fingers as I agonised my next move. I didn’t know what else to do, I didn’t know how I could survive without you. You transformed me, you saved me, and then you left me and you didn’t tell me why.
Stephen Stratford died that night, in that window.
Not because I took a handful of Percocet, because I didn’t end up doing that, I couldn’t. I always knew that suicide doesn’t end the pain, it just moves the pain. All the people thinking of a life without me in it. But the soul of Stephen Stratford did die that night, that much is certain.
Just like in my formative years when I pushed everything down and ignored it, I put my feelings in a box.
I became The Protagonist. Id, a shell of a person. Cold, hard, and closed. A defense mechanism, where I was barely functional but functional nonetheless. My right foot followed my left foot which followed my right foot, and step by step we passed the days, until the days blended into weeks, months and years. Before I knew it, life was passing me by, but that intolerable helplessness that consumed me in the window wasn’t pushed to the front of my cerebral cortex, devouring my every breath.
It let me tread water, it let me heal just enough that I could turn that emptiness into something else. I could reappropriate that devastation, turn self-destruction into wanton destruction of others.
I dealt with it.
It wasn’t until I saw him in the flesh, the sensation of his throbbing pulse against my fingers as his body sent panic signals up and down his carotid artery, that I managed to find a way to get some release. To see that if I want life to stop passing me by, that I need to let that pain break me, so that I can rebuild myself, one part at a time.
When I felt his consciousness leave him, his body going limp beneath my grip, I knew that it was time to come out of that shell, to begin the process of relearning who Stephen Stratford is, who he was, and who he will become.
So as I stare at myself in this mirror, the battlescars of a hard road travelled, I try to find a sense of pride in the fact that I am on this journey to rediscover myself, to make good on the embers of hope that once flickered for me, to try to resurrect this poor misunderstood womyn from the ravine of lost souls into which he’d fallen. To be not just great, but to be the best.
I’d already re-established a warpath of sorts. Undefeated, never pinned or submitted in OPW.
This match at Stairway To Heaven… this journey, this parable, this allegory...
It is about me, it is being brave to put that makeup on my face, to show my tattoos, to acknowledge that I am not quite a man, not quite a woman, but something in between, and that I am happy with that, that I don’t want to hide that anymore. I don’t want to keep stuffing that feeling down deep in my gut and pretend it doesn’t exist.
To stand tall, with all of my scars on full display, over the rest of them at Stairway To Heaven.
It would prove that nothing was in vain, the journey was worth it. I can’t change what I lost, but I can honour it, I can embrace it. What it took to get to the top of the mountain, finally.
My fingers trace the contour of my cheeks, I flutter my eyelashes that are naturally long and elegant. The paint on my nails is chipped, emblematic of how I have always felt about myself in general. The roots of my hair are starting to come through, brown sprinkled with grey - I’ll need to fix that before Stairway. I remember when my skin was so soft and clear, and I didn’t appreciate it at all. Now I can see the pores of my face from across the room. Rough to touch, and worn out to the eye. Lived in.
But it is pride that I find. And hope. A sense that good things are coming, that we’ve passed the turning point in the canyon of despair and we are making our ascent, we are healing our wounds and soon our broken wings will support our weight again.
Whilst everyone is looking at each other, wondering who will betray whom, whether it will be the great hope Xavier returning to the family or whether Swan will stick the knife in once and for all and pledge her undying allegiance to the Syndicate, Roger Wright be damned, or whether they will finally all show their hand and let us know that it was a work all along and they are all best friends… who knows, and nobody cares. But Stratford will be there, under the radar, looking to fuck it up for everyone. Because lord knows, the last thing anyone wants is Stratford to control the destiny of OPW, slinking away with the title from under everybody’s nose. Of all the possible outcomes, I think that’s the one that people are banking on least. Just listen to them both, Xavier and Anicka, neither of them even consider Stephen Stratford a threat, barely a fucking footnote in their thoughts going into this match. Everyone’s focused on Wolf and Wright and their pathetic little tug of war over the Immortal Champion.
And it’s precisely that which keeps this spring coiled as tight as possible, ready to plunge that knife right into the first one that moves, ready to set fire to the house of cards, to start a new era.
To me, this matters more.
January 20th, 2020 - French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana
Fade in.
We’re in the kitchen of my house, the day that The Producer first came knocking, months prior to me ever appearing on Outlaw Pro’s Showcase prior to Highway 2 Hell. He sits opposite me, his face obscured from view by the glinting harsh morning sun that cuts through the blinds on the east-facing window. His elbows rest on the pine counter-top, fingers pressed together almost in prayer, but the digits interlock and the tips on one hand play a soft drum on the back of the other hand.
“There will be you, there will be Anicka if she makes it, there will be Xavier. I have another who will join from my ranks. You know him, but you won’t truly be acquainted until just before the match,” he offered, still pondering how much information to betray so early in the discussion.
“I’ll put all the chips in play to force their hand to play exactly as we want it, the other participants will be Roger Wright, Apathy—” He continued.
I raised a mug of tea to my lips, and interjected, almost spilling my tea, “Apathy?”
“Apathy, yes. She might be buried in the mid-card at the moment, but she’s going to get a shot at the title and really twist things up for Swan and the Wolfpack. She’s a problem for Swan, but I don’t think they see it. It’ll be easy to get them to agree to that suggestion. They think I can’t see what they’ve got up their sleeve at Highway 2 Hell, but I know that the title won’t even be up for grabs. Keep your eyes out for her because she is probably the one true free spirit in this match.”
At this point, I was unsure whether I believed a word that came out of his mouth. It seemed far fetched at the time. Not so much now, on reflection.
He thought himself a Prophet, and I was starting to think that he was the Second Coming with how everything fell into place exactly as he said it would. The only thing he didn’t bank on was Scotty Adams, but none of us did, did we?
“They will be so concerned with each other that their eyes won’t be on you or the Luchador at all. All you’ve got to do is what you do best, and it is yours for the taking.”
I was starting to buy what he was selling, “Roger Wright is the other part of The Swan Situation, right?”
“For now,” I can make out the changing shape of the contours of his cheeks as he smirks, “but by the time Stairway is upon us… who knows?”
“All he is going to care about is protecting what he loves,” I am the one smirking now, looking down into the pale brown liquid in the mug braced in my hand, “he’s the weak link. My ally in the fight, I’ll work with him on Wright first, he won’t see it coming.”
“The biggest threat is Xavier. He’s the wildcard. Unpredictable. Even he doesn’t know what he is going to do from one moment to the next, so whatever your game plan is, you need to account for the variable variable. Plan for the unplannable. Whatever you think is the answer, plan for it for fail, get the whole alphabet and more of blueprints and study them, but like I said, if you’ve got that thing inside you that you had before, then you will find a way.” He was reassuring me.
“Xavier is what Xavier is, I’ve been there and I’ve felt how he feels. The chip on his shoulder is one of the biggest I’ve seen, and he feels like he has everything to prove. He’s insecure, he has the weight of a dynasty resting on him and the expectation to follow in their footsteps, but all he really wants to do is carve his own path.” I know him better than he knows himself, “But he’s trapped, because he comes from a family of trailblazers. The only way he can succeed in his goal of carving his own path is to fail. He can’t live up to what his brothers did, because they raised the bar, they became the bar. He isn’t redefining the bar, the bar isn’t even on his horizon.”
And I know I can help him fail. He is so focused on what he doesn’t want to be that he’s not obsessed enough about what he DOES want to be.
“Use his own ego against him, his vanity. Make him feel like it’s going exactly as he planned.”
“Then whip that rug out right from under his boots,” I nod. “Not a novice at this. You know that ring psychology is literally the only leverage I take with me into 90 per cent of my matches.”
“The thing is,” I continue, “when the bell rings and the talking stops, a lot of changes will have happened between now and Stairway 2 Heaven. It is several months away. A game plan is only going to take me so far, a strategy is only going to edge it in my favour just slightly. I’m an unknown, nobody knows who the fuck I am, they won’t see me coming, but nothing is for sure.”
“Mr. Stratford, nothing is sure in life but death and taxes. But I know what I am doing, and I know how the pieces will fall. The people we’re dealing with, they are not very smart. Too much testosterone, not enough meditation.” He finally took a sip of his own drink now, which must have been stone cold. “But they will know who you are Mr. Stratford, and they will fear you.”
“Trust me, do what I say, when I say it, and they will fall right into our trap.”
My grin was starting to make my face ache. He stood up and offered one parting remark that echoed in my skull even now, before he turned and saw himself out of my house.
September 21st, Los Angeles, California - Moments before the main event at Stairway 2 Heaven
As I noted, the one thing The Producer didn’t foresee was Scotty Adams. We all knew he’d jump at the chance of taking the title shot as per Stairway tradition. What none of us expected was for him to take Swan to the limit, literally.
It is difficult to say whether he rose to the occasion or whether she stooped to a new low.
We’ll find out in due course, I suppose. But back when I took him apart systematically several weeks ago, I named him as the Kingmaker. At the time he was the only one who had no allegiance to one of the main factions going into this match, and whilst he had no realistic chance of doing the whole damn thing, he had the power to make or break it for one side or the other. Things have evolved somewhat since then, he has put his own sword in the fire with The Cure, he’s taken his shot, but he’s a busted flush now, isn’t he? He was doin’ his own perfect job of coming in under the radar but now he’s busted his biggest nut on trying to come in with the belt and he’s spent for sure. Can he still influence things? I’m not so sure. But his mere existence in this match is something that none of us planned for, and that alone makes it noteworthy. I just think when it comes to crunch time, he falls short.
Its a similar story for Apathy, I feel. She came out of fucking nowhere and shook up the world and I was there, front row, excited for how it would change the face of OPW. Selfishly, I want to be the one that rips the power from the clutches of the desperate, but I have to say that she made me a fan on Showcase Episode 16. Her performance on Episode 17, though, was exactly what I expect from Scotty Adams this week. Too much, too soon. Peaked way too early, too early to take the strap. But her level of danger in this match far surpasses that of Adams, and like Adams, she’s a potential Kingmaker.
On reflection, it’s probably unfair to say that she came from nowhere, she has been everywhere, done it all, and she’s on a tear at the moment, she’s a force to be reckoned with. One to be respected, she’s probably on her last run in the industry, trying to get that last dopamine hit of glory. She’s tasted it before, she’s iconic, you don’t know wrestling if you don’t know Apathy, but when that match was signed for Showcase 16, there were very few people in the Outlaw Pro ecosystem that truly thought Anicka would buckle.
And she was so fuckin’ close, she had the thing in her hand. And then it got ripped away, and she couldn’t seal her fate the week after.
She’s certainly a shot-taker, she took her shot and barely faltered, and whilst I don’t see her going all the way to the bank, I expect her downfall to contribute heavily to the downfall of others. She will leave an indelible mark on Stairway To Heaven, of that I am certain.
Roger Wright is almost an unknown at this point. A former multiple-time World Champion, the world at his feet, still fucking young and virile, more money than the Pope and the Queen. But he’s throwing it all away, all that talent and potential, his prime years in an office, fawning over a girl and worrying about bureaucratic decision-making and intra-organisational politics. He’s had a rocket up his ass the last couple weeks, gave a beating to Stylez, the whole deal, but his issue is consistency and mentality. His heart isn’t in it for the strap, he doesn’t do this week in and week out, he hasn’t been working for this, week after week, delivering the performance of the night every week since Highway 2 Hell. He’s good, and he can turn it on when it suits him, we can’t overlook him.
But as I said previously, I have a feeling that his sole intention is to set Swan free. And he will get his wish whether he is able to enact it or not - that title isn’t going home with a Wolf. But he hasn’t been at his best, or even really taking part, for some time now. He’s become periphery. His power struggle, his obsession with the bad choices his significant other continues to make, and I guess his mistrust of her intentions overall seem to weigh heavy for him. Because to me, it looks like a guy who sees his girlfriend falling in with the wrong crowd, and all the while she’s telling him ‘its fine, its fine’, but the reality is that she’s slipping further and further from his grasp, and like a helpless little cuck, he’s watching his life fall apart before his very eyes. For some, that might drive them to extraordinary lengths. But him? I don’t know if he can deal with the emotion. It consumes him. What is he going to do about the rest of us whilst Anicka’s legacy hangs in the balance? What about when it comes to him versus her? And it finally dawns on him that he is in a no-win situation?
He either lets her win, maintaining the status quo, or he steps on her and ‘sets her free’, betraying everything he has with her. If it comes to that, that is when the window of opportunity is open for anyone else to make their move. He’s checkmated himself, and soon enough he’ll know it.
Piss and vinegar can describe only Xavier Marke, Xavier Wolf was all piss and vinegar for as long as anyone had known him, and he owned that fact too. He spent a large portion of his career being a tyrant, trying to come out from the shadow of his family, this is not new information. And in the last few months, he has been the catalyst for all of the unrest in the OPW, the tail that is wagging two dogs, the protagonist of his own making, if you like. Everything revolves around him, and the influence he continues to exert over both sides of this aforementioned tug of war. Nobody for a moment believes that this charade is legit, the first sign of trouble, and that knife is going right across the carotid of Stylez, he’ll get the fuck out of dodge and back to the warm bosom of the pack. None of this is new. But what is new, is the sudden urgency to win, to care about outcomes. He has always been about the chaos, about the war, about the throes of passion as sweat and blood flies from the jolted bodies of him and his opponent. What came after, the end result, didn’t really matter. You’ve seen it all through history, that man has never worried about a title, never let such a thing define him. Doesn’t pride himself on an esteemed record, or ratio, but there is no doubt that he is formidable, always has been. But now he’s just as imposing, but he really wants to fucking win.
That’d be a scary prospect for anyone, surely. Because we all know he has the God-given talent, he has the athleticism, the pedigree, the gift, the physical attributes. What always got in his way was his mindset, was trying to push the wrong envelopes.
So now what? Now he wants this, he wants the whole damn prize, to finally realise his dream of being revered, being worshipped, being the best. He wants my dream, my destiny.
He looks down on me, pities me, mocks me. But you put us side by side and we have a lot in common. It was never about the championship, it was always about the fight. Until now. This matters more to us both, because we both recognise that to win this kind of match will define your career, set you up to be legend immortal; insurmountable. Undeniable forevermore.
Rise from the ashes of your broken life, emerge from the shadow that has dwarfed you for as long as you can remember.
That could easily describe either of us.
As for the Luchador and myself, we will work on the task at hand, and eventually it will come to the two of us. Having spent the last two weeks in close proximity to him, I know that this is something that beyond the veil of his public persona is really important to him. He has something of his own journey that he’s embarking on, and I guess once all is said and done, his identity will be revealed, because there is little chance of him being able to overthrow me. Then he can really start to turn the screw. Then we can really turn the screw. Counter culture, anti-establishment, fuck the status quo. Imagine that. Because this doesn’t end with the Immortal Championship, it doesn’t end at Stairway, whatever the outcome. Until this point, there’s a clear hierarchy within our team, he is there to make sure anything getting in the way of my victory is squared away, settled, dealt with. After Stairway, we will see. The Producer has taken us this far, its up to us to see this through, and then what is next will follow.
The Producer curated this whole thing. Conception to deliverance. In his honour, or selfishly for my own journey, this has only one way to end. No second guesses, no self-doubt. This man wants to take the playbook from LA Johnny Stylez and make confetti from it, he wants to take VooDoo and Vincent Wolf’s family and fracture it beyond repair. Because the power is concentrated in such a strange way, and the network know it. We’re running out of fresh faces, we’re running out of fights to make. We need to breathe some life into this stale shit show that the Syndicate and the Wolves are pushing to play in perpetuity. And you know what? I’m going to make it happen.
So as I stand here, in the arena, waiting for my music to hit and for the lights to dim, I look at myself in the mirror and I feel immense pride. I’ve taken this personal journey to uncover a part of myself that I had accepted long ago was dead, to shine a light on something I’d kept bottled up for years, to accept my truth and take it as far as I can go. And that parting remark from the Producer during our first ever meeting echoed through me again, making the hair on my neck stand up in anticipation.
It made me certain that the personal journey I was embarking on was critical to my future success. If I stayed in my box, living sheltered from reality as The Protagonist, there was no way I could beat those six other people as conclusively as I will tonight and finally, oh finally, be crowned King of the World.
“To get to Heaven, Mr. Stratford, one thing is for sure, you’re going to need your wings.”