The End Is the Beginning Is the End

[Johnny Karma]

Sometime in the mid-90s, Queens NYC

Somewhere in the suburbs of Hillcrest, we see a family sat in their living room, with a young son lying on his belly as he stares transfixed by the episode of Taz-Mania on TV as his father sits on the couch sipping a cup of chicory watching his son, and in the doorway the mother watches the son like a hawk, clearly finding the content of the show he’s watching to be at least 37% less wholesome than she would appreciate as she frets that it may warp her son’s fragile little mind

All of a sudden this scene of suburban quote-unquote bliss is interrupted by a knock at the door, which leads to the father placing down his cup as he gets off the couch to answer the knock, as the mother continues to watch in a hawk-like manner in case any of this family of cartoon Tasmanian devils swears or does drugs

After a moment, the father reappears in the living room and squats down near his son

Father: There’s a visitor for you John.

Peeling his eyes away from the screen for a moment, the boy looks at his father for a moment – and then looks behind him to see the person stood in the hallway, at which point he springs to his feet and runs towards the person as fast as his little legs can carry him, throwing his entire body towards the person to bearhug their legs

Grandpa!

Grandpa: Heeeey there, Johnny-boy, you’ve gotten a little bigger since I last saw you!

Mom does say I’ve been eating a lot!

Mother: I said no such thing!

Grandpa: I’m sure what Johnny-boy meant to say was you’ve helped him grow up big and strong, isn’t that right Johnny-boy?

The child enthusiastically nods, seemingly satisfying his mother – while earning a surreptitious wink from his grandfather

Father: So, dad, about this wrestling show you’re headed to…?

Mother: Wrestling show??? This is the first I’ve heard of it!

Grandpa: Now, now, it’ll be fine. It’s an afternoon show, so the rowdy element won’t be there.

Mother: But he might see people drinking, or hear foul language – and you and I both know those physiques can’t be achieved by just going to the gym!

Father: Come on, you’re being a touch irrational. I doubt any of the wrestlers will be pressuring John to use steroids…

As the parental conversation continues, the son leans towards his grandfather and whispers a pertinent question

What are steroids, Grandpa?

Grandpa: Something that only someone too lazy to do the hard work would use. You’re not a cheat, are you Johnny-boy?

The child shakes his head in agreement

Grandpa: Then I think you’ll turn out alright.

10th December 2016, Boston MA

Fresh from finally unleashing the months of built-up frustration by giving finally showing Johnny Cannon that he would not just lie down no matter how many times the New Kings attacked him, a relieved-looking Johnny Karma enters his locker room once more and he genuinely looks as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders

Yet as he re-enters his locker room, Cherry Baum is somewhat apprehensive about Karma’s new-found exuberance

Are you sure that’s what you wanted?

Karma takes a moment to think about the question, to the point he takes a seat and invites Cherry to do likewise, although with all the adrenaline swimming around Karma’s bloodstream right now he is being careful to not bounce off the walls

If you asked me a month ago if I should be sinking to Cannon’s level and just taking the mamzer to the woodshed I’d have agreed with you and said that the only way to deal with the way he’s been acting for the past few months is to soundly defeat him in the ring and prove that his bark’s much bigger than his beytsim.

…however that was a month ago, and since then he’s been going out of his way to hunt down anyone he can find and put them on the shelf, just as he was doing a year ago, and it was time that somebody stepped in – and that’s when I was reminded of something: last time he was “headhunting” as he liked to call it, I was the guy who stood up and said enough was enough, and when it came to having the settle the issue I did more than enough to settle the issue because not only did I show I could take what he threw at me, I proved that I could defeat him. And for a time I thought that he’d have learned from that, but the takeaway that he had was that him and Goodrich wasn’t enough to finish the job so he needed some numbers backing him up.

Adjusting where he sits, Karma makes sure he’s thinking extra carefully about what he’s going to say next

I thought that Cannon would have got the message, that there’s only so much time before his actions have consequences, and that he would learn that somebody would stand up to him and put him down. Instead he recruits Carmine and Diamond because, in his mind, he’d be able to act like this was the Old West and he could get his way by being the meanest, dirtiest Ben kalbah for a hundred miles in any direction for much longer if there was three rather than one, not just tripling the time he could get away with it but by having people to watch his back and stretch the time even more. That makes Cannon a repeat offender, someone clearly not looking to change his ways, so if he didn’t learn his way after I proved I could beat him my way…

Unable to think of any other body movement, Karma shrugs

…I guess he needed to learn that I could beat him his way, by attacking him when he least expected it and not stopping until he couldn’t get back up.

I mean, did I like having to do things his way? No, I really didn’t – but I’m not going to lie and say I hated the results, because I have given so much and received so little that something had to change, and to be honest I’m sure that my Twitter’ll be exploding right now saying that I should have done what I did a couple of months ago.

Sometime in the mid-90s, Queens NYC

A few hours removed from the scene we saw earlier, we catch up with the boy – who if you haven’t figured out by now is a young Johnny Karma there’s something wrong with you – and his grandfather as they take their seats at an arena

Grandpa: How do you like the seats Johnny-boy?

They’re pretty good, although I can’t see when the man in front of me jumps up and down.

Hearing this, and as there’s a convenient lull in the action he can be heard above the crowd, Karma’s grandfather taps the man in front on the shoulder, and is immediately met with an expression that combines contempt and disgust

Grandpa: Excuse me, I was wondering if you could stop jumping up?[/font]

The other fan looks at Karma’s grandfather like he’s a bug that splattered on his car windshield

Grandpa: It’s just my grandson is here, and it’s his first show…

Asshole Fan: Piss off, Gramps.

The other fan turns his back on Karma’s grandfather and starts hollering obnoxiously – even though the only action in the ring at this moment in time is a ring attendant wiping down the ring ropes before the next match

Karma’s grandfather looks towards Karma, who looks hurt that someone would be so rude to his grandfather just because he asked them such a reasonable question, something which hurts his grandfather just as much – but luckily, Grandpa has an idea…

Grandpa: I know a way you can get the best view in this entire row.

Really? How?

Karma’s grandfather gets out of his seat and manoeuvres himself in what little space he has so he’s crouching down, offering Karma the chance to climb onto his shoulders

Are you sure? I might be heavy.

Grandpa: It’s okay, Johnny-boy, I’ve carried much heavier things!

The young Karma climbs onto his grandfather’s shoulders and holds on tight as his grandfather manoeuvres so the pair have a good view of the ring – and at the exact moment the pair are looking at the ring, the entrance music of one of the show’s headliners starts, and the pair loudly cheer

16th December 2016, Queens NYC

A couple of decades after their encounter with the obnoxious asshat, Johnny Karma is back at the same arena, one which looks an awful lot like the Carnesecca Arena – but this time it is not as a paying fan, instead he is stood inside the empty arena, with the bleachers folded away and due to the arena being empty there’s an echo to his voice as he speaks

As the end of the year starts to get a whole lot closer than you realised you find yourself looking back and remembering some of the things that happened – and, believe me, 2016 is a year that not many people want to remember, as we started off by losing David Bowie and ended up gaining President Trump.

Looking away from the bigger picture, you also start looking at things you did and things you wish you did better, and I’ve been doing a whole lot of that lately. For example, this year I actually got to walk out in front of my hometown in this very arena, a place I could literally walk from my front door to the dressing room without even breaking a sweat. That’s something that means a lot, because while there’s times you might appear in bigger arenas in front of bigger crowds, there’s something different in the atmosphere that comes when you’re in front of your crowd.

Something else I did was win a championship, lifting the Pride Championship for a second time, and given how long it was since I last held a title it felt good to remind myself as much as other people that I have it in me to deliver in the big matches.

Yeah there’s a few things that could have gone better, there always is, for example I came so close to winning the Frontier Lions Cup but not close enough, but I can still be proud of what I accomplished.

Pausing for a second, Karma exhales – and a faint cloud of condensation can be seen as he does so

But then there’s the things you look back on and wonder how the hell they happened the way they did, and that’s where the New Kings come into the conversation.

I look back and wonder why the hell they thought I was the perfect target for them to make a name for themselves, I look back and wish maybe I could have been more proactive in gaining support to turn them back much sooner, I look back and wonder why I allowed myself to be victimised so often in beatdowns after matches or during the Gold Rush Rumble, and I look back and wonder why it took me so long to get that first taste of victory against them. Those are things that are always going to nag at my subconscious, because while I have answers now I didn’t have them then – and some of that is my fault.

Thinking about it now, what gets me is that I allowed everything that was going on to derail my momentum, because one moment I was lifting the Pride Championship, the next I found myself in a loop of trying to stop the New Kings that meant I wasn’t moving forward – and that loop just seemed to keep twisting around and around on itself to the point I didn’t know if I was any closer to the end. Yet with all this going on I learned that, sometimes, it doesn’t matter because something greater comes along and throws you for a loop – and that’s something else I’ll remember about this kusemek of a year, losing someone so close to me…and having that followed by having that loss used as a weapon to beat me over the head with.

Pausing for a moment, Karma collects his thought, letting out another sigh

There’s days I wonder if one of Cannon, Carmine, or Rother look in the mirror and ask themselves “What the hell is wrong with you?” but, to be honest, I doubt any of them think they’ve done anything wrong – and that’s the problem with each and every one of them, they think it’s a joke to them. Well let me remind them of the time I was seen as a “joke” by more than a few people on the roster: rather than shrug it off and carry on as I was carrying on, or make myself look a deluded fool by talking a good game and utterly failing to back it up, I stepped into a steel cage to prove to Kevin Hardaway and anyone else who wanted to look past me that I am not going to take something like that lying down – and I proved it, because I walked out victorious, and that should have changed a few minds.

This is what the New Kings never seemed to get, the fact that I was the one guy who thwarted their plans. Earlier in the year I called out Cannon on his behaviour and we settled it in the ring, and I beat him. I challenged Carmine for the Pride Championship, and not only did I beat him for the belt but I beat him in the rematch to keep the title out of the New King’s hands. I kept the entire group out of the Frontier Lions Cup by defeating Danny Diamond in my qualifier. For someone wishing they did a lot of things differently, that’s a lot of things he did pretty damn right.

So now it comes down to a battle in my home state, as the Usual Suspects have to find themselves a third to face off against me, against Cordy Stevenson, and against Dom Harter – and the reason they need a third is because after so long thinking they had things going their way, suddenly their numbers are a lot smaller than they were. So whether this means Cannon is medically cleared to compete after feeling what it’s like to get beaten on, whether Carmine is cleared from that infestation of warts around his schmeckle, or whether they can find whichever gas station bathroom they left Diamond in, now it’s the New Kings’ turn to feel overwhelmed, and I’m looking forward to it - because I want this to end, as it needs to end, and having been there from the start I need to be there to end it once and for all so as midnight is approaching on the 31st I can look back and say, yeah the year sucked, but at least I did something that guarantees that 2017 won’t be so awful.

18th December 2016, Coney Island NYC

Sitting on a bench on the Coney Island boardwalk, Karma looks out towards the sea while Cherry tries her best to shield her eyes from the sun and stop the wind turning her hair into some Lovecraftian horror, and in the brief moment she manages to not be blinded she turns towards Karma

Have you thought about what you’re going to do after this? Not this, I mean, but when Final Frontier is done and the New Kings are a memory, what are you thinking about?

As he considers his answer, Karma slowly turns towards Cherry

Honestly, I’m not 100% sure. I’ve got a few ideas, of course I do, but I’m wondering what it would feel like if I do put a few dozen nails in their coffin. Will I feel like I can take on the world, or will I feel…less, because something which has been defining me for so long will be taken away and there’s nothing to replace it? I can’t say one way or the other, and that’s going to say a lot about how things pan out moving forward.

A slightly bemused Cherry picks up on his comment

Okay…say you send them down the river, and you feel like King Kong crossed with Superman, set your sights high, what’s the goal you have?

If that’s how I feel, I guess I’d be doing the same thing I do every night, Cherry – try to take over the world!

Sensing his obvious teasing, Cherry smiles – but even through her smile, she can’t quite let the question go

Seriously, though, what are you thinking about?

As Karma prepares to answer, he places his hand on top of Cherry’s, and the two look out towards the sea – but before Karma answers…

Sometime in the mid-90s, Queens NYC

Having got back from the wrestling show, Karma’s grandfather is carrying the young Karma up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire as Karma is all tuckered out, and although the last few stairs are a struggle he soldiers through to silently open Karma’s bedroom door and carry his grandson to bed, resting him on his duvet – and just as he turns to leave, the young Karma stirs

What…time is it?

Grandpa: It’s a little bit after your bedtime, Johnny-boy, but I got you home safe and sound.

The young Karma yawns

I love you Grandpa.

His grandfather kisses the young Karma on the top of his head

Grandpa: I love you too, Johnny-boy.

As Karma settles down in his bed, his grandfather turns and leaves the room, and as he leaves the room he turns back to wave, and is met with a sleepy wave from the young Karma as he heads for the land of dreams