My name is Carl Mercer.

I never cared about wrestling, but wrestling promotions are corporations like any other - when they’re big enough, that is.  I used to work on budget back in the days of the WfWA, and when the WfWA closed I had a decent resume and I got picked up by Defiance when it went national.  I don’t actually like pro wrestling very much.  I don’t watch the shows, I almost never see a wrestler, and while I’ve seen Eric Dane a few times in the office he’s never spoken to me.  He looked at me once; I hope to never experience that again.

The only wrestler I’ve ever really had a chance to talk to is one named Kai Scott.  And, to be honest, I didn’t ask for the chance, I was ordered to try to hire him by my bosses’ bosses’ boss. It was during that fight between the WfWA and Defiance, I didn’t understand exactly what was going on, but the WfWA guys wanted me to keep him from joining Defiance.

I gave it my best shot.  He said things that made my mind think strange things.  And then nothing happened.  As I understand, he didn’t end up playing much of a role in that one way or another.  

But, rumors fly in an office and pretty soon I had this reputation as some guy who had a connection to Kai Scott. Scott is extremely reclusive when he’s not ‘on’, and for some reason Lance Warner thought I was the guy to ferret him out of wherever he was hiding and do an interview.  All I had was a five year old cellphone number, so I dialed it up without worrying, planning to tell him it was disconnected.

He answered me on the second ring.

Two days later, I was booked on a flight from Mobile to New Orleans.  I have to admit, a fully expenses paid trip to the Big Easy in exchange for talking to a wrestler for a half hour at the most was a pretty sweet deal.  I’ve never had a problem with my employment with DEF.  Although, I don’t associate with the wrestlers often and I’ve never been in the middle of a backstage rampage.

I met up with Kai Scott at a little roadside restaurant called the Camellia Grill.  As it was early  in the morning we ordered breakfast.  I got a waffle, he ordered a mountain of food, and when it came out I envied a wrestler for the first time - not for the job, but for the appetite.  

After we finished eating, I took out my “interviewey machine”.

“How long have you been wrestling?”

Kai sighed and stared off into space.  “Since 1996.”

One of the funny things about Kai is that, depending on how the light hits him, he can look ten years younger or ten years older.  He’s only in his mid 30s.

“The first place I found that wanted me was a promotion in Kentucky.  I won their Television Championship.  Then Jeff Andrews came up from Mexico and we won the tag titles.  Then I broke my knee for the first time.  It was 1998.”

“And that knee’s been giving you trouble ever since?”

“Up until about 2008.  I had some... stuff happen.  Learned to work with it.”

A classic Kai Scott answer.  Give a very vague statement hinting that there’s something much bigger going on in the background that he’s privy to and you’re not.

“Any other singles titles?”

“Only one.  That would’ve been the IWA Heavyweight Championship.  And the funny thing is, I didn’t ‘earn’ that shot.  Previous champion got injured.  Put the title on a ladder and invited the entire friggin’ fed down to try and get that belt.  I played it cool.  Ring full of newbies who’d never get closer to the big belt in their entire careers, they were desperate.  Frantic.  I let them burn themselves out.  One of them, guy named D. Leprechaun, I underestimated him, bad.  We were up top the ladder, he stuck his arm through the ladder and got me in a mandible claw.  That’s this nerve hold where they squeeze a nerve under your tongue.  He was too clever by half, though, I didn’t have to do much to bash his arm against the ladder and break his hold, then I kicked him in the head, knocked him off the ladder and grabbed the belt.”

I don’t know what my face looked like, but he took notice of something.

“Before you say ‘awesome’ or anything, you should know that I tore my knee up so badly climbing that ladder and kicking D.Lep, I ended up vacating it.  Then a month or so later I came out and ripped into the guy who won it next and made out like I was quitting because of him.”

“Why do that?” I asked, feeling stupid, like I should have known.

“Because it doesn’t matter how often you lose as long as you can go back later and claim that you actually won. If you can’t manage that, just get a good excuse.  I decided to refocus myself after that.”

“How so?”

“I decided that real power didn’t come with holding the Big Belt.  It came with being able to decide who held the Big Belt with words alone. I’ve been doing that ever since. It’s just that... two unexpected things happened right next to each other, and suddenly I’m putting down the puppet strings.”

I didn’t say anything, and he continued after a drink of water.

“I was managing a young woman named Claira St. Sure.  You might’ve heard in her, she was a finalist in that tournament that they called DEF2.0.  And she was good.  Really good.  To this date she hasn’t lost to anyone who wasn’t both a former multi-time World Champ and who outweighed her by more than 100 pounds.  Eric Dane doesn’t like her, though.  As soon as the tournament was over, he stuck her in a trios tag team.  I can’t manage someone to the top of the game if the boss is content to let her keep beating up people miles below her level because he just doesn’t want her at the top.”

“Then the other is, I always planned to let Heidi Christenson and Ronnie Long handle the bulk of the workload in the Untouchables trios tag team, and they didn’t.  I wanted the Untouchables to succeed so badly that I stepped up.  Maybe it’s just the five years of inactivity, but I wrestled and I felt pretty good.  Now, you remember what I said earlier about how what actually happened doesn’t matter as long as you can claim you won?”

I nodded.  He smiled.

“I claimed I won and that I was entitled to a World Title shot.  And it worked. I got a contendership match, provoked the guy I was wrestling into getting himself disqualified, and then acted hurt in the medical office until I got the next card off.”

“What I’m telling you, kid, is that I got this upcoming World Title shot, my first shot at a World Title since December 2002, and I got it by talking a good game while doing next to nothing. Not only am I smarter than Python, Alceo Dentari, Edward White and Cancer Jiles, I’m fresher too.”

As Scott said that, the dessert came.  New Orleans style bread pudding.  “There’s enough whiskey in this sauce that I could get a buzz on a second helping” was all Scott had to say until he’d cleaned his bowl, and when he was done, he leaned forward confidentially.

“Lemme tell you somethin’ about that there Alceo Dentari” he said, slurring his words - why, I have no idea, he was clearly fully lucid.  “That thing about beating people.  He’s really convinced he beat The Untouchables.  It should be obvious, to anyone with half a wit, that he didn’t beat The Untouchables, he beat Heidi in a 3 on 1 handicap match and got a set of titles out of it.  Sooner or later he’ll start shooting his mouth off about beating the Untouchables, because when you’re as pitiful as Dentari you’ve got to make a big deal out of every little success that comes your way, and he’ll use it as evidence he’s gonna beat me.  Kid, does Dentari look like someone who could beat me?”

I stammered something about not knowing exactly who Alceo Dentari was.  Like I said, I didn’t actually watch the wrestling.

“Like Python” Scott said, not really listening.  “Dude jumps on the ‘fuck you Heidi’ bandwagon everyone’s been on and um... something something.  I don’t suppose it ever crossed Python’s mind to walk up to her backstage, or even call her on the phone or something, and say ‘hey Heidi let’s talk.’  No, he had to wait and wait and watch her melt down, and then start calling her a coward.  Well, she gave him what he deserved, and getting Beautiful Dreamer’d isn’t real great preparatory work for a ladder match.  Ladders tip.  Let me repeat that for you, Carl.  Ladders. Tip.  That’s how I broke my knee, you know.”

I hadn’t known.  He hadn’t actually said how he broke it.

“Now Edward White.  OK.  Let me put it this way.  You know how Bruce Lee said he does not fear the man who’s practiced ten thousand kicks once, but does fear the man who practiced one kick ten thousand times?  Ed White has one kick that he’s practiced ten thousand times.  It’s called being fuck-off rich. And he will spend money giving himself every available type of convenience.  Outside help, buying off referees, rigging the electronics.  Nicky Corozzo and Jane Katze will interfere.  Bronson Box and his bunch probably will.  And when you get right down to it, Ed’s still got some of The Hobo in him, he’ll scrap if he’s got to.  But money, man - there’s only one way to throw money around.”

Kai had leaned close enough to me that I could smell the bread pudding whiskey sauce on his breath.

“Same thing with our World Champion.  The man who rides on luck, the man who wears the coolest sunglasses in the universe to hide his sleepy red eyes from the world.  Unlike me, Cancer Jiles hasn’t figured out that the more ridiculous a boast is the more believable it is, but he rides that particular train to success anyway.  What he’s never realized is that how successful he is depends on whether the engineer on duty is someone like Eric Dane, who conducts him towards taking the World Title from Jeff Andrews... or like Edward White, who gets him pinned by a backslide from Jeff Andrews.”

“What I’m saying, kid, is take out the conductor and you take out Jiles.  And as it happens, the conductor’s wrestling a girl who wants to torture him, so I probably won’t even have to do that much.”

Dinner over, I turned off the interview device.

As soon as I did, Scott’s usual poise returned to him.

“Nice seeing you again, Mr. Mercer.  Don’t worry about the bill.  Go and enjoy your vacation.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

I didn’t expect him to tell me, but he did.

“I’m going to see if I can make Claira and Diane forgive me for abandoning them.”

If he told me that, though, I assumed it was because he wanted everyone to know it.

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