(FADE IN: Nova’s face at a sidelong view, one cheek resting against the canvas of an empty wrestling ring).

NOVA: This is where it all begins again.

The camera fades away from his face and the mat becomes crisper, individual beads of water still resting delicately on its surface from a recent cleaning. The camera zooms in slowly, and the beads grow larger.

NOVA (V/O): What a defeatist and pointless mindset pervades the culture of our business. Everywhere I go I hear “The Golden Age is past, the Glory Days are gone…”

The camera pans back out. Nova rests on his knees, clad in jeans and a sleeveless black ‘The West Is the Best’ t-shirt. A lit cigarette hangs from his hand and a bottle of Spanish table wine sits on the mat next to him.

NOVA: …while we continue to kill ourselves in the ring…for what? A husk? A painful reminder of how great everything used to be? I don’t remember ever stumbling upon any wrestling utopia, free from the problems that plague the rest of our sickly industry. I don’t recall the passing of any Golden Age.

The Eagle Star takes a long swig from the bottle.

NOVA: And yet we stand on the ruins of an empire. They already parade the name of the CSWA through the streets like the coffin of Jim Crow, proclaiming its death, though undoubtedly in less ecstatic tones. And much like that bold declaration of freedom, perhaps the celebration – or memorialization, here – came a bit too soon.

I don’t know much about the CSWA. I won’t pretend to. I know that it stands now at the brink of permanent extinction after almost nineteen years. I know that men I respect gave buckets of their blood for the name to stand for more than just decrepit immortality. And I see somehow in my head a link between what this place stands for, and the perceptions of our industry on the whole, bringing me to my real motivation for extending the stay originally granted me for GOLD RUSH over to the company’s continued survival:

If I can believe that the CSWA can be brought back from the dead, from the clutches of archives, to polish the brass and once again stake its claim and take its place in the heartland of professional wrestling…

Nova takes a last drag of his cigarette and flicks it away.

NOVA: …then maybe I can believe what I say to you now, that the “Golden Age” hasn’t passed…

…that it never really left us at all.

(FTB)