[The fluorescent lights flicker to painful, blinding life. We’re in the same nondescript warehouse we always find ourselves in just before... ]

 

Voice from off camera:

Well well.

 

[He’s dressed down. No pinstripes or polished spats. A white wifebeater, khaki slacks and a pair of dark brown suspenders worn off his shoulders and dangling from his waistline.]

 

[That and a nondescript black eyepatch over his left eye.]

 

You know who:

Guess I’ve been bloody put in my place, eh boys? Between Cancer's unexpected fighting spirit and Voss' tongue lashing I find myself in bits and pieces.

 

[The self styled “greatest attraction in all of professional wrestling” and former Defiance champion stands in far better spirits than we all probably expected him. The area around the eyepatch is still painfully swollen and bruised but the mustachioed mass murder machine is all smiles underneath his trademark waxed handlebar.]

 

Bronson Box:

I’m a bit out of practice, honestly. Seems like ages since I got to sit down and spread my gospel to you lot. Lets see, shall we? Where to start. The unoriginal outsider has already said his piece, so it’s my turn then?

 

My turn to talk about how Justin Voss puffed on his little cigarettes, showed off all that lovely plumage and told me... well, what an awful girlfriend I have, the obvious news that I suffered a bit of a bruise in my last match and what else... ahh, yes. 

 

His obvious and pathetic lack of understanding as to just what The Blood Diamonds ARE.

 

[Boxer narrows his one good eye.]

 

Bronson Box:

Justin, son. You sit there and compare you and that short bus of Light’s with myself and Edward White? In what way are those two soft in the head ginger idiots and that mentally unstable cartoon Sawyer anything akin to the bright shining hope provided by the flawless cut of The Blood Diamonds?

 

It’s through Edward White’s genius... [pause, grin] painting with the pain, destruction and chaos only I can create. All to cleanse this promotion of the cancer that eats at its soul and impede its growth like a malignant tumor slowly growing, eating, consuming everything it blood touches.

 

[Pause for a twitch of the mustache.]

 

Bronson Box:

The cancer of mediocrity, Justin. Yours, Light’s, Heidi’s, Andrews’. The whole lazy, unoriginal, uninspired, entitled, bloody BORING lot of you. You sit there with the entirety of the vivid pallete of violence this beautiful sport has to offer spread out in front of you and all you can do is sit there and preen and poke and WHINE AND COMPLAIN AND FUSS AND STOMP AND POUT! ... pathetic mewing.

 

Like a child.

 

[Boxer paces like some scowling caged hound. His eyes never leaving the cameras lens.]

 

Bronson Box:

You presumptuous little pup.

 

You think this is what’s on my mind?

 

[In one sudden motion Box plucks the eyepatch from his head. The eye is still swollen shut in a wet red mass of flesh. Somewhere in there is Box’s other beautiful brown peeper, buried like some sort of lost relic under a desert of painfully swollen eye meat.]

 

Bronson Box:

I’ve suffered far worse in my day, boy. Far worse that didn’t happen in a bloody wrestling ring, believe you me. You stand there and poke fun and jest but do you really KNOW pain, boy? No you don’t. You really don’t and you want to know what that tells me? The fact you think this little contusion would be the “in” for your tactfully executed “mind games” there, boy’o?

 

Firstly it tells me you haven’t done your bloody homework. You haven’t the faculties to get in my mind, know me, beat me from the inside out. You reinforce that fact every time you open your craven mouth and pathetically spew your pretentious puffed up self promotion, your lies. You’re more concerned with you than me, that much is obvious. I’ve crawled into your mind and curled like a viper around your bloody brainstem... can you feel me there breathing, Justin?

 

[Bronson laughs after a bit of a pause.]

 

Bronson Box:

A little boy with a big mouth proves himself resilient and thus develops a false sense of entitlement, extra extra! ... I’m going to eat you alive, son. Because that second thing you being an emotionally oblivious little nincompoop tells me is this.

 

[Bronson gets uncomfortably close to the camera.]

 

[Obviously choosing his words carefully.]

 

Bronson Box:

You’re... SCARED, aren’t you Justin? I can feel it radiating off you in waves. Scared you're going to fail. Scared your little charade will be found out and your precious family will see you for the forgettable, lying, painfully typical everyman their husband and father truly is.

 

You see... warriors prepare for battle by searching their souls and developing a deeper understanding of the souls inside the men their about to bloody and cast open. You fuss and preen about like a woman. While I’m practicing dropping bastards on their heads and learning new ways to crank back on a mans neck you’re learning new ways to smoke and developing some cockamamie back story about retribution for your “evil deeds” done in days past.

 

[Box hooks his thumbs under his suspenders and quickly yanks them back over his shoulders.]

 

Bronson Box:

You’re an uninteresting little princess.

 

In a years time I’ll have forgotten your bloody NAME whilst mine will be remembered for ages. The madman. The Wargod. The destroyer.

 

[Cocking his head to the side Box scowls directly into the camera.]

 

Bronson Box:

You lob insults at my female companion. You mock my religion. Tell me, what exactly has changed since you were this reviled villain?  You’re wife and children mocked and trash thrown at their feet when in public all in response to your foul deeds inside the wrestling ring. You, Justin Voss... and I quote “playing the villain.”

 

[Silence.]

 

Bronson Box:

You’ve played the villain, now you play at being some sort of hero... a cruel, spiteful, self involved, chain smoking hero.

 

I don’t play. I AM a bloody villain. Indeed. I might bloody have all my soldiers out there... Virginia, Francis, Edward, the whole lot! I might use my spike and pierce that tanned hide of yours, spill some of that weak Aussie blood on my clean canvas and leave you sprawled out in a pool of your own piss and fluid.

 

Again.

 

[Silent satisfaction.]

 

[Finally.]

 

Bronson Box:

I’ve said this over and over, to you and Light and Andrews and Cancer and Heidi and Boston Bancroft and Eric Dane I’M NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN AND I‘M NOT HERE TO PROVE TO YOU OR ANY BLOODY MAN HOW GOOD I AM! I BLOODY KNOW HOW GOOD I AM, DO YOU HEAR ME YOU PITIFUL LITTLE SOT?!

 

[Settle... settle.]

 

Bronson Box:

I’m a different breed, boy. I’m a giant and you ain’t got no beans. I’m just going to squash you. Crunch. End of fairytale, no reprieve. That’s you. The FIST is just a thing... but to crush a man in front of the whole world? Witness the steam rise from his open wounds and see in every eye true respect develop like a precious seed? That’s a trophy that means something. I have that. I have nothing to prove. Nothing to lose.

 

 

 

 

So I’m simply going to enjoy ripping you to pieces again, lad.

 

 

[Fade.]

 

 

Bronson Box: v/o

Amen.