District XWA: I Am You and You Are Me (Diamond Jack Sabbath)

[DJS]

The lights go out in the Ticketdome and the fans cheer- anticipation running through their bodies. Suddenly...



White lights flicker in time with the drums of "No More Heroes" by The Stranglers, and images of Diamond Jack Sabbath performing various moves he's famous for display themselves on the Titantron, to impassioned booing from those who detest him. As the song kicks in, the Innovator of Anarchy himself makes his way through the curtain. He paces up and down the stage, surveying his audience for tonight, before proceeding down the ramp and towards the ring. As he walks past us, we can see a long, horrific scar down the side of his face, right next to his eye.

HANA RAMIEREZ:
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Beating Heart of the XWA...DIAMOND JACK SABBATH!

MARK SANCTION:
Well, he said he was going to be here tonight and now the Survivors' "Destroyer of Eras" is indeed on the way to the ring and...goodness, look at that scar.

MATT STEEL:
You really thought he'd come out of a match with Laurel Anne Hardy unscathed? That woman should come with a health warning.

MARK SANCTION:
Regardless, Jack emerged victorious in that match at Fool's Gold, as well as capturing the IYHWF Championship recently in Australia. Despite the battle scars and as much as it sickens me to say, he's had a successful month, and I think we're about to find out who he's got his sights on next.

MATT STEEL:
Oh, I bet I can guess.

By this point, Jack is in the middle of the ring, soaking up the boos and pure hatred of the crowd. With a microphone in his hand, he taps the top of it three times before clearing his throat very loudly into the mic. There's more booing from this. He smiles- takes nothing, this. As the booing continues, he raises the mic up properly.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
It's okay, I'll just talk over you. I'm not even talking to you lot tonight, do what you want. I came here to talk to someone else, and that person is none other than...A.J. Morales.

Cheers for the Revolution. Jack pauses, rolling his eyes. He places one hand on his hip, and waits. They can't chant forever and, well...they don't. Eventually, as it peters out, he raises the mic back up to his face.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
I know you're back there somewhere! Well, obviously, you've got a match tonight. Be a bit rubbish for everyone if you weren't! And it's a big match, isn't it! Oh, it's big because tonight, you're facing the Cleopatra of the XWA herself, the Mistress of the Survivors, Minka Carter...who I'm sure I will catch up with shortly after the match, too.

MARK SANCTION:
Jesus.

MATT STEEL:
What? Clearly they're off to talk about future tactics and such. Get your mind out the gutter, Mark.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
Big night for you, Andrew! But I'm gonna put a bit of a spanner in your works because in just a few minutes, I'm gonna call you out to this ring. Nothing too sinister, we'll just have a little chin-wag, just you and me. Feel like it's long overdue but, but...before I do that, I just wanna make something, clear, really. I wanna make it very clear why I'm calling you, of all people, out here because there's a very special reason why. I'd just like to you take a look at this for a second.

And he points to it- that scar across his face. Coupled with the goatee and greyer hair, he's beginning to look less like a wrestler and more like a Bond villain.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
Yeah. Got that last month. Hell of a match. I won, but I don't need to tell you that. Now, that's the only lasting damage she's inflicted on me. That's gonna stick with me forever and that's all well and good, but history would rather talk about the fact that I, Diamond Jack Sabbath, defeated Laurel Anne Hardy. Here was someone who came in and decided 'hey, I'm the NEW Beating Heart of the XWA' and I beat her, because she didn't understand what it would take to put me down. And I find...I find that's a bit of reoccurance with you so-called 'new era' guys. You presume. You all think you've got it figured out when in actual fact, you don't even know what you're doing.

Jack wanders across to the turnbuckle and perches himself atop of it.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
Now then, why do I take specfic issue with you, A.J. Morales? Why? What's so big and bad about you? Is it your background? No. I don't care. Is it your youth and exuberance? No it's not. Once again- I don't care. No...it's your arrogance. Your total and utter arrogance.

The fans boo on behalf of the currently-abscent Morales. Jack shrugs.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
Right. Okay- you wanna be "The Revolution", eh? That's a loaded word to use, but fine. You can use that all you want. Well I remember the days, you'd probably have been in school at the time, when I was trailblazing across this company with a group of lads and we called ourselves the Legion. WE wanted revolution too...and we were fought against. But something I've learned in recent years, and the very reason I decided to join the Survivors nearly a year ago, is something I never considered when I was part of the Legion, so I'm going to present it now to you.

He hops down off the corner turnbuckle, scratching his nose as he walks towards the rope, facing the entrance way. He could come out at any moment, Jack thinks, but he won't. He shouldn't. He should listen first.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
So lets say, A.J. Morales, that you guys fight us off. Not gonna happen, but lets picture it. You and your mates gather together and you form a plot, you beat the Survivors. Finally! Hooray! Cue dancing Ewoks and happiness, ding dong, the witch is dead. And maybe, if you're lucky, you get a good few years where you rule over the era and it's all lovely and wonderful and everyone's happy. Then one day- and it'll come, just you mark my words- one day, you come to the arena and you're about to do the same thing you normally do. Maybe you're a bit slower, a bit more beaten up than you used to be, but you do your best every single night. But as you walk into the lockerroom, you realise you don't recognise anyone anymore. Brand new faces, all dripping with hubris. You get a little tap on the shoulder, and you turn around. Some snotty little guy you've never seen in your life stands looking at you, little half-smile on his face, and he's just so pleased to tell you it's 'his time now'. But at least he's nice enough to tell you that, because everyone else in that room's looking at you like a pack of vultures, because they think the same thing and the biggest dog in the yard becomes the elephant in the room. And maybe, even, there's nastier new ones who decide to cause mayhem, and they're just younger and quicker than you. They've had time to watch everything you do. It's never going to be the 'first time' you do a move, you've hit the Liberator hundreds of thousands of times now and they know it. You're not the man you used to be, and as you look up with your face full of mud, some upstart puts his foot firmly on your chest, holds up a fist and he cries "revolution." What then, A.J? Or do you just let the revolution take it's course? Or do you fight back? I'll say something to you that I wish someone had told me all those years ago. You can fight us all you want, try to 'Bury the Survivors' as much as you bloody well like, but how are you going to save your revolution from the NEXT one? And how will you cope when the world decides to villainise you for not wanting to simply step aside? You'll look back on everything I've said tonight and realise we weren't the bad guys. You made us that way, and one day you'll find youself in a world where people treat you the same as they treat me, A.J. I am you and you are me.

MATT STEEL:
He raises a good point...

MARK SANCTION:
This isn't even remotely the same thing! The Legion tried to reanimate the place in their image!

MATT STEEL:
Oh, and these new guys aren't trying to do that?

MARK SANCTION:
Well...not in the same way, no!

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
Well, I know what I'm going to do, because I'm certainly not going to step aside, I'm NOT going to leave because you want me to. But forget about me, I'm apparently obsolete now, so lets welcome down A.J. Morales...the NEXT Diamond Jack Sabbath!

MATT STEEL:
Here we go...

[TAG TO: A.J. Morales]

[RevolutionJones]

The arena rains down boos on Jack as he waits patiently for A.J. to answer the challenge.



After a brief rising tide of white noise, the opening riff to "Revolution/Revolución" by Ill Niño hits the PA, setting off the crowd into a wave of cheers. The lighting near the entrance turns gold and a highlight reel of clips from A.J. Morales's past matches starts to play. The Revolution himself emerges, microphone in hand, still not dressed for his match with Minka just yet. Around his waist, he carries his half of the BGDF Yin Yang Championships, and his T-shirt bears the yin-yang logo of the Anti-Apartheid Movement to go with it. The rest of his clothing all conforms to that black-and-white color scheme. He stops just before the point where fans start to line up along the sides of the entrance ramp, looking right at Sabbath, and points in his adversary's direction as the music fades.

A.J. MORALES
A'right, I'll get to your false equivalences in a second.

A.J. turns to the crowd.

A.J. MORALES
What's good, Johannesburg?

The crowd responds with a warm welcome of more cheering, and A.J. soaks it in before walking down the ramp, giving out high-fives and fist bumps to those who reach for him, and climbing into the ring to face down Jack.

A.J. MORALES
That's it, Jack...you've been studying the bad guy playbook of politics, haven't you? If you can't defend what you're doing, just point at someone calling you out and say they're exactly as bad as you, right? Yeah...that's not gonna work here. You've been here all this time, dude, you should know these fans are too smart for that.

More cheers. A.J. turns to the crowd and laps up their applause.

A.J. MORALES
No, no, thank you! Haha...

A.J.'s expression goes back to serious as he turns back to the so-called Beating Heart.

A.J. MORALES
...but you know...it is interesting that the big thesis you came up with is about how deep down, I'm just like you. It's interesting because...y'know, when I came to this ring on a cruise ship in the Pacific Ocean in the middle of an episode of Massacre and drafted myself into this war...I didn't call out any one person. I called out the Survivors as a group, and I didn't know which one of y'all was gonna take the bait.

A murmur of anticipation starts to rise from the crowd. This is going somewhere good, they can feel it. It's just a question of where and a matter of when...

A.J. MORALES
Seriously, think about it! Richard Maxwell could have seen a young upstart like me calling for insurrection on his TV show and decided to make an example outta me, just like he's trying to do with Layton & Fenric.

The crowd boos in solidarity with the Tag Team Champions, protesting their ban from XWA Massacre.

A.J. MORALES
Trace Demon could have gone through my run in Zapatista Lucha Libre, found out that I had a trios partner who looked a lot like him, and used that to try and freak me out until I was complicit. Ace Andrews could have started hiring people to come at me and used his ownership stake to screw me out of as many opportunities as he wanted to.

More booing, this time at the mention of the two prominent Survivors.

A.J. MORALES
But no. Of all the Survivors who could have taken the bait...it was you, Jack. You were the one who got so offended about what I had to say that you decided to make yourself my new nemesis.

A.J. turns to the crowd as Sabbath keeps looking at him, not breaking focus for a second.

A.J. MORALES
I mean...c'mon, seriously! Diamond Jack Sabbath, the Innovator of Anarchy, the Crown Jewel of Professional Wrestling, the man who, for years, was the brightest star this company had ever seen, picking a fight with a guy who was just finding his place on the card as a singles wrestler. A guy he easily could have looked at and said...

A.J. puts on an over-the-top cranky expression to go with an exaggerated version of Sabbath's posture.

A.J. MORALES (bad Manchester accent)
Ehh, he's not worth it. His time in the soon-sheeiiiine is years away. I got more important people to worry about.

The crowd eggs A.J. on with cheers, but he cracks up and can't keep the impression up. Sabbath gives the Revolution a look of disgust...but there's a hint of genuine anger there he's trying to keep hidden away.

MATT STEEL:
That was a terrible impression! Jack never says the word "sunshine!"

MARK SANCTION:
But if he ever did, would it sound like...?

MATT STEEL:
Sometimes you get caught up on the stupidest details, you know that, Mark?

A.J. turns to Sabbath and goes back to acting like himself again.

A.J. MORALES
For real, though! I was nowhere near your pay grade! You coulda gone after somebody like Laurel Anne Hardy or Smith Jones, and you coulda made them your main target, and nobody woulda questioned it for a second! But the episode after all those speeches about burying the Survivors, I was the one you sent your goons after. When you were on commentary for Lord of the Ring, I was the one you spewed the most vitriol about. And now, you come down to this ring with a live mic, and I'm the one you call out. That kind of pattern doesn't just happen for no reason.

A.J. adjusts his jacket, ready to say what needs to be said.

A.J. MORALES
And you can blame my quote-unquote arrogance all you want, but you know what? I see what's going on here. It's not just that I remind you of you, because you're completely self-centered and everything you ever think about somehow gets back to "I, my, me, mine." No...you don't just look at me and see yourself.

The Revolution leans in close, invading Jack's personal space.

A.J. MORALES
You look at me, and you see me avoiding all your biggest mistakes...and that terrifies you.

"OHHHHHHH!" screams the crowd. A.J. steps back, a knowing smile on his face as he watches Sabbath's anger start to burn through the cracks.

A.J. MORALES
Now, Jack, I know how much you hate genuine introspection, but...bear with me here. Let's go through everything I do that eats away at you. You saw me call the Survivors out despite being, at that time, completely on my own, and you remembered how you wouldn't even be here if Ciaren Donegan didn't give you an in. You saw me and my squad become an organized resistance against you with genuine loyalty to one another, who run in to try and bail each other out when they need help, and you remembered how you screamed at the Legion that you were their god and they turned their backs on you. Every time I walk through that curtain and the crowd cheers and I give out high-fives and sign autographs, you remember you've burned your bridges so badly that they'll never want that from you again, and you remember how, when you were General Manager, you got so laser-focused on your own agenda that Massacre got cancelled and they nearly shut this place down for good. And worst of all...every time you see Amy in my corner, you remember how you took the one person—the one!—who saw enough good in you to stick around, who never left your side, even in the hardest of times, who made sacrifice after sacrifice for you, inside and outside the ring...and you remember how, with one kick to the head, you pushed her away for good and destroyed the only love you ever knew.

The crowd goes nearly silent. All eyes fall on Sabbath, who's doing everything he can to maintain something resembling calm. But the Revolution's words cut deep, and it shows. He can't help any of the emotions shining through in his face or his body language.

A.J. MORALES
So lemme tell you what's really gonna happen after my match tonight. I'm gonna walk back through that curtain and give the next Supreme Champion the longest, best-tasting kiss I've ever given her. You're gonna throw a tantrum in front of a TV somewhere as they load Minka up into an ambulance, but you're not gonna go to the hospital with her, because let's face it, unless she's fucking you or fucking somebody up, you don't care for her at all. And then the next morning, you're gonna wake up, check your phone, and have a panicked flashback to this exact moment, because you're gonna find out that the front office will have made my next wish come true, and at XWA With a Vengeance, you're gonna be stuck in this ring, one on one, with A.J. Morales, the Rawest! Wrestler! Alive!

The energy of those last few words feeds back into the crowd, and the cheers start roaring back. A.J. holds his mic sideways over the waiting open palm of his free hand, lets it fall, and catches it without even looking.

MARK SANCTION:
Jesus...A.J. went in...

MATT STEEL:
He went a little too far, if you ask me...

MARK SANCTION:
I'm gonna stop you right there. Don't even try to defend that statement.

MATT STEEL:
I don't have to! Jack's an icon. He can defend himself.

MARK SANCTION:
Well, let's see how he uses that chance...

[TAG TO: Diamond Jack Sabbath]

[DJS]

Jack scratches his nose, digesting everything that's just been said by A.J. Morales. There are fans in the front row waiting with baited breath to hear his response. He looks down, closing his eyes for a second before he looks back up with a wryly- yet scornful- smile.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
Right. You and me, then. You and me at XWA With A Vengeance, we'll get in this ring and we'll do this one-on-one. I'm in. We'll go head to head!

He turns and is about to leave. But then he just can't. He can't move, his foot is stuck in place. He knows he's not said enough. He can't just walk away from this. He finds himself turning back at such a speed and raising his mic right back up as he gets in closely to Morales like a drill sergeant. Everything he says now is through gritted teeth.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
...But as far as you, YOU, taking my spot and you being the NEXT Diamond Jack Sabbath, like I said earlier, as far as you taking the spot that I hold in this place...nah. You won't. I was wrong. Y'know why? Cos you're not strong enough. You don't have what it takes. You couldn't be me in a month of Sundays, mate!

He stops for a moment, moving back out of his face.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
When I came here, I loved it. But it turns out that all the XWA saw was fresh meat, then it chewed me up and spat me back out again and then it went back for more year after year after year until you were presented with the shadow of a man you see before you. The young, ambitious person who came to this place all those years ago, he's gone. He's fucking gone and he's never, ever coming back. He had everything going for him, that guy. He had everything going for him. But now, I'm nearly forty years old and I've got no kids and I've lost my wife and every morning I wake up and my back hurts and I look in the mirror and I see this scar. I've lost two back teeth, I get regular migranes and my leg clicks every time I stand up but no one actually cares about any of that after a while. Everywhere I go, I get booed, no matter what I do, no matter what effort I put into things and that's going to be YOU, A.J. Don't you see what I'm telling you?! That's gonna happen to all of you annoying, peppy little dipshits who run around thinking you're king of the castle now.

He points to the centre of the mat, looking into A.J. with a thousand-yard stare.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
Me and the XWA used to have a symbiotic bond, but that's finished now. That's over. The symbiote's moved in and it's fucking taken over my body like a parasite. Jack Martin-Sabbath is gone, Diamond Jack Sabbath killed and mutilated him years ago, and now XWA's eating away any last remains. I wake up in the morning if I've slept at all and XWA tries desperately to find something else belonging to me that it can ruin and take away from me, leaving nothing but this place to come crawling back to. Every single friend or relationship I've had since I came here is gone. They're all gone. Only my enemies remained, and sometimes, A.J, all about it's the devil you know.

MARK SANCTION:
Is he having a breakdown here?

MATT STEEL:
He's certainly opening up a bit...

DIAMOND JACK SABBBATH:
So you can stand there with your smug little face and your stupid smirk and your...ego. But everything you have now, if you want this bloody spot, I give it three years before you're a brainless, lumbering husk of a man who used to have everything, but through just trying to establish a legacy for themselves has completely lost everything that they once had and it drives you mad. You will not leave here the same man you came in as, mark my words.

He shakes his head, a snarl on his face as he once again moves in closely.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
You're not the next Diamond Jack Sabbath. You've got more to lose and you won't be strong enough to face up to that. So no, I'm not afraid of you, A.J. Get that silly idea out of your head. I've not got the energy to be afraid of you and after seeing everything I have here, I'd never be afraid of anyone again. You're only 'Raw' in the same way fresh meat is, the world just hasn't had time to cook and devour you yet. In the end, XWA will take everything away from you, A.J, and I'm gonna give it a head start at XWA With A Vengeance because you need to learn what it's like to really be here. Bring whoever you want with you, they can stand in your corner and go 'yaaahh, woo, A.J. Morales!' but all it's gonna give me is someone to stare into the eyes of as I snap every little limb in your body and kick your head in. Yes, you have a future here. I'll make it stop. You're not strong enough to be me, and you've definitely not got what it takes to beat me, either. I'll prove it and behind everything you've just said, behind the wall you're trying to present to these people to make them 'believe' in you, you KNOW I'll beat you.

And now he moves away. He seems to be done. The two of them stare down for a few moments before Sabbath turns, about to leave. But once again...he has another thought.

DIAMOND JACK SABBATH:
And that Hardcore Championship you've got that you're so proud of winning and you thanked everyone and their gran for helping in? Hold it close. Come next month, I'm taking that away too. Count your blessings, kidda. I'm coming for all of them.

And he drops the mic. Well, he more throws it to the side and leaves it. There's a thud as it hits the mat. "No More Heroes" returns as the Destroyer of Eras leaves the ring.

MARK SANCTION:
There we go- after a verbal back and forth, Diamond Jack Sabbath will face A.J. Morales for the XWA Hardcore Championship at XWA With A Vengeance in October.

MATT STEEL:
Things got very heated there. And now with it being for the Hardcore title, I can't wait to see these guys tear each other apart!

A.J. watches on as Sabbath turns back for one last glance. The stage is set, the match is made. XWA With A Vengeance beckons.

[CLOSED]