Wrestle Kingdom: Footnotes in History (PWA-02)

Some stories were never meant to be finished.

It’s important to remember sometimes that real life wasn’t as fashionable or as functional as fiction. Real life was messy. Real life always got in the way. Real life often refused to be scripted in the way that you wanted it to.

Before the biggest match of his career so far, Joe Fontaine told a swashbuckling story of “wrestle pirates” to encourage his tag team partner and soon-to-be brother-in-law, expecting that the end of the tale would be the triumph of Sir Fontaine and Sir Phillips over the dastardly Eminence Trading Company. 

Yet reality had other plans, and the Winds of Change failed to become the last-ever PRIME Tag Team Champions at Culture Shock. The entire narrative crashed and burned, filled with tears and pain, as Joe watched Jared Sykes and Justine Calvin parade around with the tag titles they felt were rightfully theirs… again.

Just because a story had a natural conclusion of heroes overcoming insurmountable odds against an unstoppable enemy didn’t mean that this conclusion was possible.

And so, the story was left unfinished.

Life moved on without the Winds of Change.

Just another footnote in history.

*.*

Sir Fontaine finally awoke days after their warship had been sunk by the Eminence Trading Company out on the fringes of the Phoenix Ring Ocean. He felt like he was just hit by a tremendously powerful piledriver spell, the kind that made independent wrestle commentators¹ shout “DANGEROUS!” at the top of their lungs. 

He laid confused, barely able to take in his surroundings.

He could tell he was on a ship, gently rocking back and forth as it cut across the waves. How did he get there? What happened with the Pirateslayer? The last thing he remembered was the ball of steel chairs smashing a hole into the side of the ship, and…

…Wait. Where was Sir Phillips?

The very thought that his companion wasn’t there made him sit up suddenly in his bed, pain shooting up and down his body as he did. The extremely dignified noises that didn’t sound the least bit like a woman’s screams caught the attention of the presiding doctor.

“Pardon me, sir wizard knight,” the aged doctor said in an accent that Sir Fontaine couldn’t place, gently pushing Sir Fontaine’s shoulders back down onto the bed, “You got the full and utter shit kicked out of you. Why, I don’t even know how you survived!”

The doctor looked at his notes.

“It says here you took no less than fifty-eight punches to the face from a… toxic hell banshee? I never would’ve thought that such a creature would be corporeal enough to even throw hands!”

Sir Fontaine vaguely remembered this sound strategy he came up with where he would wear down a wrestle ghost’s fists using his face. He was surprised, he supposed, that the strategy looked like it worked at first. They won. They achieved their victory over the Eminence Trading Company. Then came the bullshit. The victory was snatched away. The Company came after them with a vengeance. They had to win again, and they had nothing left to make a second miracle possible.

Sir Fontaine didn’t say anything.

He was still very confused. Probably because of the whole fifty-eight punches to the face thing. Really scrambles the language center of the brain, you know?

“We found you adrift, clinging to a piece of wood from what was left of your ship. You were babbling incoherently about a trading company and a man named Sir Phillips. Also, about the use of marmosets in wrestle wizardry, which I think is one of the seven dark wrestle magics². I could be mistaken. I don’t practice magic, I would only malpractice magic.”

Sir Fontaine let out a noise that’s both a groan and a whine, “I don’t think a doctor should tell me that they do malpractice magic.”

“Maybe that should be one of the dark wrestle magics³,” the doctor said, “Anyway, I’m…”

There was a sound like static as the doctor told Joe his name. He considered asking the doctor to repeat himself, and then thought better of it because he had a headache now. It’s probably not related to the aforementioned fifty-eight punches to the face, don’t worry about it.

“Alright, Huey,” Sir Fontaine decided, “So, do you know where my companion, best friend, and brother from another mother, Sir Phillips, went?”

“That’s not my name,” the doctor muttered under his breath, “Did you not hear me? It’s…”

More static.

Huh. Weird.

It’s probably fine. Everything was fine⁴!

*.*

Joe Fontaine was adrift after Culture Shock.

He remembered attending his sister’s wedding with a bruised face that he could only barely cover up with makeup, drifting through the low-key, family-only ceremony as though he were underwater. His mind wasn’t focused on his sister’s happiness in being wed to the girl she loved. 

His mind was on the catastrophic failure which happened just two nights before.

He didn’t want to be in PRIME.

He didn’t want to be reminded again of his failures.

Every time he’d walk into that locker room, he would forever be reminded that he was half of the “second best” tag team in PRIME. A division that some outside observers claimed only had two teams in it even before its termination.

So, he didn’t re-sign with the company right away. And since he didn’t re-sign, neither did Sid. Where Joe went, Sid followed. A trip to Japan seemed like the best move to make for the Winds of Change, but something about the trip didn’t feel right.

After all, they were inducted into the Crownless Kingdom shortly before that match at Culture Shock. It was their mentor’s group. The same mentor that seemed more in Jared Sykes’ corner than their own. The same mentor that came up with the idea of making the tag title match at Culture Shock a two-out-of-three falls match.

That last fact had been burning in the back of Joe Fontaine’s mind in the days after Culture Shock. The Winds of Change won the first fall of that match. If it had been a normal match, if it had just been like it was at UltraViolence when they failed the first time… the Winds would have what was rightfully theirs.

The worst part about accepting this match at PWA-02 was that to the Winds of Change, even if they won the belts… 

…it’s only a consolation prize.

*.*

The vessel that Sir Fontaine found himself on was called St. Sealant’s Kickass Wrestle Boat⁵.

It was a sleek piece of nautical achievement. Truly, if the great Hoytseidon were here now, he would smile at what a fine vessel this was. Stupid sexy Hoytseidon. 

Sir Fontaine learned that it was only a small part of a greater fleet, but that the men who captained this vessel were among the lieutenants of that fleet. He did not, however, learn where Sir Phillips had gone. He worried that he fell into the depths of the PRIMEsea, never to be seen again. He was far more worried about the response of Sir Phillips’ sister princess than he was about his health and safety, though. Let’s keep our priorities straight here.

“Hail and well met, Sir Dewey,” Sir Fontaine said to the commander of the ship, “I’m grateful that you took me on board your ship, and I’m hoping to be able to help you on your valiant quest.”

Dewey stared at Sir Fontaine for a moment.

“That’s not my name.”

Oh. Right. Sir Fontaine could never catch their names. It was weird. Every time he’d hear their names, it was drowned out by some kind of static. He blamed all of the punching⁶.

Let’s be honest, it’s probably not important.

“Sir Dewey” dressed in a dapper pirate coat, and he looked to be on the older side. Have you ever met someone who tried very hard to be a pirate without falling into a lot of the trappings of a pirate? That’s “Dewey”. No eyepatch, no peg leg, no hook hand… it’s like he’s not even trying at all!

“Right. So, anyway, Dewey, I’m sure you have a valiant quest that I need to help you with. Maybe I’ll find Sir Phillips while undertaking such a quest for you!” Sir Fontaine said cheerfully.

Not-Dewey exchanged looks with his first mate, a man who was short on words but tall on being tall. Sir Fontaine didn’t really catch his name, either, so he assumed his name was Chuck. He just had this look about him that screamed “Chuck”⁷, you know? 

“Uh, yeah. Gonna get right on that whole quest thing. Yep,” not-Dewey said, looking for all the world like he regretted all of his life decisions, like rescuing this man from a floating piece of lumber or letting him continue calling him by the wrong name or working for a mercurial pirate admiral that may or may not have come into his captaincy through shady means⁸ beyond the scope of piracy.

“I’m really excited to get back on my questing. I feel like I got super sidetracked, you know? Like, really, I think that I might feel better about things if I got to save, I don’t know… maybe one princess? Two would be preferred. I’ll take a prince if you’ve got one that needs rescuing, though. Not exactly picky, really.” Sir Fontaine jabbered.

There’s stares going around from both not-Dewey and not-Chuck. Even not-Huey pokes his head out from the cabin to stare at him. They were all the looks of men staring at a crazy person. In their defense, they’re probably right, because none of them would even exist without the overactive imagination of the man that Sir Fontaine was based on.

Before anyone can say anything in response, though, they heard the sound of a steam engine. Everyone looked around in confusion. Steam engines weren’t a common sight or sound in the Phoenix Ring Ocean, not ever since Dusk reversed the order of dying and retiring and nearly ruined all of causality in the process⁹. 

“By the Grin of Gamble! What in the fuck is that?” not-Dewey asked.

No sooner did he ask that question did the lookout spot what was coming.

“Port side! Incoming!”

All eyes turned towards the port side of the ship.

It was a train.

Okay, look, we all know¹⁰ that trains don’t belong on the ocean. Physics was very unkind to trains and open water. That’s just a rule of life and trains and the ocean. Lots of rules were being broken out here in whichever of the Seven Seas¹¹ they were in. Come to think of it, Sir Fontaine should probably ask where exactly they were.

Yet, there was a big honkin’ train surfing along the waves, free of those cursed rails that bound all trains. By the looks of things, it was a train with a steam locomotive up front dragging along a passenger car. Smoke billowed from the top of the locomotive, and you didn’t want to breathe that smoke in because you might get high. Or maybe you did. We’re not here to judge¹².

“What the fuck?” Sir Fontaine asked.

As reasonable questions went, this was one of them.

The train was moving at a slow, but deliberate pace towards them. It took not-Dewey a perilously long time to order the Kickass Wrestle Boat to get out of the way of the train, such that by the time the train reached them, only mere feet separated the train and the ship.

The train slowed to a stop.

Two men, dressed in conductor’s uniforms and pirate hats, emerged from the engine.

“Bro!” they shouted in unison. “Bro! Bro! Bro!”

Every man on St. Sealant’s Kickass Wrestling Boat took an unconscious step back, knees wobbly. The fear on the face of not-Dewey was palpable, as he turned to not-Chuck to tell him to get the ship the hell out of there.

While they didn’t know their means of travel until now, everyone knew a ghost train when they saw it, especially when it was piloted by the long dead Surf Brothers, Bradlee and Bowie Surf. Look at their empty eyes. Look at their vacant expressions. Look at their pallid skin, immune to the effects of the sun despite all of the surfing they did, bro. These were men that were long dead, claimed by the tides.

Or they’re so high that they’ve been on the moon.

One of the two.

“Don’t listen to their siren song!” not-Huey shouted over the cacophony of the “Bro!” chants and the train’s engine, “That’s how they get you!”

“Bro,” Sir Fontaine muttered. He blinked and turned away, realizing that he was listening too much to the chants and lost himself to the chill highs of the dreaded Surf Brothers, “We have to get out of here.”

“We’re too close to them…” not-Dewey spoke in a low voice, “Bro…”

He looked horrified as that last “bro” escaped his lips. This was dangerous. No one wanted a ticket on board the Bro Train. It’d be the Murder on the Orient Express, except that the train itself would be the culprit. Have you ever been stabbed by an entire train, in the ocean, with a knife¹³? Do you have any idea how nonsense that last sentence was? Do you have any other questions? You do? Well, that’s too bad, we’re answering none of them.

Sir Fontaine knew that a drastic measure needed to be taken.

He turned to not-Chuck, and whispered to him, “Excuse me, Chuck?”

The man who was short on words but tall on being tall gave him the expression of a man who knew he wasn’t being addressed by his name, but was going to roll with it because this was Joe’s narrative and not his own. He’s remarkably at peace about this.

“I need you to get this boat away from the train as soon as possible. And also… to toss me.”

Not-Chuck’s smile grew wide. It was like all of his birthdays came together at once.

He grabbed Sir Fontaine by the back of his shirt and the top of his pants, and threw him into the air like he was chucking trash into the air.

Oh, so that’s why he’s “Chuck” in this story. Got it. Cool.

Sir Fontaine made a very dignified sound as he’s being thrown into the air, and it didn’t sound the least bit like the Wilhelm Scream. After all, he asked for this, and he definitely didn’t expect to be thrown that high into the air like he was launched by a trebuchet.

He adjusted as he flew into the air.

A wrestle spell began to escape his lips, a deadly and powerful sorcery known as the intercontinental ballistic missile dropkick. 

This spell was a deadly weapon of mass wrestle destruction, rarely used due to the continued fears of the great wrestle wizardry arms race. First you’d get the intercontinental ballistic missile dropkicks, then you’d get the nuclear powerbomb, and then you’d find yourself summoning Shakuaraut the Canadian Destroyer¹⁴, Befaller of Civilizations, and then that’s just a whole mess that would take like ten whole years to clean up. 

“Broooo…” said one of the Surf Brothers, in awe of the impending doom heading for their train.

“Bro!” said the other.

They couldn’t get away in time before Sir Fontaine came down with the force of… Well. A missile impact.

KABOOM!

*.*

The Bahamas were awesome.

Joe Fontaine, freshly twenty-one, enjoyed a wide variety of very alcoholic beverages for the first time. Stories would appear on dirt sheets about how a man matching Joe’s description – which is to say foppish, dumb, looks like an idiot, and with a ridiculous topknot that strangely never appears on any official PRIME photography as though it was so dumb that they Photoshopped it out – was spotted wearing the loudest Hawaiian shirt possible and shouting “I AM JOE FONTAINE!” at the top of his lungs until he simply ran out of energy and fell to the ground snoring and sleeping.

The nice people he was taking his vacation with would assure you that it was probably worse than reported.

And still, Joe was still not re-signed to PRIME even two weeks after Culture Shock. Negotiations were ongoing, but Joe and Sid were reluctant to agree to anything. There was no tag division in PRIME. The idea of PWA Tag Titles didn’t appeal to them, because they weren’t those titles – the ones that Eminence would forever hold in perpetuity.

All the while, he had no idea what was going on in PRIME.

The most he would do with the company during this time would be to log into Jabber – PRIME’s equivalent to Slack – say something purposefully dumb because it amused him, and then be out of there.

He was on Jabber on the morning of May 6th. He was in his underwear in his hotel room in beautiful Nassau, fighting off a massive hangover. Yep. Gotta learn how to drink responsibly, kid. As Joe was currently hating the bright sunlight of Paradise Island, he saw enough activity from Cecilworth and Hoyt that he had to ask what he was missing.

Ria Lockhart, whom Joe shared a vitriolic-at-best relationship with, told him to go congratulate his trainer.

“Wait. Why?” he asked himself.

After some banter back and forth, he got the impression that he missed something big. So he got on Google. After fumbling over typing the words “what happened on the last PRIME show” several times (and boy howdy, that’s not a search you should do with SafeSearch off, let me tell you), he finally saw the results of ReVival 27.

Okay, sure. Brandon Youngblood beat Hayes Hanlon for the Universal title. “Of course he did,” Joe said to himself, “That guy is to suplexes what powerbombs are to Sid. Like, learn some other moves, you fucking bald-headed dipshit. God. Hate that guy. He doesn’t even have a cool singlet like Sid does. He has a singlet you draw pee stains on in Photoshop when you’re bored. And maybe Hayes should stop covering his title belt in butter and banana peels.”

He scrolled down.

“Jared Sykes beat Arthur Pleasant… cool. Cool, cool, cool. Great for him. Great start for your cool new singles career.”

He realized his hungover eyes skipped over something. 

He scrolled back up, and there it was.

“Coral Avalon defeats…” Joe muttered, and he didn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t. There it was, for all to see. His mentor had defeated Nate Colton for the 5-Star Championship. On his first goddamn try, Coral Avalon won a championship in PRIME. He‘d accomplished what Joe and Sid had failed to do twice. 

That motherfucker.

Joe logged out of Jabber.

He resisted the urge to throw his phone to the ground like he was celebrating a touchdown. There was no celebration in what he was doing.

Instead, he called up one of the nice people that had sponsored his trip to the Bahamas instead.

“Hey, Dewey?”

“That’s not my…” the nice man started to say in his odd accent, before he caught himself and asked, “I mean, what do you need, Joseph?”

“I’ve made my decision,” Joe said with the authority of a man who might not quite know what he’s getting himself into, but certain that it would be better than his current situation.

“I’m in.”

*.*

Sir Phillips was undefeated in the fighting ring.

He had to be.

When the Eminence Trading Company hit his ship with a standard wrestle pirate broadside¹⁵, Sir Phillips was thrown far from the scene of the battle. If he were made of lesser stuff, he would’ve surely been annihilated with the rest of the ship and its crew – save Sir Fontaine, of course. But as Sir Phillips was a brave wrestle wizard, he did not die.

He was, however, captured deep in the heart of the Octane Sea, and taken to the seat of power in this most lawless and dangerous place – the Best Coast. Here, captured wrestle pirates and wizards fought for the amusement of its governor, Lord Governor Lee Best, better known as “the Bestholder”. 

The Bestholder’s name was known and feared throughout the Seven Seas. Adorned with the still-preserved eyes of all those who crossed him, his many arms wielding deadly ballpoint pens, the Bestholder ruled over the Octane Sea as its near-omniscient ruler. If it happened in the Octane Sea, he knew it. If it happened outside of the Octane Sea, he’d know about it eventually. His many eyes saw to it. 

A shame about the insanity, though.

Once he was in the Best Coast, Sir Phillips was promptly forced into the gladiatorial arena to fight under the many watchful eyes of the insane Bestholder.

After all, he powerbombed that one unnamed Best Alliance Pirate into smithereens. Like, literal smithereens. Have you ever powerbombed someone so hard that they exploded into body parts? Sir Phillips had! The Bestholder was wary about sending his top men to fight Sir Phillips in the fighting ring for that reason. He didn’t want to see any of his top guys get blasted to fuck by a wrestle wizard who only knew how to do exactly one spell, even if he knew that one spell so well that he became the living embodiment of it. 

At first, the Bestholder tried to send his normal, everyday henchmen after Sir Phillips.

They all died, powerbombed to death.

The ground around the fight pits were littered with whatever was left of their bodies. Arms, legs, pelvic bones… all of them. All of the bits. Even some bits that didn’t belong¹⁶. There were even several piles of ashes, and I don’t know if anyone had ever been powerbombed so hard that they ceased to exist. Thanos wished he could turn dudes to dust as efficiently as Sir Phillips did through powerbombs.

Those that somehow survived battle with Sir Phillips were summarily disposed of in the Stevens Pits, never to be seen again.

Sir Phillips was growing exhausted after weeks of this. He was becoming malnourished. The injuries piled up. His incredible powerbomb magic, though mighty, wouldn’t avail him for too much longer if the Bestholder ever pitted him against an enemy that could properly counter it. Then it would be over and it would be he who wound up in the Stevens Pits.

On the fourth week of Sir Phillips’ trials and tribulations, the Bestholder decided that enough was enough. He’d send two of his greatest pirate lieutenants to take care of this annoyance. He couldn’t afford to lose any more mans to powerbombs or to whatever horrors lurked in the Stevens Pit¹⁷. 

A cherubic, beautiful man with the voice of an angel, let’s call him “Mad Dog” McVay, heralded the arrival of two very nasty men. Not nasty as in unhygienic¹⁸, but nasty as in they had surly demeanors and worked for the Bestholder. 

The first of these nasty, dirty boys was known as “Soulless” Dan Ryan. He was a giant golem in a nice suit and a pirate hat with the youthful face of a child, and loaded with enough steroids to kill a horse. Terrifying. Merciless. Soulless. It made him dangerous. Legends told that he was a once mere mortal with a soul and everything, but his frequent losing clashes with the Glue Armada’s admiral, Pirate Lord Cecilworth Farthington, the Loather of Arms, left him in his current state. You know, the whole not having a soul thing. That’s sort of an important thing to go and lose. 

The second was Jatt “Superr” Starr. His list of nicknames could give those of Sir Phillips or the Pirateslayer a run for their money. His list of accomplishments within the Octane Sea spoke for themselves. Few others could count themselves as dangerous. His wrestle magic was that of the stars themselves, a kind of astrology-based wrestling that foretold your destruction by way of simply putting the name “Starr” into things¹⁹.

Sir Phillips was worn down. He was battered and beaten. In the face of the duplicitous Ryan and the stellar Starr, he stood no chance. Not alone, anyway.

Where was Sir Fontaine?

Surely a wrestle wizard of his great strength should’ve survived the catastrophe at the Culture Shock. Right?

Starr unveiled his weapon, a really slender and utterly impractical steel chair on a hilt. You know, a sword. A chair-sword²⁰. Ryan opted for a minotaur’s battle-axe²¹, two steel chairs crudely tied together to a long pole in the relative shape of a double-bladed battle axe.

Sir Phillips had nothing but his exhaustion by his side in the face of these overwhelming odds. He wasn’t even sure if he could muster another deadly powerbomb spell.

Ryan, though soulless, offered a grim facsimile of what a confident grin should look like. Starr balanced his chair-sword over his shoulder, eager to stab Sir Phillips to death with it even though this is a wildly impractical weapon to be stabbing anyone with.

They approached.

Then they stopped, because they could hear the cacophony, and not the kind of cacophony that you’d normally hear in the Best Fighting Ring. Even the raucous crowd grew silent as a sound like grinding metal passing through a gale grew distressingly louder.

“Oh, god dammit,” the Beholster said to no one in particular, “Not again.”

There was a sound like the gates of Pandemonium itself ripping asunder, and its denizens pouring out to begin Armageddon. That’s not quite what happened here. The actual event was a train flying through the roof of the Best Fighting Ring. You know, an average thing that happened in a professional wrestling contest and definitely not something that you might see in certain cinematic universes²².

There’s mayhem. Hundreds of witnesses to the sacred art of Best-style fighting were sent scattering to the relative safety of “not fucking here”. Even the battle-hardened duo of Starr and Ryan, champions of the fighting ring in their own right, didn’t want to be there when the train fell. They scattered like dust in a cyclone. I would, too. That’s a train. Trains weren’t built to fall.

Sir Phillips scattered, too, but he saw something in the air. Something familiar, wearing green, and…

…Aw, fuck, that’s Sir Fontaine, isn’t it?

Sir Fontaine landed on the ground with the train landing behind him, smashing in half of the ring in the process. Naturally, he landed with one fist and one fist to the ground, which would be hell on the knees if he wasn’t a prodigious and handsome wrestle wizard.

Behind him, the Surf Express’s brothers slowly emerged from the wreckage, coughing. Starr and Ryan, knowing that the Bestholder would demand to remove the intruders by way of blood and chair, brandished their weapons at the intruders. Sir Phillips and Sir Fontaine, nodding together, assumed classical wizarding stances²³.

A tense standoff between six individuals. Anything could happen.

This was what the Phoenix Ring Ocean was all about.

With a yell, some of them including the word “Bro!”, they all charged at one another.

*.*

It was right before ReVival 29, the first night that the Winds of Change have appeared on PRIME television since their loss at Culture Shock. A lot had changed since then. All but one of the singles championships in the company had changed hands since that night. There was a new Glue Factory in town. The Love Convoy was growing in power by sheer force of Vickie Hall’s will. Ivan Stanislav was… okay, he’s still doing the Ivan Stanislav things of being a version of the Hulk with the serial numbers filed off and covered in hammer and sickles.

The point was, the PRIME that Joe Fontaine and Sid Phillips walked back into scarcely resembled the one that they left.

“I can’t believe you’re still doing that thing you do where you tell dumbass stories to me to pass the time before we do something important.” Sid said. “And why did you have all of the cool moments and I’m stuck about to get my ass kicked by Tweedle Dipshit and Tweedle Dumbass?”

“…Which one of Starr and Ryan is which?” Joe asked, innocently.

“Fuck you,” Sid said, “That’s which one.”

“That… doesn’t answer anything.”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay, bro,” Joe conceded, “Look, I know this all sounds crazy…”

“And it is crazy,” Sid interrupted, his hands on his hips, “I want to get that out there before you start trying to explain to me how uncrazy it is. And not the story. Jesus Christ, not the story. This whole idea you’re on… you realize what it means, right?”

Joe nodded, “Well, yeah. But this is the way forward for us, isn’t it?”

He spread his hands.

“We were denied our destiny, man. And that’s about to become everybody’s problem. Those PWA Tag Titles, we’re going to take them. I don’t care what that dipshit Justine has to say about them. Consolation prize. Kiss my ass, I didn’t see you signing up for this shit.”

He sighed. Joe was tired. He could only keep pretending for so long, “I’m done playing nice, Sid. Just done with it. Next time I tell one of these stories, we will be champions. We won’t be footnotes in some record book talking about a dead championship that no one wanted. And when we’re champions, there will be no gods, no kings, and no berries.”

He held out a fist.

“No one but us, my brother.”

Sid stared at Joe’s outstretched fist for only a few moments before he bumped it, “No one but us.”

*.*

Footnotes

1. A heretical branch of wrestle wizardry said to be difficult to do and impossible to take seriously if done poorly. Common signs of the latter occurring include a frequent mention of a number of ex-wives greater than one, irresponsible amounts of swearing, extremely questionable opinions about minority groups, and being Eugene Ware. 
2. The seven verboten wrestle magics are as follows: Lichcraft (also known as Lichery), the Miracle Chaos Annihilation Suplex, Xerox Machines, Forklifts, Wrestle Demon Summoning, Thigh Slapping, and Animals (including and especially marmosets).
3. It won’t be. We put a lot of thought into “seven” dark wrestle magics, and we can’t have eight of anything if we’re doing footnotes. That’s just a rule.
4. Everything is not fine.
5. Saint Rebecca “Becky” Sealant was born in the Scenic, Yet Diabolical Nation of Fruitsylvania, and if we’re being honest, she was only ever nominated for sainthood because there’s a clear lack of Wrestle Jesus in the PRIMElands and the Phoenix Ring Ocean on the whole. We only just got Hoyt back! He’s only one Hoyt!
6. The Missouri Valley Academy of Wrestle Wizardry have yet to figure out how time travel truly works, as their magic only seems to send a would-be time traveler deliriously forward in time.
7. Scholars of the now-defunct Alexandra Pierce Memorial School for Wrestle Spies colloquially referred to the phenomenon of “just looking like a Chuck, you know” as “Zachary Levi Syndrome”. 
8. All pirates are shady, really.
9. The various wrestle wizarding academies across the Seven Seas of the Phoenix Ring Ocean have worked tirelessly to reverse engineer the smoke technology employed by Dusk since that day. It’s led to a lot of people getting super omega high, a level of high hitherto unheard of in modern understandings of wrestle wizardry. Dammit, Dusk.
10. Well, maybe not Jace Parker Davidson.
11. The known Seven Seas of the Phoenix Ring Ocean are the PRIMEsea, the Octane Sea, the sanctioned Violence ocean, the SHOOTsea, Missouri Valley Bay, the DEFIANT Waves, and the Sea Lost To Crayola, where morons still think the R-word is cool.
12. The arbiter of judgment within the PRIMElands and the Phoenix Ring Ocean is Powerslam Anubis, because of course it is. The great Powerslam Anubis welcomes all to his Duat of Judgment. He brought the feathers, you’re bringing the hearts full of sin.
13. I know I have.
14. The last time that Shakuaraut the Canadian Destroyer, Befaller of Civilizations, Herald of the Emo Years, the Ambien Walrus Made Manifest was summoned in the PRIMElands, it led to the destruction of society as we knew it and it took many years before it could properly recover from the devastation. To this day, wrestle archeologists are still uncovering ruins left behind by what came before during what they have called “the ReVolution Era”. On a side note, Shakuaraut wasn’t even Canadian. He’s from North Carolina, wherever the fuck that’s supposed to be¹.
    1. I mean, logic suggests that it’s probably next to East Carolina¹.
       1. Holy shit, Gary, get out of the footnotes. They’re bad enough without you.
15. Cannons that fired balls of steel folding chairs were common armaments in the high seas of the Phoenix Ring Ocean, despite being hilariously impractical, dangerous, and not at all what you should be firing out of cannons. Wrestle pirates weren’t exactly known for their intelligence, since they’re an amalgamation of two of the dumbest kinds of entities to have ever lived on mother earth – pirates and professional wrestlers. 
16. Professional wrestlers are made of wrestle muscles – “wruscles”, if you will. These hypothetical pieces of human anatomy shouldn’t exist, because they’re developed as part of the antithetical-to-living-healthily nature of being thrown violently to the ground by other professional wrestlers.
17. Probably Scott Stevens, tbh. 
18. Well, okay, maybe they should take a shower for all of that coal dust.
19. Naming moves after yourself makes them more powerful. This is known science.
20. Not to be confused with a sword-chair, which you absolutely do not want to sit on. Because it will hurt your butt.
21. Yes, there is a minotaur. No, despite the purpose of the footnotes being to explain in-universe things of Joe Fontaine’s ludicrously stupid fantasy wrestleverse, we are not explaining the minotaur. The minotaur is unknowable. 
22. The Chandler Tsonda Cinematic Universe, of course.
23. You know, like you’re about to lock up with your opponent. Like you’re a pro wrestler. Because this is a wrestleverse.