April 24, 2004
Joe Cool had been struggling a bit since the collapse of his company ICW. It wasn't that the offers weren't coming in. He was a three time World champion, after all, and just won his last in a small defunct promotion called MWF. But the fact that he was World champion as a promotion died made him want to claim the prize of a bigger, more stable wrestling company. He wanted a place where he could compete at the highest level without worrying about job security.
There were a couple of places on his radar, including ASW and MWA. What he really wanted was to keep running his own promotion but he guessed that time had passed. It was a time of upheaval in his life. His wrestling career had stalled, his first marriage ended in a messy divorce and now he was starting to feel his neck issues more than usual.
Perhaps it was good look then, that he met a kid weeks before that really wanted to be a wrestler. He introduced himself at the time as "Bloodbath" Jeremy Daniels, because that was the wrestling name he came up with at the age of sixteen. It was Joe's experience that teenagers usually thought names like "Bloodbath" made them sound more appealing to people who wanted to train them. The nickname didn't stick but the rest of his ring name did.
His real name, as he'd reveal to Joe later on, was Jeremy King. With a name like that, Joe honestly wondered why he would ever go with the name "Bloodbath" instead of something to do with royalty, but it was his career.
"Alright, Jeremy. I'm just as new to this training thing as you are to being trained, but I think if we work together we can get you where you need to be. Deal?"
"That's sounds good to me, Joe."
"I've got friends in the business, relatives, that can teach you aspects that I can't, so I might bring them by every once in a while. For today, it's just me. You can't learn how to suplex anyone or do a shooting star press until you can do basic grappling."
The two of them had met at an autograph signing while Joe was still in the MWF earlier in the month. Joe had been asked about it and thought about it for weeks, but even now he couldn't explain what it was about this kid that made him want to train him. He certainly had no experience when it came to training anyone and always considered that an old man's game. It was certainly not the job of someone who was 28 and still in the prime of his career.
This meant that the reason Joe agreed to take on Jeremy as a student eluded even him. As he watched this lanky, sixteen-year-old kid stretching near the ropes, he thought it might be because he reminded Joe of himself at that age. Joe wanted to be a wrestler for the majority of his life, but circumstances meant he had to wait until he was twenty-two. This kid saw a chance to ask for help and went for it. It was something to be respected.
"Okay, I want you to grab me in a headlock and try to keep it on no matter how much I fight it off."
He knew that he had the power to easily toss Jeremy off of him, so he decided to go at it half-speed to start. The plan was to build up his confidence a bit before really testing him. He saw Jeremy, pensive at first, apply the headlock on him and maintain a firm grip. When Joe was satisfied that Jeremy had it locked on, he simply pulled his head free and shoved him.
Jeremy staggered forward a few steps and then turned around, slightly bewildered.
"What happened there?"
"You're two times my size. There's no way I can keep a headlock on you."
"Actually, you can keep anyone grounded if you know how to work them. The problem was you were being too gentle. You have to keep their head snug and squeeze it to maintain control."
He looked at Jeremy, who still seemed disheartened by the simple shove. How easy did the kid think this was going to be?
"Try again."
Joe lowered his head and Jeremy reapplied the hold. This time it was tighter, so Joe decided he should test the kid's resolve a bit. At first, he gave him a firm shove. Jeremy held on tightly, although one leg went up in the air. Joe then grabbed his protege by the waist and lifted him up in the air for a possible suplex before setting him back down. As he predicted, being up in the air caused the hold toe weaken so he shoved him off again.
"What was that?"
"I was in the air, I thought you were going to suplex me."
"I wasn't, but someone in a match might. Or they might do what I did, throw you off so will release the hold."
"Why are we learning headlocks anyway? That kind of thing hasn't been used to actually win anything since the fifties."
Joe rolled his eyes. The kid was eager and knowledgeable, but impatient and slightly disrespectful. His teacher didn't exactly have the patience it took to progress. He wondered if he might end up referring him to a school. For the moment, he decided he would stick with it, as he tried to be a man of his word.
"Alright, take a seat. I think we need to talk."
Jeremy looked around the ring and seeing no option for chairs, just said cross-legged on the mat. Joe, finding his abrupt choice amusing, decided to join him. So the two sat, 'Indian-style', in the middle of a wrestling ring. It looked absurd. Perhaps they needed a campfire too and a rousing round of "Kumbaya." Joe found himself beginning to crack a smile at the thought, but made sure to stop it before his student caught wind of it.
"Why do you want to do this?"
"I've been watching since I was a kid."
"Okay, but so have a lot of people. Why do you think you can do it?"
"I..I just really want to. I don't know how to explain it. I just really love wrestling."
"If that's true, then you really need to be patient."
"I'm trying but..."
"You want to get into the serious stuff, I know."
"Yeah."
"But what happens if you don't know how the fundamentals work? If you don't know how to apply, or even escape a headlock, you're going to look like a joke out there."
"You weren't showing me how to escape."
"Except I was. I was showing you both at the same time. I was teaching you how to apply to hold and then by using different escape tactics I was showing you how to get out of it. You have to be aware and pay attention to everything instead of just one thing. When you're in the ring you have to do the same thing. You have to pay attention to your ring positioning, the referee, what your opponent is doing, what you're doing and all the other little 'x' factors that could change things in an instant."
"That sounds like a lot of work for each and every match."
"It is. But at the same time, once you're in there it'll feel like second nature. Once your properly taught, of course."
Jeremy lowered his head a little and had an embarrassed grin, possibly because he didn't think before he questioned the process. Joe definitely saw a lot of himself in the kid. He was once a lanky beginner who was sick of the fundamentals too. He found himself empathizing a little bit with his own teacher, even though that man was a hardass who was just too lazy to teach anything else.
Joe pushed himself to his feet and stepped back against the ropes. Jeremy stayed where he was, perhaps unsure if it was okay to get up or not.
"What made you ask me, of all people, to train you?"
"To be honest, I didn't start out that day planning to ask. I was just chatting with this woman about how I loved wrestling and she brought up your autograph signing. It might make me a bad fan, but I didn't even know you were in town. I had a lot on my mind at the time."
"Like what?"
"My mom she's...well I don't want to share that right now."
"I understand."
"The point is, once I knew I had a chance to do this, I dropped everything and took it."
That was admirable. Joe wished he could have started earlier, so seeing someone who was trying to do just that made him a little jealous. He got off the ropes and returned to the center of the ring.
"Alright, kid. Get up. We're going to go again. This time, focus on my movements and try to control them. I can't go anywhere if you've got my head in a vice. Don't be thrown off my by strength."
He lowered his head once again and allowed Jeremy to jump to his feet and put a headlock on him again. Wrestling was the fuel for both of them, the universal language that crossed age and experience gaps. It was all either of them really cared about, especially at this point in time.
One was too young to start training and the other was probably too young to start learning, but now they found themselves together, joined by a mutual love for a sport not a lot of people understood.
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October 1, 2008
There was not a lot that JC loved or cared about anymore. He had been in the OWF since June and eventually decided his old approach wasn't enough. Or rather, a voice in his head, a symptom of a long undiagnosed mental illness, decided for him. He had been listening to his dark passenger a lot lately, which is exactly why he was currently in a hospital of a city he couldn't remember the name of. All he saw for the longest time was red and this was the first time he was seeing clearly.
He had been forcing a lot of people out of his life. He brutalized his tag team partner, a younger guy named Jared Wave that was also from New Jersey. He fired his friend/cameraman/agent Josh because he disagreed with what he was doing. His latest severed connection was his protege Jeremy King, who was still using the silly "Bloodbath Jeremy Daniels" ring name he came up with four years prior.
Joe had chided him about that on the times they still met up. Jeremy was off on his own wrestling career now and the last thing someone who used to be called "Joe Cool" was going to do was criticize a ring name.
The two had scheduled to meet up when Joe was in town, but that had been months before he started pushing his vision for a "pure" wrestling business on the OWF roster and injuring anyone who disagreed.
As it turned out, his protege disagreed.
JC didn't remember a lot about viciously attacking Jeremy. He remembered doing it, vaguely, but he felt like he blacked out a lot of it. He didn't know how bad he did it. That's partly why he was here. The voice in his head had died down a bit and he came to his senses. He wasn't sure how long that would last, so he wanted to survey the damage and apologize if he could.
After all, all Jeremy did was question if he was doing the right thing. He didn't deserve whatever it was that JC did to him.
He questioned you, so he deserved it.
Joe cracked his neck and tried to will the voice away as he moved down the corridor to Jeremy's room. He noticed the chart inside of the door and decided to take a look at it first. Quickly glancing around to make sure there were no onlookers. Medical records were private, after all. When he was satisfied that he had a moment of privacy, he took a peek to see exactly what he did.
The chart listed a grade-3 concussion, a fractured orbital socket and multiple contusions on the body. That seemed consistent with the curb stomps he had been delivering lately.
He immediately felt pain in his chest, with flashes of grief and anxiety. With everything this kid saw in him, he ruined it and perhaps his wrestling career with an unprovoked attack. This was all because he disagreed with the direction Joe was going in? A lot of people did that. His own brother disagreed and he hadn't hurt him.
Yet.
He decided the best thing to do would be to apologize and explain his side of the situation. Maybe if Jeremy really understood what was going on, it would be easier to forgive him. Part of him knew that it didn't make any sense, but he was unsure of how to make the guilt go away. That was the downside to whatever psychotic breaks he tended to have. He always felt awful after they were over.
JC opened the door to Jeremy's room and went inside.
The kid was still only twenty but he looked a lot younger as he slept. He was frail and wrapped up in bandages. His face was swollen, with a bandage over his eyes, tightly wrapped after what JC assumed was surgery to repair the damage. He looked miserable. Joe wasn't sure he wanted to wake him, lest he give him even more pain.
He's vulnerable. You should finish it.
The dark part of him seemed to relish anything that resulted in moving Joe forward and hurting other people. He realized that perhaps being here wasn't the best option. That was confirmed as he watched Jeremy wake up. His one good eye opened slowly, then he noticed the kid catch sight of the larger JC. His began to moan loudly and fumble around for his call button.
"Jeremy, listen. I just wanted to..."
Jeremy was wide-eyed now and frantically trying to back away, even though he had nowhere to go. The look of fear in his eyes was primal. JC hated himself immediately, and wished it was him laying in that bed instead of this twenty-year-old rookie with his entire life ahead of him. Jeremy once told Joe that he inspired him to become a wrestler. Now he was inspiring a fight or flight response, mostly flight.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come here. I'll leave now."
He began to back away toward the door, but Jeremy was still in panic mode. His hand finally found the call button and he began to rapidly press it. Joe took that as a sign that he should move quicker. He glided into the hallway and angrily strode down as far from the room as he could before anyone saw him.
There would be no apology.
There would be no explanation.
Not now, not ever.
JC went through the exit and never looked back.
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He watched JC step out of the Carnage Arena in Baltimore with a look of hatred on his face. Had JC turned and looked out in the parking lot, he would have seen him. He wondered if his former mentor would even recognize him. He wasn't a kid anymore. He was all grown up.
He gripped his fingers around the steel pipe he had. This was it. This was his time for vengeance. He watched JC on TV and knew he was different now. He knew JC had his battle with mental illness. That didn't matter. He wanted to take the pipe in his hands and cave in his surgically repaired neck. As it was, he was on the phone with someone, perhaps his second wife, and his mind was elsewhere. He wouldn't even see it coming.
Jeremy's upper lip curled and he tensed up, fully preparing to rush him and end him right here in a parking lot. Then his own cell phone began to vibrate. He audibly groaned, relieved that his prey was too distracted to notice. The cell phone had a text, with two simple words: Not Yet.
He glanced behind him to a nearby car, where his blonde-haired female companion sat, watching the events unfold. She wanted this too, but they had to be smart. He knew that and so he laid the pipe down and retreated.
It wasn't just about a physical attack.
They both saw how JC turned his life around and how he was doing better now than perhaps he had in his entire life.
They planned to take it all away, one piece at a time.
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At this point in my sixteen-and-a-half career, I've accomplished just about everything I could ever hope to do in this business. On the last day of 2016, I reached what should be the pinnacle of my career. I defeated the franchise of a now dead promotion to be come the champion of that same promotion. What could I possibly have left to prove?
The answer is simple. I'm here to prove the same thing that I've been trying to prove since I debuted in Big Time Wrestling in the year 2000. JC is the best wrestler on this planet. That means going to the top promotions, dominating their competition and ascending to the top. It's been just as true now as it was when I started. If I sound arrogant, don't let that bother you. I had a really good 2016 and I'm on a mission to make 2017 even better.
So that's why I'm here. That's why, even though others may call it a career after they reached the top, I'm still plugging away. Call it a weakness, call it a latent symptom of my mental illness, call it whatever you want. I still have an addiction to professional wrestling. This is still the business that drives me. They say it's not work if you love what you do, and I love competition.
So now I'm in the UGWC. Now I'm fighting a guy named Phrixus Deimos. I'm not sure where to start. Maybe it's the fact that his name seems like something Lovecraft tossed in his rejected ideas pile. It could be because he calls himself, and I swear I'm not making this up, "The Embodiment of Fear." That's precious.
I thought wrestlers like you died out in the late 90s. Are you sure you don't want some grease paint to put on while you listen to Cannibal Corpse and think about your next animal sacrifice? Just at a first glance, you scream 'gimmick' to me and that's not a good thing. Well, it's not a point in the favor of me taking you seriously. I've seen at least twenty "Embodiments of Fear" or "Scourges of Damnation" over the course of my career.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe your idea is to lull opponents into a false sense of security only to surprise them in the ring. You have to have skill, because you're a former three-time World Champion. Your accolades suggest that you definitely bring something to the table, something that old veterans like me need to be cautious of. I'm not certainly not arriving in UGWC just to get embarrassed in my debut.
That's exactly why I'm taking you seriously even though my first instinct is to laugh over how "hardcore" and "metal" your nickname tries to be. I didn't get to where I am by simply overlooking my opponents. So take it with a measure of pride that while I'm confident I'll win this match, I'm approaching you as if you were Jesse Williams. You've got the unenviable task of being my first impression on the UGWC audience. I have to use my considerable skill to put you down, because my pride will not let me do otherwise.
I can't claim to be a man without fear like I once was. I have a family now and I have a legacy that I'm scratching and clawing to rebuild. I've done a lot of bad things in my life and I find myself trying to atone for them every single day. So while there may be fear in my mind, I know that you, Phrixus Deimos, do not scare me. You're not the embodiment of anything but my next obstacle, one that I plan to overcome at the first Synergy of the new year.
I'm a man of two minds. I want to treat you like a joke but I know that I can't. Your career and my shaky ground as a newly-minted top guy demand tell me you're a threat. I suggest that you get ready, because that means I'm going to treat you like a threat. If you don't know what that means, I suggest you look at my accolades or watch some footage.
Threats don't last very long against me.
