Post by Thaddeus Duke on Aug 6, 2023 16:56:34 GMT -5
There were two versions of my father. With that, came common misconceptions. People thought what they saw the majority of the time was his full story. Nothing could be further from the truth. Thaddeus Duke was by and large a good man. He loved his wife. He loved his friends. He loved his children, most of all. As much as he was bright and cheerful, or made someone laugh… still… there was a darkness within.
One genetically inherited from his father, and his fathers father. One he fought tirelessly to control. No one really saw the dark side of my father, unless someone decided to hurt people he loved. Only then would my father allow that darkness that coursed through his veins, to control him. There are things he’d done in his life that he wasn’t proud of. But, he also didn’t regret them. Darkness lessened from generation to generation, but it still exists. That same darkness that was in him, is also in me.
I stood above the man’s dead body while staring at my family home. Paradise Ridge was sacred. This was our home and there was nothing here but love and happiness. When my parents were home, there was no wrestling talk. There was no business talk. Only me and my siblings. We were all that mattered. Now… years on… a place that was a sanctuary to my kin, became a living hell for one of us. Try as I might, I can’t shake the mental image and the physical pain that followed. My twin sister… trapped here… enduring horrors that I cannot fathom.
I’d never felt fear before, but I feel it now. At once, I understood what my father was fighting inside himself constantly. At once… I understood what fear really was.
Some may call it evil. My father called it darkness.
Staring at the house and remembering my twin sister… I feel what he felt. That darkness that was so prevalent within our bloodline… it was rising to consume me. Tears streamed down my face uncontrollably. I had no idea how many men were inside that house, but my only goal now was to take as many of them down before I went down myself.
“...a-a-a-aith,” my fathers voice came barreling through. “Remember your faith.”
Stripping naked right here in the field, I tried to ignore him. My father though was never someone that was ignored. Pulling on the red and blue threads my mother made for me, I stepped forward… then dead stopped.
Suddenly, I’m 12 years old swinging on a hammock, reading a book. Behind me, the wooden screen door slams against the jam. Looking up, my father exits the house and comes toward me.
“What’s up, T.J.?” he asked as he approached.
“Nothin’,” I answered. “Just reading.”
“Reading what?” he asked as he maneuvered himself on the hammock beside me.
“The bible,” I replied, showing him the book.
“The bible?” he repeated in an almost incredulous tone. He scoffed as he shot his arm beneath my neck.
“Yeah,” I replied as I looked over at him. “You keep saying I need to have faith.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “But you’re missing the point.”
Beside me, my father shifted to his side to look me in the face.
“Son,” he began. “All of this training… you worry about your athleticism. That you can’t move the way I move.”
“You’re really good at things,” I replied. “I’m not like that.”
“You are,” he protested. “But what you’re missing is that faith isn’t something you read in a book. Faith isn’t something that you sit in a pew and listen as an old man gives you a lecture.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “Frankie said that he has faith and he found it by reading this book over and over.”
“That’s Frankie’s choice,” he argued. “Have you found anything in there that’ll help you when the time comes?”
“No,” I said dejectedly. He lifted my t-shirt, baring my chest before placing a closed fist against my skin.
“Faith is right here,” he said to me then. “It’s trusting yourself to know the difference between right and wrong, just and unjust. It’s trusting yourself to know how and when to use your training. It’s trusting yourself to know the difference in when to use violence, and when to use your head.
“Faith, son…” he paused. “It’s heart.
“I have faith that I’ve raised two beautiful boys, with beautiful souls, with kindness in their hearts. I have faith that those boys that grow to be men will stand and fight when they have to fight. I have faith that my sons will one day liberate this world from hate.”
“You’re teaching me all that jumping stuff…”
“Parkour,” he interrupted.
“Yeah that,” I replied. “I always slip.”
“That’s because you don’t have faith yet,” he said as he patted my chest. “But you will. When you learn to have faith in yourself, that’s when you begin to trust yourself. All those slips you’re enduring now, will turn into just another launch point.
“If they can’t touch you, they can never hurt you.”
“I’m scared, dad,” I admitted to him.
“I know,” he replied as he kissed my forehead. “Me too.”
Laying beside him, I tried to see the future like he could. He said we had at least a few years before things would change but how was he so sure? Faith… maybe.
“Why don’t we just move away?” I asked.
“Because we don’t run away from a fight,” he always answered. “We Duke’s stand so others can sit. We fight, we die if we must so that others may live.
“Do you know why I was called the Lionheart?” he asked.
“I never really thought about it,” I replied. “I just thought it was because you like lions.”
“No,” he chuckled. “Well yeah I do, but that’s not why. See, I always thought of myself as being built differently than others. Most wilt under pressure whereas I always rose to the occasion. I trusted in my abilities and I believed that when I was at my absolute best… that no one could touch me.
“I never ran away from a challenge. Instead, I ran into the storm. I faced the beast whatever it was. Win, lose or draw son… If they were gonna beat me… they were damn sure gonna work for it.
“To be a Lionheart wasn’t a nickname,” he continued. “It wasn’t just something promoters could print and sell on a t-shirt. Being Lionhearted is a way of life.
“You might be just a boy right now… but there is a lion inside of you just like me.”
“How is that even possible?” I asked him.
Of course, I know now that the Lion he always referred to, was a metaphorical lion. That conversation piqued my young curiosity. In the days, weeks, even months that followed, I studied diligently. I read books, watched movies and documentaries. I needed to know what being a lion meant.
Lions didn’t kill for sport… neither did my father. They prided themselves on their family, just like my father. They killed to survive… and if someone or something came for their family… they fought back with a righteous vengeance…
…just like him.
A young man of just 17, maybe… but like my father before me, inside me beat the heart of a lion. Instead of going to the house, I heard Mufasa angrily struggling against his chains inside the stable. Inside, I knelt down beside the only living creature that connected me to my lost family. I wasn’t even sure he recognized me, but I hugged him and cried anyway as I released all that confined him.
One could be forgiven for thinking that since Cat Cortes won last time out that that means she’ll win this time too. It is possible, but it’s not very likely. Cat’s good. I’ll never deny it and while she certainly claimed her victory two weeks ago, it did not mean my defeat. When you learn nothing, that’s when you’re defeated.
It seems calling myself a legend… you now… something several promoters have done long before I ever did… has ruffled some feathers. I don’t mind it. See, I tell the truth and the truth is what men and women all over this business are afraid of. Most of them use corny insults that have no merit and have no basis in anything true or relevant. They just want that laugh and think that’s good and acceptable. In some circles… the wrong circles, maybe.
What I do is different.
What I do is tell you the truth about you.
What I do is tell the truth about me.
That’s facts.
The weak and inferior always show their colors when someone like me has the audacity to call myself what I am. The mockery… the down play… I get it. You have to mask your own insecurities, you have to cover your own inferiorities to make yourself feel better about yourself while weakly attempting in vain to tear me down, to remove the bricks that I’ve built that made me better than you in the first place.
That’s not me.
There is nothing and no one in this business that can make me feel less of myself. I know what I am. I know who I am. It unsettles people that I have this… this confidence that is just unshakable.
Some call it vanity. Perhaps on the surface, that’s exactly what it looks like. Unlike everyone else, my career and what I am is not dictated by the outcome of a single contest. It does not live and die by my success or failure in a single match but it is determined primarily by a body of work that most everyone should be envious of.
See? The vast majority of those that make up this business are completely fine with being perceived as god almighty when ninety percent of their opponents are people they should beat anyway. That bores me. I like a stiff challenge. I like when the perceived best of the best stand toe to toe with me and while I’m not always successful… more often than not, they fail to defeat me… and I damn sure don’t use politics to do it.
That’s why I’m me and they’re them. They need the constant fluffers to feel like they’re good at this shit. Me? Save the fluff. Give me the challenge. I know how good I am and I don’t need help in order to feel superior to those I already know I’m better than.
I’m not the kind of guy that searches around for excuses. You see it all over the place, no matter their alignment… when they fail… they make excuses. It was this promoter, or that interference, or this crooked official. Shut… the fuck… up.
Again…
That’s not me.
I make no excuses. I own my failures just as I own my successes… like a badge of honor. I happily gave Cat her flowers after her win in our last outing, but if she thinks she has me all figured out, I’ll advise her that she should not get too comfortable.
Lewis is a part of the equation too, but he falls more in line with those I already know I’m better than. I’ve beat him once already. But I know that every now and then, a lack of focus can bite you in the ass. No one is immune. Not even a legend. Knowing what’s at stake, knowing what’s on the line here… do any of you truly believe that I’m not focused? If y’all knew me as well as you project… you should worry.
Standing up and drying my eyes, I could feel a presence as I looked through the stable window toward the house. My eyes were soaked with tears. I was scared and I knew it.
“What do we do to those that hurt us, Talon?” asked my father as he stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders.
“Deliver justice,” I answered him. He wasn’t real and I knew that. All I wanted at the moment though… was to hug him.
“What was it like for you?” I asked as I looked over my shoulder at him. For a brief moment, I realized just how much I looked like him. Oh, how I admired him.
“The darkness?” he asked.
“Yeah…”
“I loved it,” he answered. “And I hated it.”
“I don’t understand,” I replied.
“You will soon enough,” he stated.
“Did you ever feel bad about it?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly. “But justice needed to be done.”
“Are you still alive?” I asked him with a shaky voice.
He didn’t answer.
“They did things,” I told him. “To Caty.”
“I know,” he said with a quiet sadness. “And now you’ll show them to a permanent end why that was the big-g-g-g-gest mistake they ever m-m-m-made.”
“Why didn’t you protect her?” I asked almost angrily.
“I tr-i-i-ied son,” he replied as tears rolled down his cheek. “I l-l-lost.”
“You have to go now,” I said to him. To which, he nodded his agreement as I faced the house again.
“Revenge,” my father once told me. “It’s a best served cold. Show them, T.J.”
Then… he was gone.
“I love you Dad.”
One genetically inherited from his father, and his fathers father. One he fought tirelessly to control. No one really saw the dark side of my father, unless someone decided to hurt people he loved. Only then would my father allow that darkness that coursed through his veins, to control him. There are things he’d done in his life that he wasn’t proud of. But, he also didn’t regret them. Darkness lessened from generation to generation, but it still exists. That same darkness that was in him, is also in me.
I stood above the man’s dead body while staring at my family home. Paradise Ridge was sacred. This was our home and there was nothing here but love and happiness. When my parents were home, there was no wrestling talk. There was no business talk. Only me and my siblings. We were all that mattered. Now… years on… a place that was a sanctuary to my kin, became a living hell for one of us. Try as I might, I can’t shake the mental image and the physical pain that followed. My twin sister… trapped here… enduring horrors that I cannot fathom.
I’d never felt fear before, but I feel it now. At once, I understood what my father was fighting inside himself constantly. At once… I understood what fear really was.
Some may call it evil. My father called it darkness.
Staring at the house and remembering my twin sister… I feel what he felt. That darkness that was so prevalent within our bloodline… it was rising to consume me. Tears streamed down my face uncontrollably. I had no idea how many men were inside that house, but my only goal now was to take as many of them down before I went down myself.
“...a-a-a-aith,” my fathers voice came barreling through. “Remember your faith.”
Stripping naked right here in the field, I tried to ignore him. My father though was never someone that was ignored. Pulling on the red and blue threads my mother made for me, I stepped forward… then dead stopped.
Suddenly, I’m 12 years old swinging on a hammock, reading a book. Behind me, the wooden screen door slams against the jam. Looking up, my father exits the house and comes toward me.
“What’s up, T.J.?” he asked as he approached.
“Nothin’,” I answered. “Just reading.”
“Reading what?” he asked as he maneuvered himself on the hammock beside me.
“The bible,” I replied, showing him the book.
“The bible?” he repeated in an almost incredulous tone. He scoffed as he shot his arm beneath my neck.
“Yeah,” I replied as I looked over at him. “You keep saying I need to have faith.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “But you’re missing the point.”
Beside me, my father shifted to his side to look me in the face.
“Son,” he began. “All of this training… you worry about your athleticism. That you can’t move the way I move.”
“You’re really good at things,” I replied. “I’m not like that.”
“You are,” he protested. “But what you’re missing is that faith isn’t something you read in a book. Faith isn’t something that you sit in a pew and listen as an old man gives you a lecture.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him. “Frankie said that he has faith and he found it by reading this book over and over.”
“That’s Frankie’s choice,” he argued. “Have you found anything in there that’ll help you when the time comes?”
“No,” I said dejectedly. He lifted my t-shirt, baring my chest before placing a closed fist against my skin.
“Faith is right here,” he said to me then. “It’s trusting yourself to know the difference between right and wrong, just and unjust. It’s trusting yourself to know how and when to use your training. It’s trusting yourself to know the difference in when to use violence, and when to use your head.
“Faith, son…” he paused. “It’s heart.
“I have faith that I’ve raised two beautiful boys, with beautiful souls, with kindness in their hearts. I have faith that those boys that grow to be men will stand and fight when they have to fight. I have faith that my sons will one day liberate this world from hate.”
“You’re teaching me all that jumping stuff…”
“Parkour,” he interrupted.
“Yeah that,” I replied. “I always slip.”
“That’s because you don’t have faith yet,” he said as he patted my chest. “But you will. When you learn to have faith in yourself, that’s when you begin to trust yourself. All those slips you’re enduring now, will turn into just another launch point.
“If they can’t touch you, they can never hurt you.”
“I’m scared, dad,” I admitted to him.
“I know,” he replied as he kissed my forehead. “Me too.”
Laying beside him, I tried to see the future like he could. He said we had at least a few years before things would change but how was he so sure? Faith… maybe.
“Why don’t we just move away?” I asked.
“Because we don’t run away from a fight,” he always answered. “We Duke’s stand so others can sit. We fight, we die if we must so that others may live.
“Do you know why I was called the Lionheart?” he asked.
“I never really thought about it,” I replied. “I just thought it was because you like lions.”
“No,” he chuckled. “Well yeah I do, but that’s not why. See, I always thought of myself as being built differently than others. Most wilt under pressure whereas I always rose to the occasion. I trusted in my abilities and I believed that when I was at my absolute best… that no one could touch me.
“I never ran away from a challenge. Instead, I ran into the storm. I faced the beast whatever it was. Win, lose or draw son… If they were gonna beat me… they were damn sure gonna work for it.
“To be a Lionheart wasn’t a nickname,” he continued. “It wasn’t just something promoters could print and sell on a t-shirt. Being Lionhearted is a way of life.
“You might be just a boy right now… but there is a lion inside of you just like me.”
“How is that even possible?” I asked him.
Of course, I know now that the Lion he always referred to, was a metaphorical lion. That conversation piqued my young curiosity. In the days, weeks, even months that followed, I studied diligently. I read books, watched movies and documentaries. I needed to know what being a lion meant.
Lions didn’t kill for sport… neither did my father. They prided themselves on their family, just like my father. They killed to survive… and if someone or something came for their family… they fought back with a righteous vengeance…
…just like him.
A young man of just 17, maybe… but like my father before me, inside me beat the heart of a lion. Instead of going to the house, I heard Mufasa angrily struggling against his chains inside the stable. Inside, I knelt down beside the only living creature that connected me to my lost family. I wasn’t even sure he recognized me, but I hugged him and cried anyway as I released all that confined him.
One could be forgiven for thinking that since Cat Cortes won last time out that that means she’ll win this time too. It is possible, but it’s not very likely. Cat’s good. I’ll never deny it and while she certainly claimed her victory two weeks ago, it did not mean my defeat. When you learn nothing, that’s when you’re defeated.
It seems calling myself a legend… you now… something several promoters have done long before I ever did… has ruffled some feathers. I don’t mind it. See, I tell the truth and the truth is what men and women all over this business are afraid of. Most of them use corny insults that have no merit and have no basis in anything true or relevant. They just want that laugh and think that’s good and acceptable. In some circles… the wrong circles, maybe.
What I do is different.
What I do is tell you the truth about you.
What I do is tell the truth about me.
That’s facts.
The weak and inferior always show their colors when someone like me has the audacity to call myself what I am. The mockery… the down play… I get it. You have to mask your own insecurities, you have to cover your own inferiorities to make yourself feel better about yourself while weakly attempting in vain to tear me down, to remove the bricks that I’ve built that made me better than you in the first place.
That’s not me.
There is nothing and no one in this business that can make me feel less of myself. I know what I am. I know who I am. It unsettles people that I have this… this confidence that is just unshakable.
Some call it vanity. Perhaps on the surface, that’s exactly what it looks like. Unlike everyone else, my career and what I am is not dictated by the outcome of a single contest. It does not live and die by my success or failure in a single match but it is determined primarily by a body of work that most everyone should be envious of.
See? The vast majority of those that make up this business are completely fine with being perceived as god almighty when ninety percent of their opponents are people they should beat anyway. That bores me. I like a stiff challenge. I like when the perceived best of the best stand toe to toe with me and while I’m not always successful… more often than not, they fail to defeat me… and I damn sure don’t use politics to do it.
That’s why I’m me and they’re them. They need the constant fluffers to feel like they’re good at this shit. Me? Save the fluff. Give me the challenge. I know how good I am and I don’t need help in order to feel superior to those I already know I’m better than.
I’m not the kind of guy that searches around for excuses. You see it all over the place, no matter their alignment… when they fail… they make excuses. It was this promoter, or that interference, or this crooked official. Shut… the fuck… up.
Again…
That’s not me.
I make no excuses. I own my failures just as I own my successes… like a badge of honor. I happily gave Cat her flowers after her win in our last outing, but if she thinks she has me all figured out, I’ll advise her that she should not get too comfortable.
Lewis is a part of the equation too, but he falls more in line with those I already know I’m better than. I’ve beat him once already. But I know that every now and then, a lack of focus can bite you in the ass. No one is immune. Not even a legend. Knowing what’s at stake, knowing what’s on the line here… do any of you truly believe that I’m not focused? If y’all knew me as well as you project… you should worry.
Standing up and drying my eyes, I could feel a presence as I looked through the stable window toward the house. My eyes were soaked with tears. I was scared and I knew it.
“What do we do to those that hurt us, Talon?” asked my father as he stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders.
“Deliver justice,” I answered him. He wasn’t real and I knew that. All I wanted at the moment though… was to hug him.
“What was it like for you?” I asked as I looked over my shoulder at him. For a brief moment, I realized just how much I looked like him. Oh, how I admired him.
“The darkness?” he asked.
“Yeah…”
“I loved it,” he answered. “And I hated it.”
“I don’t understand,” I replied.
“You will soon enough,” he stated.
“Did you ever feel bad about it?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly. “But justice needed to be done.”
“Are you still alive?” I asked him with a shaky voice.
He didn’t answer.
“They did things,” I told him. “To Caty.”
“I know,” he said with a quiet sadness. “And now you’ll show them to a permanent end why that was the big-g-g-g-gest mistake they ever m-m-m-made.”
“Why didn’t you protect her?” I asked almost angrily.
“I tr-i-i-ied son,” he replied as tears rolled down his cheek. “I l-l-lost.”
“You have to go now,” I said to him. To which, he nodded his agreement as I faced the house again.
“Revenge,” my father once told me. “It’s a best served cold. Show them, T.J.”
Then… he was gone.
“I love you Dad.”