Post by lucasbalkan on Oct 14, 2020 10:52:15 GMT -5
“Bro, look at her.”
I took out my headphones and looked to my left, to the next treadmill. I was met by a young man dressed head to toe in suspiciously new Under Armour sports clothes. He was walking on the treadmill, not running, and was pointing at a young woman – who could easily still be in her teens - working out with kettle bells a little ahead of us.
“What about her?”
I uttered the words between heavy breaths. I hate cardio work but I’m getting older, I need to avoid blowing up in the ring nowadays. He gave me an incredulous grin and pointed again.
“Bro… just look at her! She’s hot!”
I shook my head and put my headphones back in to drown him out. I forgot, this is why I hate public gyms. Full of young men who care about two things; themselves and what the women in the gym look like. Young men who are no more than boys, who need someone to grab them by the shoulders and shake them until they grow up.
I’m not here to think about what people look like or to get laid, I thought.
I’m here for a purpose.
I gazed at my face in the mirror. Sharp stubble on the top of my head, unkempt beard on my chin, bruises and grazes on my face, remnants of my last match with Jay Impact. This is a face often devoid of emotion, I thought.
You may have caught a hint of a smile on my face as the referee counted ten and the bell rung last time out at Tuesday Night Titans, Jay. But, honestly, I was conflicted.
Sure, it was a relief to not lose my SFT World Title to you but I was also furious that the bell was not sounding with me pinning your lifeless body in the centre of the ring.
I looked down at the belt, shining up at me from my bag. There’s always next time, I realised.
The World Title itself does not mean as much to me as the position it puts me in. Do I care about being called “Champion”? No. Do I care about the gold in my possession? No. Do I want to influence change from a position of strength? Yes.
When, or should I say “if” to be diplomatic, I keep this title after facing you and then Jamo, there will be new opportunities for all of you. A rising tide raises all boats, after all.
I splashed some water on my face, attempting to wake myself up and wash off the frustration of losing last time out. I stared into my own eyes in the mirror. Dark. Sunken. Joyless.
I try to listen to what you have to say but I find my mind wandering as you speak. Your “funny guy” schtick and deliberate mispronunciation of people’s names speaks to a desperation to be liked by the fans and anyone else who will listen. A plea for relevance and popularity that seems to have worked a little, with fans warming to you by now.
You seem to have a fascination with male genitals – or people’s apparent lack of them – and men and women hooking up. The aping of the comedic style of a certain professional wrestler turned “actor” aside, your ranting and raving comes across as an indictment of your outlook on the world. The ramblings about women would look more at home on an internet message board for incels and alt-right pre-teens than coming from the mouth of a professional wrestler in the mid-late thirties.
I shrugged as I pulled on my hooded sweatshirt and pulled the hood over my hear, covering some of the bruises and scrapes from the previous match. Whatever works for him, I thought.
While I don’t find what you have to say interesting, I do find it interesting that the next time that we see each other, we’ll be standing inside a cell, friend.
Except an “immigrant gets treated like shit” match, there is not one that my life has prepared me better for than one inside a cell.
I have stared at the inside of cell walls in multiple countries, across three continents in my life.
I have sat in some not knowing if I will ever be allowed to leave, such as in a detention centre when I arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor and the paramilitary barracks near my hometown in Kosovo.
I have sat in others worried about those staring at me from across the room, in Dresden when us non-white immigrants were caged along with the racists who attacked us for “ruining their way of life”.
I have paced cells like a caged animal, waiting to get out and right what I perceived as wrongs.
I’ve lay motionless, nursing injuries from the police or other foes, in others.
I picked up my bag, resting it upon my shoulder which was still tensing in pain every now and again after how I landed on it on Titans.
Beyond formal and informal imprisonment, I have spent time in cages through my time fighting in Germany and England. Mixed martial arts, bare knuckle fighting, whatever paid the bills; they all had one thing in common – you were in the fight until it was done. There was no count out victories, you were caged in until someone could no longer move. A prelude to our match, no?
However, all this time being caged in my past has taught me only one thing. That you need to take advantage of opportunities and chances when you are free.
I have taken my chances in 2020. As the world burns, I have returned to where my professional wrestling career began. I planned to win the Lethal Lottery and the SFT World Title, I did so. I planned to recruit to the Flock, I did. I planned to see off challengers, I did.
And now that I am due to enter a cell with just you for company, I have been reflecting a little more on who I am and what I am doing.
I rubbed my eyes again, staring intently at the man who was looking back at me in the mirror.
I know who I am and what I am doing now.
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the First and the Last,
the Beginning and the End.
Sometimes, I look around at those who I share an employer with and I feel that there must be someone who I see as an equal, as a challenger worthy of my time and effort. Someone who could possibly be the Omega to my Alpha.
Before I became the Lucas Balkan that stands before you, there were men and women who I held in this regard. Some of whom existed in Strike Fantasy Towers during my first time here in 2003 and 2004.
When I arrived back in SFT in 2017, there were a few that I judged as worthy of my time and my attention.
After a few years away, ostensibly soul-searching and rebuilding, I returned to SFT in 2020 and one of those I deemed worthy remained, joined by one or two more.
But I never had the connection with any of these men or women where I felt that they were the counterpoint to me. I never felt like anyone was the Ying to my Yang, the Omega to my Alpha, the End to my Beginning.
Mr Impact, you might be wondering if I am going to say “that was until now” because you are challenging me for my SFT World Title for the second time in two shows. Perhaps I’m going to say that you are the one who will finally give me the challenge and the satisfaction of being the East to my West. Maybe you are expecting me to begrudgingly explain my respect for you?
I hope not.
I would hate to disappoint you.
You do not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as that select handful. You are no Shadow, no MacDaddy, no O’Toole. You are not in the same bracket as Glenn Owen or Rumpke. You do not pose the same challenge nor threat as Emerson Embry, Candace or Apokalypse.
In the ring and in life, I try to maintain standards higher than those which you appear to have. Nothing has ever been perfect but I push myself to hold myself to the high standards set by those who have come before me and who pushed me to my limits. This third and final Act of the Lucas Balkan and Strike Fantasy Towers odyssey has a significantly weakened supporting cast than the preceding episodes.
That you are popular with the SFT fans shows how starved they are of truly charismatic sympathetic heroes. That you are successful shows how limited the challenges that you are faced are.
You are, simply, lucky.
Lucky that pickings are so slim for the fans. Lucky that other more significant challengers have faded away. Lucky that our last match ended in the way that it did, necessitating a rematch.
But that luck stops here.
You are neither Alpha nor Omega, you are not the first nor the last who will challenge me, this is not the beginning nor the end of my reign.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Sometimes, I don’t understand this generation, I thought.
I had left the gym onto a fairly busy New York street and was watching the same young man from earlier who was expending more energy pointing at women than actually exercising. He was livestreaming from his phone, explaining his exploits and the “lack of talent” in the gym.
“Only one hottie but she was totally frigid. Tried to speak to her before she got changed but got interrupted by a staff member. Was hoping to see her when she left but missed out.”
A “pick up artist”, I realised. God only knows what sort of moron would be at the other end of that stream.
“Still, I’ll keep trying at this place, now I’m off to…”
He tumbled down the stairs of a subway station.
That’s the thing about this generation. They are so concerned with promoting themselves and thinking about sex that they don’t see the danger that is right in front of them.
