Believe the Hype

The camera fades in upon Crimson Skull sitting upon a cliff that overlooks a small city.
The dark night sky outside has an almost blue hint to it, and the small city is lit up by all the various lights.


Crimson Skull: Apparently the time has come for me to shake things up a bit.
Many times throughout my life I have came here to this very spot to center my thoughts. Usually, I only came here in times of great need or great doubt in my upcoming challenge. Before your arrogance clouds your thoughts, allow me to explain. I do not doubt myself winning against you, I do not doubt anything at all at this point in time.
For the past few months, there has been nothing but doubt in my mind.
But as I said last time, I am passed that into this point of enlightenment.
Do you really think all that matters to me is winning Chad?
Sure, a victory against the current World Champion would add another prestigious mark to my career, but a victory is something that I do not need.
You see, I have reached the point of my career where it doesn’t matter to me if I win or if I lose. Not because I don’t care, but because I know that even if I lose my opponent walks away with a lesson learned or walks away hoping to never have to face me again.
I have nothing left to prove in my career at this point, I just need that ending I spoke of.
Apparently, you have everything to prove.
And also, apparently you want to prove it to a certain person, Chuck Matthews.
The only common factor in any promo I have ever viewed of yours, you have to reference Chuck Matthews in some way.
Is it some sort of jealousy issue?
Or is it merely that you don’t truly believe you are better than him, and have to constantly reassure yourself that you are?
I’ll speak more of this later, but for now I’ll move onto another issue.
You claim that the entire embarrassing career that you had before was all part of your plan, because you are so highly educated.
Do you really expect everyone to believe that you were losing on purpose?
This is yet another thing that you are trying to prove to everyone. You’re trying to prove that you are completely different than what you were before and that you too have reached this higher point in your career. You can go on and be as hypocritical as you like and claim that I haven’t changed over this period of time, but if that denial of my change applies to me, then why does it not apply to you?
Every single thing that you said in your promo can be turned right back against you, my friend. You’re attempting to play mind games, and for most it is working. You’re on a great track for getting started with these mind games, but you seem to neglect the fact that the man you’re facing is a master manipulator of mind games.
Just in case your highly educated brain is wondering what I’m implying about you playing mind games, I’ll explain. The mind game that you’re playing is very similar to mass hysteria. A doctor tells an entire plane that one of the passengers has bacterial meningitis, then, suddenly the entire flight is infected with it.
Very much the same as you’re trying to buy into your own hype by convincing yourself you’re better than what you used to be. Tell a man he has cancer and has six months to live, usually he’ll die before then. However, find that he has cancer and neglect to tell him, he’ll live for years.
The mind is a tricky thing, Chad. But when one knows how to pluck at its strings, it can become a master at making people believe what they want them to. All that is need is just a bit of charisma and stone-cold facts to cement your case.
The trouble is that no matter what anyone says to you, your arrogance has completely clouded your judgment for everything. You contradict yourself completely by the end of almost every sentence you speak.
‘but if there's one thing that they are yet to accuse me of, it's being arrogant. Contrary to what you might believe, I'm not arrogant. I don't believe in my in-ring abilities. I rely on one thing to win my matches, and that's the power of my own mind.’

Believing in yourself is one thing, but there is a certain line that can be easily crossed. That line when such a powerful belief crosses into arrogance. You’re not just arrogant, you’re narcissistic.
If you truly weren’t that concerned with society’s view on you, then it wouldn’t matter if they doubt you or not. This “prophet” that you’re attempting to be is a false one. If you were half the leader of your group that you think you are, a group that stands up against all that has been established before your time, then you truly wouldn’t care what the people think, or what other people think. It shows that you’re just a weakened leader who’s playing the weak minds of those around him to believe in him and believe that he is what he says he is. Eventually, they will figure it out and overthrow you when they figure it out.
All it is going to take is just one loss for your group to have that ‘seed of doubt’ planted in the back of their minds. That and if they truly sit and think about what it is that I am saying here today. The rest of the ‘watering’ as you call it will just occur as they watch you time and time again, until suddenly they realize that they are just following a lamb. A lamb that will soon be led to slaughter.
So you have taken out James Shark, Chuck Matthews, Jason Hawk, Death Angel, and whoever else you care to name. James Shark is a fool anyways. He wouldn’t be expecting an attack against him even if you announced it to his face, his arrogance would blind him to believe that no one could defeat him. Chuck Matthews is a man constantly distracted by various other things all at the same time, so of course he was an easy target. Jason Hawk, I don’t even care to speak of. Death Angel, yet another who was distracted at the time. Anyone regardless of their talent can be caught off guard and undermined quickly.
That is all that you have done here with all of the events that Natural Law have made possible. That and your charisma are the only two things that have helped you this far.
Steel Angel is weak minded, juvenile even. Of course you could easily defeat him, that ‘seed of doubt’ was what defeated him both those times, you were just the instrument of its delivery.
I am not impressed with you, Chad.
I don’t doubt your abilities in the ring, and I do not doubt your place as champion. All that I do doubt in you is that its going to be short lived.
Somewhere between your last embarrassing stint and your current one you found the inspiration to bring you to the top. Eventually, that inspiration is going to run out.
This position as champion is something that you’re not used to, so usually there are two paths that it will take. The first, you’ll lose the championship quicker than you would expect due to your confidence. The second, you’ll retain it for quite the long time

Skull takes a rock from the ground and tosses it over the side of the cliff towards the city.

Does it bother you that you’re not as important as you think you are?
Chances are over half of the city below doesn’t even know who Chad Mason is, and most likely less than that even care that you’re champion.
You’re a smart kid, I’ll give you that.
And I also can agree with you on a number of things. One of those being your assumption on how I feed on fear.
At a time in my career, there was nothing more invigorating that seeing the fear in the eyes of my opponents. It would fuel a fire that could only be calmed by the ringing of the bell at the end of the match. That still holds true to this day, but I don’t only feed off of fear.
I feed in my opponents neglecting to accept that I can beat them, I feed on the fact that they doubt my powers are as powerful as they are. I feed on that expression of realization that they should have believed in all the things that I say whenever they’re about to have the fight for their life.
I feed off of people doubting me.
When I said that we were a lot alike Chad, I meant every word of it.
I don’t underestimate you, I just point out the pure facts. You’re younger and faster than I am, I agree. But you are not smarter.
Another big difference between the two of us is that I am nowhere near obsessed with gaining the approval of the public eye or proving to the world that I am not an embarrassment like you used to be.
Which brings me back to my point of your obsession with Chuck Matthews. Lets think about the facts. Chuck was one of the first people that you directed Natural Law to take out, Chuck runs the network, Chuck has always been successful.
You have just recently became successful.
Are you wanting the same limelight that Chuck has always had? Are you so obsessed with people believing in you that you can’t accept to not be the point of everyone’s discussion?
I’m sorry to break it to you kid, but no matter what you do, you will not be in the center of the limelight. At Ragnarok, do you think people were talking about you winning the world title? No, they weren’t. They knew exactly how it would turn out, they knew that you would stop at nothing until you became champion. What people are talking about however is the match between Corey Casey and Stygian. Maybe whenever you can perform at their level, or even test your skills against them you might be the topic of conversation longer than just a few seconds.
Champions come and go, its just a fact of this business. You’ll be champion for a while, then someone else will come along and take it from you. Do you think it’s going to matter that you were a champion? Oh sure, people will acknowledge that you were a champion, but there’s always going to be that champion that comes along or who was there before you that was a better champion.
I know I attack your ego, but it’s not to make you doubt yourself. For someone that prides themselves in their intelligence you sure disappoint sometimes. When I attack your ego, it is not to make you doubt yourself. It is to make those around you doubt you. It is to anger you to the point that you have to defend every fiber of your being that I have attacked, just to prove my point even further.
And for me to say that you can’t win without your stable behind you. Granted, you can win without them in your presence or physically involving themselves in your match, but without them as your followers that makes you just another man.
You wouldn’t be Chad Mason the leader, the prophet, the mastermind. You would just be Chad Mason, the man who almost changed wrestling forever.
Your followers give you inspiration, they give you power. They feed this unquenchable thirst for glory that you have. That is the only reason you have saw the success that you have. You have the need to prove to every single person you come into contact with that you’re not just a joke like they depicted you to be. It’s like the classic superhero villain story in the comics. Society created the monster known as Chad Mason by not believing in him, so he believes he should punish them. What happens when after all that you’re attempting to do goes unnoticed? Will you just disappear again and wait for the world to forget about you again? It won’t take much for you to be forgotten and you know that.
That’s why you’re trying to make the most of every second that you can while you’re still standing in the limelight.
And that brings me to another difference between you and I. You have a limited amount of time that your fame is going to last. I’ve been at the top of the mountain for nearly 10 years, and I’m still going strong. I don’t have the need to prove to the world that I’m not just some fluke.
Do you think that you’re the first young punk out there to challenge every single detail of my character? Do you think that you’re the first to try and reveal me to be just another man and not a monster?
If I had listened every time some young punk tried to reveal me to be another giant with a hoax, or tried to make me doubt in myself.
Do you really think that it is going to work? If I truly wanted to, I could put everything into going out there and destroying everything about you, Chad. You know it as well as I do, but you’re just trying to play the tough guy and assert your dominance as the new alpha male.
There is no reason for me to doubt myself any longer. Yes, I did let it get to me at one point in my career, but it took several years of the same ‘seed of doubt’ to be planted into my brain and several years of ‘watering’ by the same tactics and the same man to do it. You don’t have the power to control my contract and control who I face or what I do. So, therefore there is nothing that you can say or do that will affect me more than just a passing thought.
Sure, you may defeat me this week, but by god it’s going to be the most hard-fought match you’ve had yet. I don’t need your title to prove anything to you, it’s you who’s got something to prove. If you can go out there and prove to the world what you’re trying to then I will applaud you. Until then, you’re just going to be exactly as I say you are, just another kid with something to prove.
The only thing that you’ve proven to me is that you’re unbelievably stubborn and that I need a change in my ways. The change I needed was to go back to the old Crimson Skull. I needed to go back to where I could channel the powers I used to.
Call it supernatural, call it make-believe. I’m not here to force Crimson Skull down your throat.
I’m not here to attempt to do what you’re trying to do to the rest of the wrestling world. You believe so much in Chad Mason that you believe that the rest of the wrestling world should too. It’s almost as if you’re begging the world to believe in you.
I don’t fear you. I don’t fear that you can outdo me. For starters, you’re way behind on catching up to what I have done in my career.
You can try and twist my words, but as I said before I caused the death of JWF, not the other way around.
There is one thing in this world that I hate, and it has shown throughout my entire career. My biggest pet peeve, if you will, is someone who believes that they can break me, that they can outdo anything that I do.
Every federation that I have been a part of, I’ve been ‘that guy’ that the new guys have to go against to prove themselves. I’ve always been that measuring stick for the rest of the wrestling world. I’ll always continue to be exactly that as long as I am wrestling.
You see, I epitomize everything that is wrestling. I possess the raw talent, the strength, the technique, and I even show exactly just how bizarre a wrestler can be. I’ve been around for a very long time, and no one has truly put me down just yet.
At every stop and turn in my career there was always that person who thought they were bright enough to convince me that I’m not as powerful as I think I am, that I’m not even a monster like I’ve always portrayed myself to be.
Almost 10 years and it still hasn’t happened. What makes you think that you’re going to be the one to do it, Chad?
Or is it the fact that I’m the only one of the legends and the old school guys that you’ve went up against and you haven’t been able to put down?
Is that the part that eats away at you? You see me as one of your failed attempts at glory don’t you?

This could go on forever you and I just going back and forth trying to outsmart each other and trying to see who really is the master of the mind games, when you know as well as I do, it’s going to come down to who is the better of the two in the ring.
You won the last encounter, but it’s not the battles that count, it is who wins the war.
If it is my respect you want, you’re going about the wrong way of getting it.
You had some promise, starting up this new faction that took everybody by surprise. A few big moments here and there, but you made a mistake. You tried fucking with me.
Your first lesson should have been, don’t doubt what I am capable of. I may be old, but I’ve got a hell of a lot of fight left in me. And a young guy like you doesn’t have what it takes to put me down. You can call out your goon squad and see if they can help you try and put me down, but no matter what you’re going to do I’m going to keep getting right back up.
The King is back, and he’s not about to step aside and let somebody like you get away with disrespecting me. When you stand toe to toe with the devil in the flesh and stare in the eyes of the devil himself, are you going to regret what you’ve done? Probably not, but soon enough you will. You won’t admit it to yourself, you won’t even admit it to those closest to you. But slowly, it’s going to tear away and eat at you until you finally admit you just don’t have what it takes to truly defeat Crimson Skull.
Because when it’s all said and done and the smoke has finally cleared: win, lose, or draw I’m still going to walk out of that arena without any help of the paramedics. I’m going to be walking out on my own two legs, with barely a scratch on me.
The question is, how far are you willing to go to try and stop me?
I could tell you tales that would make you piss your pants about things that I have done to my opponents in the past, but that was back when I was younger and had something to prove. All I would have to do in this day and time would be to simply remember just what it took to take out a prick like you.
Let’s say you retain your title at Heroes Also Die, then you go on to face someone at From The Ashes and defend your title there as well. What’s going to happen whenever someone else’s match steals the show and leaves yours cast in a shadow in a “it was an alright match” point of view? Are you really going to lose it then?
The point that I’m trying to make is, it doesn’t matter what you do Chad. You’re never going to be as good as you think you are and you’re never going to be as good as you want yourself to be.
Go on and try and prove everything that you want to. Go and take out your aggressions for people not respecting you or believing in you. It’s not going to matter what you do, you’re still going to be the same old Chad Mason that “could have been” rather than the Chad Mason that everyone looks up to and respects.
At the end of the day, you’re just another one of the guys who won a belt.
It’s going to take a lot for you to convince people otherwise, and you know as well as I do that nothing that you do is going to matter enough to get you honored as the greatest champion of all time or a hall of famer or a legend in this business. You’ll just be a guy who was kind of good at one time.
So here’s to you Chad, just another paper champion to add on the list.
So maybe, after you lose to me this week you can do what you do best and go hide in the shadows and plan your next move to strike when no one’s expecting it. Either that or next time you can just stay in the shadows where you’re the only one that matters, and in your mind you’re the greatest of all time.
Because after all, that’s all that really matters in the end isn’t it Chad? You’re all that matters. You’re all there will ever be.
You’re just as pathetic as those who blindly follow you. And I’m going to be there at the end of your rope just reminding you just how tough reality is. And when it sinks in that your sparkle and glamour is only temporary you’re going to do whatever it takes just to keep Chad Mason a name that people want to talk about. It’s something I think they call Sean Waltman syndrome, look it up. You might just become pretty familiar with the term yourself, it might even help you realize that this is all for nothing.
It might even help you realize, that no matter how hard you try and fight it, you’re going to be another flash in the pan as well and at the end of the day, everybody still hates Chad and nobody will ever respect him.
It’s a cold, cruel world out there Chad, and you’re nowhere near ready to face it, let alone lead it.
Come next Battlegrounds, we’re going to see just how much of a champion you really are when you go into a match when your title isn’t on the line, we’ll see how far you’re willing to go to prove that you’re the top man in the federation.
We’ll see if you can live up to your own hype.
Or, we’ll simply see someone who just couldn’t quite cut it when everything they believe in is doubted and shot down to nothing.
Tick, tock, tick, tock. Your time’s almost up Chad.
Are you going to be able to live up to what you say you can when it really matters? Or are you just going to burn out just as quick as you came in?
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, or we’ll all continue to wait to be impressed with you like we have for years now.

Skull smirks as the camera pans out over the cliff and shows the city in its entire view, slowly the lights all go out in the town and the camera cuts to static.