Wrestling agent Vern Wheeler put down the phone and looked across at his client John Dionysus’ with a sullen expression and shakes his head.

“So it’s worthless,” said Dionysus.

He frowned, looked down at the WWA Heavyweight Championship belt that had been deemed invalid and pushed it across the table towards Wheeler.

“Get rid of it. I don’t care how, where or when. I don’t want to see or hear of it again.”

Dionysus got up from his seat and headed towards the door. Wheeler called out to him, he stopped and turned to his agent and long-time friend.

“They want to know if you’re still in.”

Dionysus was pensive for a few seconds then uttered his two word reply.

“I’m in.”

*

Ever since he had heard the rumours John Dionysus had been torn between two minds. He had been heart broken when on the cusp of reaching the summit of the mountain he had instead found a false ridge. WWA closed and draped what should have been his red letter day in robes of black.

He had been the champ.

He had been nothing.

It was nothing. It was non-existent. Removed with a single flourish of the eraser, or in this case by the ‘delete’ button on some secretary’s keyboard.

“History was written by the victors.” He was no longer one of them.

Time to start again.

Time re-write that chapter anew.

“Objects like to continue doing what they’re already doing.” That was just science. A law of physics. The law of inertia.

Unstoppable momentum. That is what he would become.

Again.

*

Dionysus took a break from his daily routine of pounding away at a 120lb punching bag to take the call. It was Wheeler.

“They’ve been in touch.”

Dionysus was interested. “What did they have to say?”

“They want you on the show. Naturally.”

Dionysus gave it some thought. He knew there could be no going back on the decision he made it the next few seconds. He had given Wheeler the green light to negotiate with the owners, but nothing had been signed yet.

“Put the contract in the post. I’ll make sure I do the rest.”

Dionysus hung up and went straight back to his Sisyphus-like exercise with the punching bag.

*

John Dionysus:

“All I want is closure.

No more. No less.

When the reign of the so-called splinter group WWA came to a miserable end last autumn the silver lining was that I believed I had possession of the WWA Heavyweight Championship. In a long career without significant success that the Title was a pretty big deal for me. To claim the label of the best in one of the most renowned brands in professional wrestling was a mark of salvation: it said to be me I was justified to make this latest return to the ring, that maybe my dreams were not delusions, but made of something material, substantial, concrete.

It didn’t matter to me the snubs I received from those fans who claimed as merely the best in a weakened WWA, a company that was at the time absent of top-line talent. For me that was a great opportunity: where those so-called top-line stars of WWA had bathed the future in darkness as they turned their backs on the company in its hour of need, I hoped to be a beacon of light. Along with the likes of American Freebear and Eddie Van Dorn I had taken up the mantle of torch bearer and was set on blazing a trail into a bright, new and hopeful future for WWA.

Even I have to smile now at the irony of that dream.

But now it’s real and the WWA has been resurrected with the promise of a long future ahead. I came back because I felt I had to, I felt I still owed something to myself and to WWA. I could not shake off the feeling that our business is not finished.

I look around and I see a lot of faces, none of them I recognise, and none that probably recognise me. Some history suggests are past icons of the promotion, some claim they are the names on which the new edifice of WWA will be built. However, not one of them has as much to prove as me.

I am the most significant remnant of the so-called splinter group WWA, a movement that the new regime seems intent on locking away behind some door in some dark and dusty corner of the WWA archives, and therefore a constant reminder of a time that everyone wants forgotten. I get the distinct feeling I am nobody’s priority around here.

Nevertheless, I am not the bitter man some may think I may have become. My accomplishment and previous status may not be recognised in this new WWA but I’m not one to cry over split milk. Champion or not the same challenges would have faced me: it would still be my duty to prove to everyone I was deserving of that honour, just as it is now my duty to prove I am more than merely the brightest star in a broken and washed-up WWA, and that I deserve the opportunity to lead this company forward.

RJ Stone, Jack Griffiths, Diamond Shazam: all men who have made early pretensions in this new era, but the question remains outstanding about whether any of these men come back to or arrive in WWA with the same burning desire that I have; whether they have the same compulsion of reason to make their careers here a success. I don’t doubt everybody here has some baggage of their own, but none weighs to heavily as my burden to prove I belong here.

I need that closure.”