The setting is the rocky shores of Oregon. It's overcast, windy. The Amazing Logan stands in the foreground, wearing a fedora, a windbreaker and some faded jeans, using his cane to prop him up. Michael Bastard is in the background, wearing nothing but a pair of old board shorts, faded and tattered, standing barefoot, bracing himself against the waves crashing on his back.
TAL: The time has come for Michael Bastard, the NEW Craziest Wrestler in the Business, the Man without Conscience, the Wrestler Your Favorite Wrestler Is Afraid of, to make his triumphant debut on pay-per-view, and how fitting is it that it will be in a "Stalker's Rules" match. Finally, a platform without the restraint of rules, without the added burden of having to hold back lest he be disqualified. How fitting that people will have to pay to see the carnage. It's almost like Dan Ryan knew that the full fury what Michael was capable of and wanted to charge money to see it, to weed out the squeamish. Sure, people will still watch for the epic main event featuring three of the best this business has ever known and Cameron Cruise wrestle for the right to be called World Champion, or maybe they want to see if serial coward Layne Winters will escape yet again with his Television Championship intact. How many, though, after seeing the swarth of destruction that Michael cuts across that ring, covering the canvas red in natural paint, bringing about destruction so casually that it will look like your random Middle Eastern village after the Mongol Horde rent it asunder like everything else in Central Asia, will stick around to watch the rest of the event rather than turn it off in disgust, run to their bathrooms and discharge the contents of their dinners or go to their computers and FURIOUSLY type letters to the FCC, to CableVision or XFinity or to Ryan himself, demanding that that kind of violence never be shown anywhere on the air again? My guess is more than a few will.
Of course, the match itself... well yes, the match. Of course, it takes two to tango, and I can almost hear the thousands of fanboys screaming at me that there's no way Michael can make short work of Stalker and that Stalker is going to destroy Michael, yadda yadda yadda. I know Jason, you probably feel a bit disrespected being compared to one of the thousands of villages wiped off the face of the Earth during those dark, dark times when Genghis and his men ravaged most of the known world. Hell, judging from your terse little number there, you're thinking of doing the same to Michael, leaving him in ruins, promising to end his career. I would have taken it very personally in my days as an active wrestler. The truth is, though, I actually respect you, and Michael does as well. You see, you've carved out a niche here in the Empire, one that admittedly, Michael is setting out to nestle into himself. Then again, I had a lot of respect for Omega, and the guy didn't even have the courtesy to show his face. Because of that, they shoved Michael into a farce of a sham of a mockery.
But for as much as I respect you, as much as I think you've done a grand old job turning everyone's preconceived notions of what violence in wrestling should be, how much carnage, how to recondition people to expect something more than they've been used to, well, I stand here a little annoyed and underwhelmed. You see, you've taken things far, but you haven't taken them far enough. No, I'm not talking about the levels of violence. I've seen them up close, and there are few in the business like you. However, when I come here and see that you've co-opted the idea of "no holds barred" as something patently exclusive to you, well, it offends me and it really offends Michael.
You see, we haven't come here to be anyone's lackeys. Michael certainly doesn't want to be led around by the nose by someone he doesn't necessarily know, and before you accuse me of the same thing, well, then, you've been fooled just like everyone else who thinks this is a master-slave relationship. No, we also haven't come here to put the fading stars of yore out to pasture, nor are we here to start some freakshow side-stage division where the wrestling elite can shove the goons and the mutants while the makes air quotes "real" wrestlers compete for things like the Intercontinental and World Championships. WE're here to take savagery, extreme, decimation, whatever the hell you want to call it, to the next level. We're going to make it mainstream, Jason, do what you've failed to do. You sit back and pretend that defeating Rocko Daymon when he already had a foot out the door an accomplishment, you hang from the coattails of men like Sean Stevens who only wish to use you to get ahead, and you expect me to believe that you deserve to call the no-holds-barred match your own? I think not.
Bastard steps forward from the waves, skin visibly twitching from the cold water and the cold air causing him to shiver.
TAL: Black Dawn, Michael begins to foist our vision of violence and mayhem upon the Empire. Black Dawn, a very fitting name, because Empire Pro will see the dawning of a new era of terror, with the old, meek one fading to background like yesterday's news. Jason, prepare to accept a beating so severe that you'll wish the people paying for this event will plunk down an extra fifty bucks, telethon-style, to cover your hospital bills. At Black Dawn Jason...
MB: VIOLENCE. BECOMES. MAINSTREAM.
Logan smirks as Bastard's guttaral, primal scream formed into words dies down. Bastard's handler raises his cane and swats the camera down, causing the screen to go to static.