The Raeth Report
By Ron Raeth
Leading into Olympus the UWA's two day fan festival was quite a success, though there were some interesting highlights, or lowlights if you will.
The last signing of the first day featuring Kalinda Kriegsdottir, Angelica Jones, and P. Clarence Whitman was marred by the notably sensitive British gentleman making his way to the tables first, and shortly thereafter being introduced to Kalinda.
Apparently having repressed the memories of the horrible horrible Kalinda/Hush/Whitman vs. Leviticus/Fitzgerald/Stumpy Rodriguez feud in IWC, a feat that I'm sure many IWC fans would like to be able to replicate (I know I would), Mr. Whitman took one look at the towering form of the Azure Nightmare and promptly passed out.
Every time he would reawaken he would look around with his usual look of befuddlement at the world around him, catch sight of the Big Blue Beastie, and then return to the great state of unconsciousness.
About halfway through the signing Kalinda got up to her usual mischievous tricks and in between signing autographs spent several minutes of the signing using her marker to inscribe devil horns on Whitman's temples, Frankenstein-esque stitching on his neck and wrists, and for the magnum opus added what appeared to be KISS inspired facial designs.
Mr. Whitman can only hope that the marker manages to wash off before his debut match with Lilith Evans later tonight.
Throughout the two days of the event Kalinda spent a great deal of time with her menagerie of associates in the XBOX gaming tent, where fans would pit their skills in Overwatch against Kalinda, Dragon Kitty, Spark, and Claudia, who were all on site, along with Hall of Famers Desolation and Hellkat joining in over the internet.
Kalinda spend most of the event switching between classes, and refusing to play Mei or Hanzo "Because that would be stereotypical," with Kitty (whose awkward mole claws requiring a custom controller/arcade stick that looked like it was made from a box of scraps in somebody's garage) favoring Torbjorn and Symmetra for their turrets to do all the aiming, Desolation spent the day as McCree, Reaper, and Roadhog teabagging anyone and everyone, while Hellkat went against type and filled in team gaps, rather than be random and looney like everybody expected.
But the star of the group had to be Spark, whose Tracer gameplay was the stuff of nightmares as he managed to flawlessly exploit several game breaking bugs and spent most of each Payload map embedded inside the cart.
The XBOX tent concluded with a Street Fighter V tournament amongst the roster that saw Kalinda take on Selena Frost in the finals. It was Actual Dragon versus Alaskan Dragon, which saw the Snow Queen emerged triumphant.
During the early rounds the dragoness was banned from using her custom made arcade stick by Microsoft officials, which lead to a chorus of boos from the audience, and Kalinda and her entourage starting several derogatory chants, as well as attempting to drown out any official announcements with vocal renditions of classic Nintendo songs.
Other highlights include Kalinda doing a few demonstrations of her strange abilities, including keeping the XBOX gaming pavillion nice and cool by using her breath weapon to ignite several fire barrels to radiate sheer cold.
A research group from the nearby University of Nimes dropped by to analyze exactly just how in the heck that managed to work and left with a lantern burning with the blue fire in order to better study the effect in a lab.
"Even if UWA is intent on promoting me in the same slapdash, shitshow fashion that ULW did they've proven that they're at least better than ULW by actually, you know, letting me attend the goddess-damned fan festival." stated Kriegsdottir during the event.
"I was banned from appearing at the last one a company I was with threw, and conducted my own fanfest in the parking lot. With blackjack. And hookers. No, actually we had a few bands performing, a cookout, a few carnival rides and games, and a few inflatable bouncy things."
"Though I think I might've terrified the French fans when I brought it out and had it inflated earlier today. I decided to bring in some singing tesla coils, put on some goggles, gloves, and a labcoat, and with lighting flaring behind me I shouted "RELEASE ZE SPRINGENBURGER!" and then we inflated a giant bouncy castle type thing shaped like a hamburger."
"It was good fun. I just wish my in-ring time with the UWA was as entertaining and fun as my out of ring shenanigans here today."
"The last two days made me happy, but the PPV itself? That REALLY pisses me off. You know what? No one's using the stage right now and I bet there's a microphone left unattended. Let's precede Christmas in July with Festivus in June. I'm going to go and air the complete and utter HELL out of my grievances. Ta ta!"
The Cerulean Dragoness then proceeded to storm the stage and cut a scathing promo, which I'll link to the YouTube of here.
So for the second year in a row I'm going into the biggest PPV in the company as a fucking afterthought.
You'd think that wrestling promotions would take the opportunity to take their rising stars and actually, you know, do something with them. Something to make the fans feel like they've invested their time, effort, and emotion into this company. Something to make them care, to have an emotional stake in the outcomes of these matches.
But it's starting to stink around here. It's beginning to smell a lot like IWC and ULW. My last name isn't Frost, Todd, Chase, or Mason, so that means I get to sit in the back of the booking bus with the rest of the people who don't have their tongues rammed into some corporate butthole while some puppet master's got his hand up my ass so he can make me walk and talk.
I earned a title shot, but has anything come of it? FUCK NO! A date hasn't been set, a match isn't being promoted. Hell, I'm lucky if my X-Limits contendership gets a two second mention once a night.
You'd think folks would be chomping at the bit to have all their titles on deck on the FUCKING BIGGEST SHOW OF THE YEAR to milk all the PPV buys they can out of the fanbase. Every single title being defended makes the show seem important and it makes the belts seem important.
But noooooo. Precisely fuck all has been done to promote my contendership or a match against Alana Starr. Starr, who has thrown a fit because she doesn't get to hold TWO belts, and doesn't have World Title contendership has thrown a fit, pitched her toys out of the pram, and stomped off to her treehouse of angst.
Why? Why the FUCK do you let people get away with this? Why do you people coddle the worst behaved members of your roster? Why you you let Ba'al jerk you around by demanding matches? Threatening that he and his entire faction will turn into bats and flap off into the night to haunt a local Hot Topic until the sun comes up.
Why do you give them what you want?
These people are fucking over your business. These people don't acknowledge your authority over them.
Why do you bend over backwards to please them while you treat your hardest and most loyal workers like garbage?
I'm here to fight. I want a good, solid knock down drag out brawl.
I want a challenge.
I want to be threatened.
I've had one nice, solid match with Selena Frost, but the head office didn't give me that.
You know who did? FUCKING BA'AL.
He demanded I face Selena with the intent of trying to drive a wedge into our budding little alliance.
The head office gave me a title contendership for a title that thus far hasn't been fucking defended once since we opened the doors.
And then to show just how meaningless and worthless that opportunity was, I got to spend the next two months wrestling all the people I'd already fucking beat in that match all over again!
News flash, dipshits, if Lilith Evans, Danny Darko, and Gavin Taylor couldn't get the job done when they had the possibility for numbers on their side, they sure as shit aren't going to manage to beat me on their own.
I mean I appreciate getting thrown the tiniest of bones by so magnanimously being allowed to beat the complete and utter fuck out of a member of New Eden who's rubbed her tongue raw licking Cindy Todd's boots, but why the fuck did Gavin Taylor have to be there too, eh?
And now I have to wrestle fucking Danny Darko AGAIN, this time with bonus mid life crisis?! What the fuck.
Maybe you don't realize what you're dealing with here. Hell, you hired fucking P. Wiggy, so for all I know you've decided to bring back the Freaks, Idiots, Midgets, and Dragons division from IWC that went over like a nice, wet, underwear staining fart after a night of booze and cheap Mexican food when it happened the first time.
You're also continuing the proud ULW tradition of having the Tag Team titles defended once annually.
You know what? Just give the damn things to Cindy Todd and her current bitch of the month, that way you can kill two birds with one stone, and make the one time a year when the tag belts are defended be the same match where Cindy has her pets lick the dust off of her wrestling boots she keeps in the back of the closet and wrestle once a year.
Because also for the second year in a row somebody who spends 99.9 percent of her time in a managerial role gets the announce team salivating over her wrestling at the biggest show of the year, while I get stuck with some washed up has-been.
Though this time it's Danny Darko and not Lethal Weapon, and Danny's the one who has gotten deep into his cups, brought out the hair shirt, and is wailing his sorrows about how horrible he is. Whereas Lethal Weapon was all "YOU ARE BLUE, YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE BUSINESS OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING!"
But do you know what the real disgrace is? The fact that somebody who works her big blue butt off for this company, somebody who is always there to wrestle her matches, who throws everything she has into each fight, who has given the PR department a nice, long, juicy rant to air each and every week consecutively for NEARLY THREE FUCKING YEARS WITHOUT FAIL, who has never held the company she works for over a barrel…
I get as much effort put into my match at the biggest PPV of the year as the eight guys that just got signed to the company.
Yeah, way to put the promotional machine to work there, boyos.
My match with Darko? There's no drama here, there's no story, there's no purpose, there's no point.
How many people out there do you think heard about that match and went "Oh boy, something that happened on free TV that I've already seen, I think I want to spend money to see that!"
And it's not even like there's anything added to this match that could've made it interesting. Kalinda and Darko, BUT WITH WEAPONS! Kalinda and Darko, BUT IN A CAGE! Kalinda and Darko, WITH THEIR SHOELACES TIED TOGETHER! Kalinda and Darko, WITH DARKO'S SELF-LOATHING ON A FORKLIFT!
I mean we don't even have a fuckin' coal miner's glove or some viagra on a pole.
You filled all the matches with people that you actually give a fuck about, because they have ties to folks that will pitch a tremendous bitch fit and rip out a chunk of your company when they go stomping off taking their ball, and your balls as well, and going home to gargle them.
Then you looked at the leftovers, and the people you can fucking count on to go out there and put on matches, that can actually be counted on to cut a goddamned promo, and you just randomly threw two of us together because just by saying some words, or slurring drunkenly into a camera while crawling around the floor like David Hasselhoff, might stir up a handful of extra buys just so folks can see the train wreck.
Is Darko going to show up completely and utterly sloshed, in no condition to wrestle, and show the legacy of Desolation by carrying a literal god damned inanimate object to an honest to god four star match?
Is Kalinda finally going to go off the rails, starting biting people's fingers off, punting 100 pound ex-models into the first balcony, and go Gojira all over the set, the announcers, the announce table, the timekeeper, the cameraman, and if fucking Benjamin Franklin hasn't already stuffed it all down his big, fat gullet, the catering department?
Because I'm sure I can get a thousand more buys by promising that I'm going to take a cake, cover it with thumbtacks, stick some burning candles on the damned thing, and promise by the end of the night that it's going to go in the face of somebody that the fanbase thinks is a complete and utter fucktard.
Dave, Drew, do I have to go and make your lives difficult in order to be treated with respect around here? Do you WANT me to make it so significant sections of the arena are simultaneously flooded, frozen, and on fucking fire?
Because I'll do that.
I can make running Outbreak a fucking chore, if that's what you want.
It's not like I'm even asking for much. All I'm asking is that you people do your fucking jobs to actually SHOCK, HORROR, get a little bit of the promotional machine behind something that the fans want to see anyway.
I want to beat the fuck out of each and every member of the combined forces of the New Eden/Sinistry alliance, that I have dubbed the Nudistry in a combination of double entendre and portmanteau.
Each and every single one of them.
It's not that difficult to make the matches.
And there's so damned many of them that I can probably do this from now until the end of time.
Hell, since they've decided that they can bring out non-contracted wrestlers in order to skirt the rules against interference you can give me a big yellow shirt that says "SECURITY" on it in big, black, bold all capital letters, and I can sit on a chair, munch some popcorn, have a shopping cart of weapons right behind me, and I will make mincemeat out of anybody who hits the ring who isn't a contracted member of the United Wrestling Alliance, and is thus trespassing.
You let me do that and I'll be fine with whatever lame, stupid, insipid, uninspired matches you throw my way, so long as I have the chance at being able to entertain myself by wailing on people who shouldn't be in a ring in ways that only my twisted imagination can provide.
It's not like I have a shortage of ideas. Sometimes I just go and walk around the hardware store to look at things and go "You know, I could use this to hurt somebody in a unique and rather unpleasant way," just in the hope that Hell freezes over and I'm allowed to actually compete in a hardcore wrestling match.
I'd enjoy it, the fans would enjoy it.
Tell me you don't want to see someone take a weed whacker to Ethan Von Aaron's groin, or to have me take off Gavin Taylor's ever present, unsightly, stubborn armpit hair with a bolt of Care Bears cloth and an economy sized tube of superglue, or to draw a lovingly rendered image of Dickbutt on Clarence Whitman's back with a hot glue gun.
Yes, goddammit, I want to wrestle a proper fucking hardcore match so bad I would stoop to wrestling P. Clarence fucking Whitman again.
Come on! Give me something! Let me do something fun! Let me do something entertaining!
Make sure that each and every match on the card is at the very least something that the fans can even give the slightest of shits about.
Darko's pissed off that you threw this match together with no fucking reason, I'm pissed off that you threw this match together with no fucking reason, I'm sure the fans are pissed off that you threw this match together with no fucking reason and are posting memes with "WHO BOOKED THIS SHIT?!" on them in the usual letters.
And I don't understand it. I don't understand it at all.
Why would you people be purposefully awful at your jobs, eh?
Your entire purpose is to make a show that people are emotionally invested in, where heated rivalries and interesting matches take place.
Do you honestly think there's anybody out there that's just drooling at the opportunity to throw down tens of dollars to watch me beat the shit out of Danny Darko?
Do you think there's anybody out there that's stupid enough to throw down tens of dollars thinking that they're going to see Danny Darko beat the shit out of me that also actually wants to see such an unlikely implausibility take place?
Fucking Darko doesn't think Darko can beat me.
And normally I'd be fine with this.
I'm a wrestler, you put my name opposite somebody's, and I'll go out there and I'll wrestle the bastard.
But this? This is the biggest show of the year, and by putting me in this match you're shooting yourselves in the fucking foot, and everybody knows it.
I'm officially putting you on notice, UWA.
After Olympus, after I smack Danny Darko so hard all the alcohol flies right out of him, I'm giving you two weeks.
Two weeks to get your shit together and prove that you actually have something remotely resembling the slightest bit of sense.
You've got one booking and one fortnight to prove to me that you actually value my loyalty to this company, to all the effort I put forth to entertain the fans.
Show me that you actually give a fuck about people with a decent work ethic.
And if you don't?
Then you've given me your tacit agreement that the way to get ahead in this company is to attempt to hurt it, because much like its least pleasant roster members, is into some kind of freaky S&M dungeon fuckery.
Show me that you value hard work, dedication, and loyalty and I will continue to work hard, and loyally dedicate myself to the betterment of this wrestling federation.
And if you don't? Well then, you've shown me that either you don't care, that your corporate personhood is wrapped up in a gimp suit screaming "HURT ME PLEASE" through its ball gag, or you're just setting me up to try and make me fail on purpose.
Whatever the motivation is, it's sending me a message loud and clear.
And that message is that being a good employee is not what my bosses want from me.
In which case, boys, I'll happily oblige you and aim to misbehave.
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