.blacklisted. | two
tgw.retribution.ppv | oct.26.2009
darling vs albrecht
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club.pulse. | los.angeles.california | one.month.ago"Welcome back to the good ol' U.S. of A, Jack," Kyle Halford offered as he turned away from the one-way glass overlooking his nightclub. "Now you can have a proper glass of tap water without worrying about parasites or some shit like that."
"That's Mexico," Jack reminded him as he helped himself to a bottle of scotch from Halford's private collection.
"Whatever," the promoter shrugged. "Shame Absolute went under. Thought they might make it."
"They over-reached," came the reply before a swallow of scotch went down the hatch.
"Seems most wrestling companies do, these days. Every time I start to show an interest in some company these days, they seem to go under."Halford shrugged again, clipping a cigar. "I suppose they just can't handle long-term exposure to the talent you possess?"
Darling gave him a look over the rim of his glass.
"Pull your tongue out of my asshole," he snapped.
"I don't need you to kiss up to me. You're doing well enough by yourself, what with your deal with Murasame-san."Kyle choked a laugh around his cigar, coughing out some smoke before he chuckled, "Ooh, speaking of. You've been busy as of late, you might not have heard. Tsuruga got canned."
That made Jack turn his head, eyebrow raised. He made it a point to try to keep an eye on up-and-coming talent in the business. One never knew when one might face down such talent, or when you might find yourself standing alongside it... if only for the moment. He'd kept an eye on that kid Teach from St. Louis, who seemed to have dropped off the radar in the wake of Epic Wrestling shutting down. Likewise, there were students at Vilaar's academy in Strasbourg that had caught his eye.
And of course, with his amicable relationship with Murasame Masaki, he was regularly kept abreast of happenings in ASPEN and JASPER. That was in part due to his own interest in his younger sister's career there, and in part because of his desire to just keep his eyes on things. Jack had tapped Tsuruga Kazuma as someone who just might become a significant name in ASPEN's future-- if his attitude didn't get in the way.
By what Halford was saying, it had.
"Really? Which wrestler's wife did he try to put the moves on this time?" he asked.
"Well, there was still some bad blood over his groping Kasumi Toshiro, last I'd heard," Halford waved that off, "but what got him shitcanned was assaulting Murasame."
"Really?" That surprised Jack. For all his attitude, he'd thought Tsuruga was smart enough not to physically attack a Japanese promoter. The politics of
puroresu was as fractuous as it was Stateside, but despite that, the promoters were part of their own kind of brotherhood. They didn't take kindly to that kind of thing from their employees.
"That can't have gone well for him," Darling smirked.
Halford returned the smirk. "He popped up here in Cali not too long ago. Came sniffing for a job, but I've done well with my relationship with ASPEN and JASPER. I wasn't gonna risk it by giving Jumbo a spot on my cards."
"Good thinking." He poured himself another glass of scotch and knocked it back.
"Well, thanks for the drink, Kyle, but it was a long flight, and I've got some business to take care of here in L.A. before I pop back to Philly to check up on business there." He glanced out at the club.
"How's J-Bomb been doing?""Well enough," Halford sighed. "It was a shame that Massive D couldn't keep up with J-Bomb's trash-talk. We could have made serious bank off a rap war between the two."
"So find another rapper to aim at J," Darling snapped, the fatigue of the hours-long flight fraying at his patience.
"Shouldn't be hard. Guys like J have a lot of friends when they're on the way up, but once they get there, folks get resentful. They don't like it when one of their own becomes one of Them.
"It's like crabs in a bucket," he went on.
"Did you know, Kyle, that if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket and leave the lid off, one will eventually figure out how to get out, but it always gets dragged back in by the other crabs.""Such it is in life as well as crab buckets?" Halford queried.
"Of course." Darling put the half-empty bottle back with the rest and made his way out.
"I'll talk to you later, Kyle."As he headed for his car, his driver holding the door, Jack pulled out his cell phone. There were many e-mails from the various execs and other people-of-influence in JDI Enterprises clamoring for his input on many and sundry projects, voice-mails of the same bent, plus messages from the family, asking him to stop by and not be a stranger (that was probably via proxy from his mother), and of course letters from Rosalyn.
He was in the middle of sifting through these when the phone chirped.
"You have a call." The number was one he didn't recognize, but it wasn't easy to get hold of his number and
not have yours in his directory first. He accepted the call.
"Speak.""Jack Darling," said the voice on the other end. Darling blinked slightly in surprise. Quaranta?
"I have a proposition for you.".:.:.:.:.:.:.
The die is cast, ladies and estrogents.
Last week, I and my colleagues in the Blacklist stood up to the "best" -- notice the air-quotes, folks -- that True Glory had to offer up. A rookie, a punk, and a paper champion.
That's right, I said it. AJ Adams is a paper champion. Who did he beat for the title? Cody Only. A man who's place in the wrestling history books will be in a footnote of a footnote of a footnote that gets left on the editing room floor. A man whose qualifications for contendership were being the best that was available at the time. Given that TGW has, on its roster, someone who claims six World championship reigns (although I'll submit that said titles' claims to World-caliber status are dubious at best) in his title history, that's quite a sad state, isn't it?
A paper champion who, if there was any justice in the world, would have dried up on his mother's thigh. Who did he beat to get the title? A nobody. Who did they offer up as challengers for him in Detroit? The only other champion on the roster and David Blazenwing.
Blazenwing.
Meanwhile, the better quality of challengers are kept at bay by throwing meat shields at them. Reina Morgan, the ferocious Black Cat that she is, is being fed a waste of a morsel in a fucked-up fashionista -- or whatever the fuck Q is -- which will only serve to whet her appetite and make her hungry for more people to hurt. Teresa Quaranta gets to drag the rookie through the wringer, and kill what passes for gray matter in that skull of his. And who does Mason throw at me, in a vain attempt to slow me down?
Jordan Goddamn Albrecht.
This, ladies and estrogents, is a fucking insult[/i].
What is there to be gained by this match? Well let's look at it from a variety of points of view.
Wade Mason hopes that Albrecht will get lucky and manage to hurt me. His hopes are empty, and easily shattered. The punk formerly known as Ian Fucking Ballistic is a sad sack of excrement. If he had any dreams of beating me, they evaporated once the drugs wore off. He is a worthless human being.
And he is worthless is many different respects.
First of all, he has no monetary worth. To build off of Teresa's concept of "brands," the Jordan Albrecht brand couldn't move product if it fell off the back of a truck. It sells nothing. The name means nothing. It's not merely worth nothing; if you were trying to sell it, you would
pay the other person to take it off your hands.
Examples. The name Teresa Quaranta is worth money. Clearly this is so. Wade Mason was fondling himself with the thought of bringing her to TGW, and he was so desperate to do so that he agreed to give her a number of lucrative, blank contracts. Those contracts are what allowed Yours Truly and Reina to come work for this company in the first place. Teresa was valuable enough to be worth that potentially dangerous situation.
The name Anthony Johns-- in his self-styled incarnation as 'The Legend'-- is worth money. The man was virtually unbeatable for years. He had talent, a kind of charisma, and the ability to sell out arenas even after years of the same talk, week after week-- "I am God, the Entity, and you are all my playthings," or words to that effect. Even now, after I deconstructed his entire self-made mythos, he still moves product. He has worth.
Take Yours Truly, Jack Darling. My name is worth money. In the wrestling business, I am hated with the kind of vitriol usually reserved for right-wing invective. But that same hatred sells tickets. People line up to see their hero du jour try to shut me down. In the outside world, I am still not liked, but my name carries a certain respect to it. I managed to claw my way to financial supremacy
in spite of my being a professional wrestler. I have monetary worth.
On another level, Jordan Albrecht has no mental worth. This is a man who never knew his birth mother until recently, and had apparently been put in the custody of someone with the surname of Ballistic. What nationality is that, by the way? It sounds Slavic or something. Were Mister and Missus Ballistic from Inbredistan or Azerbaifuckingstupid? Albrecht is a man-- no, wait, that's giving him too much credit, since he's still a fucking child-- is a
boy who gave up a possible life with endorsements and video game avatars in the next Tony Hawk's Masturbatory Wasteland or whatever the fuck they're called.
Seriously, Jordan. You're a skater punk. That's the first thing most people remember about you, after they remember the way I dropped you on your head last week. A skater punk. A little more time spent at the skate park grinding your ollies on the halfpipe or whatever, and you might have become a Name in the X-Games circuit. Mind you, you never would have had your own video game named after you, but you might have gotten a place in the game somehow!
Albrecht is also mentally unworthy due to the fact that I scrambled what few brain cells he had by dropping him on his dome.
Compared to the Blacklist, Albrecht is far unworthy in the mental department. You've got Reina Morgan, who can devise about a dozen ways to hurt you within seconds of meeting you for the first time. You've got Teresa Quaranta, who was smart enough to dupe Wade Mason into giving us contracts. And you've got myself, considered by many critics to be one of the smartest wrestlers alive. I analyze, I adapt, and I overcome. Always.
Thirdly, Jordan Albrecht has no physical worth. Let's compare, shall we, folks? He's skinny as a rail, and seems more interested in fucking with his birth mother, whatever skank he's banging, and himself to put much effort into actually, you know, trying to become a slightly less awful physical specimen. I'm not saying that the first thing I want to do when I see Jordan Albrecht is throw up. It's gotta be at least the second or third, after shaking my head in disgust and perhaps clawing at my eyeballs.
Consider his opponent. I am hardly scrawny, but neither am I so bulging with muscles that look like a spokesman for PowerThirst(tm), the only energy drink with
Men-ergy and Electrolytes, Powerlytes, Turbolytes, and more lytes than your body has room for. Having that much muscle mass may make you strong, but it also slows you down. I strive for a balance of power and agility, and given that I've been wrestling for over thirteen years now, I'd say I've found it. I am a man who takes good care of himself, and keeps in shape.
And I'm wrestling someone that I could break in half without even trying. And believe me, it is so, so tempting.
Finally, what I like to think of as the prime definition of 'worth' is this: have you left the world a better place?
I consider this from many angles. I have enriched the lives of many through their employment with JDI Enterprises, the corporation of which I am chairman. I've forced others to radically re-think their strategies in response to my own business practices, forcing them to scrap years-old practicies in favor of new ones which work better.
Wrestling-wise, I consider the way in which I have caused many wrestlers to step up their game to bring their absolute best, the way in which I have had such a major impact on the business itself to give my name worth.
And of course, if 'worth' is measured by making the world a better place, then I have made it eternally better with a certain incident in Germany.
At the end of the day, I go to bed satisfied that I have worth. That I matter in the grand scheme of things.
What about you, Ballistic Boy? What helps you sleep at night? A feeling of worth? A sense of satisfaction? Or just drugs?
After Detroit comes and goes, with TGW failing to get Retribution on the Blacklist, I'll sleep soundly, knowing that we are still in a class of our own compared to you, satisfied with a job well done. You, Albrecht, will sleep the sleep of the heavily sedated as they take you to the hospital.
See you in Detroit, skaterboi.[/color][/b]
.blacklisted. | two | end