Provisional Custody: Notes on the Inaugural Champion

PROVISIONAL CUSTODY: NOTES ON THE INAUGURAL CHAMPION Prepared statement, read aloud into a recorder, for future release. ———————————————— In one week, I will compete for the STRIFE World Championship against Mr. Tomás Reyes-Montoya, who currently holds it. I have been asked, several times, to provide a characterization of my opponent prior to this contest. I have declined each request, on the grounds that public characterization of the champion before a championship match is an act that, performed casually, would compromise the seriousness of the work I am about to do. I am providing the characterization now, in the form of a prepared statement, because the work has been completed and it is appropriate that it enter the record. Mr. Reyes-Montoya is thirty-six years old. He is the son of a wrestler and the grandson of a wrestler. He trained in the Mexican lucha tradition under the supervision of his father from approximately the age of six and supplemented that base in Brazil and Japan in his twenties. He is married. He has two children. He is widely respected by the men he has competed against, and the respect, by every measure I can verify, is earned. He won the inaugural STRIFE World Championship at Ignition by defeating Mr. Wone in the final via cross-armbreaker, applied against the cage wall in the corner numbered four. The application was clean. The result was honest. I want to be precise about this at the start, because I am about to say several other things, and I do not want any of them to be misread as failure to acknowledge what Mr. Reyes-Montoya accomplished. He is the correct inaugural champion of this federation. ———————————————— I would ask the listener to attend carefully to the construction of that sentence. He is the correct inaugural champion. The qualifier is doing the entire load of the sentence. The federation, in its inaugural period, required a champion who could be recognized as a champion by an audience that had not yet learned what the form was going to be in this room. Mr. Reyes-Montoya is that. He arrived with a documented lineage. He arrived with a public reputation. He arrived with a style — the lucha-base submission game, augmented by Brazilian and Japanese supplements — that translates legibly across cultures. The audience, on the night of the inaugural pay-per-view, needed a fighter they could read. He was the fighter they could read. He produced the result the moment required. This is what it means to be the correct inaugural champion. It is not a small thing. I would not say it if I did not mean it. It is also not the same thing as being the correct champion. ———————————————— The distinction matters because the federation is now several weeks past its inaugural moment, and the audience that needed a legible champion at Ignition will, with time, develop the capacity to recognize a more difficult kind of champion. The form will mature. The audience will mature. The question of what correct means in this room will move beyond what was required at the launch. I have been preparing for that question since before the bracket was drawn. The title is, at present, in Mr. Reyes-Montoya's provisional custody. I use the word with care. Custody is the legally appropriate term for an arrangement in which a party holds something on behalf of an institution that has not yet finalized the disposition. Provisional is the modifier the institution applies when the arrangement is subject to review. Mr. Reyes-Montoya holds the title. The federation, in due course, will review the arrangement. The review will be conducted, as all such reviews properly are, in the cage. I am the review. ———————————————— A note about my prior contest with Mr. Reyes-Montoya, since I anticipate it will be raised by commentary. We met in the semifinal of the championship tournament. He won. The win was via submission, applied cleanly, in the third exchange of a sequence I had not at that point fully drilled against. I tapped within the protocol. I credit the result. I do not contest the result. I want, however, to address what the result was and was not. It was a data point produced under the conditions of a single-elimination tournament with a fixed bracket and a calendar. It was, specifically, a contest in which I had approximately nine days to prepare for an opponent whose lineage I had been studying from a distance but had not previously had occasion to engage at competitive range. The nine days were sufficient to compete. They were not sufficient to win. The nine days are now several weeks. The several weeks have been spent in the kind of preparation the original bracket did not permit. I have watched every Mr. Reyes-Montoya match in this federation from a seat I requested at the front row of the press riser. I have compiled, in a folder that I keep for this purpose, the specific geometry of his transitions in the hex environment — corner choices, wall use, the timing of his submissions against the cage wall versus the open mat. I have noticed several adjustments he has made since the round of sixteen and several that he has not. The adjustments he has made are intelligent. The adjustments he has not made are the subject of the dissertation I am submitting in one week. I do not say this with hostility. Mr. Reyes-Montoya is doing the work. He is doing it the way the form has always asked the work to be done. The room, however, is a different room than the one in which he learned to do that work. He is, in my professional assessment, still doing the work as though the room were a ring. The room is not a ring. The room is a hex. The corners are six. The walls do not yield. The door is the only exit and it can be locked. I have not been adjusting to this room. I prepared for this room before I arrived. The distinction is the entire thesis. ———————————————— In one week, the cage will arbitrate. I will not cheat. I will not strike Mr. Reyes-Montoya with intent to wound. I will not address the audience. I will, from the opening lockup forward, demonstrate the difference between a fighter who has adapted to The Crucible and a fighter who is still adapting. The Crossroads is the finish. From a German Suplex transition, bridged pin, three count. Center of the cage. No theatrics. Mr. Reyes-Montoya is, as I have said, the correct inaugural champion. I am the correct champion. The audience, when the result is in, will understand the difference. They will not enjoy understanding it. They are not required to. The work does not require their approval. The work requires only that it be done properly, in front of them, under the rules of the form. Class is in session. — E. M.