Post by Immanuel Taylor on Sept 2, 2011 18:37:29 GMT -5
Despite the stereotypes about the weather in Russia, summer in the heart of the Motherland is quite humid and it was very wise for the EUW-Asylum Headquarters to book a show during the last days of the summer period and the first days of the fall. Immanuel’s flight departed from the San Francisco International Airport on the 30th of August after Immanuel paid over a thousand dollars from his savings account to bump back the EUW-Asylum airline ticket from Friday the 2nd to August the 30th. Immanuel’s flight, the carrier was Air France, made a stop at the Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris with a transfer time of one hour and ten minutes before Immanuel boarded another flight and reached the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow in just five hours and fifty minutes.
The EUW-Asylum headquarters, since it pre-booked this in advance, was easily able to get the required 30-day tourist visa for its workers along with the invitation letter from one of the many hotels in Moscow. Immanuel’s hotel was and is the Samovar B&B and, like the ticket, he had to pay an extra fee to add additional nights. The extra fee Immanuel paid for going much earlier than planned ate a chunk out of his savings but it was worth it.
Immanuel Taylor had to get out of San Francisco after he had found out that the Euro-looking stalker is living across the hall from him. The Euro-looking Stalker is someone whom Immanuel is positive Mark Rivera hired to investigate Immanuel’s past. He had been keeping an eye out for him ever since that sole night where he followed Immanuel into that obscure little café. It was only by a freak accident that Immanuel opened his front door and found the man opening his front door across the hall from him. Had Immanuel opened his door one second later, the Euro-looking Stalker would have seen him.
But that did not happen. Due to Immanuel being behind him, Taylor was able to identify him and quickly retreat back into his room. That three-second long but immensely significant encounter left Immanuel with the advantage…and suffocating anxiety. The Euro-Looking Stalker is living across the hall from the man he is hired to investigate. He doesn’t know this. Immanuel does. And with that crushing anxiety, Immanuel quickly and temporarily left San Francisco to recuperate and regroup. He needed to get out of there, out of the vibrant yet suddenly claustrophobic Paris of the West .
Immanuel’s been to Russia before, he had taken a train from Helsinki to Leningrad, now known as St. Petersberg. He even knows some Russian, decent enough to get him by as a visitor. Relics of growing up during the Cold War. It helped him when he checked in at the Samovar B&B and it’s helping him now as he cruises through the busy stalls at the Izmaylovo Market, specializing in pretty much everything from carpets to books. Immanuel had gotten here via the Komsomolskaya metro station. Immanuel had also been to the Kremlin and had taken some time to visit the excellent New Tretyakov Gallery, housing Soviet-era Art.
History is to Moscow what Diversity is to Toronto and Cultural Liberalism is to San Francisco. Immanuel should know since he is currently sitting on the steps of the Russian State Library, previously known as the Lenin Library, housing a copy of every book published in Russia from 1922 till the current day. A mixture of Constructivist and Classicist architectural design gave the building a neo-classical and grandiose façade. Immanuel sat on one of the many steps overlooking the lush green lawn, the statue of Dostoyevsky to his back.
Immanuel had his shoulder bag with him along with a cold sandwich and coffee in a thermos. It’s the 1st of September now and Immanuel silently agreed to himself that his costly and temporary escape to Russia has done him good. No frantic suspicions and, ironically, no sighting of that Euro-looking Stalker in a country full of people who look like him. Immanuel has a white, European visage too which, along with his decent command of Russian language, made him able to assimilate here and take comfort in his ambiguity and facelessness.
To make up for his daily exercise routine, Immanuel jogged everyday from the Kremlin to Pushkin Square and engaged in intense bouts of push-ups, sit-ups and other cardiovascular exercise that kept him in his peak physical condition. Taylor also rented a laptop from the EUW-Asylum Headquarters and, nestled in his modest room at the Samovar B&B, logged into his online account at the EUW-Asylum central website and downloaded matches concerning Maynard Hetfield from the archives.
Taylor, now on the steps in front of the Russian State Library, had a carbon copy of Maynard Hetfield’s biographical folder lying next to him, long scanned through and analyzed thoroughly. Hetfield’s wrestling style as Immanuel pondered about when he first acquired a copy of the biography is a solid base of essentials, Suplexes and Submissions, that prop up a main offensive of vicious kicks and strikes. To counter this, Immanuel would need to take out the momentum of Luck’s offensive.
For that, Submissions would be Immanuel’s key weapon. A man can’t kick you if you’ve gotten him ensnared in a chickenwing crossface and that would be easy to do if you’ve got the weight and height advantage. Immanuel has the latter. To Hetfield’s 5’11, Immanuel responds with a 6’7 stature. Both men are neck-deep at the 240 pound mark only with Immanuel possessing an insignificant 1 pound advantage. The height advantage easily hurts Hetfield’s chances of trying to pull off those fancily brutal kicks of his. If he would want to connect with, say, a Psycho kick, he would have to either go on the top rope or get Immanuel while Taylor is on his knees.
And even then, kicks are by nature very tricky to pull off since they consist of the competitor literally leaping in the air and thus pitting his weight against immeasurable equations such as in-match fatigue, velocity and other factors attributed to physics. And that’s not taking into account a counter-attack. If Maynard goes for the SIlencio maneuver, a springboard kick in short, and Taylor simply sidesteps out of the way or ducks, then Hetfield’s going to find himself the victim of gravity, added velocity due to the springboard push, and the punishing ring mat. If he would fall on his ankle, he could very well twist it and thus cripple any future kick offensives while also giving Immanuel the perfect opportunity for locking in a submission maneuver. If the ankle twists, an ankle lock, probably a grapevine one, would turn the figurative tide of the match if not seal the figurative deal.
Still, the common laws of physics can’t be sufficient enough in of themselves. What if Maynard Hetfield doesn’t miss? What if he pulls off that Silencio maneuver? Just as a missed springboard kick could twist Hetfield’s ankle, a well-executed Psycho kick could knock out Immanuel. It’s a two-way street with the laws of physics. Professional Wrestling is similar to a dance and Immanuel has some experience with high-fliers, he’s tangoed with the likes of Danny Tenfold and Diabolik. Immanuel also has the experience of dealing with chaos, of outright barbarism as he currently is the reigning two-time Hardkore Champion. Both these experiences are essential to dealing with the newly unhinged Maynard Hetfield.
Taylor took a sip from the black coffee in his thermos and recalled a match he had with Chance Fusion the SnV after Immanuel’s Hardkore title victory. Fusion had severe, spontaneous bouts of intense strength and Immanuel characterized Fusion’s strategy in a way similar to how he is currently characterizing Hetfield’s offensive. The way to combat such a sharp offensive is containing the opponent and to do so submissions would be the effective strategy. He was able to do that with Chance Fusion, picking up a submission victory. To do so with Hetfield, Immanuel would have to get a clearer picture of Hetfield’s offensive.
Now, this is Hetfield’s first match post-transformation so Immanuel cannot strongly rely on Maynard’s past matches. There’s a dangerous level of spontaneity in there. When the match bell literally rings, Immanuel expects Hetfield to come at him with everything in his arsenal. The beginning of the match means Hetfield has all this momentum to burn and burn he will. He’ll be coming in at break-neck speed, using his high-flying background as a prerequisite to go ballistics with kicks and punches. Corner Immanuel and pummel him. Keep going at him until he drops, add in a variation of a DDT or Suplex here or there, and keep the pain coming.
That’s what Immanuel envisioned Maynard Hetfield’s strategy to be. And why not? Does every wrestling strategy have to be technical and sophisticated? What’s wrong with brilliantly simple destruction and chaos? Immanuel saw nothing more than pure, unbridled fury in Hetfield, made all that more twisted and dangerous by Hetfield’s past experience. Immanuel closed the biography folder and stared up at the clear sky and then directly ahead at the Kremlin, the massive fortress opaque and intimidating, indicative of something not white or black but a perpetually gray matter. That’s how Immanuel saw his match come Sunday the 4th. Something neither white nor black, a grey matter that Immanuel would be walking into. Except, unlike the fact that what lies beyond the walls of Kremlin is completely mysterious to Immanuel, Immanuel would be walking into his shapeless match with Maynard Hetfield with a chain-solid strategy.
Anything can happen in that ring with an individual like Maynard Hetfield, just like anything could have happened in that Barbed Wire match. And things did happen. Tyreke Bell saw an end to his reign as Hardkore champion and is currently out of action while Immanuel walked out with the bell. Immanuel persevered. And he would do so again come Sunday the 4th, he would walk in as the two-time Hardkore Champion and would dance the dance with the unhinged Hetfield. The Hardkore Title with Immanuel’s name on it is a testament to the heights Immanuel is willing to go and the ambiguous dangers he is capable of facing.
Taylor packed his things and, his eyes still on the massive Kremlin walls, got up and slung the shoulder bag on his shoulder. He had it on his right for a while so he shifted it to his left. He threw away the cold sandwich wrapper and packed the thermos in his bag. The sun is setting now and it gave a nice background along with the Stalinist-structure of the Hotel Ukraina.
In the Hotel Ukraina itself, Vitali Khodorkovsky is sitting on a luscious couch in the living room of the Business Executive Suite. There are four guards in the room. Vitali, also known as The Euro-looking Stalker whom Chad Kennedy had hired to investigate Immanuel and whom now Rivera is paying to continue the operation, is wearing a very nice suit and, in fluent Russian, ordered a local beverage from the room service waitress.
Vitali didn't see Immanuel that night, he still doesn't know that Immanuel is literally living across the hall from him. Only Immanuel is blessed with that information. Vitali got his drunk and said something to the waitress, in Russian of course, which made her smile. Suddenly, the door to the in-suite office opened and Rivera's personal assistant motioned for Vitali to enter. He got up and did so. The door slammed with a gentle thud as September 4th, Immanuel's dance with Maynard Hetfield, gets closer and closer by the second.
