Post by Kyle Shane on Dec 4, 2017 21:03:17 GMT -5
He held the glossy pictorial between his fingers, eyes scanning it and shielding it's pages against the gust of snowy wind. And he read, peering into the pages of the Rolling Stone and, as always, trying to glean insight into someone he couldn't say he knew.
There's a curiously subdued atmosphere when you walk into Kyle Shane's apartment. For someone with such a famous ego, you'd expect every inch of the open-air, bay window penthouse to be a shrine to him. When we arrived for the interview at 5 we found Kyle, much the way it all began at the start, simply playing X-Box on a couch. This is a man who has presented a frustrating contradiction that it feels like not many have ever truly figured out; a man we've watched grow up from a Game Boy to a man. Someone who dedicates his personal philosophy towards perfecting endless achievement and constantly honing and upgrading his skills yet who's private life seems to be a constantly shifting flux of turmoil. We talked with a group of Kyle's associates in preparation for this interview, and with them has emerged a picture that is perplexing as is it amazing.
So no, Kyle isn't one to hang elaborate trophies on the wall or have a replica of every title he's ever won hung up. And yet, there is the sense that he carries them with him in memory, quietly as a point of pride, and even wears his home chaos as a peculiar badge of honor - this is where I came from, and this is how far I've come. It takes either a very strong will or a deeply affected and unhappy person to come from such a place of constant redefinition. And yet, Kyle Shane has been redefining himself on a new stage ever since he left his self-imposed exile from his stock in trade and stepped foot in his new home, Pure Class Wrestling. The Kyle Shane who bowed on Collision Course's stage in December 2016 certainly felt like a different beast: bombastic, over the top, ridiculously overblown, arriving amid a weeklong saga of high concept sci-fi. To say the least, it left some of his new peers intrigued, and some put off.
The results have been undeniable for some. Kyle made his mark in quick fashion with decisive victories in Pure Class's Underground division, defending his title multiple times, wrestling twice a night, and even capping off his first few months with a tournament win that placed him among an elite class. But for every big win it felt like there was a brake check to his momentum, and another reconfiguring to his style as he adjusted to his new home.
"Ay bruh," heckles the newstand vendor, "This isn't a library, you wanna read the magazine you buy the magazine, c'mahn." So saying, he yanks the Rolling Stone out of his clutching claw, nearly causing him to imbalance. In response, the emaciated, sickly form turns to read him, scrawling over his face with black eyes, mouth twisted in a palsied and surprisingly lupine snarl. But he calms himself, telling himself that there will be no shenanigans tonight and he needs to keep his temper. "Sorry, my good working man," he says in his most sympathetic voice. "I know the plight of the simple store opener. I will pay you for your wares." He digs out a fistful of money, but now the man's broad face is squinched with suspicion.
"You talk funny, man." Is all the husky newsvendor says, looking weirded out.
Grumbling, he takes the magazine back under one arm. But it was what he held in the crook of his other arm that meant the most to him right now. A beautiful little bauble he'd had appropriated from the physics department of the university. He held it tightly against his side, his crutch holding it in place, as he laboriously moved closer to his vantage point at the restaurant. He couldn't see Kyle yet, but he had done the tracking. He knew he was getting close.
He raised his head to the sky despite the twinge of pain from his wasted muscles. Who was Kyle Shane? He grinned. The fawning magazine asked questions he had been yearning after all of his life. A twisted love/hate burned there in his heart. Sometimes he wanted everything Kyle ever had, because he grew up with nothing. Sometimes he did want his brother to prosper, to continue living a life he himself could only imagine in dreams.
Sometimes, like tonight, he just wanted him, for once to... choose.
His slumped shoulders rising and falling as he selected carefully the next spot for his crutches with each step on the slick ground, he made his way to the restaurant's open awning, and the expensive party going on within. He may have felt a little out of place as he stood in the foyer, with his stained long coat and his knit hat. So he stashed his crutches and taken an inobtrusive seat on a bench, like a hungry patron wishing to be seated, and waited for his opening. Hungrily, with the strength of a desperate man, he wrenched open the magazine and brought it up to his face, providing a cover as he scanned the party room where a few dozen well-to-do's were sipping champagne. Then, biding his time, his eyes focused on the words.
You get the sense with Kyle that the most important thing for him is his being understood, more than anything. He's paused his game as we sit side by side on the couch, and answers questions with a pinpoint, clear elocution. It's only when he's really tuned up that his Southie roughness starts coming out. We spoke to him to about his mixed reaction from his peers, his goals in the rest of the time he may feel he has left in wrestling, and his thoughts about what makes him confident in calling himself the God of Game.
RS: So, big match coming up?
KS: [laughs] I suppose you could call it that.
RS: You described it in the Club Vivacious segment that aired on November 22nd, as the culmination of everything you've worked on since you came to Pure Class Wrestling a year ago. Can you walk us through where you were a year ago and why you came here, and then what you feel this entire year has accomplished for you?
Kyle takes a moment before answering.
KS: A year ago I was thinking I was done with this. I have always been open about what I want to achieve in wrestling, and where I was, I wasn't happy. They say never burn bridges with past employers but eh. In my last run in WGWF, I thought about walking away every week instead of sitting down to get to work on Mondays. There's a lady I do therapy with, she's always encouraging me, if you're depressed, make sure that the environment around you isn't what's causing it first, and then change your surroundings. So I went from their ring, to retired, and unhappy and unfulfilled, to looking to find something better. Because it still felt like I had something to say in wrestling. And then I came here. It allowed me to break this feeling that I was just churning out content on an assembly line, to feel like I was just going through the motions. Because here, I always have a sense that there is a giant brass ring up there waiting for me to grasp. I just need to find a way up to it.
RS: Both members of Club V seemed... less than enthused with your asserting your credentials.
KS: Oh, that Club V segment was off the rails asinine. [laughs] They invited me on but they never expected me to come out there with a live mic. They asked me if I was nervous about my first big match of my career like I was just out of training learning how to do a headlock. I know that we in the industry take a dim view of working for other companies, but asking me if I felt ready for a big match was... what? I have been big match ready every single time I step out there. It's right in my bio that I go out there and treat every match as a big deal. And not for nothing, I've only won 8 world titles. But take outside companies away and I've still had so much big match experience this year... I stand here as a man who has called his every shot. I said I was going to be Underground King. I said I would win the North American title and make it mean something. I won an entire tournament comprised of some of the best we had to offer. So for them to drub me as someone who was naive and not ready for this was ridiculous. As I was saying, this is everything I've put together over this year all coming to a head. This is the cold war I've had with Seromine's followers like Gabriel simmering in the background since the summer coming to a head. This is me testing myself against arguably the best in the business today. I know it's a big deal. Because it's not just winning another World title to me. It's pushing myself to face the best, and overcome. To be my best, and show it.
RS: It's easy to see why some people would be nonplussed with your attitude, though.
KS: The ridiculous thing about that segment - except for the fact that I censored myself with "frickin" so I wouldn't have to pay ANOTHER FCC fine and god, Johnny V went all over himself with did you just say that, how childish, how blah blah blah - was how they rushed to downplay everything I said. Justin Michaels couldn't listen to me talk about any one thing I had accomplished without barging in and reminding people he had done something similar in 2006. Johnny V just, for some reason had to break in and tell people that he won the North American Title too and it was meaningless as if it's not our second tier title and stepping stone to the main event in the current configuration. Just, they invited me to talk but it really felt like everything was to push their own agenda. Good pie, though. [laughs]
RS: But are you? Are you ready?
KS: I think I'm more ready for this than I have been at any other time I took a jump at the top.
RS: Well, it has to be talked about, because you had a chance to step up at Deadly Intentions. If you had won the Rumble, we might have had a very different conversation.
KS: No, you're right. I was cocky going into that, but I also think in October I wasn't ready. It wasn't on my mind to sum up and wrap up everything I'd learned all year, to put into practice everything I've learned. Honestly I look at what I put out there and half of it was formulaic and churned out platitudes about breaking foundations. I think I missed the message of what we were trying to say. But I also think the climate of the world right now, things are getting darker. Religious right are taking over, in bed with corporate greed. Powerful people are using and abusing moral standings to try and justify screwing over people underneath them. If ever there was a more apt metaphor for the world we live it, it's at Deadly Intentions. And I think the lesson I took away from that was, don't be fake. Stand up to them, and speak your truth, your whole truth.
RS: And what is your whole truth in the context of that food chain? To put it simply, what makes you think the time is now for the God of Game to ascend to the top of an entire company?
"Sir, we can't seat you without proper attire," breaks in a snooty waiter, and he looks up from his magazine. So lost in his own world... he fumbles a bit for his words, because he is not effortlessly charming like his brother. Finally, he thinks of what to say. He folds the magazine and puts it in an inside pocket of his coat, and he pushes himself up on a crutch to walk over to the maitre'd's podium.
"I know I don't have a reservation, I'm here for the corporate party in the hall, the - the Sasuke party."
"Zat party is a closed list only." The maitre'd pencil thin eyebrow raises as he takes in this ragamuffin, crippled leg/curved spine, dishevelled ghoul. He is drawn, pale, gasping from exerting effort, and his eyes have red rings under them. He also has the slightly off feeling of a quiet fanatic.
The thin man leaned in close to the maitre'd, trying to speak confidentially as the line shuffles impatiently behind him. "Can I at least use your restroom to clean up? Please, I - I have a degenerative illness, and sometimes my bowels - well - can I - I'll pay, I'll pay you any amount - "
The waiter's lip peeled back in a disgusted grimace. "Just go. It's the first door on your right off the foyer. Off with you." And he picked up his crutches and tottered around the corner, with the speed of someone humiliated. Inside, though, he was seething. At the way that suited jackal had looked at him, had quietly mocked him. One day, when he was powerful enough, he would teach anybody that looked down on those with conditions like his the most abject lesson of their lives.
He made his way into the bathroom, and there he set down the box. He opened the lid just a corner, enough for him to see the glow of the device. He grinned silently. Who was Kyle Shane?
He took out the Stone again, folding the cover around the back to the page where he left off. The pictorial with the article captured a picture of his brother. He was sitting at ease, leg propped up on his couch, bringing a spliff to his lips and caught in a haze of smoke, an amiable grin on his face. Smile big, brother. Soon, you will have to choose your route.
He flipped the magazine with a wayward flap of his hand behind him, and he scooped the box back up. The magazine lay on the bathroom floor, open, it's pages in disarray, forgotten, it's story open to the world.
KS: Right now, the entire company and all of it's audience are under the spell of Seromine. People bought in to his sermonizing and moralizing at Deadly Intentions and they truly believed that Seromine was someone who would bring an order to the company. I'm standing here showing people that there's another way. I have always said that, ultimately, all Seromine offers people is lies. I'm not the biggest believer in God. I feel like praying to some unknown and unknowable deity for the providence to solve your problems takes away the satisfaction of doing things for yourself. Because at the end of the day, that's all that's out there, is just you, yourself. But Seromine does not offer divine providence. He does not offer people hope. All he gives to them is greed and theft. He steals from them, their hope, their faith... their intelligence when they have to sit through his drivel... and most importantly, all of his followers. He strips them of their personal identity, makes them cringing serfs that only parrot the words he wants them to say. Look at Rick Majors, who can't even be his own man now, he runs around spouting quotes of a perverted Bible and ending every other paragraph with Praise Seromine. That should not be. Nobody should put that much faith in one man and raise him to a pedestal like that.
RS: It's almost as if they've raised him to the status of their God.
KS: But the problem is that Seromine is mortal, nobody proved that more than Nathan Saniti and Seromine's inability to beat that gibbering lunatic. Nathan Saniti made Seromine look foolish time and time again. He drugged him and reduced him to an insensate lump. And every time Seromine looks ready to fall, he has an ace up his sleeve. Like on Trauma, when his gimp Gabriel lost the match for their team, he was ready with poison mist to the face. If he was so sure of his stature and his infallibility, he wouldn't have to resort to cheap come from behind tactics, would he? My message is clear. You fight for yourself, you win for yourself. Seromine is preaching to a horde of weak minded, slow witted vagabonds that they can use cheap tactics and thug violence to get what they want. When I faced Gabriel, at Deadly Intentions, I fought him with the idea that I would pit only my skill against his. But when the word of Seromine falls short, when the skills of Seromine and his ilk prove not enough, they fall back on cheap shots to get by. Ultimately, that proves to me that he is the most flawed and degenerate person of all. Not someone to worship. Because why would anyone worship a God who is at the very bottom of it all, about doing nothing but cutting corners and taking the easy way to get ahead? I suppose that a case can be made that that's religion in a nutshell, but we aren't here to debate agnosticism in today's philosophy. Cold, hard, facts, Seromine is not a God, not a heavenly prophet that deserves a pulpit to spew his propaganda; he is a sick, evil, demented man that needs to be put down, hard.
RS: So the question then remains, if Seromine isn't someone you would want people believing in as a God, why should they believe in you?
Kyle takes a long time in answering.
KS: I don't expect people to believe in me just because I say it. That's never been what I'm about. I don't preach my message to the masses. I just go out there, and I do what I do. If there's anything I want people to believe, or to take away from what I do, it's that you never give up on yourself. If you put your whole heart into it, if you stand true, you can accomplish miracles. That anyone believes in me is because they see that I'm serious about my belief system. And not for nothing, people have predicted my crashing and burning since the dawn of time. Just like Seromine this week, people have said, the Game is over boy, since God I don't know. And yet I'm still here. I'm still coming out there with a middle finger upraised to those that tell me I can't get to the next level. I'm still showing people that they haven't even seen me at my absolute best, because I am endlessly creating the best version of myself. And that is all I can say about that.
So who is Kyle Shane? Uber-confident, untouchable, unbreakable workhorse or quietly tormented, unsatisfied artist? Asshole or broken soul? Man transcending god or man still a boy? Or maybe it's a touch of all of these? We can only glean small insights, as he remains famously inscrutable even in interview. The interview ends as Kyle becomes more withdrawn and aloof, going back, as he always does, to starting up his system and playing his game. And yet, maybe that more than anything, is who Kyle Shane is about. He will always start the game up and play anew.
He found his brother sitting off to one side of the party, at a low ebb for socializing. He started to cross the room to him, but when the other lost Game Boy, the Jap Hiro, came sauntering over, Kyle started up with his big, faked party smile again. "Thanks for coming out, brother. Glad you could fit it into your schedule."
He lurked at the far end of the table carrying hors d'oeuvres, and picked up and nibbled on a canape. He watched Kyle, silently, from afar, gauging his lack of comfort in the business-like atmosphere. Kyle shrugged and laughed, and Hiro handed him a champagne flute, which Kyle toasted. "To another successful business start up."
"Hey, man, listen, Wupfh is going to change the game of social media. My investors are all on board, this is a big innovation."
"Is this the best climate to be getting into social media, though, since net neutrality may deprive thousands if not millions of lower-income Americans affordable access to the Internet, and - "
Hiro moves in to shush Kyle. "Can you just - not with that right now, we don't need you freaking out any cash movers with your rhetoric."
Kyle squints at his former partner, almost in the vein of someone looking at someone that they don't recognize anymore. And with that, Patrick grins a little. All the Voice in the Grey dogma that Kyle swallowed in his time working with their group had led to a bigger divide between the two Game Boys. And Hiro, well... Hiro may still have been smarting over losing all the funding to his company, and he may have had a little hand in that. He can't help but feel a little bit of perverted glee over the fact that the strain between Kyle's awakened ideals and Hiro's capitalistic hunger to get back to a position of power put them at odds. Oh no, Kyle lost a brother. How tragic.
"Can't you just for once - Ugh. Just enjoy the champagne, Kyle. I'll talk to you after." And Hiro went off, to schmooze with some investor. Kyle sank down into a seat against the wall. Swanky music played over a piano piped in from somewhere, and beautiful people in expensive suits and dresses guzzled this swill and laughed in that upper class white way. Kyle looked so alone and out of place.
Now it was time for him to approach.
Kyle was in his own world as he crutched over, and came to a stop in front of him. Kyle didn't look up, either.
"You're caught in between these two worlds, aren't you?"
Now Kyle did look up, and he looked ashen, as if he had seen a ghost. But he didn't raise a yell, even if he wanted to. What was he going to shout in a crowded investor party, that his maniacal half-brother was here to menace him? His face twisted into a snarl, and he spat. "What do you want, Patrick?"
"I just came to talk. And to give you a gift."
"I don't think I want any of anything you could offer me. Not after all the people's lives you ruined."
"I'm not here to ruin lives, Kyle... I'm here to offer you a chance to explore your best one. To choose."
Kyle's eyes narrowed. And so, he offered his brother a chair, which Patrick sank into, gratefully, his bones sighing. They sat side by side, in silence, for a while, and Patrick didn't launch into a pitch, and Kyle didn't try to strangle them again. They just sat, Kyle drank his flute of champagne, and they watched people at the party exchange light chit-chat over drinks.
Finally, Patrick spoke. "Funny thing, knowing the future. There's really only two ways it can go. It's like Schroedinger's Cat. Fifty fifty split of whether the cat inside is dead or alive. You understand?" He was rooting around inside his long, battered duster, hunting through pockets, looking for the box. "The future is the moment between moments. Everything that could happen is possible, or is not."
And he withdrew it from his pocket, at length. I stared at it, giving off a soft golden glow in his hand. A tiny metal box, about the size of a box of matches. It had a hinged lid. Kyle tilted his head, trying to pierce it's mysteries. "So, what will this do for me?"
"The moment between moments. Either way the brick could fall, missing you or nailing you. Choose whatever metaphor you want," he said, content to speak in riddles. Kyle turned back to Patrick with an even bigger snarl on his face, clearly debating about the chokehold after all. Patrick held his hands up innocently, as if to say alright, alright, I'm getting to it. "Opening this box will present you with the choice of where you want to go. What you want your future to be."
"So what does this have to do with dead cats or whatever?"
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It doesn't. It concerns where you're going in your life, years from now."
Hesitantly, looking from him to the box and back, and then wanting just to chuck it and go back to his waiting bed and away from this weird and awkward party, but something deep within him pulled at him. Wanted to see what awaited.
He opened the box. And then, instantly, the party was gone, and Patrick was gone, and all he could see was darkness.
And yet, at the same time, bright and blinding light, incandescent and throbbing, industrial light.
Light, and the rhythmic clanging of machines, metal on metal.
Darkness, and the unyielding pelt of rain on his skin. Kyle was experiencing both sensory touches at the same time, simultaneously.
In the light, he saw himself, decades into the future, standing on a catwalk overlooking a vast industrial complex, building robot parts that looked science fiction and aggressively military. His older, much more worn self wore a suit, gray hair, and a withered face and body, and a sneer of contemptible, perpetual ennui. It was a man who was surrounded with cold, emotionless machines, who had lived his life not letting anyone close. He wondered what happened to bring about this dual success and failure.
And in the dark, he saw the same man in a different situation, so diverse it was practically a different life. He knelt at a gravestone. The rain washed over him, but he paid no attention. His head bowed sadly. He ran his bare fingers over the engraving on the headstone. As he did, Kyle saw the blue police lights washing over all the monuments and statues of the graveyard, the cop cars pulling up and the men filing out. He saw the man with the detective's shield shout at the kneeling, weeping old man in the dirt of the gravesite.
"Freeze, Shane!"
He saw the gravestone, marked "Karen Shane".
"The future is the moment between moments."
"The choice where you want to go."
"What you want your future to be."
"Decide, Kyle."
"Decide."
There's a curiously subdued atmosphere when you walk into Kyle Shane's apartment. For someone with such a famous ego, you'd expect every inch of the open-air, bay window penthouse to be a shrine to him. When we arrived for the interview at 5 we found Kyle, much the way it all began at the start, simply playing X-Box on a couch. This is a man who has presented a frustrating contradiction that it feels like not many have ever truly figured out; a man we've watched grow up from a Game Boy to a man. Someone who dedicates his personal philosophy towards perfecting endless achievement and constantly honing and upgrading his skills yet who's private life seems to be a constantly shifting flux of turmoil. We talked with a group of Kyle's associates in preparation for this interview, and with them has emerged a picture that is perplexing as is it amazing.
So no, Kyle isn't one to hang elaborate trophies on the wall or have a replica of every title he's ever won hung up. And yet, there is the sense that he carries them with him in memory, quietly as a point of pride, and even wears his home chaos as a peculiar badge of honor - this is where I came from, and this is how far I've come. It takes either a very strong will or a deeply affected and unhappy person to come from such a place of constant redefinition. And yet, Kyle Shane has been redefining himself on a new stage ever since he left his self-imposed exile from his stock in trade and stepped foot in his new home, Pure Class Wrestling. The Kyle Shane who bowed on Collision Course's stage in December 2016 certainly felt like a different beast: bombastic, over the top, ridiculously overblown, arriving amid a weeklong saga of high concept sci-fi. To say the least, it left some of his new peers intrigued, and some put off.
The results have been undeniable for some. Kyle made his mark in quick fashion with decisive victories in Pure Class's Underground division, defending his title multiple times, wrestling twice a night, and even capping off his first few months with a tournament win that placed him among an elite class. But for every big win it felt like there was a brake check to his momentum, and another reconfiguring to his style as he adjusted to his new home.
Who is Kyle Shane, in your words? When I think of Kyle I think of deep-rooted insecurity. I know, that answer is going to make him very angry because, in his line of work, if you expose weaknesses, you give your opponents a psychological edge, but in my professional analysis it bears out. Kyle Shane is someone who cannot help but expose every side of him, the good and the bad. Warts and all. He is compelled, even, to showcase his weaknesses... but I think that actually works out to his benefit. Were someone to probe such a perceived flaw in his ego, Kyle would brush it off as if their opinion doesn't matter. Believe me... it's the most infuriating part of therapy sessions with him. So when I think of, who Kyle Shane is... I think of someone, that is flawed, more even than he knows. But I think in him there is a heroic impulse, to take those flaws, to take what holds him back week after week and the demons that threaten to drown him and to show it to the world. And to say to them, look at this. This shit doesn't stop me, and neither can you. That, to me, is the ultimate expression of his strength. Because the only thing that can ever really set Kyle back, is Kyle. - Dr. Krista Miller, LCSW
"Ay bruh," heckles the newstand vendor, "This isn't a library, you wanna read the magazine you buy the magazine, c'mahn." So saying, he yanks the Rolling Stone out of his clutching claw, nearly causing him to imbalance. In response, the emaciated, sickly form turns to read him, scrawling over his face with black eyes, mouth twisted in a palsied and surprisingly lupine snarl. But he calms himself, telling himself that there will be no shenanigans tonight and he needs to keep his temper. "Sorry, my good working man," he says in his most sympathetic voice. "I know the plight of the simple store opener. I will pay you for your wares." He digs out a fistful of money, but now the man's broad face is squinched with suspicion.
"You talk funny, man." Is all the husky newsvendor says, looking weirded out.
Grumbling, he takes the magazine back under one arm. But it was what he held in the crook of his other arm that meant the most to him right now. A beautiful little bauble he'd had appropriated from the physics department of the university. He held it tightly against his side, his crutch holding it in place, as he laboriously moved closer to his vantage point at the restaurant. He couldn't see Kyle yet, but he had done the tracking. He knew he was getting close.
He raised his head to the sky despite the twinge of pain from his wasted muscles. Who was Kyle Shane? He grinned. The fawning magazine asked questions he had been yearning after all of his life. A twisted love/hate burned there in his heart. Sometimes he wanted everything Kyle ever had, because he grew up with nothing. Sometimes he did want his brother to prosper, to continue living a life he himself could only imagine in dreams.
Sometimes, like tonight, he just wanted him, for once to... choose.
His slumped shoulders rising and falling as he selected carefully the next spot for his crutches with each step on the slick ground, he made his way to the restaurant's open awning, and the expensive party going on within. He may have felt a little out of place as he stood in the foyer, with his stained long coat and his knit hat. So he stashed his crutches and taken an inobtrusive seat on a bench, like a hungry patron wishing to be seated, and waited for his opening. Hungrily, with the strength of a desperate man, he wrenched open the magazine and brought it up to his face, providing a cover as he scanned the party room where a few dozen well-to-do's were sipping champagne. Then, biding his time, his eyes focused on the words.
Who is Kyle Shane to you, in your own words?" Who are you with? Why... why are you here in the middle of lunch rush? Look... I'd rather not discuss that asshole. He's caused me enough grief. Who's Kyle Shane? Someone who sees the rest of the world in very simple terms. You're either a challenge to be overcome, or an NPC on a sidequest for him to use and then walk away from. Can I just - next in line, please? - Chad Jacoby.
You get the sense with Kyle that the most important thing for him is his being understood, more than anything. He's paused his game as we sit side by side on the couch, and answers questions with a pinpoint, clear elocution. It's only when he's really tuned up that his Southie roughness starts coming out. We spoke to him to about his mixed reaction from his peers, his goals in the rest of the time he may feel he has left in wrestling, and his thoughts about what makes him confident in calling himself the God of Game.
RS: So, big match coming up?
KS: [laughs] I suppose you could call it that.
RS: You described it in the Club Vivacious segment that aired on November 22nd, as the culmination of everything you've worked on since you came to Pure Class Wrestling a year ago. Can you walk us through where you were a year ago and why you came here, and then what you feel this entire year has accomplished for you?
Kyle takes a moment before answering.
KS: A year ago I was thinking I was done with this. I have always been open about what I want to achieve in wrestling, and where I was, I wasn't happy. They say never burn bridges with past employers but eh. In my last run in WGWF, I thought about walking away every week instead of sitting down to get to work on Mondays. There's a lady I do therapy with, she's always encouraging me, if you're depressed, make sure that the environment around you isn't what's causing it first, and then change your surroundings. So I went from their ring, to retired, and unhappy and unfulfilled, to looking to find something better. Because it still felt like I had something to say in wrestling. And then I came here. It allowed me to break this feeling that I was just churning out content on an assembly line, to feel like I was just going through the motions. Because here, I always have a sense that there is a giant brass ring up there waiting for me to grasp. I just need to find a way up to it.
RS: Both members of Club V seemed... less than enthused with your asserting your credentials.
KS: Oh, that Club V segment was off the rails asinine. [laughs] They invited me on but they never expected me to come out there with a live mic. They asked me if I was nervous about my first big match of my career like I was just out of training learning how to do a headlock. I know that we in the industry take a dim view of working for other companies, but asking me if I felt ready for a big match was... what? I have been big match ready every single time I step out there. It's right in my bio that I go out there and treat every match as a big deal. And not for nothing, I've only won 8 world titles. But take outside companies away and I've still had so much big match experience this year... I stand here as a man who has called his every shot. I said I was going to be Underground King. I said I would win the North American title and make it mean something. I won an entire tournament comprised of some of the best we had to offer. So for them to drub me as someone who was naive and not ready for this was ridiculous. As I was saying, this is everything I've put together over this year all coming to a head. This is the cold war I've had with Seromine's followers like Gabriel simmering in the background since the summer coming to a head. This is me testing myself against arguably the best in the business today. I know it's a big deal. Because it's not just winning another World title to me. It's pushing myself to face the best, and overcome. To be my best, and show it.
RS: It's easy to see why some people would be nonplussed with your attitude, though.
KS: The ridiculous thing about that segment - except for the fact that I censored myself with "frickin" so I wouldn't have to pay ANOTHER FCC fine and god, Johnny V went all over himself with did you just say that, how childish, how blah blah blah - was how they rushed to downplay everything I said. Justin Michaels couldn't listen to me talk about any one thing I had accomplished without barging in and reminding people he had done something similar in 2006. Johnny V just, for some reason had to break in and tell people that he won the North American Title too and it was meaningless as if it's not our second tier title and stepping stone to the main event in the current configuration. Just, they invited me to talk but it really felt like everything was to push their own agenda. Good pie, though. [laughs]
RS: But are you? Are you ready?
KS: I think I'm more ready for this than I have been at any other time I took a jump at the top.
RS: Well, it has to be talked about, because you had a chance to step up at Deadly Intentions. If you had won the Rumble, we might have had a very different conversation.
KS: No, you're right. I was cocky going into that, but I also think in October I wasn't ready. It wasn't on my mind to sum up and wrap up everything I'd learned all year, to put into practice everything I've learned. Honestly I look at what I put out there and half of it was formulaic and churned out platitudes about breaking foundations. I think I missed the message of what we were trying to say. But I also think the climate of the world right now, things are getting darker. Religious right are taking over, in bed with corporate greed. Powerful people are using and abusing moral standings to try and justify screwing over people underneath them. If ever there was a more apt metaphor for the world we live it, it's at Deadly Intentions. And I think the lesson I took away from that was, don't be fake. Stand up to them, and speak your truth, your whole truth.
RS: And what is your whole truth in the context of that food chain? To put it simply, what makes you think the time is now for the God of Game to ascend to the top of an entire company?
"Sir, we can't seat you without proper attire," breaks in a snooty waiter, and he looks up from his magazine. So lost in his own world... he fumbles a bit for his words, because he is not effortlessly charming like his brother. Finally, he thinks of what to say. He folds the magazine and puts it in an inside pocket of his coat, and he pushes himself up on a crutch to walk over to the maitre'd's podium.
"I know I don't have a reservation, I'm here for the corporate party in the hall, the - the Sasuke party."
"Zat party is a closed list only." The maitre'd pencil thin eyebrow raises as he takes in this ragamuffin, crippled leg/curved spine, dishevelled ghoul. He is drawn, pale, gasping from exerting effort, and his eyes have red rings under them. He also has the slightly off feeling of a quiet fanatic.
The thin man leaned in close to the maitre'd, trying to speak confidentially as the line shuffles impatiently behind him. "Can I at least use your restroom to clean up? Please, I - I have a degenerative illness, and sometimes my bowels - well - can I - I'll pay, I'll pay you any amount - "
The waiter's lip peeled back in a disgusted grimace. "Just go. It's the first door on your right off the foyer. Off with you." And he picked up his crutches and tottered around the corner, with the speed of someone humiliated. Inside, though, he was seething. At the way that suited jackal had looked at him, had quietly mocked him. One day, when he was powerful enough, he would teach anybody that looked down on those with conditions like his the most abject lesson of their lives.
He made his way into the bathroom, and there he set down the box. He opened the lid just a corner, enough for him to see the glow of the device. He grinned silently. Who was Kyle Shane?
He took out the Stone again, folding the cover around the back to the page where he left off. The pictorial with the article captured a picture of his brother. He was sitting at ease, leg propped up on his couch, bringing a spliff to his lips and caught in a haze of smoke, an amiable grin on his face. Smile big, brother. Soon, you will have to choose your route.
He flipped the magazine with a wayward flap of his hand behind him, and he scooped the box back up. The magazine lay on the bathroom floor, open, it's pages in disarray, forgotten, it's story open to the world.
KS: Right now, the entire company and all of it's audience are under the spell of Seromine. People bought in to his sermonizing and moralizing at Deadly Intentions and they truly believed that Seromine was someone who would bring an order to the company. I'm standing here showing people that there's another way. I have always said that, ultimately, all Seromine offers people is lies. I'm not the biggest believer in God. I feel like praying to some unknown and unknowable deity for the providence to solve your problems takes away the satisfaction of doing things for yourself. Because at the end of the day, that's all that's out there, is just you, yourself. But Seromine does not offer divine providence. He does not offer people hope. All he gives to them is greed and theft. He steals from them, their hope, their faith... their intelligence when they have to sit through his drivel... and most importantly, all of his followers. He strips them of their personal identity, makes them cringing serfs that only parrot the words he wants them to say. Look at Rick Majors, who can't even be his own man now, he runs around spouting quotes of a perverted Bible and ending every other paragraph with Praise Seromine. That should not be. Nobody should put that much faith in one man and raise him to a pedestal like that.
RS: It's almost as if they've raised him to the status of their God.
KS: But the problem is that Seromine is mortal, nobody proved that more than Nathan Saniti and Seromine's inability to beat that gibbering lunatic. Nathan Saniti made Seromine look foolish time and time again. He drugged him and reduced him to an insensate lump. And every time Seromine looks ready to fall, he has an ace up his sleeve. Like on Trauma, when his gimp Gabriel lost the match for their team, he was ready with poison mist to the face. If he was so sure of his stature and his infallibility, he wouldn't have to resort to cheap come from behind tactics, would he? My message is clear. You fight for yourself, you win for yourself. Seromine is preaching to a horde of weak minded, slow witted vagabonds that they can use cheap tactics and thug violence to get what they want. When I faced Gabriel, at Deadly Intentions, I fought him with the idea that I would pit only my skill against his. But when the word of Seromine falls short, when the skills of Seromine and his ilk prove not enough, they fall back on cheap shots to get by. Ultimately, that proves to me that he is the most flawed and degenerate person of all. Not someone to worship. Because why would anyone worship a God who is at the very bottom of it all, about doing nothing but cutting corners and taking the easy way to get ahead? I suppose that a case can be made that that's religion in a nutshell, but we aren't here to debate agnosticism in today's philosophy. Cold, hard, facts, Seromine is not a God, not a heavenly prophet that deserves a pulpit to spew his propaganda; he is a sick, evil, demented man that needs to be put down, hard.
RS: So the question then remains, if Seromine isn't someone you would want people believing in as a God, why should they believe in you?
Kyle takes a long time in answering.
KS: I don't expect people to believe in me just because I say it. That's never been what I'm about. I don't preach my message to the masses. I just go out there, and I do what I do. If there's anything I want people to believe, or to take away from what I do, it's that you never give up on yourself. If you put your whole heart into it, if you stand true, you can accomplish miracles. That anyone believes in me is because they see that I'm serious about my belief system. And not for nothing, people have predicted my crashing and burning since the dawn of time. Just like Seromine this week, people have said, the Game is over boy, since God I don't know. And yet I'm still here. I'm still coming out there with a middle finger upraised to those that tell me I can't get to the next level. I'm still showing people that they haven't even seen me at my absolute best, because I am endlessly creating the best version of myself. And that is all I can say about that.
So who is Kyle Shane? Uber-confident, untouchable, unbreakable workhorse or quietly tormented, unsatisfied artist? Asshole or broken soul? Man transcending god or man still a boy? Or maybe it's a touch of all of these? We can only glean small insights, as he remains famously inscrutable even in interview. The interview ends as Kyle becomes more withdrawn and aloof, going back, as he always does, to starting up his system and playing his game. And yet, maybe that more than anything, is who Kyle Shane is about. He will always start the game up and play anew.
Who is Kyle Shane to you, in your own words?" I have to say I know Kyle more than most, and what people don't see is that his promos, those godforsakenly long, overdrawn, overdramatic film school pieces he spends hours assembling, always reflect him. I don't think Kyle has ever known anything but creating and playing out stories, so his promos are always just that, about the art of creating and what it does to him. Kyle is complicated as fuck... but in all of what he creates, there is a sense of using the fantastical, weird, sometimes ridiculous elements of his mind to explore the human condition. I just hope one day he'll see into how beautiful his own heart really is. I really, really hope that for him. - Array Kadima.
He found his brother sitting off to one side of the party, at a low ebb for socializing. He started to cross the room to him, but when the other lost Game Boy, the Jap Hiro, came sauntering over, Kyle started up with his big, faked party smile again. "Thanks for coming out, brother. Glad you could fit it into your schedule."
He lurked at the far end of the table carrying hors d'oeuvres, and picked up and nibbled on a canape. He watched Kyle, silently, from afar, gauging his lack of comfort in the business-like atmosphere. Kyle shrugged and laughed, and Hiro handed him a champagne flute, which Kyle toasted. "To another successful business start up."
"Hey, man, listen, Wupfh is going to change the game of social media. My investors are all on board, this is a big innovation."
"Is this the best climate to be getting into social media, though, since net neutrality may deprive thousands if not millions of lower-income Americans affordable access to the Internet, and - "
Hiro moves in to shush Kyle. "Can you just - not with that right now, we don't need you freaking out any cash movers with your rhetoric."
Kyle squints at his former partner, almost in the vein of someone looking at someone that they don't recognize anymore. And with that, Patrick grins a little. All the Voice in the Grey dogma that Kyle swallowed in his time working with their group had led to a bigger divide between the two Game Boys. And Hiro, well... Hiro may still have been smarting over losing all the funding to his company, and he may have had a little hand in that. He can't help but feel a little bit of perverted glee over the fact that the strain between Kyle's awakened ideals and Hiro's capitalistic hunger to get back to a position of power put them at odds. Oh no, Kyle lost a brother. How tragic.
"Can't you just for once - Ugh. Just enjoy the champagne, Kyle. I'll talk to you after." And Hiro went off, to schmooze with some investor. Kyle sank down into a seat against the wall. Swanky music played over a piano piped in from somewhere, and beautiful people in expensive suits and dresses guzzled this swill and laughed in that upper class white way. Kyle looked so alone and out of place.
Now it was time for him to approach.
Kyle was in his own world as he crutched over, and came to a stop in front of him. Kyle didn't look up, either.
"You're caught in between these two worlds, aren't you?"
Now Kyle did look up, and he looked ashen, as if he had seen a ghost. But he didn't raise a yell, even if he wanted to. What was he going to shout in a crowded investor party, that his maniacal half-brother was here to menace him? His face twisted into a snarl, and he spat. "What do you want, Patrick?"
"I just came to talk. And to give you a gift."
"I don't think I want any of anything you could offer me. Not after all the people's lives you ruined."
"I'm not here to ruin lives, Kyle... I'm here to offer you a chance to explore your best one. To choose."
Kyle's eyes narrowed. And so, he offered his brother a chair, which Patrick sank into, gratefully, his bones sighing. They sat side by side, in silence, for a while, and Patrick didn't launch into a pitch, and Kyle didn't try to strangle them again. They just sat, Kyle drank his flute of champagne, and they watched people at the party exchange light chit-chat over drinks.
Finally, Patrick spoke. "Funny thing, knowing the future. There's really only two ways it can go. It's like Schroedinger's Cat. Fifty fifty split of whether the cat inside is dead or alive. You understand?" He was rooting around inside his long, battered duster, hunting through pockets, looking for the box. "The future is the moment between moments. Everything that could happen is possible, or is not."
And he withdrew it from his pocket, at length. I stared at it, giving off a soft golden glow in his hand. A tiny metal box, about the size of a box of matches. It had a hinged lid. Kyle tilted his head, trying to pierce it's mysteries. "So, what will this do for me?"
"The moment between moments. Either way the brick could fall, missing you or nailing you. Choose whatever metaphor you want," he said, content to speak in riddles. Kyle turned back to Patrick with an even bigger snarl on his face, clearly debating about the chokehold after all. Patrick held his hands up innocently, as if to say alright, alright, I'm getting to it. "Opening this box will present you with the choice of where you want to go. What you want your future to be."
"So what does this have to do with dead cats or whatever?"
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It doesn't. It concerns where you're going in your life, years from now."
Hesitantly, looking from him to the box and back, and then wanting just to chuck it and go back to his waiting bed and away from this weird and awkward party, but something deep within him pulled at him. Wanted to see what awaited.
He opened the box. And then, instantly, the party was gone, and Patrick was gone, and all he could see was darkness.
And yet, at the same time, bright and blinding light, incandescent and throbbing, industrial light.
Light, and the rhythmic clanging of machines, metal on metal.
Darkness, and the unyielding pelt of rain on his skin. Kyle was experiencing both sensory touches at the same time, simultaneously.
In the light, he saw himself, decades into the future, standing on a catwalk overlooking a vast industrial complex, building robot parts that looked science fiction and aggressively military. His older, much more worn self wore a suit, gray hair, and a withered face and body, and a sneer of contemptible, perpetual ennui. It was a man who was surrounded with cold, emotionless machines, who had lived his life not letting anyone close. He wondered what happened to bring about this dual success and failure.
And in the dark, he saw the same man in a different situation, so diverse it was practically a different life. He knelt at a gravestone. The rain washed over him, but he paid no attention. His head bowed sadly. He ran his bare fingers over the engraving on the headstone. As he did, Kyle saw the blue police lights washing over all the monuments and statues of the graveyard, the cop cars pulling up and the men filing out. He saw the man with the detective's shield shout at the kneeling, weeping old man in the dirt of the gravesite.
"Freeze, Shane!"
He saw the gravestone, marked "Karen Shane".
"The future is the moment between moments."
"The choice where you want to go."
"What you want your future to be."
"Decide, Kyle."
"Decide."
