White paint on the black top.
INTRODUCING BROOKLYN
“I don’t really give a shit about food.”
Words of dripping apathy out of the mouth of a mohawked skater punk, as he walked his large pit bull, and talked to a black and pink pig-tailed woman, and his other pit bull walking, cap-wearing friend. The three of them dressed in mostly blacks and dark greens. The three of them totally ignoring the flow of traffic, as they walked across the street and Russel David hopped across the street in the opposite direction, so as to not hold up traffic. The Brooklyn Bridge loomed behind him.
“So everything is in place, hey?” The man behind The Mark column, spoke into his cell phone to an unknown voice on the other end. He was a tall lanky fellow, with shortly cut hair and deeply intense eyes. Though those eyes might have just appeared intense due to the dark bags under them, incurred by numerous late nights writing about wrestling, and otherwise helping build a life of comfort for himself, his wife and his baby girl. Russel David, weaved between a pair of Chinese immigrants in front of a Korean food market, and a chubby Puerto Rican kid sloppily eating a hot dog with a biiit too much sour kraut. He was in the DUMBO district, down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.
“No, tell them I’ll be there in a few minutes, just had to park my car near the C, E line.”
Yes, Russel David was deep in Brooklyn.
“Again, thank you for… all of this.” David smiled, as he snapped the cell phone shut and slipped it in his pocket.
He rushed along the sidewalk, because he knew they where all waiting for him. More or less everything had been settled, and everything was put in place, and if he didn’t arrive soon enough… someone might spill the beans about that Cup to James Boyd. It was the last touch to all these things they had planned, and David wanted to be the one to tell him. It really had been a busy afternoon, for Russel David. It wasn't going to get any quieter either.
The deal for Hurley Fairfax had almost fallen through, with his manager Jimmy threatening to take him to Japan, even with Jimmy Beretta’s ties to Legion. That was almost the draw for David, having read what happened to Beretta’s career through all the fault of his own… to see him almost drag someone else down, as well. The mans ego truly was infamous, just as Boyd had remembered a quick call from James Boyd to Beretta, though, helped settle things. Beretta got something of a signing bonus for Fairfax, as well as a finders fee for himself, but also there was something else that Beretta had never held himself, while he wrestled, and it lay within the walls of this thing that Russel David was now putting his heart and soul into…
Russel could only grin at the thought of it, the wrestling fan boy almost pouring out of him. Legion was a fed that was connected to almost every wrestler out there, especially those with a generational legacy of there own. It had ties to federations, and David could only wonder how deep they reached. People in this business either remembered the stories of Legion, or there fathers did, or there trainers did, one after another had a memory of the storied league.
And now, it was back.
Stopping for a moment on the corner, Russel looked over either of his shoulders and then reached into his pocket and grabbed a palm-sized sticker that featured the Legion logo. He peeled off the non-stick side, and then checking again for a cop that might give him a talking to, he jumped up and slapped it on the front of a stop sign. Yeah, he was a man in his thirties acting like a kid again. A kid in a candy store.
And as he rounded the corner, there was his candy store.
INTRODUCING THE CHURCH OF FIGHT
Strong grey stone nestled in the snow, it was quietly impressive. Three stained glass windows on it’s east face only added to the grandeur of the old building. A few lights had been set up, high up on the outside of the stain glass, to shine inside for later effect. A sign hung on the side of the building as well, between the windows and the stone steps up to the large oak doors into the Church. On it was the Legion logo, as well as a fair share of local artistic pieces, and the announcement.
SAT & SUN, APRIL
8:00PM BOTH NIGHTS
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
This was the Church of Fight.
Russel David jogged up the stone steps, slapping the sign on his way past it. He pushed through the large oak door, and walked into the building.
David snaked his way around all the lights and folding chairs still left to be set-up in the auditorium main area. In the main hallway where the crowds would sweep through the building and towards the ring, where the stairs up to the audio visual teams booth. Not just the lighting man would be up there, in due time, but also the announcing team. The black and white tiled walls lay waiting to be plastered with advertisements of all the local shows.
“Ladies and Gentlemen…” Russ announced as he entered the ring area, then paused. It was beautiful. The room was empty, save for the three men within it. “Oh, how was Vegas, Jim?”
James Boyd nodded with a smile, but shrugged. "Fairfax is back off." The logistical mastermind behind the upcoming season of Legion. The man who had been down these roads before with All-Star Championship Wrestling, and even though it broke his heart when that storied federation closed it’s doors, only to be rejuvinated when they once again opened... and not only that, but then accepted him the first Hall of Fame class as an archetect of the fed. It was a feat he planned to repeat with Legion, he loved every minute of these grass roots days again. Loved every inch of the history of the league called Legion.
Garrett Frampton. A former referee for the Squared Circle, and unabashed lover of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. He was a man of contradictions at times, a straight laced personality with a rock and roll edge. Buddy Holly glasses, giving away to cleanly swept back hair and a sharp grin. Thanks to his time spent with tSC, since it’s inception, and his time following Legion’s certain iterations before that… there was nothing the man didn’t know about a wrestling ring. Russel David could tell that this place was Frampton’s mecca, a cross between the crass of CBGB’s and the understated history of Abbey Road.
And of course, the color-commentary man for Legion’s shows. A man who had been helpful in getting a few of this first season’s roster names in order.
High Flyer.
Shock white hair combed back, the same hair that he had had for a good year now, since burning those longer green locks right off. Himself. Yes, he would always be that kind of guy, aside form the man who sold snow. Not one to underestimate. Though a great guy for color commentary.
Flyer grinned a mischievous grin. “Nope, no ladies. Just us… guys. Sigh.” Yes, High Flyer said sigh. And then shook Russel David’s hand. These four men looked at each other, a definite mix of experience and occupation within the wrestling community but none of them lacking in desire, and then turned towards the main attraction of the dimly lit room. The ring.
Spot-lighted in the center of the domed church space, with dust filtering through the light and settling into the space… where the black ropes and white canvas of Legion. The ring itself was actually no more then a foot off the ground, so no steps into it and nothing hidden underneath it. A great site for the action to be seen by all the chairs on the hardwood floor once they where finally brought in and set-up around it, not to mention easy to see from the balconies at the back of the auditorium. The ring was called a “pony” ring in Lucha Libre circles, but Russel David loved it for it’s inset charm. The logo, still needed to be stenciled into the center of the ring.
So it was nice that the Legion Cup was keeping it’s place on a stand in the center of the ring, until then.
“James.” Russel David spoke, in regard of the silver trophy that sparkled in the spot light, right at home in the center of the ring. “There was a reason I had to drag you away from the paper work.”
“Well I have to get out somehow.” Boyd grinned back at him, he seemed older then any ACW fan might have remembered him. Greying into white hair, and had a brittle edge to his strong voice. Charles Dunn was always the voice box, anyway. The spirit of there Hall-of-Fame promotional partnership. So since Dunn’s death… things where different, certainly. Still, Boyd was grinning again these days, it was something about this David kid that reminded him of that old potential. “What’s the reason, then?”
“We aren’t calling it the Legion Cup anymore…” It was a name that it had carried within itself and the federation for eighty plus years, since the second age of Legion, in the 1930’s, Russel had found out, so this decision hadn’t come lightly.
“That so?” Boyd replied, squinting to see the engraving on the silver bowl, and three tiers of silver. Legion was engraved across the bowl… and names of teams, of wrestlers where etched on the tiers, stretching from the founder Domenico Duce in the 1890’s, his sons and grandsons as it’s other past architects, and the winners of the esteemed Cup from the early 1930’s into the late 1970’s. Nine teams in all. This was history… who could they name it after?
INTRODUCING…
“We’re calling it the Dunn Cup.” Russel smiled, and his heart skipped a beat, wondering what Boyd’s reaction would be.
“After Charles…” James Boyd’s heart had stopped. He gasped in a bit, and Garrett slapped him on the back, with a toothy smile of congratulations. High Flyer nodded, he was glad he had been here for this.
“Yeah. The season will be the Dunn Cup Series… Jim, it‘s going to be part of it all.” And now, not only where he and Boyd part of Legion history, but so was Dunn. Just like Boyd secretly wanted, and what Charles Dunn deserved. There might have been two others with the money and the rights… but Russel David, James Boyd and in an odd way now, Charles Dunn, where the heart, brain, soul and spirit of Legion.
“Kid, wow.”
It was there's. Within the black ropes and the white canvas of the ring. There history. There world. And soon enough, Legion would belong first to Brooklyn, then New York.
Then the world.
