Baddest Mother Fucker (vs. Hide Yamazaki)

I’m not sure you two cowboys know who the fuck I am.

That’s fine. Let’s take the gold out of the equation. Let’s take the glory and toss it in the trash. Let’s shed this bullshit about hanging a specific banner on our backs and going to war.

This isn’t about sending a message to your home, another federation… no this match transcends wrestling. It transcends this bullshit little pissing contest.

Hide Yamazaki or Casanova English?

Who really is the baddest mother fucker in this game?

It was slid through the crack in my front door sometime between midnight and 3 a.m.

A singular Tarot card staring face up at me.

The Hanged Man.

I held it in my one hand, blowing smoke into it, sitting in a leather chair in my shitty Baltimore rowhouse. Suffice to say the paychecks were barely keeping me afloat. It’s not the same as when my name was in hot neon in places like Times Square. But those days come and go as my opponent knows well.

I better sell some fucking tee shirts, get some of those royalties rolling on in.

I spun the card in my fingers, sighing.

“It was a good idea to call me,” Voodoo said stepping from the kitchen into the living room.

“But I don’t think I can help you. My magic won’t work against Hide.”

He was already one with the dark arts, a sadist with a jolly jackass as a manager wrangling him from venue to venue.

“The best we can do is strip away the mystique. Come to terms with the fact the man on the other side of the ring at Incursion is just that. A wrestling legend sure, but at the end of the day Hide is just another unhinged mad man, a neanderthal using blunt force to belong.”

She brushes her hand over my eyes forcing them to close gently.

“Vision yourself running, running and running to the point of exhaustion. You need to outlast, you need to weather the storm. You need to realize you will need to work through pain, work through suffering. You can feel it in Hide as much as Johnny wants to lighten things up.”

I pictured myself running and running, air trying to enter my lungs as my throat slowly closes from irritation and exhaustion -- I keep going. Visualize heels digging into the ground pushing off.

“It’s about lasting. It’s about not dying, it’s about being a cockroach, a pest, an irritation until you can pull the trigger on a kill shot. He’s getting old, he’s getting tired, but he will hurt you early, he will hurt you long, it’s all about endurance and…”

I didn’t even open my eyes, I was in such deep concentration I could hear her right hook slice through the air in front of me. I raise my hand quick catching her wrist.

“There you go, endure, stay alert and you’ll have a chance of putting him away. No voodoo with this one Mr. English.”

She says stepping back into the kitchen.

As much as society thinks we have advanced -- one thing remains true -- and on a subconscious level it fuels people like Hide.

If you crush enough skulls they’ll still make you king in the world we live in.

In the ring it’s all well and good… but I’m still trying to find a way to wash the blood off my hands outside of it.

Maybe, I shouldn’t have come back.

I take a sharp inhale finishing off my cigarette. I smash the butt into the ashtray sitting upon the end table to my right. I run my hand over the Chaos Championship sitting on my lap.

I already knew it wasn’t Hide or Johnny Buttaker who slid that card through the door.


Detective Tony Burns sipped his coffee gingerly as the liquid floated near the rim and still managed to spill a third of it on his dress shirt and paperwork.

Ringing phones always did startle him.

He worked his way into a decent cash flow pushing paper down at the Baltimore precinct before deciding to get into private detective work. In his late 40’s he combed his thin blonde hair to the left to create a transparent sheath over his balding scalp.

“H..h...h.. Hello Detective Burns here, what can I do ya for?”

“It’s me, The Canadian, did you do it?,” the voice on the phone demanded.

“Yeah, I slid the card through the crack in the door. I don’t know what you think this is going to do, reading his fortune or whatever we are doing.”

“Trust me, he’ll get the message.”

“Jeffery Epstein didn’t kill himself?”

“Now you are getting it, something like that anyway.”

Detective Burns holds up a picture of Casanova English, a photo the detective on the other line snapped when English was questioned about a murder nearly five years ago.

“You really think this pro wrestler got into a maximum security prison in Canada and had this man killed… why? More so why do you care… I mean the man was a serial rapist.”

“That’s not how justice is handled, whether we like how it works or not. The due process already did its work with Mr. Edison. We’re all humans at the end of the day…”

The only thing they ever had on Casanova English, also known as Cassidy Jones, is the fact that he visited Raymond Edison in prison a handful of times. A rapist in Canadian prison for various sexual assualt charges and one count of murder severing several life sentences at Millhaven Maximum Security Prison.

“But why, and how?”

“Raymond Edison was Casanova English’s father… I am determined to prove that, that is where you come in. I need you to get close. I need you to get me hair, some spit, some fucking blood or cum I don’t care if you have to jerk this asshole off. I am willing to pay whatever it takes Burns.”

The man on the phone paused.

“I know that Casanova had something to do with his death. He might seem like he is half the man he was… but his little cult… The Orphanage… it still has a following… I know there are people still working in the shadows for that man’s benefit. Look how quickly he has gone through the ranks at Carnage. He is going to slip up Burns…. And when he does… one of us will be there.”

The line went dead and Burns set down the phone quickly. He grabbed the piles of paperwork on his table and organized them into neat little stacks whistling all the while.

He brings his lips back to the coffee.

The phone rings again.

“DAMN IT!”


Ransom wrapped his behemoth hand around a glass of water and gulped it down as I took a sip of my beer. I waited until the waitress was out of ear shot to continue our conversation.

“No, I don’t think we are going to end up like those idiots at the end of the day. I’m not going to become a delusional idiot like Hitmaker and fight vicariously through you for my glory.”

I mean that’s what I said, but it was only inevitable. That’s why I brought Ransom in, to replace me, for him to continue the message, maybe resurrect The Orphanage back into relevance.

“I wish they had made this a tag team match,” Ransom said. “But we know Johnny is past getting his hand dirty in the ring.”

“Well, just in case he does get his hands where they don’t belong I’ll have you out there to snap every single finger… he won’t be counting Hide’s pay so quick to split up after Incursion.”

I raise one hand summoning the waitress to bring the bill.

“Johnny likes to talk about how Hide is a strong style sadist, I sure hope my countrymen was at least smart enough to teach his client Canadian Strong Style.”

The waitress appears and I tap my debit card off the machine. I skull the rest of my beer, pulling my leather jacket over my shoulders and start staggering home -- Ransom there to ensure I maintain balance.

“I got a bad feeling,” I said, my stomach turning a little from the few beers.

“Worried about Hide and Hitmaker?”

“No, it’s not that,” I said, shooting my eyes behind us. “That car, it’s been following us.”

“Would anyone have reason to follow us,” Ransom asked.

I said one word, Ransom was there too -- complicit in the whole thing… the death of my father.

“Millhaven.”

Ransom stiffened up, tried to keep an eye on the black car the whole way back to my place. They stayed a few car lengths back, trying to keep at least one car between us and them… but it wasn’t hard to tell… The Canadian, as he likes to be called, must be outsourcing his work. I know he isn’t that sloppy.

After retiring from wrestling the first time, I don’t think there was a day in those few years I didn’t look out my window from my old home in Ottawa and see a black car, waiting for me to do something incriminating so they could haul me in for questioning again.

“Why do they even care about what happened to that guy?”

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t care. I tried to put that moment behind me. I realized the whole thing was useless… it didn’t save my mom.

Sure, the few years of sobriety were bliss… but what he did to her, she couldn’t get it out of her mind. She saw him when she looked at me, that’s what lead to the relapse, the overdose, the suicide.

It never mattered if he was still breathing or not…. He took her whole voice away decades ago… and when she found it, it sounded shrill, abused -- she must not have liked that.

“Fuck em all,” I said, turning around to stop and look at the car.

I could tell the driver didn’t know what to do, stuttered on the brakes a few times, but he rolled past slow.

I just waved, as it to say…

c’mon -- hang me.

I’m in Columbus, but not standing outside the nationwide arena. I squint at the Columbus City Hall and slowly walk into camera frame as Ransom films. I pace around the front area smoking a cigarette.

I’m wearing a brand new tee shirt I’m hoping will rake in a few extra dollars which reads, ‘Casanova English, Chaos vs The World, Incursion 2021,’ with both logos of the companies involved blacked out.

I stop pacing and stop to stare right at the camera, cancer stick hanging from my lips.

“I’m in a unique position. I head to war with no army backing me, my own roster taking pot shots at me on social media when called out by a group we are supposed to be battling in unity against… but who am I kidding. It’s not like Carnage Wrestling is some diamond in the rough, the poor fed was past its bar for innovation… for entertainment… until I came along and injected it with a little personality.”

I pull the cigarette from my lips and hold it in my fingers waving it at the camera for a second before speaking again.

“But it wouldn’t take a sleuth to see the cookie cutter bullshit square every company in the industry -- CW included -- is using. Look at our website, four out of five champions white and blonde, three of them men. Not quite the spitting image of innovation nor diversity if you ask me. So, when I come here and offer something different, when I come here and shake things up I didn’t think they’d be welcoming and clearly I was right. Hide they are hoping you do them a favour, and how fitting a man named Hitmaker backs you… I just have to wonder who on my roster put the money up to see me go down.”

I don’t have the Chaos Championship in frame. It needs a makeover before Incursion. It needs to actually mean something to Hide to get him motivated, to give him tunnel vision, so all I have to do is stick my foot out and watch him trip.

“See it won’t be that easy because I’m not fighting for Carnage Wrestling, I’m not fighting for UGWC, hell… I am not fighting for myself. I’m fighting for the unwanted, the disenfranchised, the people who have unbridled talent but are neglected based on politics and pandering… and I’m about to sign an executive order to give myself a license to kill.”

I take a pause puffing away, blowing plumes of smoke in front of city hall as the sun sets.

“Hide, you are a former World Champion, and I honestly believe you are the most dangerous man on the UGWC roster. I know that you aren’t coming for the Chaos Championship, I know this isn’t a title vs title match for prestige like virtually everyone else has been honoured with… but I will be bringing a championship with me to Incursion, something I think might entice you even more than a world title... “

I toss my cigarette on the ground and stomp on it. I snap my fingers and Ransom brings the camera closer, he throws me the championship. I catch the Chaos Championship, but three pieces of duct tape are stripped along the front, and in thick black letters -- etched with a Sharpie -- it reads ‘Baddest Mother Fucker Championship.’

“We all know this is the real money fight. They made a mistake putting you and I first Hide. We’re both out for blood… and I know…”

I look down at the duct taped title on my shoulder.

“We both believe we deserve this moniker, this accolade and at Incursion we show the world what real wrestling looks like, what strong style feels like. Wake me up with a chest cavity crushing chop, drop me on my fucking head, try and kill me… because I’m coming with everything I have. And once I finish you off in the centre of the ring… I am going to drag Johnny Loudmouth to the centre and choke him unconscious and leave you two love birds laid out.”

I spit at the ground at the the thought of Hitmaker. He reminded me too much of what I was destine to become, a broken man hoping to hold on to something, anything relevant. Hoping this industry remembers I laced them up -- fears I could one day do it again anytime. It was like looking into the future -- and I didn’t plan at treating Ransom any kinder than Hitmaker treated Hide.

But that’s the thing about me… I know exactly who I am.

Like it or not.

I walk to the middle of the City Hall frontage and turn and look up at the stone-like structure for a moment.

“Do you have any idea what used to be here?”

I turn back to face the camera and gesture at the ground.

“Christopher Columbus used to stand here. A giant fucking staute of the dumb bastard. You know what he was famous for Hide? For years they taught in American schools that he founded this country, that he was this great explorer and navigator that unlocked the secrets of the world. Turns out, he was just another European colonizer who would have been lucky to navigate his finger into his asshole.”

“Why mention this… I’m not trying to bring any politics into this, there is a point. See Hide, people know of you as a legend. They know of the way you have destroyed wrestler after wrestler, how you have popularized strong style here in the states. But… years have gone by… styles have been altered and innovated… perspective change. When you stack old tales and legends up against new and modern standards.. .what i’m saying is in your little bubble there may be no question you are the baddest man. Hell you barely have to take anything seriously and get the job done. But zoom out, put that old man on a larger playing field and it’s easier and easier to see the elderly pooch isn’t learning any new tricks.”

“And well, maybe like other idols, in wrestling and outside, you become less relevant, less monumental, they start looking at you and wondering if you founded anything, if you changed anything at all with what you did, or it was all just some bullshit… bravado… tall tales.. smoke stoked by unineligible teachers like Johnny Hitmaker.”

“I guess at Incursion we find out if Hide makes the pages of a new testament The Modern Day Messiah is working on.”

I raise up the championship toward the camera.

“I’m taking your place old man, and the only way you’ll be the face of this industry again is if your rip mine off and fucking wear it. Hope you accept the invitation.”

I wink at the camera slapping the title back on my shoulder as Ransom snaps it off.


Detective Burns liked to unwind on a Saturday night with a tall glass of beer. It was filled to the brim, ice cold. He got spoked by English earlier in the night, and he wasn’t planning on sitting outside the rowhouse in his shity black sedan with the windows barely tinted after that.

He puts his lips to the glass…

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.

“Fuck.”

A good quarter of the luxury locally brewed IPA all over his lap.

He gets to the door and swings it open to see a burning brown bag.

“Christ, oh fuck.”

He puts his shoe on and starts stomping out only what he can assume is a bag of animal or human shit, but as he frantically stops he sees it.

The card he had delivered to English… singed…. The Hanged Man staring back.


The Hanged Man is a card that suggests ultimate surrender, sacrifice, or being suspended in time… Voodoo told me that.

But that isn’t me.

I’m back. I’m not stuck anymore, I'm moving forward.

I buried the past with dad..

And if anyone wants to try and dig that up…

We’ll…

I don’t mind adding a few more bodies to the landfill.