[FADE IN. “The Dragon” is standing in front of a TEAM logo, wearing his ring jacket]
Karl: Isn’t it strange how the human mind works – a person says that someone else can’t read them, and yet they themselves can read another party. A person can think they know what they’re talking about, when in reality they merely show a total lack of understanding. A person can think they are against the current state of professional wrestling, and yet they accept so many parts of it that they are as much to blame for its state as any others.
In what has become a rarity, I’m going to go through what Viktor’s been saying, and illustrate the flaws with his thought processes, and the flaws with his words, because I think it’s time someone showed him that what he considers to be his intelligence is precisely one of the things that gets him laughed at. I hope you’re ready for this, Viktor – your heaven is about to have another shroud removed, and you’re going to be one step closer to being left exposed totally to the truth.
First, have you been watching Beast of late? I have – I do work in the same company as he does, after all. I can assure you, watching his matches on the monitors or through the curtain at Empire Pro’s house shows, he has not lost a step. He has not lost any confidence. Yes, he was annoyed with himself that he lost to you – but he knows that losses are a part of this business. A world champion he is – and a professional. He knows that the only person who can truly defeat him is himself – if he were to give in to self-doubt after a match, he would be a loser. Has he done so? Not that I’ve seen on the tapes and live events I’ve seen him at.
But of course, you’re the only person able to read others, right? Beast is suffering a lack of confidence, whereas you’re totally focused and are going to destroy someone you assume is cocky and intellectually arrogant. You decide to insult someone who speaks the truth about you – the cold hard truth that you try and hide behind a façade. You resort to insults because that’s the last refuge of those who cannot handle having the truth about themselves thrust into the public domain.
Confused, Viktor? How many times have you said that you were going to crush me now? How many times have you implied I haven’t got a chance against you, because you have a ‘mission’ to purify this sport? And how many of my arguments have you avoided or shrugged off because they contradict your delusion? You’ll find that you’ve only answered a small percentage of what I’ve said, and it’s clear why – you can’t handle the rest of it, so you either avoid it, or try and twist it to suit your own gain.
Unfortunately, Viktor, the fans are a bit more intelligent than you give them credit for. They realise who Pat Roach and Kendo Nagasaki were – some would also recognise names like Mick McManus, Shirley Crabtree, Mark ‘Rollerball’ Rocco, Hirosi Hase, and Inoki. All professional wrestlers – note what I’m saying, Viktor. Professional wrestlers. The ones who’ve grasped the concept of needing to give the fans something more than just a hard-fought contest – if the fans wanted to see nothing but pure grappling, they’d flood to the gyms throughout the world which give you two men, a padded mat with a circle on it, and a referee, where points are scored for takedowns and you can spend several minutes in the one hold.
That’s something you haven’t yet grasped, is it, Viktor? That there’s a difference between the various forms of wrestling. I have been very careful to refer to what we do by it’s proper title – professional wrestling. Where we have ladder matches, or scaffold matches, or sometimes matches with multiple rounds. Where the rules from one federation to the next can be totally different, but the moves and athleticism are the same. Whether in Japan, Mexico, the United States, Canada, or Europe, the simple fact is what we do isn’t the same as two men who grapple on a mat. If you look at crowd sizes, sales, merchandise figures, you’ll see that we’re in a complete business – and if you look throughout history, to the beginnings of the NWA, or the UK professional wrestling scene, or NJPW, or any long-standing promotion in any country and any culture, that is still the case. You had characters and gimmicks – the rubber matches have always had a gimmick surrounding them, from a leather strap to hair vs. hair, from steel cages to retirement matches. All are gimmicks meant to entice the fans in to watch the spectacle. It adds to the competitive aspect – anyone can on their day beat anyone. This isn’t boxing – you won’t see a match where going in you can tell the outcome, because in professional wrestling, what you think is going to happen can easily be turned on its head. THAT is professional wrestling. And professional wrestling has never been what you want to make it – it’s never been about the ego of Viktor Molotov.
That’s what your crusade is really about, isn’t it? You want to make a name for yourself. I know – you’re going to say “No, it’s about purifying this sport” – in which case, why have you named one of your finishing moves the Purifying Scourge? Look up in a list of official moves, and that isn’t the name. It’s a grapevined Dragon Sleeper. Your other finisher, the Molotov Cocktail, is a suplex from an abdominal stretch into a pinning combination. No move exists in the official movelist called “The Molotov Cocktail”.
It’s strange – you hated the first promotion you were in because of the bastardisation you saw, but you’ve adopted many things from the same world. You use alternate names for your finishing moves. Your official profile, filled out by yourself, has a nickname for you – and you even changed the name of your hometown to its Soviet name. You don’t even play totally by the rules of what you see as pure wrestling, do you? Holding a choke until the count of four is still cheating – to use football as a reference point, just because you don’t get sent off for deliberately delaying the restart of play, doesn’t mean it’s part of the rules. The rules in wrestling call for no choke-holds. Just because you can hold it on for a count of four doesn’t make it within the rules.
But you like playing the hypocrite, don’t you?
[Karl smirks before continuing]
Karl: You see, Viktor, for all your claims, you’re really a small child. You fall back on the same tactics the schoolyard bully does.
[putting on a fake voice] “No, you’re wrong, you’re totally wrong, I didn’t do that because of that, you’re wrong, shut up! MUMMY!!”
[he returns to his normal voice]
You think I’m arrogant? You’re entitled to your opinion. But come on – if I had been Japanese or American, would you still have referenced St George? Just because he’s the patron saint of Moscow, do you think many Americans know that?
As a European, I would have hoped you had a decent head on your shoulders. I’d have hoped that in you, I had an opponent who understood basic concepts. It’s a shame to see my hope was misplaced. It’s a shame that you’ve had to resort to being a schoolyard bully in order to give yourself a show of confidence. You fail to realise that professional wrestling, which is what we’re in, is not the same as Olympic style wrestling, and has never been so. It’s as much about economics as it is individual competition in the ring.
You also fail to realise that, despite your words, you lack of faith in yourself still shines through. You need the security blanket of saying you’re going to cripple someone, and how they’re never going to be the same again. You need to hide behind a façade of hating everything that professional wrestling has become, when in fact you have embraced so much about it that you are a part of what you seek to destroy. You are not outside professional wrestling – you’re a part of it, one of the reasons it, in your eyes, is so bastardised. You hide your lack of confidence in the same way as a schoolyard bully. You refer to name-calling, assertions that whomever you’re arguing with is wrong and you are right, without offering any real resistance to what is being said. Some people may have been taken in by what you’ve said, but I, unfortunately for you, am not one of them.
Does that mean I am overlooking Viktor Molotov? No. As I have said, you are one of the best. I know that it’s going to be a very tough, very physical match. However, I also know that you are not going to be unbeatable. Your mind is not as focused on the encounter as you would like to think – and as soon as things start to deviate from your plans, you’ll get frustrated. I’ve already seen it – you get tense when you’re in an uncomfortable situation. You start to lose your edge – you become, by your standards, sloppy. As physical a match as this is going to be, it isn’t going to be as clear cut as you would like people to believe. Until the final bell wins, no-one knows who the winner will be. That’s part of why people are paying to see us, Viktor – they know it’s going to be a match to remember. They know that the athleticism that will be on display, and the skills they will see, are second to none. They know that as professional wrestlers we will both give it our all to try and become the owner of the Merritt Trophy – they know that it’s going to be the Russian Purifier against the man with two and a half years experience going at it for one of the biggest prizes in the industry.
If you want to believe the lies you’ve been telling yourself, go ahead. If you want to believe that you’re outside professional wrestling, even though the facts speak otherwise, go ahead. If you want to believe that you can read other people when the truth says otherwise, go ahead. If you want to ignore what I’ve said, go ahead. Because when the bell rings, none of what’s been said here by either party will matter. In the ring, it’s between the two of us, with any and all stipulations the bookers want to give us. Whatever rules they decide to have us play by, I’ll play by them. In front of a sell-out crowd in the Madison Square Garden, we’re going to put on a show that the fans will remember for the rest of their lives.
That’s what makes professional wrestling, as much as you hate it, the purest form of sport and entertainment in the world.
[FADE OUT]
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OoC: I'd just like to take this time to thank Tom for organising this tournament, and to thank Dan for what has been a very fun match to RP for. Best of luck mate
