New Orleans; ‘The Big Easy’, a place so unique in its inception and multi lingual origins that it will be forever known as a district of dreams, somewhere to hang your hat up and make yourself at home.
That is, of course, unless your name is Tyke Index.
Hi, sit down and get your feet up we’re about to tell some stories kids.
I had arrived in New Orleans around four hours ago and as Harvey Goodfellows approached me with a stuttering hand of Jack Daniels I could just tell that tonight was
going to be a long one, we were going to go hard in the mud and end up in a right mess.
I always found it ironic that for most people New Orleans represented opportunity, inspirations and aspirations – for all intents and purposes this was a district
represented in the hopes and dreams of creative minds which stretched miles and miles across Bourbon Street.
Harvey would tell me about the city and the Orleans Parish, hell he would even gloss over Hurricane Katrina and paint a lavishly endowed picture of a city which was
seeped in history, this was their history though and I had nothing in common with any of it.
In fact the only thing that New Orleans represented to Tyke Index was a lifestyle I had succumbed to time and time again, vices such as partying vices such as drugs
and vices such as the thing in my hand right now hard sour mash liquor. I wasn’t taking this trip for granted, I was aware that this week was going to truly test my
sanity and my well being, it wasn’t even a stretch to suggest that my life was in danger, the vices this city possessed in my truly humble opinion represented more of a
threat than my nemesis at Good Time Anaquin Adams ever would.
Word had got out that I was struggling mentally at the moment, that Tyke Index had returned to a world of fragility and vulnerability, to a certain extent the dirt sheets
were correct and as Wade Keller pointed out all so poignantly in the Torch, my in ring ability had diminished in the past month. Arguably my last good match came all
the way back at the start of the month against Scythe Bloodline at HcW Hardcore Kingdom. There were shades of doubt placed against my name, an asterisk after my
initials and for the first time in my career that asterisk wasn’t there to signify that I was the champion, no, this time that asterisk was there to symbolize weakness.
Somewhere along the line my journey took a detour and the destination became somewhat unknown, yet all along all I wanted was to have a Good Time which led me
ultimately to where we were sitting right now – some shitty Irish dive bar named Paddys at the back end of darling Bourbon Street.
As the drinks filtrated my blood stream so did the bad thoughts and by god once those bad thoughts started to do their thing, there was no turning back, not tonight,
this good time I was so desperate to achieve? Well, it was a long way away, so far away in fact I wondered if I would ever retrieve it and make my life whole again.
Damn, more than anything in the world I wanted to feel whole again. I wanted to feel free and dangerous but lately all I felt was like a liability, recently I felt like
nothing was worth the bother anymore. Since the turn of the month the only thing that mattered to me was making money, I didn’t care about how that money was
assembled or what method achieved those paydays. Maybe that’s where the Chinese Whispers had grown into monumental screams and it became clear as day that
Tyke Index didn’t give a fuck anymore. Thinking about it and discussing it with Harvey a few things became very transparent – firstly there was no turning back, not
this time around.
My days being liked around here were gone and thank god, I always hated being the tragic hero anyway, fuck that guy, nobody likes that guy.
Secondly, even if I did still want to be that guy everyone looked up to the fact is I wasn’t, the mainstream media portrayed my soul as a toxic drug abused silhouette of
a person, any empathy was dehumanized into a lifeless melting pot of despair and repent, I was no longer known as a professional wrestler but instead a capitulation
within the profession, a visage on this beautiful sport we liked to call ‘rasslin’. My public image had been damaged beyond repair; that paired with a frantic disbelief in
anything fairy tale meant that I would have to build the bricks differently this time.
My time being loved was over, my flirtations with the darkness had only just begun and I figured that there was no point in doing this any other way and then it came to me. I stood up out my seat and yelled at Harvey:
“Let’s look at that fucken poll result”
Last week I conducted a poll asking what sort of dance should take place between Anaquin and myself and after extensive research, half a dozen false starts and frantic
fingers on keyboards worldwide, darling twittersphere would demand a Tango. Thing is, though, that poll meant nothing and those people who wanted to see the Tango? They could suck my cock because from today onwards we were doing things my way, we would be dancing the Tyke Index way and that waltz around Coke Mountain would be free of weak and poxy humans who for whatever reason feel like they have some sort of right to call the shots on my life.
I was so, so, SO fucking sick of answering to people or feeling like I owed them an explanation. My name is Tyke Index and I am the greatest wrestler that ever lived.
What infuriated me more was how quickly every single person in the back and in the seats flocked towards Anaquin Adams our beautiful Universal Superstar, she was
this months flavour and just like last months flavour she would soon be out of stock and out of luck.
Anaquin Adams was everything wrong with this sport; a nobody who the dirtsheets dipped in glamour and prestige because she merely looks good and hits a note in
contemporary popular culture like the fifty billion people before her, yet here’s the thing, soon Anaquin would be irrelevant again, soon Anaquin would be mopping floors in McDonalds and soon? Soon Anaquin would be the one pumping drugs and acids into her system as she fought the realities of how much her life had free fallen into a crest wave of pungent disaster.
I had been the disaster and sorrowed tale of failure for too long and it was a burden I was no longer prepared to carry around with me and after this Good Time we
were about to have the burden would be passed on once and for all, passed on like the plague, passed on good and hard.
