Post by Stace Matthews on Feb 11, 2018 7:54:10 GMT -5
“Let's all ride,” his speakers thumped an outlaw beat, “into the night, ‘cause we're in your town, we're gonna burn this building down…”
Sinister, his custom-built, satin-black, ‘58 Ford, thundered down the baron highway; wide open, the 845 horse-powered stable under the hood has that roar that stands every hair down your arm at attention.
Johnny Matthews held the accelerator to the floor, pounding coffin nails one after another. Then, he flicked them out the window and, like the miles between Tucson and Greenville, he left them behind him.
“So,” he sang along, “let it burn…”
Between bookings, he has seen more of the road than home the past few weeks.
In fact, he hadn't been home since being awoken by a former trainee, running a cadence bump drill in The Barn at two in the morning. From South Carolina to New York, out to Vegas and down to Tucson, this trip across the panhandle is the closest he's been to home.
Until his ‘Pops’, Weston Wright, had to move into the upper east wing of their Corpus Christi estate, the plan was for Stace to be on the road with him. After winning the North American Championship, his Notorious ally has had more individual or “championship” appearances booked by PCW’s marketing department.
He's been out here working the road solo for the most part and that can do things to a man’s way of thinking. It can alter his entire perception and change his point of view.
While some might say, “You didn't win.” and he was certain that there would be a few that would mention, “You were the first eliminated.” so far a he was concerned, he had made a very successful debut in the southwest. Not only did he push the network liability when he addressed the fans, everyone backstage and the entire Championship Wrestling Coalition, he drew one of four gold tokens to compete for the WxW Grand Championship in the main event. A match where, he may have been eliminated first, but that didn't stop him from returning to do the job that he was paid to do.
He was finished when he had delivered, he did so with a steel chair, and absolutely none of these actions or antics, his loose cannon behavior, would be surprising to any Pure Class Wrestling fan.
A decade ago.
This same torrid adrenaline rapidly rushing through his veins and increasing his pulse, kept him at this unpredictable lunacy that irked even the television network. There was one difference between then and now and it was frustrating him.
The word backstage, the gossip of the locker room and the talk in the ring was impossible for him to ignore; and, the fact that the Pure Class Wrestling World Champion had called him a sellout to his face in the middle of the ring, something deep inside of him ignited and now, he is torching blacktop.
“What gives this mother fucker the balls to call me a sellout?” He wondered, out loud.
When you have spent the amount of time that he has, going up and down the blacktop and gravel; well, okay, when you have smoked the amount of marijuana and nicotine on top of the gallons of whiskey, vodka and tequila that Matthews has, talking to yourself becomes normal.
Besides, he actually has a little red-dirt road in his upbringing, where not talking to yourself is considered crazy.
Like his father, and his father before him, Matthews got his training and his start in Texas.
His grandfather and the Stevens family put technical, big-man, Texas wrestling on the map.
While everyone else was flocking to New York at the time, his father and Justin Michaels consistently sold out the Alamodome.
Matthews got his start as Johnny Vivacious for Cyber Wrestling Revolution, the talent development promotion of his father’s IAWFe. He never wrestled for his father, instead he was sent across The River, the Mighty Mississip, to represent the Matthews family in a cleverly schemed feud with the Turner family’s Supreme Championship Wrestling.
“Then I married Ol' Senior’s only daughter,” he laughed, smoking and driving.
Since crossing The River, with the exception of a RoughKut tournament in Southern California, all of Matthews success thus far has been in the failure of promoting TRUE in Cincinnati and running rampant over Pure Class Wrestling in the Carilinas.
Is it...
The fact that he not only returned from the longest hiatus of his hiatus legacy, but that he did so with PCW’s most expensive legal nightmare, Justin Michaels?
That he killed the cartoon that was Johnny Vivacious and returned to his legacy last name in the entertainment sport of which the Matthews are a cornerstone?
That, since his debut in 2005, there haven't been any promotions in the deserted southwest worth his legacy homecoming until West by Wrestling?
“How the fuck am I a sell out?”
Couldn't possibly be that, even after laying Johnny Vivacious to rest in the past, they came right back out with another “corny segment,” playing games with the World Championship Belt to start this Notorious year; right?
“We aren't trying to be some,” he puffs on his cigarette and blows smoke out the open driver's side window, “new world order of professional fucking wrestling, Man.”
Besides, if the idea of Notorious was to put everyone on their toes, why not the World Champion?
The guy that, right before winning the Championship, came down to the ring to be blatantly belittled by the more experienced duo. The same guy that, after he had finally won the Championship, came right back down to the ring to be mocked by the same two with a revamped game. The same guy that went down to the ring, when Matthews refused to, and addressed the fans wearing a replica belt.
“That takes brass fucking balls,” he pulls hard on the cigarette pursed in his kisser, “and you have to give it to him, Shane is a professional.”
The wrestling rags had already printed their predictions and asked all of their “What if?” questions. So, what if Seromine and Gabriel bend Dominator to their way of thinking?
“Or they get Horatio and Dom just follows.”
Either way, the rags all agree, a unified showing of the World and North American Champions with the Underground King would trump ANY other likely PCW combinations.
“So,” he shakes his head, the road in front of him reflected in the dark shades that hid his eyes, “why poke the fucking bear, Bro?” A conversation he couldn't likely have alone quickly ended as he realized, “That means I'll have to beat Dominator.”
Stealing the World Championship was one thing, he could apologize and make things right. Cracking a champion over the head with their own belt was something quite different.
“Definitely a fucking receipt due for that, Man.”
However, just because he could do something, doesn't necessarily mean that he would.
“I could stop smoking,” he laughs out loud, smoke blowing in the wind. “This feels like,” he pauses, taking in the scenery and wide-open sky of Oklahoma, “well, the southwest IS fucking home, Man.”
Since The Icey Awards at the end of 2017, when he leveled the current Underground King, he had grown a little parched of the salty Carolina air.
He clearly had indigestion over the very first time in the ring in 2018, when he played host to “Where In the World…” So much so, that he refused to do it a second time or even go to the ring to address the crowd at all on the last Trauma. The absense resulted in Kyle Shane, donning a fake World Championship out to the ring. This time, to call Matthews and Michaels children.
“We ain't a pair of fucking degenerates, Man.”
He was certain that, when they made their big return, they had made it known to the powers that be that be that they are not a tag team, this Notorious thing is, at most, a loose aliance. Also, one could be almost-positive that they had been out to the ring with a live microphone on more than enough occasions that the production truck should know, Matthews and Michaels are Notorious.
“Vivacious,” he huffs, “and everything to do with that trainwreck,” he puffs, “is dead and gone.”
So too, were his cigarettes and he didn't have any packs left in his bag either. He had driven across the Texas panhandle and made a short trip through Oklahoma before dipping back down into the Lonestar State, he also needed gas. He was going to have to stop and, at a Gas Up, Park’n Eat west of Texarkana, he did. In the parking lot, he sent a few text messages.
One in response to his wife, he sent, “Thnx for taking care of Pops. Guess I’ll see you after WXW next show.” She wasn’t able to meet him in Texarkana due to difficulties getting an aide or nurse to the house.
He sent a message to his brother-in-law, “Hey Ducker, I'm in TexArk, probably overnight, should be in SC by Saturday.”
“Fucking autocorrect!”
Then he checked Twitter, sent a tweet about “teaming with the meathead” for WxW’s One and another about “Notorious teaming with Dominator” at PCW’s next Trauma.
Then he went into the fuel center. He grabbed two cases and a tall can of Budweiser from the Beer•Cave and then thumbed through the Maxim and a car magazine as he waited in line. At the counter, he requested three packs of Marlboro Reds and paid with his black card.
He stepped back outside and immediately had a cigarette dangling in his lips and flipping ashes about.
He was booked in the same “unlikely partnership” match, with a few exceptions. In Carolina, he was teaming with his best friend and the guy he planned to dethrone at Mass Destruction; one way or another. In the southeast, he was teaming with another ring giant, or “meathead” as he had repeatedly called his WxW partner, without the Force of Nature to watch his back.
He tossed the cases of beer into the passenger seat, locked up and watched through the large restaurant windows.
“Justin and I don't need Dom to win,” he mumbled, cracking the tall can open, “we need him not to lose.”
He chugged more than half of the can, took a large puff of smoke into his lungs, and said, “As long as the meathead keeps his cool out west, the viking won't have a chance.”
He tossed his empty can, brown bag wrapper and all, and headed inside the restaurant.
Inside, he found a corner table and sat quitely, he knew exactly what he wanted when the waitress walked over to the table. She was very young, cute and bubbly.
“My name’s Shevy, Darlin’...”
“Is that Atlanta,” he interrupted.
“I'm sorry?”
“Your accent,” he ate her with his eyes, “it's definitely Georgia, but I am betting Atlanta.”
“Well,” she shook her head, amused, “how’dja guess?”
“I have heard them all,” he said with a wink.
“Must have, that's crazy,” she was awed, quite easily, “what can I fix ya up with?”
“Coffee, black. Steak and eggs,” he ordered, “well-done, scrambled; scattered, covered, topped; white toast, grape jelly…”
“An’thang else?”
“A peach…”
“A peach?”
“Yes, Shevy, I could de-vour a little peach right now.”
Not an hour after her shift had ended, his better judgement lost in the heat of the moment, lust steamed Sinister’s windows. Parked in the middle of nowhere, with an eastbound train roaring by, she moaned and squealed as she danced with the Devil that pale moon night.
Sinister, his custom-built, satin-black, ‘58 Ford, thundered down the baron highway; wide open, the 845 horse-powered stable under the hood has that roar that stands every hair down your arm at attention.
Johnny Matthews held the accelerator to the floor, pounding coffin nails one after another. Then, he flicked them out the window and, like the miles between Tucson and Greenville, he left them behind him.
“So,” he sang along, “let it burn…”
Between bookings, he has seen more of the road than home the past few weeks.
In fact, he hadn't been home since being awoken by a former trainee, running a cadence bump drill in The Barn at two in the morning. From South Carolina to New York, out to Vegas and down to Tucson, this trip across the panhandle is the closest he's been to home.
Until his ‘Pops’, Weston Wright, had to move into the upper east wing of their Corpus Christi estate, the plan was for Stace to be on the road with him. After winning the North American Championship, his Notorious ally has had more individual or “championship” appearances booked by PCW’s marketing department.
He's been out here working the road solo for the most part and that can do things to a man’s way of thinking. It can alter his entire perception and change his point of view.
While some might say, “You didn't win.” and he was certain that there would be a few that would mention, “You were the first eliminated.” so far a he was concerned, he had made a very successful debut in the southwest. Not only did he push the network liability when he addressed the fans, everyone backstage and the entire Championship Wrestling Coalition, he drew one of four gold tokens to compete for the WxW Grand Championship in the main event. A match where, he may have been eliminated first, but that didn't stop him from returning to do the job that he was paid to do.
He was finished when he had delivered, he did so with a steel chair, and absolutely none of these actions or antics, his loose cannon behavior, would be surprising to any Pure Class Wrestling fan.
A decade ago.
This same torrid adrenaline rapidly rushing through his veins and increasing his pulse, kept him at this unpredictable lunacy that irked even the television network. There was one difference between then and now and it was frustrating him.
The word backstage, the gossip of the locker room and the talk in the ring was impossible for him to ignore; and, the fact that the Pure Class Wrestling World Champion had called him a sellout to his face in the middle of the ring, something deep inside of him ignited and now, he is torching blacktop.
“What gives this mother fucker the balls to call me a sellout?” He wondered, out loud.
When you have spent the amount of time that he has, going up and down the blacktop and gravel; well, okay, when you have smoked the amount of marijuana and nicotine on top of the gallons of whiskey, vodka and tequila that Matthews has, talking to yourself becomes normal.
Besides, he actually has a little red-dirt road in his upbringing, where not talking to yourself is considered crazy.
Like his father, and his father before him, Matthews got his training and his start in Texas.
His grandfather and the Stevens family put technical, big-man, Texas wrestling on the map.
While everyone else was flocking to New York at the time, his father and Justin Michaels consistently sold out the Alamodome.
Matthews got his start as Johnny Vivacious for Cyber Wrestling Revolution, the talent development promotion of his father’s IAWFe. He never wrestled for his father, instead he was sent across The River, the Mighty Mississip, to represent the Matthews family in a cleverly schemed feud with the Turner family’s Supreme Championship Wrestling.
“Then I married Ol' Senior’s only daughter,” he laughed, smoking and driving.
Since crossing The River, with the exception of a RoughKut tournament in Southern California, all of Matthews success thus far has been in the failure of promoting TRUE in Cincinnati and running rampant over Pure Class Wrestling in the Carilinas.
Is it...
The fact that he not only returned from the longest hiatus of his hiatus legacy, but that he did so with PCW’s most expensive legal nightmare, Justin Michaels?
That he killed the cartoon that was Johnny Vivacious and returned to his legacy last name in the entertainment sport of which the Matthews are a cornerstone?
That, since his debut in 2005, there haven't been any promotions in the deserted southwest worth his legacy homecoming until West by Wrestling?
“How the fuck am I a sell out?”
Couldn't possibly be that, even after laying Johnny Vivacious to rest in the past, they came right back out with another “corny segment,” playing games with the World Championship Belt to start this Notorious year; right?
“We aren't trying to be some,” he puffs on his cigarette and blows smoke out the open driver's side window, “new world order of professional fucking wrestling, Man.”
Besides, if the idea of Notorious was to put everyone on their toes, why not the World Champion?
The guy that, right before winning the Championship, came down to the ring to be blatantly belittled by the more experienced duo. The same guy that, after he had finally won the Championship, came right back down to the ring to be mocked by the same two with a revamped game. The same guy that went down to the ring, when Matthews refused to, and addressed the fans wearing a replica belt.
“That takes brass fucking balls,” he pulls hard on the cigarette pursed in his kisser, “and you have to give it to him, Shane is a professional.”
The wrestling rags had already printed their predictions and asked all of their “What if?” questions. So, what if Seromine and Gabriel bend Dominator to their way of thinking?
“Or they get Horatio and Dom just follows.”
Either way, the rags all agree, a unified showing of the World and North American Champions with the Underground King would trump ANY other likely PCW combinations.
“So,” he shakes his head, the road in front of him reflected in the dark shades that hid his eyes, “why poke the fucking bear, Bro?” A conversation he couldn't likely have alone quickly ended as he realized, “That means I'll have to beat Dominator.”
Stealing the World Championship was one thing, he could apologize and make things right. Cracking a champion over the head with their own belt was something quite different.
“Definitely a fucking receipt due for that, Man.”
However, just because he could do something, doesn't necessarily mean that he would.
“I could stop smoking,” he laughs out loud, smoke blowing in the wind. “This feels like,” he pauses, taking in the scenery and wide-open sky of Oklahoma, “well, the southwest IS fucking home, Man.”
Since The Icey Awards at the end of 2017, when he leveled the current Underground King, he had grown a little parched of the salty Carolina air.
He clearly had indigestion over the very first time in the ring in 2018, when he played host to “Where In the World…” So much so, that he refused to do it a second time or even go to the ring to address the crowd at all on the last Trauma. The absense resulted in Kyle Shane, donning a fake World Championship out to the ring. This time, to call Matthews and Michaels children.
“We ain't a pair of fucking degenerates, Man.”
He was certain that, when they made their big return, they had made it known to the powers that be that be that they are not a tag team, this Notorious thing is, at most, a loose aliance. Also, one could be almost-positive that they had been out to the ring with a live microphone on more than enough occasions that the production truck should know, Matthews and Michaels are Notorious.
“Vivacious,” he huffs, “and everything to do with that trainwreck,” he puffs, “is dead and gone.”
So too, were his cigarettes and he didn't have any packs left in his bag either. He had driven across the Texas panhandle and made a short trip through Oklahoma before dipping back down into the Lonestar State, he also needed gas. He was going to have to stop and, at a Gas Up, Park’n Eat west of Texarkana, he did. In the parking lot, he sent a few text messages.
One in response to his wife, he sent, “Thnx for taking care of Pops. Guess I’ll see you after WXW next show.” She wasn’t able to meet him in Texarkana due to difficulties getting an aide or nurse to the house.
He sent a message to his brother-in-law, “Hey Ducker, I'm in TexArk, probably overnight, should be in SC by Saturday.”
“Fucking autocorrect!”
Then he checked Twitter, sent a tweet about “teaming with the meathead” for WxW’s One and another about “Notorious teaming with Dominator” at PCW’s next Trauma.
Then he went into the fuel center. He grabbed two cases and a tall can of Budweiser from the Beer•Cave and then thumbed through the Maxim and a car magazine as he waited in line. At the counter, he requested three packs of Marlboro Reds and paid with his black card.
He stepped back outside and immediately had a cigarette dangling in his lips and flipping ashes about.
He was booked in the same “unlikely partnership” match, with a few exceptions. In Carolina, he was teaming with his best friend and the guy he planned to dethrone at Mass Destruction; one way or another. In the southeast, he was teaming with another ring giant, or “meathead” as he had repeatedly called his WxW partner, without the Force of Nature to watch his back.
He tossed the cases of beer into the passenger seat, locked up and watched through the large restaurant windows.
“Justin and I don't need Dom to win,” he mumbled, cracking the tall can open, “we need him not to lose.”
He chugged more than half of the can, took a large puff of smoke into his lungs, and said, “As long as the meathead keeps his cool out west, the viking won't have a chance.”
He tossed his empty can, brown bag wrapper and all, and headed inside the restaurant.
Inside, he found a corner table and sat quitely, he knew exactly what he wanted when the waitress walked over to the table. She was very young, cute and bubbly.
“My name’s Shevy, Darlin’...”
“Is that Atlanta,” he interrupted.
“I'm sorry?”
“Your accent,” he ate her with his eyes, “it's definitely Georgia, but I am betting Atlanta.”
“Well,” she shook her head, amused, “how’dja guess?”
“I have heard them all,” he said with a wink.
“Must have, that's crazy,” she was awed, quite easily, “what can I fix ya up with?”
“Coffee, black. Steak and eggs,” he ordered, “well-done, scrambled; scattered, covered, topped; white toast, grape jelly…”
“An’thang else?”
“A peach…”
“A peach?”
“Yes, Shevy, I could de-vour a little peach right now.”
Not an hour after her shift had ended, his better judgement lost in the heat of the moment, lust steamed Sinister’s windows. Parked in the middle of nowhere, with an eastbound train roaring by, she moaned and squealed as she danced with the Devil that pale moon night.