Post by 🏴Jamie Blankenship 🏴 on Oct 11, 2022 0:48:48 GMT -5
This whole intro thing begins very cliche’. There’s no imagery, just families at home watching a black television screen, as an unfamiliar voice -that is simultaneously accented with a rusty midwestern nasal force, and a slow southern drawl- creeps through television speakers across the globe:
“I wonder what it would feel like to be just like them. Willing and ready to climb into whatever cute boxes the masters have carved up for us:
You’re only a fast paced attraction, Jamie!
You’re going to make big money by taking big crazy risks, and getting injured.
No one wants to see you in the ring otherwise.”
“You’re a circus act wrestler. You need to lean into it!
They all have so much advice to ‘lend’. Their brittle and longing hands shaking in anticipation of whittling away some design, some logo for your box. Something that people can see and identify with immediately, like a dose of meme on social media, some feeling of instant gratification that people need. Because people are too afraid to open the box. They never want to look inside for themselves and see. No, they have to be told what you are, they have to be told who Jamie Blankenship is, and he better fit into one of these main, played out archetypes of the wrestling industry or else:
he’s. never. going. to. make. it!”
“Well, hallelujah to that! “
“Haven’t we all seen enough of what ‘making it’ looks like these days? Mindlessly smug, cloud-programmed professional athletes, so consumed with self image that they’re all suddenly the most beautiful people on earth. Keeping the plastic surgeons rolling in dough with their destructive body dysmorphia. And for what? A handful of interactions on Twitter? To chop away at their own souls so they can fit into the masters box? They’ll plaster their faces on every billboard, and wrestling program, every pay-per-view poster and 50 dollar t-shirt on earth, for every set of eyes who loves, and gets lost in this sport to see. They will have millions the world over looking directly at them, but never know who they’re actually looking at. That’s when you’ve ‘made it’ in this industry. After you’ve climbed in that box, slit enough throats and spilled enough blood in sacrifice for power and image. That’s when the masters give you the green light.
People like me, who won’t participate in their little plans, we’re just freaks. Radicals. Extremists. More colorful worded boxes and labels that mean absolutely nothing. We’re rookies. Fresh meat. Scum. About 90 percent of us who make an earnest, good hearted attempt at finding a career in professional wrestling never ‘make it’. Instead we get used up by the system. They condemn us in public, but behind the curtain, they lead us like bunnies headed for an Easter slaughter, chasing an imaginary carrot. They need us to build their stars. To keep the bloodthirsty cogs of their machines turning. “
“I don’t show my face now because I’m not one of them.
Because this isn’t about the man you see with your eyes.
This isn’t about the image or the box they want to package me up in and sell to you. “
“This is about the man you don’t see, and the countless others just like me- who’ve been exploited, raped and murdered by the brass plated megalomaniacs of this industry. But can you take my word for it? All of these action figures who dance around on your televisions in the main event cards of OCW? They all know it’s true. They’re all willful participants. Here they have the power to speak out, and won’t…”
“People like my dear friend Harmony physically cannot speak, and yet if he could, his roar would shake the foundation of these injustices. Leaving those culpable in this capricious race for power trembling.”
People always waste their words.
A curtain pulls back from the image. A large black cloth flipping down, dragging across a dirt ground, and tying around the waist of some dirty black jeans. The man turns to face the camera, an indistinctive dusk setting behind him. We get a good look at his face, it’s worn with an almost uneasy stoicism.
“Do you understand why I had nothing to say before, or after my match against Helena Handbasket?”
We now recognize the man fully as Jamie Blankenship. The OCW rookie who made his debut back in August. As mysteriously as Jamie made his debut back then, he would go on to vanish after suffering a defeat to the plucky Helena Handbasket.
His face is flat. His tone sturdy and vibrating with a quiet sureness of strength.
“Because I was blacklisted before I ever stepped foot in the ring. They know I won’t spare words and take them for granted. They know I don’t fit into any of their boxes. And they’re scared to death that I’ll show the world where I’m standing- - - “
Just as the camera was pulling back to show Jamie’s full background, the screen fills with snow and static as the feed is abruptly cut and replaced with dead-air and a generic OCW logo.
“I wonder what it would feel like to be just like them. Willing and ready to climb into whatever cute boxes the masters have carved up for us:
You’re only a fast paced attraction, Jamie!
You’re going to make big money by taking big crazy risks, and getting injured.
No one wants to see you in the ring otherwise.”
“You’re a circus act wrestler. You need to lean into it!
They all have so much advice to ‘lend’. Their brittle and longing hands shaking in anticipation of whittling away some design, some logo for your box. Something that people can see and identify with immediately, like a dose of meme on social media, some feeling of instant gratification that people need. Because people are too afraid to open the box. They never want to look inside for themselves and see. No, they have to be told what you are, they have to be told who Jamie Blankenship is, and he better fit into one of these main, played out archetypes of the wrestling industry or else:
he’s. never. going. to. make. it!”
“Well, hallelujah to that! “
“Haven’t we all seen enough of what ‘making it’ looks like these days? Mindlessly smug, cloud-programmed professional athletes, so consumed with self image that they’re all suddenly the most beautiful people on earth. Keeping the plastic surgeons rolling in dough with their destructive body dysmorphia. And for what? A handful of interactions on Twitter? To chop away at their own souls so they can fit into the masters box? They’ll plaster their faces on every billboard, and wrestling program, every pay-per-view poster and 50 dollar t-shirt on earth, for every set of eyes who loves, and gets lost in this sport to see. They will have millions the world over looking directly at them, but never know who they’re actually looking at. That’s when you’ve ‘made it’ in this industry. After you’ve climbed in that box, slit enough throats and spilled enough blood in sacrifice for power and image. That’s when the masters give you the green light.
People like me, who won’t participate in their little plans, we’re just freaks. Radicals. Extremists. More colorful worded boxes and labels that mean absolutely nothing. We’re rookies. Fresh meat. Scum. About 90 percent of us who make an earnest, good hearted attempt at finding a career in professional wrestling never ‘make it’. Instead we get used up by the system. They condemn us in public, but behind the curtain, they lead us like bunnies headed for an Easter slaughter, chasing an imaginary carrot. They need us to build their stars. To keep the bloodthirsty cogs of their machines turning. “
“I don’t show my face now because I’m not one of them.
Because this isn’t about the man you see with your eyes.
This isn’t about the image or the box they want to package me up in and sell to you. “
“This is about the man you don’t see, and the countless others just like me- who’ve been exploited, raped and murdered by the brass plated megalomaniacs of this industry. But can you take my word for it? All of these action figures who dance around on your televisions in the main event cards of OCW? They all know it’s true. They’re all willful participants. Here they have the power to speak out, and won’t…”
“People like my dear friend Harmony physically cannot speak, and yet if he could, his roar would shake the foundation of these injustices. Leaving those culpable in this capricious race for power trembling.”
People always waste their words.
A curtain pulls back from the image. A large black cloth flipping down, dragging across a dirt ground, and tying around the waist of some dirty black jeans. The man turns to face the camera, an indistinctive dusk setting behind him. We get a good look at his face, it’s worn with an almost uneasy stoicism.
“Do you understand why I had nothing to say before, or after my match against Helena Handbasket?”
We now recognize the man fully as Jamie Blankenship. The OCW rookie who made his debut back in August. As mysteriously as Jamie made his debut back then, he would go on to vanish after suffering a defeat to the plucky Helena Handbasket.
His face is flat. His tone sturdy and vibrating with a quiet sureness of strength.
“Because I was blacklisted before I ever stepped foot in the ring. They know I won’t spare words and take them for granted. They know I don’t fit into any of their boxes. And they’re scared to death that I’ll show the world where I’m standing- - - “
Just as the camera was pulling back to show Jamie’s full background, the screen fills with snow and static as the feed is abruptly cut and replaced with dead-air and a generic OCW logo.