The Turn Has Happened, And There Is No Turning Back
There once were heels hailed as heroes and baby faces booed. This was the way of the world, and for a while it worked.
Now the son of that son of plumber who once taught us about hard times makes his way to the ring, to meet face-to-face with the face that runs the place.
Two moral men, of past and of present.
One, a future Hall of Fame fixture, tasting victory for the first time in the recent years of a long career, on the cusp of a final farewell, having long since traded the infamy of faux fights for the limelight of La La Land.
The other, the prodigal prodigy who made a name for himself in parts unknown so that he could finally make his way home, knowing the place for the first time, to claim his birthright in the form of the gilded belt around his waist.
Five lives eliminated on an altar of steel, one man standing where a chamber once stood, while an audience of millions, sated by the prior sweat-soaked showmanship, finds itself newly invigorated by the promise of potentiality.
The opportunity is earned, the clash is inevitable, the road to immortality is made clear…while the numbers sixteen and seventeen gnaw at the back of the mind like mathematical mockery…
But platitudes must be paid and sportsmanlike hands must be shaken…until a familiar refrain crashes the party.
The show must go on.
But it is not the expected Brahmin deity of electricity and entertainment who first appears through the fire and the smoke, but a demon from a different domain.
A stranger in the strange land of the giants, an energumen of rhyme and rhythm, an imp of excess and indulgence, the price of a soul already sold made manifest
An omen of the inevitable, he clears the path for the self-proclaimed Great One.
And so the champion of the people turned tinsel town tyrant approaches, flanked on either side by sycophantic signs held high by the teeming masses, all of which signal a singular intent.
I WANT YOUR SOUL
I WILL SELL MY SOUL TO THE ROCK
TAKE MY SOUL ROCKY
Paraphrasing words once spoken by the man with the power of purchase, they demand to be damned, but will the scion of wrestling’s other royal family join them in their self-imposed perdition?
His answer is unequivocal…as are its consequences.
Blood and pain, shock and disbelief, a ringing in the ears that will never subside, a fall from grace two decades in the making…
The price has been paid.
Not by the man brought low for the sin of taking the high road, but by the very man who paved it—he who once hustled through all adversity, loyal to a fault, commanding respect during the most disrespectful times...
You can’t see me.
We couldn’t see him. The salutes, the signings, the smiles, the star power and stark contrast from a bygone era now irrevocably eradicated with a swift kick and a Judas kiss.
Words once spoken by a fallen foe now echo from the past and into eternity, the fiend’s prophecy forever fulfilled.
The score will be settled at the showcase of the immortals— a promise of solace for the man on the mat forced to taste the iron reminder of his mortality.
The turn has happened, and there is no turning back.