A Filed Note, Brief By My Standards

A FILED NOTE, BRIEF BY MY STANDARDS [Filed by hand. Shawn Cortez, the week of NO ESCAPE. Distributed to the locker room and the federation site. No interview requested.] ———————————————— I want to start by saying something I have not said in this federation before, and I want the locker room to notice that I am saying it, because I do not say things twice for effect. I have nothing left to argue. I arrived here angry about a bracket I was not in. I wrote the office a letter. I wrote the office three letters. I fought a hardcore specialist built specifically to erase me and I lost the way you lose to weather — honestly, and without complaint, because there is no complaint to file against weather. I fought the finest technician in this building and I lost to a man who took my own observation and used it better than I used it myself, and I said so, in writing, because that is who I am. Two losses. Neither of them was the office's thumb on the scale. I asked for a fair room. I got one. I do not get to keep arguing after that. So I am not arguing anymore. I want that on the record before No Escape, because after No Escape I do not intend to bring it up again. ———————————————— CORMAC HEALY I am not going to write him a dossier. I did not write one for McCready either, and I was right not to, and the reasoning is the same, though the man is not. McCready was weather — you dress for it, you do not study it, because there is nothing under the surface to study. Healy is not weather. Healy is closer to a fact. A fact does not change depending on the conditions. You do not scout a fact. You simply account for the fact that it is going to be there, at the end, whatever you did to try to move it, still standing where you left it. I have watched the tape from all six of his STRIFE appearances. I want to be precise about what I saw, because precision is the whole of what I do and I am not going to abandon it just because the opponent in question does not particularly reward it. He has lost to Wone, to Pryce, to Kuramoto, to Pagan DuHast, and twice to Reyes-Montoya. He has never been finished decisively. He has never tapped. I have built my entire career on the idea that a man's habits are readable if you watch closely enough, and I have watched closely, and here is what I found: he has exactly one habit. He shows up, and he does not stop, and eventually the building starts applauding him for it whether he wins or not. That is not a gap in his game I can exploit. That is the whole of his game, executed perfectly, every time, by a man who does not appear to know any other way to do it. I have heard what Reginald Graves said about him. I do not often find myself agreeing with Reginald Graves about anything, on principle, the way one avoids agreeing with weather. But he was correct. The man fights. I am not going to pretend that observation is beneath me just because he is the one who made it. Here is my honest assessment, and I am going to give it to you the way I give everything — plainly, and once. Footwork beats output. Distance beats volume. I have spent four appearances proving that a system beats an instinct, against opponents who had systems worth beating. Healy does not have a system. He has an instinct that has been correct enough, often enough, that I am not going to insult either of us by pretending my footwork makes this a formality. It doesn't. I intend to win anyway. I simply do not intend to be surprised by how hard that turns out to be. ———————————————— I said this was going to be short, and by my own standards it is. Two losses, two wins, and an argument I have finally finished having. What is left is a fighter who fights, and a technician who has run out of grievances and has to actually go and be one. How does it feel to want? I suppose I am about to find out from the other side of the question, against a man who has never once asked it out loud. — "Simply" Shawn Cortez