We open with a shot of a suburban backyard. In the center of the patchy grass stands a trampoline. Off to one side, a kiddie pool holds four inches of a brown liquid that nobody will identify. A hardware store bag of thumbtacks sits open on a patio table next to a ladder borrowed from the garage. Two teenagers perch on a cooler with a phone on a tripod, livestreaming to nine viewers. Somewhere, a dog barks.
Into this arena walks Dirty Dragón, in full mask and gear, the way a king walks into a peasant village. He surveys it all. He is appalled. He has also decided that he is being extraordinarily generous simply by standing here.
A skinny sixteen-year-old wearing a homemade cardboard championship belt sprints over, star-struck. „Oh my god. Oh my GOD. You actually came. I did not think you would actually come,“ he says, vibrating. „I’m Tyler. This is my show, Backyard Alliance Wrestling League. We run it every Saturday, unless my mom needs the yard.“
„So… BAWL? I should,“ Dragón says and puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder with tremendous condescension. „I have come to study, Tyler. In about a week, I enter a tournament full of men who hurt themselves for fun. Lunatics who feel no fear and no pain. And I asked myself, where do such broken, simple creatures come from?“ he gestures at the yard. „And the answer is here, Tyler. A backyard. Behind a sea of Honda Civics. This is the swamp where the monsters are born. So I have come to observe the swamp. You are welcome.“
„That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,“ Tyler breathes.
Dragón begins his royal tour. He signs an autograph on a folding chair that nobody offered him. He signs another across the surface of the kiddie pool. He stops a passing teenager and signs that teenager, on the forehead, without being asked. „You are welcome,“ he tells each of them.
He looks at the trampoline from some distance. „I see you are running a No Ropes match tonight. Very hardcore.“
Tyler chimes in. „Yeah well we can’t afford the ropes just yet.“ Dragón just nods.
He reaches the patio table and picks up a single thumbtack between two fingers, examining it the way a jeweler examines a diamond.
„This,“ he announces to the livestream, „is the problem with all of you. You reach for the tacks. The ladders. The swimming pool of whatever that is. You have decided that hurting yourself is the same thing as being good.“
He drops the tack. „It is not. A real genius never bleeds if he can help it. Watch, and learn. This is a free master class. Normally I charge a great deal.“
He climbs gingerly onto the trampoline. It wobbles. He performs the single safest maneuver in the history of the sport, a gentle headlock applied to the open air, and dismounts immediately.
„You see? Movement. Positioning. Not dying. THIS is wrestling. Take notes, muchachos.“
The two commentators applaud wildly. Tyler is near tears. Not one of them understands that they are being insulted, which somehow makes Dragón angrier than if they did.
„Now,“ he says, clapping his hands together, suddenly all business. „Tyler. I am also here on business. I need a weapon for my tournament. Somebody stupid and fearless that I can point at my enemies and hide behind. Do you have anybody like that?“
Tyler’s entire face lights up. „Do I?! GET JOE. SOMEBODY GO GET JOE.“
There is a scraping sound from behind the shed. Slowly, something rises. A young man, maybe nineteen, shirtless, covered in what is either paint or bruises or both, an actual metal trash can lid strapped to one forearm as a shield. He crosses the yard with the calm of a person who has never once in his life been afraid, and stops directly in front of Dragón.
„This is Joe Garbage,“ Tyler says proudly. „He is our World Heavyweight Hardcore Ultraviolent Champion of the World, recently defeating Flimsy Steve for the vacant title. He has never tapped out. He has never even said ow, as far as I know.“
Dragón looks Joe Garbage up and down, intrigued in spite of himself. „Interesting. Joe. Tell me. Do you feel pain?“
Joe Garbage considers the question for a very long time. Then, without breaking eye contact, he reaches up, pulls a thumbtack out of his own forehead, one that has clearly been living there for a while, and holds it out to Dragón as a gift.
Dragón recoils so hard he nearly falls off the patio.
„…No. No. Absolutely not,“ he backs away, hands raised. „I have made a terrible mistake. This one cannot be controlled. This one does not fear death, which means he does not fear ME, which makes him completely useless to me,“ he points at Joe with genuine alarm.
„THIS is what I am walking into at Lockdown. Seven of these. Madre de Dios.“
Joe Garbage, still holding the thumbtack out, has not moved a muscle.
Tyler, sensing the meeting slipping away, plays his final card. „Wait, wait, before you go. We wanted to give you something. For coming.“
He nods, and a commentator hurries over carrying, on a couch pillow held like a velvet cushion, a hubcap. It has been spray-painted gold. A label maker has printed BAWL HONORARY WORLD CHAMPEEON and stuck the strip across the middle.
„We want to make you an honorary champion of BAWL,“ Tyler says solemnly. „It is the highest honor we have.“
Dragón opens his mouth, surely to refuse. This is beneath him. This is a hubcap. He is royalty. He is a serious and prestigious man.
He looks at the hubcap. It’s round. It’s gold. It says CHAMPION… Well, something close to it.
Something deep in Dirty Dragón’s brain, the part that has never once been able to say no to a title of any shape, quietly overrides every other system. His hand drifts toward it. He catches himself. It drifts again.
„…It would be rude to refuse,“ he says softly, and takes the hubcap, cradling it against his chest. „For the culture. I accept, on behalf of the fans. Do not make it weird.“
He slings the spray-painted hubcap over his shoulder and turns to leave with as much dignity as a man carrying a car part can possibly muster.
„Thank you for the swamp, Tyler. It has been very… Educational.“
He exits. Joe Garbage watches him go, and then, slowly, carefully, puts the thumbtack back into his own forehead for safekeeping.
The scene goes static for a few seconds. When it comes back, Dirty Dragón sits somewhere clean and quiet now, the spray-painted hubcap resting on one knee. He has not put it down. He looks into the camera.
„I went to a backyard today, muchachos, and I learned something very important about all of you.“
He lifts the hubcap. „Not from this. From this I learned nothing, except that I look good holding anything gold,“ he proclaims and sets it aside gently. „No. Today I learned exactly what it is I am about to fight.“
He leans forward.
„At the first episode of AWS Lockdown, we’re holding the King of the Deathmatch tournament. I do not know yet exactly where they have placed me in the bracket, or who they put in front of me first. I’ll learn that on Ward, in the end. But I want to be honest with you, amigos. I do not care even a little bit. Because my plan does not change based on a name. It does not change based on whatever number they write next to me. It is the same plan in the first round, in the last round, and in every round in between.“
A slow smile forms on his face.
„You see, I met the future today. His name is Joe Garbage. A pseudonym, I presume. He pulled a thumbtack out of his own skull and tried to hand it to me like a little flower. THAT is who fills these tournaments. Men who do not feel pain. Men who do not fear death. And every single one of them believes that makes him dangerous.“
He shakes his head slowly. „It makes them predictable. A man who is not afraid to die will always, always run straight at the fire. And all I have to do, muchachos, is never be standing where the fire lands.“
He picks the hubcap back up, absently, because he cannot help himself.
„A tournament is just the seeding match again, only longer. More rounds. More chances for the tough guys to get carried out on a stretcher. Every one of them has to win deathmatch after deathmatch to lift that trophy. They have to survive the fire three times. And me? I only have to be the last man still standing at the end of each one. And I am very, very good at still standing, because I am never in the part of the room where people fall down.“
„But do not misunderstand me, muchachos. I am not just going to survive,“ he raises a finger for a second, making his point. „A genius does not leave his masterpiece to luck. In a deathmatch, they hand you a room full of weapons and they expect you to trade with me, blow for blow, tough guy for tough guy. I do not trade. I make the whole match happen on my terms. I stall. I run. I hide under the ring until my opponent gets so frustrated, so desperate to hurt me, that he starts making mistakes. He reaches for the big weapon too early. He climbs too high. He swings so hard that when he misses, and he will miss, he does all my work for me,“ he taps on his chest.
„Every deathmatch animal has the same flaw, amigos. They want the violence so badly they cannot be patient enough to earn it. So I let them tire themselves out swinging at air, and when they are spent, and bleeding, and slow? THAT is when Dirty Dragón goes to work. A little something for the eyes. A loaded elbow. Goodnight,“ he blows a kiss.
„And I have read the rules, of course. I always read the rules. Eight men. Three rounds. First round, semifinal, final. Every one of them looks at that bracket and sees three deathmatches they have to win. Three wars. Three chances to lose an eye or a vital organ. I look at that same bracket and I see three opponents who are going to beat themselves, if I am only patient enough to let them. Because in a tournament like this, the smart man does not have to be the best in the building. He just has to be the one still standing at the end, with all of his blood still on the inside.“
He stands.
„So pull your tacks. Bring your barbed wire, light tubes, legos, whatever you have. Prove how tough you are, round after round after round, until there is nobody left in that whole bracket but a pile of brave, broken bodies, and one masked man who never took a single scratch, holding the only trophy that was ever going to matter.“
He taps the side of his head. „Brains, muchachos, not scars, win titles and tournaments. I’ll prove that once again.“
He looks down at the hubcap in his hand, then back at the camera, and does not put it down.
„They call it the King of the Deathmatch,“ he says and the smile turns cold. „But nobody ever said the king has to bleed for his crown. Eight men walk in. Seven get carried out. And the one still standing at the end, the one without a single mark on him? That is your king, muchachos.“ He turns to leave. „The last one clean.“
He walks off, hubcap on his shoulder, and the scene cuts to black.