All in all, Butch Parker looks refreshed. To the untrained eye maybe. If you looked a little closer, you'd probably change your mind if asked twice. Butch's often soul-piercing emerald green eyes tell quite a few stories. Someone has said things that have stuck with him and those things have now started to linger and blossom themselves from the very seeds of doubt he'd sworn could never be planted.
After all. He was Butch Parker. Butch f**king Parker. The Rampant Lion, the One Man Tartan Army, even the Gladiator of God at one point. He was nigh-on invincible both mentally and physically. Or so he thought; mentally that is. No...someone has said things that have stung Butch, worse than any South American insect or arachnid ever could.
A plethora of emotions is rampaging through his mind causing quakes and fissures to appear and those seeds of doubt have now found their way into those fissures. Anger. A lot of anger. Not hatred, no, there is dislike; only disappointed, in both himself and the other. Sorrow...regret but not in the way you'd think. He doesn't quite know where to start, but he'll give it a shot.
You know Ronnie, when I sat there and watched the first part of that promo, I have to be honest, it got me thinking. It was starting to make my opinion of you to shift somewhat...
The light snickering of an exhalation wrought with irony escapes his nose.
I thought to myself, was I too harsh before? Was I....wrong?
I thought, well f**k me, he's really wanting to prove a point here! He's getting himself away from the distractions that are the par the course when you associate yourselves with the likes of Eddie and Talon.
I thought to myself, there's the Ronnie McNeil of old, the man that I used to have the utmost respect for. The same man who'd work himself half to death to train for a match no matter the size; be it in a twenty-thousand-seater stadium or a dingy litte High School gym hall. The very same man that when I found out you'd signed your lucrative deal with the Hardcore Wrestling Alliance, I ran to the management offices like a kid getting his first A aching to tell his parents, practically begging for a match with you.
A ten second wave of silence begins, one that feels more like ten hours.
I thought, Jesus Christ, I was right to increase the amount of training I've been doing because he's not even got his eye on; his hard-on is for Hans and the HWA World Championship. He's gonna want to just steamroll right over me without even as much as a look back.
And then you started talking.
A rough-skinned right hand reaches up, the fingers combing through the damp hair, the left mopping over the face. The index finger and thumb the opposing sides of the bridge of the nose.
I gotta say Ronnie...you caught off-guard with that one. A verbal uppercut right in the gut.
A disbelieving expression and a shake of the head to match.
You're right...you're abso-f**king-lutely right. About some things. Others...I might one day forgive, for ignorance's sake. So don't worry, there'll be no re-hashing or over-described insults flying at you. No Alpha Male-esque beats of the chest or any of that shit. No.
For the record by the way, my little training regime that I was going through prior to my addressing of you was not just some plagurised MMA workout scene but nothing more than a simple run-through of kickboxing syllabus work. Granted, yes, it is still a martial art but you'd be soundly mistaken if you were to think I were trying to copy Mr Wilkinson's pre-match training techniques. If he also happens to both vent his anger and increase his hand-eye-feet coordination on a punch bag then whooptey-f**king-do! After all, if a man can't punch or kick with any sort of skill that shows he's skilled in an art of combat just because another man somewhere else conducts himself in a very similar fashion, then what has this world come to? That's the first point I'll put down to ignorance because you weren't to know I'm a second Dan black belt in kickboxing, were you?
I hope you'll forgive me though Ronnie, for my part in a case of mistaken identity. I apologise if I seem to have spoken about and to you in the same manner as I've addressed Eddie over the past few months. It's just he's spent so much time recently not only speaking for you but also putting words in your mouth, that it was just getting to the point where I couldn't not tar you with the same brush.
More silence. Uncomfortable. Edgy.
And Lord, please don't misintepret my reformed friendship with Hans as a case of coattail riding on my part, Ronnie. It wasn't five years ago when Hans had turned his back on me, stabbed me in the back and almost ended my career thanks to a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.
The left hand instinctively reaches down to grab hold of the knee. Reflex action. The fingertips run over the scar tissue like they were reading braille.
And then Hans returned. A new man, no longer swayed by the seductions of Senester. I forgave him because as much as he'd caused me countless amounts of pain, both physical and emotional, I'd endured too much with him to piss away the kind of friendship we have.
And then the roles were reversed and I found myself kneeling at the feet of...him. I too found myself corrupted and misled, left with only my perilous thoughts in those towers that I know you can concur with me on. I did reprehensible things and I know that. I broke the leg of the woman whose heart belongs to the only man alive I truly trust and for what? Telling the truth? There is a lot of blood on my hands that just can't wash away with an apology and Hans is smart enough to know that. I'm not trying hard to make him forgive me just so I can betray him to steal a shot at his title. Truth be told Ronnie, you'll probably find that Hans is much more keen to put his belt on the line against me than the other way around, I do have a three-nil record against him that he's dying to break.....so that's another point I'll give you for not really understanding the bigger picture.
Another long moment of uneasy silence. Butch knows what the subject matter is going to entail but there's no hiding from the truth, no matter its form, whether twisted, distorted or perverted. Its still the truth; in some shape or form.
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