Wes Ikeda: How bout that, boys?
He gave Sabin a fist bump, but when he went to clasp hands with Alex, he pulled him into a hug.
Wes Ikeda: I love ya, kid. That was fun.
Alex Shelley: So much fun. And a springboard hurricanrana? I haven't seen you do that one in a decade.
Wes Ikeda: I think I gave Jericho about two dozen of those this past week. It was all Mike though. The magic is in the front flip from the opponent, and not landing on your neck.
Wes gave a little grin, as if remembering who he was talking to.
Wes Ikeda: Sorry, not that I needed to tell you that. Guess I'll always think I have to be teaching you.
Alex Shelley: No worries. It's a learning tree I've never gotten tired of sitting under.
Wes glanced back at Sabin who had now moved over to talk to DiBiase and O'Reilly.
Wes Ikeda: You go enjoy it. I'm gonna help them get this equipment apart.
Wes gestured toward the production team who somehow seemed busier than they had all night. He gave Alex another slap on the shoulder and moved past him. Yeah, it didn't matter where Alex had gone, or how long he'd been there, this was always home.
The scene opened outside. It was a clear dark night on the banks of the Detroit River. Alex Shelley was walking along the shore of Grosse Ile, The city skyline of Detroit was lit up in the distance and Alex paused to admire it, before turning to the camera, contemplative.
Alex Shelley: It's a beautiful view. Most people in Detroit don't even get to see it because you either have to come from money or make a lot of money to live here on Grosse Ile. Canada on that side. Detroit over there. EBWF helped me to have a comfortable life. So much so, that I got to leave and do what I wanted to do. NJPW, ROH, a high school gymnasium here and there. Because all I ever wanted to do was wrestle. See those lights over there?
Alex gestured to the Canadian side of the river.
Alex Shelley: That's Windsor, Ontario. Home of the original BCW arena. Not the performance and training center that EBWF moved to the states, but the real deal Ciociaro Club. I would spend every Friday night at Ciociaro Club watching BCW shows. Picture it. Think of every banquet hall where you've ever attended a wedding. Now put a wrestling ring in it. Some folding chairs. It's 1998, and I'm a 15 year old kid sitting in the front row. Every. Friday. Night.
He gave a whimsical little smile, obviously remembering.
Alex Shelley: You know who else was there every Friday night. I know it's one of the most popular wrestling stories. So, I'll recap it briefly for the uninitiated. Wes Ikeda is there taking BCW by storm, touring Ontario, taking Heartland Wrestling Shows. But every Friday night he's at Ciociaro Club, becoming BCW World Champion, facing Sabu, facing Raven, facing Tommy Dreamer, facing Chris Jericho. He's making a name for himself as the ultra-violent, King of Hardcore, King of the Deathmatch, sure. But the dude can wrestle his face off. So that's where I want to be, front row, every Friday, drinking it all in. It wasn't long before the regular guys on the roster started to notice me there week after week, and Wes was my guy. I cheered for him and cheered for him. Stalked him in the parking lot so he'd talk to me about wrestling. Eventually, on days he didn't have to work, Wes would meet me at the banquet hall, at the local pool, at the park and he'd do his best to teach me. Wes didn't go to wrestling school. He was learning from everyone around him, and despite being broke off his ass, living in his car sometimes, and facing some personal demons of his own he never failed to make me feel like I was important to him. Paying it forward was important to him. Last Monday night meant a lot to me. Sharing the ring with Wes Ikeda is never something I take lightly. I've known him since I was just a kid, and he's the big brother I never knew I wanted. I owe everything about this insane life I live to him.
I've been away from EBWF for a while. Sure, you've seen me show up in the Rumble. You've seen me get eliminated in the first round of King of the Ring. But when was the last time I had a run in EBWF, huh? Over ten years ago if you can believe it. So all week long I've watched social media and the message boards and the question is the same. Why now, Alex? EBWF is home. It's that simple. Regardless of all the rumors you hear. Regardless of any beef you think exists between me and some of the guys backstage. It was just time to return home. It was time to come back to a place that is so important to me, to an audience that is so important to me.
And I'm starting this new chapter with an opportunity to face Miz at Fallout for the EBWF World Championship. All I have to do is beat five other guys in the most hellacious structure Chris Jericho's mind ever created. Should be easy.
He chuckled sarcastically.
Alex Shelley: On one hand, I could go on and on about these guys. I could run down their resume, and I could compare myself to them. I could tell all of you how in the last twenty years that I've been in this business they've mimicked me, or copied me. My fingerprints are all over today's professional wrestlers. Their size. Their look. I had to try to make it a world full of physical monsters, and now all you average guys get to ride the wave of my hard work when I made it cool for all of you to be who you are.
Wes moved on from BCW about a year before I made my pro debut. He'd signed a big contract. Weekly TV. We're talking in an age before smart phones and social media, where if you wanted to talk to someone you had to really make the effort. Even after Wes had made the big time, married, baby boy named Blaine, clean for the first time in years, touring the world, I'd hear from him once a month or so. There'd be tickets at will call when he came through town. He'd let me mail tapes to his house and he'd call me up and tell me what he thought about them. One day on the phone he says, I think you could really do Sliced Bread #2 if you practice not breaking someone's neck. When your options are limited to a trampoline and your bed that one takes a little time to figure out, but I did it.
See, I'm not like you guys in this match. Kevin, with your stacked training with French Canadian powerhouses. Devitt with your money to travel all the way to Japan and train in the Inoki Dojo. Xavier Woods just meeting Nick Adonis one day and getting to walk into NWA like you owned the place. I didn't have Long Island money like MJF and literally enroll myself in a wrestling school called Create A Pro. And I certainly, certainly, certainly was not born into a wrestling family, second or third generation, growing up around it all my life, and trained by my Uncle Barry Windham, was I, Mr. Wyatt? You're even named after the guy for God's sake.
I was a nothing and nobody who learned from a nothing and nobody, and we both became somebodies. I think it was Wes becoming a somebody that finally convinced D'Amore to keep training me at Can-Am. And I would train, and I would watch TV and the thing I wanted was to have just an ounce of confidence that Wes Ikeda seemed to have.
I think it was raw talent that had me debuting in ROH just six months later. And there I was with all your girl's favorite wrestlers, beating up CM Punk and Roderick Strong and Samoa Joe and Bryan Danielson and his Hero and on and on and on. Standing back and watching while guys like Seth Rollins, Jimmy Jacobs and Jimmy Rave stole my look and my style right down to the two toned hair. My fingerprints were all over this industry before I ever set foot in EBWF. Wes Ikeda gets a lot of shit for being a Chris Jericho mark, so just understand right now that Wes Ikeda is my Chris Jericho. I'd been running up and down the road for almost three years when I'm catching my old buddy on international television. I have no idea what he's about to do, but his hands are on the mic and when that man speaks I listen. And how he ended that promo that night is forever burned in the part of my memory that hears things as clearly as if someone was speaking to me right now. He looked directly in into the hard camera and he said, "There isn't a wrestler alive that doesn't want to be me. Doesn't want the spot that I have. Carry that championship belts I got. Doesn't want to take the bumps that I do. Draw the gate that I do. Get the checks that I've got. Have the acclaim that I do. There isn't a wrestler alive that doesn't want to be on the cover of Pro Wrestling Illustrated like I am. Drive the car that I drive. Have the girl that I have. Every single one of you wants to walk, talk, swagger and fuck like me but you're not on my level. This whole company isn't on my level, and right now you're losing the opportunity that any one of those assholes in the back ever will be."
It's a famous clip on Youtube right? Makes everyone but him money. And he's somewhere right now cringing that he ever said that, and with me being older and wiser I know he didn't have any confidence in what he was saying. It was probably one of the most nerve-racking things he ever did. Nevertheless, he dropped the mic. The realization washed over me in my shitty apartment on the Northside that he had just walked out of that promotion, abandoned it all, and for 16 long hours I sat until my phone rang and he told me that he'd gotten out of his contract and he was joining the family business. EBWF was only three years old, but would I come. Would I turn EBWF into the vision he had for this indusry's future. Would I stop leaving my fingerprints all over wrestling, and come here and leave my boot prints in everyone's back. I did, and the thing all of my opponents in the chamber need to understand is that in less than five years I did everything here. I was the face of this company. I was the longest reigning, youngest EBWF World Champion of all time. When I left in 2008 I broke the fan's hearts, but I disappointed my mentor. The coolest thing about Wes, though? He was sad for him, but happy for me. When I debuted at the Tokyo Dome guess whose ass was right there in the front row?
So I made my way, NJPW, Ring of Honor, MLW, I tagged with Kushida on God damn NXT because I learned from the very best what it takes to build a legacy. I've done all of that over the last two plus decades and I'm still not even the oldest guy in this damn chamber. That match last Monday wasn't a one off. Getting my hands on The Miz felt like destiny. This locker room knows I haven't been sitting on my ass for ten years. They know they have every reason to fear me. Anyone who has been doing this for any amount of time knows that this look in my eye is a sign of the unfinished business I have with EBWF. Wny now? Because EBWF has been here for 20 years and there are two things I know. It is lead by a man that doesn't regret much and beloved by fans who never forget. And it started to eat at me that somewhere on the 30th floor of EBWF HQ in St. Louis sat a man that stuck out his neck for me and wondered "What if Alex Shelley had stayed". It started to eat at me that in arenas all over the world an entire legion of fans would want to welcome me back here. So do not be surprised on Monday night in Philly when the lights go down and Motorcity hits and that crowd gives the same energy Detroit did. It's like that everywhere I go.
There's a lot of rumor about why I didn't resign here all those years ago, and there will be time to get into that eventually. Right now, all that's important is that I had to leave to prove that I could make it anywhere. I proved that on six continents in some of the most prestigious wrestling promotions all over the world. And now I have to come back to prove that my brand, my life's work, my talent was never wasted. To prove that there isn't a wrestler alive that doesn't want to walk, talk, swagger....
He grinned.
Alex Shelley: ...well, you know the rest. The elimination chamber on Warfare is just one more place where I'm going to leave my fingerprints on this business. Then I'm going to leave them all over the EBWF World Championship and finally, after all these years, become the two time EBWF World Champion.
Shelley admired the city for a moment more before turning his back to it and walking out of the frame, his heavy boots heard crunching against the river bank as the scene faded to black.
