Metric

I expected nothing less, and still, I’m disappointed. Here’s that cudgel you wish to grasp onto. Others have done it too. That’s on you, and them, because I’ve been, for better or worse, through the good and bad, unapologetically me. And I will always be me.

Like it or not.

Deal with it or don’t.

I won’t give a shit.

Mistakes, like Nate’s, can be forgiven. Don’t think you’re going to set goalposts on shit you don’t understand. Grow and change? You’ve done everything? Is that, really, your assessment? No, really, that’s a genuine question. Because you walked around here with an air about you through much of 2022, and then, you played your hits, focused on wrestling and feelings and observations, and Jacob Mephisto got a dog collar around your neck and bitchwalked you. Even despite winning the Intense Title afterward, you’ve never been the same. Never carried the same weight. That same swagger. And hey, I could dog you on that, but guess what; sometimes, shit happens. Sometimes, you walk into the ring, and you get knocked for a loop, and you’re not sure if the pieces will ever fit together again. A penalty kick did that to me. Had more than a few times even this year where I’m beyond frustrated, trying to figure out what to do.

Here’s the difference; my ears remain open. I survey with my eyes. I see what is around me and I try to learn. Adapt. Find solutions to problems enforced upon me by my limitations. Nobody has won more singles matches in the history of this company; I could coast on what I did. I don’t.

Did I earn that shot against Hall? Honestly? No. I didn’t feel truly ready for it. I took it anyway. I don’t make the matches. I’m not the one that thought Cancer Jiles deserved five thousand bites at the apple just by making the Almasy Final. I’m not the one that thought Hayes Hanlon was minted for Colossus. Rezin and Jared Sykes lost back to back before taking the Universal Title in their opportunities. I didn’t shelve Phil Atken three weeks after he beat me. I didn’t sit on the sidelines for three months with my last match being a PPV tag and get an Undefeated Year chron like FLAMBERGE. But here’s something I did do; I have defended that belt more times than everyone else in this era combined. Not perfect circumstances for the goal, but you’d do the same in my shoes.

But ‘you’re the best’, so you already know that.

Now whatever fucking metric you have to call yourself ‘the best’, I don’t know. Is it...being on the winning War Games team? Because any good will went out the window from the very next match against Bobby Dean. We’ve done everything. Yeah? If you’re so adaptable, if you can change so well, then why the fuck do you default to self sabotage? Why can’t you help yourself from shooting yourself in the fucking foot and bleeding all over the carpet, time and again, chance after chance, year after fucking year? You’ve broken bodies and held gold all over the place? You fucking idiot, LOOK AROUND YOU. You’ve got people who have been doing that for over twenty years staring right back at you. It doesn’t make you special. The only reason it even matters with others here is dependent on connections through others. The passing ships of the night. And it wouldn’t even be a hair up anyone’s ass if you didn’t make it so. Go out and do your thing. Others here do all the time. Why is it that not a single other one of them has this need to puff themselves out over it like you do?

Don’t walk back in here, calling yourself the best, fucking losing because you hung yourself, and piss all over what they are and what they’ve done and what they deem as important as a cope and seethe mechanism. You keep bringing up sex. You keep scattershotting this trying to find some way that you’re the aggrieved. That I need you on your hands and knees or some shit. Stop projecting.

Give your screed. We’re all Don Draper, looking at you in the elevator. Only difference is, I only think about you in the context how fucking annoying you are. Sure others can vouch.

I’m just going to be the one to do something about it.