What Matters - Global Challenge v Jason Cashe

[Zane]

“Hasn't Zane won a few of these? His confidence must be SUPER high but in that head held high, I test chins.”
-Jason Cashe, “Hello, Mockery #3 GC”

“To answer your statement about confidence with a single word...”

“No.”

---

Synergy, After Losing to Knox.

I walked back through the curtain after losing to a man I'd grown to genuinely dislike over the past year. That loss put me at one and two in the Global Challenge with my only win coming against the only guy who hasn't won. Believe me when I tell you that thought was simmering in the back of my mind while my immediate thoughts of losing to a mouthy cartoon of a wrestler smoldered and intensified in the forefront. I'd be lying if I said that my doctor’s warning wasn’t also echoing right now.

I sure as fuck didn't feel like the guy who held the record for the most Global Challenge victories. Seb had commented that I have a pattern of winning the Global Challenge once every five years. I'd told him that this year would be the year that I broke that pattern. That’s an impossible task now. It also forced me to ask a far more discomforting follow-up question.

Would I even be here in five years?

I honestly didn’t know the answer.

---

Trainer’s Room

Jordan checked my jaw to make sure it hadn't been dislocated by Knox’s version of kneeling a guy in the jaw from a fireman's carry. He called it “Into the Void,” which struck me (get it) as a tad overly dramatic name for what I call “In Cold Blood.” Either way, it's a jaw to the face and it hurts. Taking two of them hurts even more, and puts your lights out. Sure, the guy’s a prick, but he knows how to go when it counts.

“Your jaw’s fine,” Jordan declared, looking at the scan in his hand. “But stop leading with your chin. Everyone here knows that you have an almost impossibly hard head, but that's the wrong way to test it.”

I put my hand on it and immediately regretted it as a shot of pain went up from it into my skull, causing me to involuntarily hiss to express it. I felt an “f-bomb” coming, but my still largely closed mouth muffled it so it came out as muted and slightly incomprehensible. Jordan looked at me, grinning ever so slightly.

“Feel better,” he chided.

I shake my head “no” and let my hand fall back to my side. Jordan finishes checking me, then hands me an ice pack.

“You’ll be fine,” he explains in his slight but still noticeable accent. “Just stop falling off of their shoulders and onto their knees, aye?”

“Ha, ha,” I heard myself say back.

He looked down at the newest scans of my knees, and his face sank faster than the Titanic. They look bad in the same way a Yugo looks bad on a modern highway. He looked up at me with genuine concern on his face.

“How’re the feeling,” he asked.

I shrugged. It’s a gesture I seem to be making a lot lately. “They hurt. Same as always. The ACL barks at me almost constantly. I’ve learned to block it out in the ring. After that, I alternate between the ice bath, the sauna, and Tylenol. I should buy stock in them…”

“Are they why you lost,” he inquires.

“No,” I respond. “I lost because I took two knees to the chin and they turned my lights out. It’s not like I’ve ever relied on speed to win.”

He held the scan up to the lights again, responding with a long headshake and an even longer exhale.

“How does it hold up without the brace,” he follows.

“Fine,” I reply. “Although stairs are a bitch at times, much to the disappointment of some in my household.”

Jordan shoots me a questioning look but doesn’t press it. Being a retired wrestler, he understands how much we value our privacy.

“I appreciate your not pressing me about that remark,” I respond.

He places the scan down and smiles. “I understand how much wrestlers value their privacy.”

His response draws a loud and derision-filled scoff from me. “Some of us anyway. The rest blather it all over Twitter like chatty high-schoolers.”

“I believe it’s called ‘X’ now.”

“It’s a cesspool of people mostly acting like annoying children,” I reply. “It doesn’t matter what it’s called now. It’s a microcosm of our locker room.”

Jordan chuckles and takes the ice pack from me, handing me another one. I place it against my jaw as he drops the used one in the nearby sink.

“It is quite the assortment of personalities,” he replies without turning around. “Having Deimos as our CD is certainly a step I never thought of.”

I smile, wincing despite the instant pain that shoots up my face. “We had a talking penguin with a gun as CD and you think the most gifted stalker in the history of professional wrestling as CD is somehow weird?”

He turns at this remark, smiling. “Touche. I suppose it’s not strange for UGWC.”

“Nothing’s strange. Things don’t get ‘stranger,’ they just get more obnoxious, and more idiotic. Welcome to our new milieu.”

“Meileu.”

It’s impossible to ignore how long he pauses.

“Are you sure he didn’t hit you in the head with a dictionary?”

I look straight at him and respond without thinking. “Fuck you, Jordan.”

He grins like The Joker, which is admittedly more than a bit unnerving.


“I can mark ‘concussion’ off of your checklist,” he says it with an unhealthy abundance of satisfaction.

---

“Hi, Jason.”

“You know, I honestly have nothing for you this week. We have no history. We don’t know each other. Our paths have never crossed. There’s nothing personal about this for me. Don’t take that to mean, though, that this is inconsequential to me, or that it doesn’t matter.”

“It always matters.”

“This week matters for two reasons. I know I can’t finish any better than fourth in this bracket. Either you or Knox is going to win it. The thought of Knox winning my tournament truly disgusts me. The best I can finish is fourth with two wins and two losses if I beat you.”

“At worst Konrad picks up an unlikely win against Ezra this week, I lose to you and he and I end up tied for last.”

“That’d be truly embarrassing.”

“The second reason is that as a three-time winner, it’d reflect badly on the tournament for me to finish with a single win, especially with that win coming against a man who compulsively can’t get out of his own way.”

“I simply can’t allow that.”

“A record of two and two isn’t anything that anyone will glorify in the future, but it’s a damned bit better than one and three and it doesn’t embarrass the tournament. I know my window to win this is closing fast after this one, and while I won’t win it this year, I still have the next two or three years to win my fourth.”

“That goal hasn't changed.”


“In your very first promo for this tournament, you mocked Ezra Wolf by way of asking him how his knee was. You tried that as a threat, just like your comment about how since I had to be holding my head up because of my past in this tournament you’d hit me in the chin.”

“Not only are you, well, wrong concerning how I’m feeling about the Global Challenge at the moment, but have you ever seen a shot of my smile? It’s obvious to anyone who isn’t Stevie Wonder that I’ve been struck in the face with knees more than a few times during my career.”

“Hell, it happened twice at what was the end of my match with Matty boy.”

“By the by, Matt, if you ever think that I’m going to address you as ‘mister,’ then you’re going to be perpetually disappointed because that just ain’t happening. ‘Mister,’ and its multitude of variations, is saved for people I either respect or have to deal with in an official capacity, and you miss inclusion in both categories by a substantial margin.”

“Especially the first one.”

“In case that was too many words for you...”

“Fuck off.”

I clear my throat.

“Sorry about that diversion, Jason. It needed to be said, and I doubt you feel any particular sense of affection toward that cartoon who thinks he’s a real boy.”

I make a marionette gesture with my hands for the next few seconds, making sure to conclude it with the toothiest and most snide grin possible.

‘Toothiest,’ for me, anyway.

You work with what you have, right?

“I have to admit that I don’t really feel much of anything for you. Don’t take that as a de facto sign of disrespect. It isn’t one. It’s just that with winning the tournament out of the picture now, I find it difficult to feel any sort of strong emotions about this match of ours. It’s not personal, and now that the tournament is out of my reach, I have a far more important object to focus on.”

“Hell, you might challenge me for it at ‘Infinity.’ We’ll see.”

I smile, then rub a slight throb of pain out of my jaw. Stay in school, kids. Knees to the jaw hurt.

“You may not consider yourself to be a ‘top tier talent,’ but bad wrestlers generally don’t succeed, let alone survive in UGWC. They get too disheartened and leave after a few setbacks. There are exceptions to this, of course. Some seem to either thrive on the masochism of constant defeat or who are too oblivious about themselves to realize why they’re as miserable as they are. They’re self-destructive and don’t see it, because to them it’s they who are normal.”

“Maybe you’re not one of those people because you came close to dying, or at least that’s the story you’re telling. I would like to think that you’re not spewing bullshit for cheap sympathy, but this is wrestling, and let’s be honest with each other…”

“Most wrestlers are self-absorbed, amoral scumbags.”

“I just lost to one of them.”

“He’s a man so loathsome that his former ‘best friend’ tried to cave his face in.”

“You lambasted Ezra for wanting...I believe you used ‘jonesing’ instead, for attention. That raises one question…”

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Do you live with your head almost permanently stuffed up your ass like Knox does, only emerging when you’re trying to whore for attention, or are you oblivious to the fact that all wrestlers are attention whores? We run around in a ring, most of us in absurd-looking outfits, and hurt each other in front of large audiences in a quest for their approval and adoration.’

I point over my shoulder at my own ring gear and smirk. Black ring shorts with a red stripe down the side of each leg, and black leg boots. Fancy, I know.

“If I recall correctly, you’ve said recently that you want the adoration that comes with being a crowd favorite. That’s never been my game because I’m supernaturally gifted at making people hate me, even if they pretend to feel otherwise. Just ask Lucy and our former World Champion, Sebastian. I seem to live rent-free in their heads because they always have something disparaging to say about me.”

The thought made me smile ever so slightly. When Kast had contacted me about the CoOp Champs promo for our most recent ‘Synergy,’ and I’d watched it, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the pathetic swipe that they took at Montague and me. That’s another lesson, kids…

Let shit go.

“I’ve tried to be the guy who draws cheers,” I explain. “It never works. I have a natural affinity for making people hate me.”

“It’s a gift.”

---

“Can I get a hedgehog, Mr. Zane? PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!!”

I hear Larry inhale. I know what’s coming next.

“They’re so CUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!!!!”

Christ that was loud. And shrill. How does such a thin body produce that shrill sound? It could crack glass.

I took a second to wait for my eyeballs to stop vibrating, then took a short breath, gave myself a gentle slap on the side of the head, and looked at him.

“Why’d you hit yourself in the head?” he asked innocently.

“To stop my ears from ringing,” I reply. “Why is it always everyone else but you who’s in pain when you hit those decibel levels?”

He smiles sweetly in return. Not the kind of sweet that Sloane always did. You know, the sincere kind. That smile is as close as Saint Larry gets to being a smart-ass. Somehow it’s still irritating. I’ve never been able to overcome the cognitive dissonance that that rather odd paradox causes.

“I thought you wanted a dog,” I answer. “A Pointer, or something.”

“I DOOOOOO,” Larry says, smiling as he drags the word out.

“Don’t do that,” I reply. “It’s creepy.”

“Do what?”

“Grit your teeth and then push your lips out when you stretch a word out. It makes you look like someone forgot your daily Thorazine dosage.”

Larry giggled. Larry rarely gut-laughed or even laughed normally. Most of his expressions of humor were protracted periods of hysterical giggling. That too was a bit creepy.

“Oh come on, Gloomy Gus,” he retorts dismissively. “Why can't I have both? You have your doggies, and hedgehogs are so tiny. You'll barely notice them!”

I raise a questioning eyebrow.

“Whenever you tell me that I’ll ‘barely notice’ something, it ends up being very much the opposite. Do you remember what happened the last time you promised me that?”

His eyes look down at the floor. “Yes,” he replies meekly. “I was hoping you’d forgotten...”

I chuckled despite how little it had been funny.

“What happened?”

He drags his toe back and forth in a tiny circle on the floor. “I don’t want to say.”

“Larry...”

He sigh-wimpers, the sound he usually makes when he knows he’s either in trouble or near being there.

“We almost got a guest house,” he answers. “Why are you still mad about that?”

I pause, exhale loudly, and cast a quick glance out of the window.

“Where would it have been built...”

“On the lake,” He replies quietly.

“A little louder for the people in the back…”

He stares at me. “What people in the back?”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“It’s a stupid figure of speech.”

“I didn’t create it.”

“You used it.”

“And you almost had a guest house built out on the lake because some guy in a fancy-looking suit flashed a wad of money and a couple of cute women in your face.”

“Cute,” he replies incredulously. “They were HOT.”

“They were from Kalispel,” I reply.

“And?”

“And,’ what?”

“What’s your point? Or are you just being a dog?”

I shake my head. “I’m not being ‘a dog',” I tell him. “And I don’t consider that comparison insulting. Soup is ‘hot.’ The weather can be ‘hot.’ Fire is ‘hot’.”

“And your point?”

“At best those women were ‘tepid’.”

“Now you’re just hedging,” he answers back. “Speaking of which...”

“Not now, Larry,” I tell him. “Maybe once my match with Cashe is done. We’ll talk about it later.”

“You have YOUR dogs,” he squeals, pointing at my sleeping Shepherds.

“I’ve had mine for years.”

“Now I can get MINE for years!”

“Larry.”

“But it’s not FAIR!”

“I didn’t say ‘no’,” I tell him. “But now is NOT the time. I have one win in this tournament, MY tournament, and it’s against a man with a reputation that’s so tarnished that I could’ve beaten him while fighting with two broken arms and no one would take the win seriously.”

“You wouldn’t cry?” He asks with weird concern in his voice.

“What,” I ask him, genuinely confused. “Cry about what?”

“Your broken arms,” he wails in an impassioned tone.

“My arms aren’t broken,” I explain. “It’s a hypothetical example…”

His face suddenly turns beet red. “Did you just insult Mr. Konrad? He’s always really nice to me!”

“Yes, I did,” I answer tersely. “And he wouldn’t be lately. Stay away from him.”

“Hmph,” he says with a stomp. “First you won’t let me get my dog, then you won’t let me get my own hedgehogs like Ms. Sloane has, and now you’re being mean to Mr. Konrad!! I don’t KNOW you anymore!!! You’re like a flaming hang glider!!”

He storms off, leaving me open-mouthed and dumbfounded in the middle of the kitchen.

“What the fuck just happened?”

Then the other thing he said hit me.

“'Flaming hang glider',”...” I can feel pain beginning to form behind my eyes. “What the hell does that even mean?”

---

“Congratluations on your…nuptials? I guess? Don’t get me wrong, Sloane is a fantastic woman, one of the few genuinely good people in this business. I’m not sure what that says about you, but congrats nonetheless.”

“Speaking of ‘congratulations,’ you had a hard time extending those to Ezra before you faced him because in your words he ‘hadn’t done enough.’ You belittled his accomplishments as inconsequential because he’d only won the Conquest Championship twice, and the Cross-Hemisphere Champion once. Somehow, because he didn’t reach some kind of arbitrary time of possession with them, as if this is a football game and you’re the self-appointed referee.”

“It was bullshit.”

“And it still is.”

“Who the hell are you to decide what matters and what doesn’t? You’re new here. This isn’t your home, you’re not a part of this roster, and you’ve never held any championships here. Are you talented? Sure. Would you be a good addition to the roster if you decided to stay? Definitely.”

“But right now you’re a visitor.”

“A guest.”

“A guy with opinions and just enough air to express them.”

“As I said, I don’t like or dislike you. I have no real opinion of you at all, except that you’re a highly talented wrestler who I could lose my third match to. The return question I have for you is this...”

“Do you know who I am?”

“You belittled Ezra because to you his championship reigns were meaningless. Well, guess what Casheman?”

I hoist the still-bloodied Cross-Hemisphere Championship onto my shoulder.

“I’m the reigning and defending Cross-Hemisphere Champion. I’ve held this championship for two hundred and nine days. On Monday it’ll be two hundred and twelve days. That’s the third longest reign in the history of this championship. Guess who has the second longest reign? I’ll give you a minute to look it up.”

I smile and adjust the championship on my shoulder.

“Me.”

“That one was two hundred and twenty-four days. Now I know you might not consider this one to be legit because I’ve beaten people you probably don’t respect for it. To be quite honest, if that’s your view…”

“I don’t care.”

“There’s only one man who’d had a longer overall time possessing the Cross-Hemisphere Championship, and he’s currently our Creative Director.”

I felt myself bristle at the mere thought of him. I find it ironic that he’s taken over with a desire to take UGWC back to its former “glory days.” To him, that means days when he was important as a talent. He might find those days again, but for now, he’s an old dog trying new tricks while he’s running the kennel.

“Given our history and his jealous obsession with being ‘the’ Cross-Hemisphere Champion, I expect him to pull some kind of shenanigans in the future to take my championship from me because I’m threatening his overall record.”

“But that’s for the future.”

“You’re the present. My present. Unlike Ezra and Konrad…”

“My championship pedigree here is a little harder to impugn.”

I smile.

“I find it more than a little…ironic that you’d swear up and down that titles don’t matter to you. You insist that they’re nothing but…baubles that people get obsessed by, but in a not overly startling act of brazen hypocrisy, you are perfectly happy to castigate others for wanting them.”

“Be careful when talking out of both sides of your mouth like that.”

“It can cause lockjaw.”

Jaw. Ouch. I probably shouldn’t have used that word.

“I’ll be happy to unlock it for you with my knee. It’ll be my way of welcoming you to my company.”

“Unlike your match with Knoxy, it shouldn’t be unexpected.”

---

“I’ve seen worse.”

That comment is sort of comforting. Sort of. In the same way that feeling the wind blow past your face when the bumper nearly hits it is comforting when compared to the alternative. Sure, you didn’t get hit, and that’s great, but it was still close enough to make you pucker.

“Thanks, Doc. I think.”

My dentist gestures by waving his open hand in front of me.

“Don’t talk while I’m working,” he warns. “I might miss my target and accidentally stab you.”

I look up at him to let him know that I don’t find his joke nearly as funny as he does. He doesn’t appear to notice.

“Besides, I can’t understand you with your mouth open like this,” he replies, laughing to himself.

Ha ha. Most people get a boring dentist. I get the guy who thinks he’s George Carlin with a spit sucker.

“Once you’re retired, you should look into replacing the broken teeth,” he continues. “It may not improve your looks much, but certain people in your life will appreciate it more during family photos.”

He pats me on the shoulder.

“Just a joke, Zane. Just a joke from your old family dentist.”

Hello, Mockery.

“The teeth on the side with the bruise from that knee you took look good. No cracks, chips, or other damage, and they’re not loose. Either your head really is as hard as a cinderblock, or that guy who kneed you has bad aim.”

He pauses and puts a hand to his chin. “Or maybe you made him weak-kneed.”

He smiles at me. “Get it? Weak kneed?”

I try to fake a smile, only for him to instantly chastise me. “Don’t smile when my hands are in your mouth.”

Then stop trying to be funny so I don’t have to pretend to laugh out of politeness. He scrapes and sprayes, then places the sucker tube in my mouth.

“Pretend the tube is the other you place great significance on.”

I look up at him, but this time I stay still, earning a smile from him.

“Thank you for sitting still. I’m almost done.”

We sit for a few more minutes in silence and he finishes cleaning up, placing his tools down.

“I’ve fixed what needed fixing. Try not to kiss the mat with your chin next time.”

I roll my eyes. “Sure, Doc, because that’s always my plan for when I have to kiss the mat.”

“It’s a bad plan, and you should stop. Are you thinking about retiring? If so, you should make plans to have the broken teeth fixed afterward.”

“Doc,” I respond, a bit exasperated. “Do you physicians have a stock list of comments, or did you meet my physician at a group meeting somewhere?”

Unfortunately for me, he noticed my wince.

“Talk less,” he responds. “That’s going to be a bit sore for a few hours today. I put in a prescription for a topical in case it doesn’t stop after today.”

I nod my thanks. He nods back.

“Have a great day, and take it easy on your teeth.”

I leave the office and step out into the parking lot to see Larry waiting for me, leaning against his car. He sees me and waves, giggling to himself a bit as he sees my eyes settle on his car.

His pink and purple Cooper Mini.

---

“I have one last question for you, Jason.”

“How would your...wife...bff...whatever Sloane is, react if you win the Challenge, win a championship here afterward...”

“And then trash it?”

“Whether you pawn it or junk it, you're still treating a championship from the company that she began in and that she's a former World Champion of with profound disrespect.”

“From a certain point of view, you're disrespecting her.”

I pause as I feel a sneeze coming on. Thankfully it never materializes.

“Is that what you want to do? Is that the trail you want to blaze now that you suddenly want to stay here now that the UGWC fans have grabbed you by the ego? I think that Sloane would certainly understand the intoxicating effect that mass adoration, and in some cases worship, can have on a person.”

“It’s fun to know that the great Jason Cashe isn’t immune from that.”

“I also know that Sloane would find the profound disrespect and disdain that you’ve spoken of treating UGWC with to be deeply offensive. Even if it’s an act that doesn’t make it better. I think that’d make you look worse.

I wave dismissively as I remember Cashe’s false humility.

“We all know, you’re not a good wrestler, you seem to never tire of reminding us of this.”

“I think it’s an act. A facade.”

“Sloane wouldn’t date a schmuck. I know she’s not a shallow woman, but a lady with ambitions such as hers, and the talents that she has wouldn’t waste her time with a self-professed loser. Let’s be realistic here. You don’t have to be the greatest mat technician or the greatest mind in wrestling to keep her happy. She had a great mat technician with money and power and, well… that didn’t end well.”

“And yes, I understand that this ‘marriage’ is due to some nonsense in Vegas. It could all be some joke between you and Knox, although I doubt that Sloane would take part in such disrespectful absurdity.”

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I took it out and looked at the message, which caused my eyebrows to shoot up.

“Oof. Sorry, Jason. Gotta run or I’m going to be in a bad spot long before I ever see you on Monday.”

“I appreciate your understanding.”

The couch was looking like more of a possibility if I didn’t get moving.