Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
EST. AUGUST 2016 - TOKYO, JAPAN
Welcome to Death Trip Wrestling. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
More Human Than Human; I.
Topic Started: Apr 3 2018, 08:07 PM (85 Views)
Josh Kennedy

Section One (Off-Camera) – “Can’t Kick Out The Roots”

18th March 2018
Long Beach, California


“And at once I knew I was not magnificent.” – Bon Iver (“Holocene”)

Josh Kennedy approached his Long Beach home slowly from his modest Volkswagen, hobbling up the driveway with a lazy, uneven gait. It was the first time he’d been home in a little over a week, having had a stint in Japan immediately preceding the 7 Days of RSR event. His exhaustion hadn’t let up in the one day between his devastating CWC World Championship loss and his arrival home from St. Louis. The hangover certainly didn’t help, either. A shudder ran through his body as he heavy-handedly slammed the car door shut and his headache flared up again.

“Motherffff-” Josh muttered, clasping his head in his hands, trailing off before he can completely vocalise the profane thought, his long black hair dropping forwards and obscuring his face before he moves it back into place. The bright California sun bore down on his eyes intensely. His pale, scar-addled skin is riddled with angry purple and black welts of bruises and sporadic cuts of varying sizes from battles fought all too-recently, he’d have a few new scars to add to his grisly, involuntary collection soon enough. The dark circles beneath his eyelids betray his lack of sleep. As he’d finally hung his head in defeat that last night in Missouri, the question on everyone lips wasn’t shock at how the mighty Josh Kennedy had finally managed to fall, but rather wonderment at how he was able to even manage limping impotently backstage in the wake of his loss on the final night. The question, as it was asked by everybody who watched his brutal seven-day champion’s gauntlet, was “How is he not dead yet?”

While the question was somewhat hyperbolic, an exaggeration of the physical torture he’d just been through, his performance was a rather large success in and of itself. And this was certainly not the first time he’d asked that exact same question of himself in a far more literal sense than he’d like to admit. Nor was it the first time he felt so rundown and battered that the accumulation of pain had made the alternative seem almost tempting by comparison. It was odd to begin tasting normalcy again, almost enough to distract him from the pangs of guilt and disappointment that still bounced off the inside of his skull like electrons in a vacuum tube. This internal comparison brought a mirthless smile to his face. His mother would have approved. He was more like her than he wanted to admit.

Josh had felt invincible for so long, brought to new heights with his CWC World Championship run. Josh had finally cemented a legacy for himself, his surging ego boosted by his hypomania; he’d felt as though nothing could stop him. But he’d always known - no matter how hard the more delusional parts of his mind attempted to supress it - that his time on top wouldn’t last forever. For better or worse, the shell he’d built around himself had been finally shattered. Unlike many who found themselves in his position, although Josh would take his loss with grace, he wasn’t about to ride away into the sunset. Whatever was next, he was determined to raise the bar he’d set for himself, and nothing less.

It seemed as though it had been decided that Josh’s ruminations on his next step had gone on long enough, however, as the front door to the modern, minimal house opened up, and a small blonde-haired girl rushed towards him.

“Uncle Josh!” She exclaimed, excitedly, flinging herself at him like a human projectile. Josh dropped to one knee, catching her in a large hug before scooping her up in his left arm and unsteadily getting back to his feet.

“Hey, hon.” Josh greeted his niece warmly; trying to suppress a grunt of pain as the impact of Clara colliding with him inflamed many of his fresher wounds.

“You’ve been gone so long, I missed you!” Clara observed, bluntly and joyfully.

“I missed you too, darlin’, but I had a whole lotta work to do.” He responded, his previously joyless smile warming up.

Clara’s cheery, excitable tone of voice switched to something a little more sombre.
“I know, I saw.”

Josh frowned. He rarely allowed her to watch his own matches, the kind of brutality and violence he often displayed wasn’t exactly in line with the example he wanted to set for her. On top of that, the last thing he wanted was for his niece to spend the days he was away from home worrying about Josh’s health when he was the closest thing to a father figure she’d had since birth.

“Sarah said it was ok.” Clara protested, reading her uncle’s disapproving facial expression in an instant, referring to Josh’s roommate, who would often look after Clara when Josh wasn’t around to take care of her himself.

“Sarah shouldn’t be making those decisions.” Josh replied, gently placing Clara back down in the doorway as he stepped inside, but he quickly dropped the subject after making his opinion known, not wanting to start a fight.
“So, what have you been up to while I was gone?”

“I learned a new trick on my skateboard!” she exclaimed, a wide, beaming grin lighting up her face.

“Oh, awesome. Wanna show me later?” He suggested. He used to get just as excited about the very same accomplishment at her age.

“I want to show you now!” Clara said, bolting up the staircase as Josh set his luggage down.

No more than a minute and a half passed before the seven-year-old rushed back down the stairs, skateboard in hand, and charged through the open door.

“Yo, take it easy! Gotta wait on old man Josh.” He called, as Clara skated halfway down the road before stopping to wait for her uncle to catch up to her.

As the wide grin maintained itself on Josh’s face, he decided that a good dose of normality was exactly what he needed. It was about time, at least. He’d spent so long trying to be something bigger than himself and his humble beginnings; maybe it was time to learn how to finally reconcile the two instead of existing as a man of two separate but equal halves at constant war with another. He couldn’t change his nature, but getting back to basics might give him a perspective he’d lost somewhere along the way.




Section Two (On-Camera) – “DNA”

2nd April 2018
Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, Japan


“I got power, poison, pain and joy inside my DNA. I got hustle though, ambition flow inside my DNA… I got dark, I got evil that rot inside my DNA. I got off, I got troublesome heart inside my DNA.” – Kendrick Lamar (“DNA”)


The camera opens on Josh Kennedy leaning over the railing of a balcony that may be familiar to some, that of his house in Japan, a property he’s owned since his days in the independent circuit. It’s in a quiet suburb of Sakura, a modest, minimal place with little exceptional about it aside from the view from the balcony, perhaps. Chiba strikes a distant, imposing cluster of light on the horizon; the bulk of the city of Sakura lies behind him, just visible over his left shoulder, barely more than a vague glow, further obscured by a mountain casting a shadow over the outskirts of the opposite side of the city outskirts. An unlit cigarette hangs from his mouth, his face half-framed in shadow. He looks far more refreshed than when he was last seen in action.

"I never really talked much about my past. Not publicly, anyways. But I’ve been doin’ one hell of a lot of introspection lately, and I figured I could at least give y’all the broad strokes.”

Josh drawls, his Southern accent thick and mumbled, a typical cadence for his on-camera appearances. He takes a lighter out of his pocket, cupping his hand around it to nurture the flame before holding it to the paper and taking a drag. Once again, a typical sight for his on-camera appearances.

“See, I came from nothin’, but not quite in the way you might expect. My mom was a physicist and dad was an architect. I like to think of it in a kinda bullshit flowery way. My mother was cold and rational, scientific, detached, but she could get real explosive. My dad was creative, passionate, had his head in the clouds. There’s one hell of a lot more to it than that, but that’s all I need to give you. Ain’t nobody wantin’ to hear my fuckin’ sob story, and even if any of y’all did, it’d take ‘til sunrise. Suffice it to say shit went south from there. Had a good few years to start with though, I won’t forsake that fact.”

The IJPW Deadly Games Champion flicks a small chunk of ash from his cigarette into the ashtray resting on the ledge just in front of him, casting a pensive glance into the night sky.

“Fundamentally, my family legacy has been one of escape. Cowardice. Runnin’ away from something we can’t deal with one way or another. I wanna change that, I don’t back down for shit. Not now, not ever. Because I’m a man of two halves, both at odds with the other. Bipolar on top of it all, just for that extra inner-struggle. Gotta love it, right? The irony there’s almost fuckin’ poetic.”

“I lost the CWC World Championship on the 17th of March. I know a whole lot of people will wanna paint a picture of me as a broken man. What good’s a champion without his championship? How fundamentally has this loss split me to the core? I can’t lie, it hurt. A lot. Felt like my legacy was ripped right outta my hands before I was done with it. Felt like I didn’t get to walk away on my own terms. But the fact of the matter is I’m far from done yet. Truth is, you can talk all that shit about my state of mind from an outsider’s perspective. It took work. A lot of work, but I got there, and nobody’s gonna take that away from me. When all 11 of you step between those ropes and stand across from me in that ring, you’ll know my head’s in the game. Right where it needs to be. And I don’t have to front to do it neither.”

“Point is, a lotta people in our circles like to put up walls. Me? Well, you ain’t seein’ me standing here makin’ threats and skulking around fuckin’ abandoned theme parks or cemeteries or wherever the fuck tryna be all spooky. There’s more to us than ego. There’s more to what we do than just bein’ the angriest motherfucker out there. I ain’t afraid to wear my heart on my sleeve because I know it don’t diminish my ability to kick the shit outta someone once that bell rings. I don’t need to cultivate the image. I can be real. I can stand here and threaten you and it’ll be just as convincing as it would be if I didn’t show my vulnerabilities, if I pretended I was invincible, some impenetrable fortress. Untouchable. Unbeatable. The truth is fallibility’s hard-coded into my DNA. Just as it is any of yours. Everybody fails. Everybody feels pain. I’m no different. This tournament will take me to my limits and back 11 times over. But here’s the thing, I’ll struggle through every fuckin’ second of it and I’ll still be on my feet by the end. Someway, somehow, the indomitable willpower of the human spirit will keep me fightin’ on.”


Josh raises his left hand, displaying his tattoo on the back of it: an image of a serpent eating its own tail, the mythical Ouroboros.

“And, since we’re talkin’ unbeatable. Let’s talk about what everyone and their fuckin’ dog is here for instead of my abstract fuckin’ ramblings, huh? Kalinda Kriegsdottir. A champion so dominant that she’s beat everyone on the DTW roster that she’s come into contact with. She’s been left to hand select challengers because nobody’s been able to carve their way through to her. Everyone wants that DTW World Championship, and nobody’s had the strength to make it all the way. Not yet, at least. I’m not gonna be presumptuous enough to claim that the first person to do it will be me, that I’m the only guy who can knock the dragon from her perch. But, straight up, there’s a reason Kalinda has the target on her back, there’s a reason everyone wants to be the one to finally do it. To break the barrier she presents. And I’ll be damned if I ain’t gonna give it everything I have in the pursuit of getting there. I kinda been the talk of the town for going up against 8 opponents in 7. My last act as World Champion myself. That’s my record. That’s the bar I’ve set myself to clear. Now, I got 11 opponents in as many nights. And every single one of ‘em’s a deathmatch.”

The Filth Parade co-founder chuckles, shaking his head.

“Don’t think I’ve ever been more in my element than this right in front of me here and now. 11 for 11. Probably a stretch, I’m not expecting a perfect run. But I doubt it’ll take perfection to be able to take my shot. And Kalinda’s my final target when all’s said and done. It won’t be easy. It won’t be perfect. But that’s where I’m aiming. All props to Joe Stanton, reppin’ IJPW, but I got my gold over on that side of the fence for now and I’m pretty fuckin’ happy with it. DTW, though? Well, that World Championship does look mighty fine, and I think people know from back in the OG Slaughterhouse days that I ain’t a stranger to running at the very top of the deathmatch game. Time to pick up that crown again and run with the wolves. Been feelin’ kinda bloodthirsty.”

“TSUDA, Kawamata, O’White, Devereaux, Riddick, Vachon…”


Josh stops to spit onto the pavement below after saying that last name. The gesture seemingly communicating everything he feels the need to about that particular name. The camera shifts to his right arm, the one coated up and down in an artistically gruesome asymmetrical web of scars, lingering on it through the silence. The grisly image displaying the result of his deathmatch with the man who betrayed the Filth Parade, sustained from a coil of barbed wire Josh had wrapped around his arm being yanked across it by a quick-thinking Vachon.

The brutality spoke for itself, and Josh felt no need to address it outright, those who’d seen the grisly classic gorefest knew what it meant. The match that had left both men brutalised and unconscious in pools of their own blood was getting a round two. The fiery glint in his eyes, and the flaring nostrils as he stared down the lens of the camera said it all.

“…Erickson, Kriegsdottir, na Kinai, Sharpe, Acid.” Kennedy resumed the list, each and every one of his opponents in Block B.

“I got at least some level of respect for… well, almost all of you. I know you ain’t here to take this shit lightly. And neither am I. Bring your walls and I’ll be the fuckin’ sledgehammer, show the world we’re humans too. Well, most of us. Give me your best, because each and every one of you will be gettin’ mine. Even if some of y’all don’t even fuckin’ deserve it.”
Edited by Josh Kennedy, Apr 3 2018, 08:09 PM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Enjoy forums? Start your own community for free.
« Previous Topic · Archives · Next Topic »
Add Reply

Theme Designed by McKee91 and Lout of ZNR