June 15th, 2016. 9pm. The location is an undisclosed gym.
Thick, sweaty, quiet air. An old-school gym. Punching bags wrapped in decades of duct tape. Weights cast from iron, the numbers faded and recognized only by their size. No music plays, just the clanging of weights, grunts, exhales, and struggle. No one at the front desk. In fact, there isn’t even a front desk. Just a key entry. The facility is empty. It’s dark, the smell and presence of dozens of people who came through today hanging in the air like heavy ghosts.
The camera opens. It is dark. Old metal lockers surround a wooden bench. On that bench, we see the silhouette of a human figure. Medium-length hair saturated with sweat. Their head slightly tilted downward.
The person turns their left hand over, holding it in their right. Staring attentively. The camera is now behind them, focused on their left palm. All we see is the hand. We hear a voice. Their right index finger traces the pad of the palm just below the fingers…
Marcus: Nostalgia is a funny thing. It often makes us think of a simpler time. A time without problems. A time when we understood the world.
A time when we thought we were in the good times.
Nostalgia is, in essence, a memory of our ignorance viewed through the lens of experience. Looking back at a test when you already know all the answers.
It can be dangerous. Dumb. Secure. Familiar.
For many reasons, I don’t really give a shit about nostalgia.
A right finger continues tracing the calluses of his left hand. The hours and hours spent gripping barbells and dumbbells. Using the gym as his addiction replacement. His hands are now the victims of that choice. Slowly tracing them, thinking of matches in London, Mexico City, and everywhere else as AOWF Champion. Every day working. Struggling. Succeeding.
But you… you love it.
Mentioning random names like a typical middle-aged man remembering his youth and convincing himself he was important.
Remembering matches twenty years ago. Names that have long faded from this business. The way you speak about them, like a fanboy still
looking for acceptance. Still trying to be part of that group.
Maybe I was never one of the boys. Maybe I was.
I never cared enough to find out.
Sure, those blurry years seemed okay. Touring. Partying. Working. Repeat.
Sitting here today, I couldn’t care less about those times. Just a blip in my history.
To you?
They’re everything you missed out on.
I don’t blame you. I think you’re using nostalgia to rewrite a youth that never gave you what you wanted. And now middle age is closing in, forcing you to look back and wonder if you missed something. You didn’t but its funny to watch you struggle to wind yourself into everything that happened. Always needing to be so important but were also just fucking annoying.
He turns his left hand over. The finger runs across crushed, beaten-down knuckles. His fingers feel like steel. The bones beneath them hardened by years of violence.
To me, this title means I’m the best in the world, and I’ve behaved as such.
Defending it everywhere. All over the world.
For the last five years, all I’ve done is wrestle, train, and win.
This title matters to you because Styxx held it. Or some other has-been whose name I’ve long forgotten.
I’m not worried about the people who beat the ghost of me when I was twenty-five, because none of them are still around to fight me at forty-eight.
I’ve outlasted them.
Surpassed them.
Survived them.
All but you.
Dustin, my hands are callused. My knuckles are ground to dust. My back hurts. My spine looks like the letter S.
I don’t do this for esteem or historical bullshit.
I do this because I always knew I was the best to ever do this, and I’ve spent years proving it.
You want to be the next Angel? Dalton? Styxx?
You want to be the historian of this museum of broken bodies?
I have an idea for you.
You should want to be Marcus Ambrose.
That should be your goal.
One of the boys. Beloved. Fucked up. But through it all, I became everything you worked so hard to pretend to be.
Funny how my career became everything you wished yours was, especially after all those years you used my failures to make yourself look perfect to my family.
You. Fuck.
Just a paper-thin man with cracks showing through.
But to get where I am?
Your hands are too delicate.
To be where I am. To be everything you think you want.
Those soft, delicate hands will need to kill me.
Look at your hands right now.
Are they trembling?
No?
Yes?
You don’t even know.
You don’t know if you’re scared.
Excited.
Ready.
Reluctant.
You don’t even know if you’re your own man.
Are you capable of becoming who saw yourself in the past?
You ready?
You’ll need some calluses. You’ll need some scars.
And if not?
I’m going to plant you on your neck over and over again until every finger you have goes numb. Until your legs stop working. Your body and brain both stop cooperating. You can’t breathe, you can’t think. You just want to escape and I’ll give you that out, without hesitation. But..
Can you do the same? Do you even look at your hands, at yourself or do you just keep playing nostalgia from decades ago. Do you think that be enough to beat me, to beat everything it takes?
Fade to stardom