Our scene opens in an old gymnasium. Thick climbing ropes hang down, there are heavy leather brown medicine balls and yellowing posters of the great wrestlers that once trained here. There are no video screens or running machines or energy drinks. This place is a temple to the fundamentals of hard work put in by hard men.

One of those hard men sits before us. Jack Standard, drying his hands after another session of real body work. He sighs heavily and then begins to speak.

“Are you a wrestler?” He asks. “I mean, when it comes down to brass tacks, can you honestly say that you are a wrestler?.”

He drops the towel and stands to his feet, he stalks around the gym looking at the posters advertising long-past wrestling cards.”

“It used to be simple. If you stepped in the ring, you were a wrestler. Simple as that.” He pauses by a large ad reading ‘Real Wrestling by Real Men.’ “n those days only real men had the grapefruits to climb through those ropes and stand eye to eye with destiny. Those were men with true mettle, with iron in their veins.””

Jack smiles grimly to himself. Before walking up to a large sepia image of himself standing over a fallen opponent. 

 “These days, it’s hard to tell. These days, they seem to let anyone in. All you need is a cute catchphrase or a fancy mask and they’ll hand you the keys to the kingdom. Wrestling used to be about craft and skill, power and combat. And now? Now it’s about fancy-pants show-offs doing artistic gymnastics and wearing capes.”

Jack flicks through sheaf of papers, marked with OSW headings. He looks disgusted at what he reads. He pulls out the match contract for SLAM.

“Look at the state of these entertainers; A dinosaur? A gangbanger? A god-damn Pineapple?! It may be 3 on 1, but the three of them barely makes one real wrestler . See how far we have fallen! Wrestling is not entertainment, wrestling is pure, operatic combat!. The way God intended us to be!”

Standard tosses the paperwork aside and stares angrily down the camera.

“You want to know what is missing in wrestling today?” Jack asks with a spit of aggression. “What the world of wrestling needs today is a little Backbone. It needs a true fighter to show why it’s not enough to pull on a mask and get an idiotic crowd of so-called fans to cheer. Anyone with handful of glitter can do that!”

“Real wrestling needs Backbone! You need Backbone to endure the suffering that real wrestlers inflict on one another. You need Backbone to overcome the struggle and grab hold of victory with both hands. Unless you are a real wrestler you’ll never get it – but at SLAM this week, I know 3 guys will leave with a new understanding of what Backbone really means.”

“And They will know for certain that they are not real wrestlers – But I am.”