Stygian [vs.] Jack Savage

You chair-shotting bastard...

Family Reunion

It is not sight but sound that greets the viewer first. A ratchet turning. The camera comes in on a set of legs going all the way up to a beautiful, shapely denim-clad ass. That ass goes up a shapely back into a blonde ponytail. The hourglass-figured woman is clad in short denim overalls with a pink bandana sticking out of the back pocket as she leans against the right front fender of a red-and-black 1970 Oldsmobile 442, looking into the engine case. The car is parked in a large two-car garage on a sunny day, presumably in Arizona. From the looks of it she’s not wearing anything under the overalls, and it just barely covers enough to keep her decent. Lilith has a wry smirk as she looks over the engine. Given who this video was made by, and where the show is this week, and how close everything is…it’s probably safe to assume this garage is in Bullhead City, Arizona. Stygian probably took some time to visit home with Battlegrounds being in Phoenix this week. Another pail or long jeans-clad legs sticks out from under the car, which is revealed to be resting on a pair of wheel ramps lifting the chassis of the car up enough so the man—who is obviously from the length of his legs and the size of his Wolverine Boots Stygian—can fit under it on a stainless steel mechanics trolley.

Lilith: Are you making any progress whatsoever?

Stygian: I don’t think so. I don’t think any progress is possible.

Another voice laughs as a man walks into camera. He’s taller than Lilith, probably about 6’1” or so. Black hair starting to gray at the temples. He’s dressed in a red polo shirt, khakis and red and white sneakers as he makes his way up to the car. He gives Lilith a look over and shakes his head.

Man: If mechanics looked more like you and dressed more like that, I wouldn’t have done so many of my car repairs myself.

Stygian rolls out from under the car and glares at the man.

Stygian: That’s my wife you’re talking to.

Man: She reminds me of your mother at that age.

Stygian looks at her and shakes his head.

Stygian: I don’t that comparison, dad.

The older man laughs.

Styg’s Dad: What can I say, son, all a woman needs to snag a Gabriel is a set of big, round, beautiful…eyes.

Lilith laughs as Stygian’s dad offers him a hand up.

Styg’s Dad: You will put on a shirt before Julie and Amber get home, won’t you Tina?

Lilith: I will, I’m just not used to it being 90 degrees in late October.

Styg’s Dad: That’s Arizona for you.

Stygian and his dad turn and look out of the garage they’re standing in and look towards the sky.

Stygian: Yeah, it’ll cool down here soon enough.

Lilith slips under Stygian’s arm and curls into his side, wrapping her arms around his waist.

Lilith: Cold? What’s cold?

Styg’s Dad: 68.

Lilith: That’s what I thought. You people have no concept of cold.

Lilith and Stygian’s dad laugh.

Styg’s Dad: Tina, I was born and raised in Michigan, I know forms of cold weather that polar bears would consider inhospitable. Sometimes it would just drop ten foot snow drifts on us. That lake-effect snow is unbelievable.

Stygian: Yeah, I remember every other thanksgiving at grandpa’s.

Styg’s Dad: You always remarked upon the impracticality of owning winter coats for one or two weeks ever other year.

Stygian: We never got our money’s worth out of those damn things.

Styg’s Dad: It was always nice to donate them after Christmas. You boys grew so fast anyway.

Lilith: Especially him.

Styg’s Dad: Jason never was a tiny kid, but he didn’t shoot up like this til college.

Lilith: Steven and Jared aren’t tiny either.

Stygian: Well, yeah. Steve is 6’4”, and Jared is 6’6”.

Stygian turns to his dad.

Stygian: Did they call back? Are they gonna make it down here?

Styg’s Dad: Steven and Rachel are. Jared is coming, but Crystal is going to stay home with Amy. She’s too young to be travelling.

Stygian: Well, that’s too bad. I was hoping everyone could be here.

Styg’s Dad: I know. You’ve been doing this for almost ten years and this is the first time you’ve had a match in Arizona. Should be fun. Well, if they don’t beat you up with chairs and baseball bats again.

Stygian: Actually that was just one guy with a steel chair. It was my friends who had the bats.

Styg’s Dad: Well, your mother still worries.

Lilith smirks.

Lilith: So does your father.

Styg’s Dad: More than I want to admit.

Stygian: Dad, I’m seven feet tall, I’m 315 pounds, I’m one of the best wrestlers in the world and these guys watching my back are good guys.

Styg’s Dad: I realize that, Jason, but this Corey Casey fellow; you ended his career in that horrible match that your mom still refuses to watch to this day.

Lilith: That’s somewhere we’re not alike.

Stygian: Even you didn’t watch it live.

Lilith: True.

Styg’s Dad: And now Alexander Remington is in IWF, and it doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to know he’s got it in for you.

Stygian: Remington is another guy trying to build his legend on my grave. At the end of the day he’s nobody special.

Stygian’s dad and Lilith both look up at him skeptically. Lilith audibly scoffs. After a prolonged silence Stygian’s dad finally clears his throat.

Styg’s Dad: Well I’m going to go get those steaks on the grill, your mom and…what do you guys call Amber?

Lilith: Lilah.

Styg’s Dad: Right, Lilah…they’ll be back soon, and you’re little brother is getting in, in about an hour and a half.

Stygian: Mom and Lilah might not be back from shopping before the next ice age. I’m actually surprised you didn’t go with them.

Lilith: I’m all for malls and the like when they aren’t built in an oven.

Styg’s Dad: They’re air conditioned.

Lilith: It doesn’t help. You’ve got thousands of people, the doors are always opening and closing…

Stygian: Yeah, the air pressure never normalizes enough for conventional air-conditioning in a building like a mall.

Styg’s Dad: Poor Tina, think you’re gonna melt?

Lilith: Feels like it.

Styg’s Dad: All the same, pleas have a shirt on under that by the time dinner comes, please?

Lilith: Will do, Chris.

Stygian’s dad laughs and walks off, vanishing into the house. Stygian wanders over and reaches into the open driver’s window of the car. He turns the key and the engine rumbles to life. At high RPMs it’d probably roar like a rampaging beast, but at idle speed it sounds like a dull growl of an angered jungle cat.

Lilith: Wonderful, you’ve gotten it started.

Stygian: Yeah. Still don’t like the way it idles. I think the timing’s a little off.

He reaches back in and turns the car off. Stygian leans against the side of the car with a sigh. Lilith turns her back to him and leans against him.

Lilith: So…Jack Savage this week?

Stygian: In my home arena. He’s got no chance.

Lilith: I hope you’re not relying on that to carry you.

Stygian: Not remotely.

Stygian pushes Lilith away from him gently and walks around the car to a big red Craftman rolling toolchest. He opens the top lid and grabs what used to be an Arizona Diamondbacks 2001 Qorld Series Championship t-shirt several years and several hundred trips through the washing machine ago. He wipes his hands off on it and turns to face the camera.

Stygian: Jackie, Jackie, Jackie…boy did you back the wrong horse. Here it is, Jack. It comes down to this. You’ve been a very brave man. You’ve been brave on Twitter when you were in UECW and you threatened to teach me some respect. When you got down on your knees and worshipped at the feet of Alexander Remington. No, I don’t hold any of that against you. False bravado on Twitter? I’m used to it. I get it all the time. I’ve got guys in five different companies who want a shot at me. I’ve got people just champing at the bit telling me how lucky they are that they’re employed elsewhere, because if they could just have one shot at me…

Stygian: Of course, when the time comes for them to have a shot at me? They never deliver on it. Brendan Maddox talked about destroying me. He come out one night and saw the scope of the match he’d have to do it in and mailed the belt to Boston. Cody Taylor brags about how easily he’d beat me…and then never hangs around long enough to get in the ring. This is, of course, the only way to tell Cody Taylor from James Shark: James has the balls to get in there with me. So really, people chirping at me on Twitter? Nah I don’t hold that against anyone. That’s not why you have a colossal beating in store. No. That’s not the bravery you need to pay for.

Stygian: You’re a very brave man, aren’t you, Jack? You’re really brave when I have a dozen security guards holding me back. You’re really brave when Parker Wayde is directing a traffic and you have a steel chair. You’re really brave when The Empire is beating me down five on one, aren’t you? Oh but Stygian did something you didn’t expect, didn’t he? Oh goodness, Stygian actually made friends! I can’t really blame you for being surprised, in UECW I had no plan, no desire to make a lot of friends. What can I say? I was unquestionably the top man, and I knew everyone wanted to take my head off. The only reason anyone could have wanted to befriend me was that whole “friends close, enemies closer” bullshit. It’s so much easier to stab a man in the back when he hands you a sword and trusts you to watch it. But no, Stygian got friends!

Stygian: You see, I guess there was this perception that Chuck Matthews and I didn’t like one another. That’s not he case. Chuck and I have been in the ring three times now. Chuck is one of the few people I haven’t annihilated completely. In that, he has earned my respect. It’s actually not hard to earn my respect as a competitor. James Shark has it. Corey Bull has it. Kevin Kayfabe has it. Brandon Macdonald has it. Anna Stone, Devlin Raine, Robbie Hart, Johnny Styles, Crimson Skull, Hostyle Jones…the list goes on and on. All you have to do is step into that ring and prove you belong in it with me. That’s how you earn my respect as a competitor. Earning my respect as a man is a little harder, and that isn’t done in the ring. That’s done in the world. How you treat your family, how you carry yourself, take care of your kids, stay faithful to your wife…

Lilith: If you were running a political campaign, they would so use that against you.

Stygian: Am I not faithful to what we’ve set up in our marriage?

Lilith: Oh, you are, I’m just saying…

Stygian: This isn’t the time to do a treatises on alternative sexualities.

Lilith: Quite right.

Stygian: In a very real way, Jack, all this backstabbing and kissing up to Alexander Remington…you’ve lost your chance to prove you’re a man, much less earn my respect as a man…but you have the chance to earn my respect in that ring. That’s all you have. You’re not going to “destroy me” you’re not going to “break me”…in fact I think I’m going to start charging a nickel anytime anyone says that now, just to see how many nickels I actually would have if I had one for every time someone either threatened to “break me”, “destroy me” or for anytime someone said they were better than I am, or used the word “Dragonslayer”. I really want to see how many nickels I can get, so by my count, you owe me three Saturday.

Stygian: What must it be like, Jack? For a whole year you sat impotent in that locker room with all your money and all your years in the sport, and you couldn’t buy what I had naturally for all the nickels you could muster! Here you were, busting your ass just to stay relevant on a roster with Axle Vengeance, Ace Static, Corey Bull, Flex Johnson and Salazar Darke…and then I came in like Chuck Norris and roundhouse kicked the roster and turned it on its head. My first match I won the tag titles from a team nobody else had even dented, and I did it pretty much by myself. We both know Tommy Phoenix was about as useful as a cock-flavored lollipop. Then the vacant Omega Title was put up in a tournament, and I want through that whole thing like tissue paper. I made highly-trained and conditioned professional athletes look like children trying to squirm out from under a catholic priest. You know the Omega Title, right? That’s the little treat your new master gave you for being an obedient dog. A gold-plated dog collar, that’s all that thing is for you, Jack. You might as well strap it around your neck as your waist, the same way that the albatross that is Corey Casey eventually will wind up sinking every one of you except Remington, who always seems to know exactly when to bail out.

Stygian: All this time you sat watching me, and you could have asked for a match at any time. You could have asked for a title match at any time, Jack, and I’d have given it to you. Hell I gave Kevin Kayfabe two shots at it because he was the only one who had the balls to ask. But you’d know all about having no balls, wouldn’t you, Jack? Because that’s what you are; an obedient little attack dog who’s been given a shiny new collar and then neutered by his new master! Does Corey keep them in a jar on his desk, Jack? You have a chance, but it’s not to win. You have a chance to survive and possibly earn my respect and in earning my respect, maybe, just maybe, you have a chance to do what Devlin Raine did, or what Kevin Kayfabe did: survive against me, and show people that even a neutered attack dog still has a fearsome bite. You won’t win. But I guarantee you if you survive it will be a feat. Because I’m coming for blood, Jackie. You’ve got a briefcase shot and about three chair shots to answer for. You own me three nickels for using those three words, but what I owe you? It can’t be paid in money. You think you’re gonna come in to my hometown and walk all over me? Dream on Jack. I’ll see you Saturday.

Fade out.