When your hero becomes something that's inanimate, a material possession that can be easily lost, easily stolen, or easily destroyed... you become pathetic and weak. You become obsessed with that one object, that one meaningless thing that holds all the power in the world to you... until it finally brings about your downfall.
Money gets you by in life, but it is not a hero. Even the finest things in life have no right to be your hero.
At one point in time it looked to me as though that was what the HWF World Title had become to Violent A... he seemed so obsessed with earning it, so obsessed that he almost turned his back on the people who brought him to that very point when he even stole it out from between my hands.
Of course, this was from a spectator's point of view. I quickly learned how much he cared for his allies, for his apparent girlfriend, for the people he called his family. He does care about this company... he really does, he just seems to be a bit delusional at times. In the end, I think he might even care more about everything else then he does about that title.
It was something that he held as just a symbol of all his hard work here finally paying off, not as his hero.
Thank God for that.
Power is another material you could say, something that Dillon Durst has seemingly become obsessed over. The power to potentially end the NLCW, to re-create it in his own image. He's building an army to gain a strangle-hold over this company, his obsession growing day by day.
Not just for power... but for revenge.
And it will be that obsession, in the end, that will lead him straight to his own downfall. His hero is his own obsessions, his blood-thirst for revenge...
In the end? His hero will fail him... and reveal that it was not a hero after-all.
I've seen people practically worship what they have and treat their items as if God himself had blessed them and told them that they no longer needed him, that those very items were what they could live off of for all of eternity. Champions reduced to slobbering all over their title belts, going beyond all rules in order to keep it as theirs. Wrestlers who at one time held all the respect I could give them suddenly changing their ways because they care so deeply for an object that, if necessary, could be taken from them in an instant.
It's really sad, you know that? When you've become so damn pathetic that you're looking up to some gold statue as your hero, as a symbol of what you want to be like later on in life... you've lost all hope of knowing what a true hero is. Heroes aren't made to be spent upon; they aren't made to be looked upon, aren't made to be some trophy case you can show off to your friends and they sure as hell aren't made for you to drown your sorrows in.
Drink all you want, it'll be your drunken ass the hero will have to save when you step into your vehicle to go home.
On the night Crystal died just over ten years ago... I was the hero. I should have been the one to prevent all of that from happening, but I failed. I failed her as a hero and as such I find it so fucking hard to understand how people can still look at me and claim that I, Dominic Pericolo, am their fucking hero!
What have I done that's so great?! What have I done, that has touched you or changed your life for the better? What is it about me that's so fucking amazing, so fucking spectacular that you believe with everything in you that I am your hero and always will be?!
I've failed you all before for God's sake! Don't you remember?! As the HWF was on its last legs, I turned my back to you, I spat in all your faces! I come to the NLCW and you give me a heroes welcome, and for awhile I may have even turned into one for everyone-- hell, I even felt it! Yet look at me now, damn it all! Where have I been for all of you?! Leaving you all in the dark... reducing myself to fighting cheaply against Kindred London in what should have been a respectable fight...
I'M NOT YOUR FUCKING HERO! GET OVER IT; I FAILED! I FAILED YOU ALL!!
...
I'm... sorry. I shouldn't have said that, but... yeah. The tension, the frustration... don't you see it? Don't you understand? I'm just like any other person on this planet... I'm no hero, a hero doesn't snap like that, right?
A hero doesn't chastise those who look up to them... a hero tries to set the best example they can.
I'm no hero... I'm just another man, no better then anyone else.