Post by styg on Aug 23, 2015 10:51:36 GMT -6
Dear Jonathan,
I feel compelled to write this in order to express certain things in what I hope to be a productive, professional manner. In the interests of fairness, I must tell you upfront there are things I'm holding back, things which would be informed more by emotion than I feel is appropriate for this letter. I am willing to share these things too, if you wish to know them, but this particular letter is not the correct avenue for them.
Back at New Year I stabbed a man on your broadcast. I will be eternally grateful to the EXODUS staff, yourself included, for the fact that no charges were brought. I understand the lengths the company went to on my behalf that night. I understand too the concern for your company's image and my contribution to any negative perceptions, for which I must sincerely apologise. In the wake of Gods & Monsters, I - like many of EXODUS's employees and wrestlers - found myself caught between the rock of trying to prevent similar situations from arising and the hard place of working to repair the company's reputation. I understand the poor decision I made, the harm I did to your company's reputation, and the impact of that decision on the personal and professional relationships between you and I. Please understand, therefore, that the things I address in this letter are not intended as a one-sided attack on you. I recognise my part in the chain of events that led here.
You know about my personal fallout from that incident - the subsequent psyche referral and the re-evaluation of my psychological profile, the increase in my therapy sessions and the courses of medication that followed. You might know about what was wrongly described as a suicide attempt, and the watch I was placed under. I hope you are aware of the struggles I've been having since then, and understand the efforts I've been making to change. I am fully aware of the terrible things I did in 2014 under your banner; I would hope you have taken note that I have not done such things in 2015. Not that I expect to be in any way rewarded simply for treating other people like human beings. I simply wish that I could in turn be treated like something approaching a human being myself.
When I joined EXODUS, I fought with the Seikigun - I fought for your cause - because I believed in this company. I am certain you know me well enough not to question my love for wrestling. I recognised in EXODUS a company with a similar passion for wrestling as my own, a passion I wanted to be a part of and a company I wanted to help thrive. This year, I joined Beowulf in Storm because I believed in this company. And when he and Nicholas Gray approached me regarding The Imperium, I agreed to side with them because I would still dearly like to be able to believe in this company.
Do I believe in this company right now, however? No. I must honestly say that I don't. Not any more. I want to, and I have faith in a large number of specific individuals, but I no longer believe that EXODUS as a whole, singular entity retains that passion for wrestling.
Many of my doubts coalesced following incidents on Twitter over the last month. For a start, I simply cannot agree with your exhortation to "take the high road" by allowing the racism and homophobia of Anwar Saad to go unchallenged; what sort of message does it send to the world, to our fans, to our shareholders, to the media, when a member of the (R)Evolution roster posts remarks like that on social media and nobody from the company but his immediate peers is permitted to respond to them? Similarly, what sort of message does it send when Carey keeps making ill-informed personal insults regarding the neurological condition with which I struggle, almost always unsolicited, without any repercussions? Is any (R)Evolution-specific disciplinary action being taken? If it is it's clearly not working, because he keeps on doing it. I would be a lot more willing to take the high road in such circumstances if I had any faith that the behaviour of the (R)Evolution roster would be addressed in a productive manner by their trainers or other staff. Unfortunately I do not.
I try to be patient. When you ask me to change something about my behaviour as a representative of your company, I do so. I keep my feelings about Chandler and Andreas off social media now at your request (despite repeated and unprovoked attempts by the former to bait me). You know how hard I've been trying this year to keep myself under control. My company medical records have full details of my cognitive therapy and mindfulness programmes. But somehow my condition is fair game for the likes of Carey and Leander, while I get a public dressing down for exposing the flawed argument of a racist? And then, after what I must remind you was my first disciplinary incident in eight months, you tweet that I'm "almost as bad as Lifer".
If you remotely believe that I'm "almost as bad as Lifer" I can only draw one conclusion: you no longer have any perspective on your own roster. I'm far from the first person you've publicly dismissed or snapped at in recent months, and sadly the incidents of you doing so seem to be getting more and more frequent again (you don't need me to tell you your own history in this regard, but you seemed to have conquered it earlier this year). If my behaviour on social media is unprofessional and reflects badly on EXODUS, then what must you say of your own? Every day it seems you're insulting one of your own employees, or talking about how this or that member of your roster is a headache. How stressed you are. How you were supposed to have left all this behind. Which - I remember Autumn Effect 2 well - you indeed were. I feel compelled now to tell you - as someone I used to call a friend, even if that aspect of our relationship has now passed - I think you need to step back entirely for your own good. Sell your shares, move away from the area, if those measures are what it takes for you to find peace. You've distanced yourself too much to be any good to the company, yet you remain too close for your own mental health. All you're doing right now is making things worse for everyone, yourself included.
I'm not saying any of this to insult you, patronise you or anger you. I'm saying it because I believe it's what's best for you and what's best for EXODUS.
I suppose this letter is also to inform you that once my current contract expires, I will not be re-signing. This decision is divorced from the personal sentiments I just expressed, but nonetheless, I no longer feel that myself and EXODUS Pro constitute an agreeable match to either party. I suspect you will agree with me on that front.
I have not made this an open letter, but you have my consent to reproduce it if you wish on the condition that it is reproduced in whole and unedited.
Yours sincerely,
Laurel Yunokawa
Wulf,
You're my brother, man. I don't know if you understand how much you did for me. I don't know if I can ever repay the debt I owe you. Every day of my life, I owe to you. And that makes this so, so hard.
I just wrote Jon Collins a letter laying out some stuff. Stuff me and you have talked about before a bit. Some stuff we haven't. Among that stuff, a decision I became certain of as I was putting everything down:
Once my contract's up, I'm done.
I'm not walking away from what we started. I'm gonna see my contract out and I'll fight by your side until that day, and in spirit at least, beyond it. But me being signed to the EXODUS Pro Wrestling roster, flying out to the RIMAC every two weeks, being in matches? On the day my contract runs out, that ends.
We'll talk about it more in person soon, no doubt. We can talk about it with Ruby and Abby, and Nick and Stacey and the others. But this is a decision I've thought hard about and I don't see any way I'm going to change my mind. I'm sick of fighting for a company that doesn't want me. I'm sick of working to defend people who'll never treat me as anything more than a live grenade at best or an idiot child at worst just because they can't smell past their own shit. I'm sick of getting nothing but insults and disdain for trying to make up for my mistakes and work on my flaws, when people like Carey and Hardaway and Brooks don't try a goddamn iota to change their shitty ways and still get all the fucking patience in the world, and fucking Zack Lifer, and you know how I feel about him, but holy fuck he keeps getting reprieve after reprieve no matter what he does - and they act like I'm lucky to even be considered on the same level as him?
For this, this discourtesy, I give my body and my soul. I give my time and my energy and my health. And no matter how much I give, I can still count on my hands the number of people who treat me like anything more than dirt.
No more. Done.
I'm sorry.
Your sister always,
Laurel.
I feel compelled to write this in order to express certain things in what I hope to be a productive, professional manner. In the interests of fairness, I must tell you upfront there are things I'm holding back, things which would be informed more by emotion than I feel is appropriate for this letter. I am willing to share these things too, if you wish to know them, but this particular letter is not the correct avenue for them.
Back at New Year I stabbed a man on your broadcast. I will be eternally grateful to the EXODUS staff, yourself included, for the fact that no charges were brought. I understand the lengths the company went to on my behalf that night. I understand too the concern for your company's image and my contribution to any negative perceptions, for which I must sincerely apologise. In the wake of Gods & Monsters, I - like many of EXODUS's employees and wrestlers - found myself caught between the rock of trying to prevent similar situations from arising and the hard place of working to repair the company's reputation. I understand the poor decision I made, the harm I did to your company's reputation, and the impact of that decision on the personal and professional relationships between you and I. Please understand, therefore, that the things I address in this letter are not intended as a one-sided attack on you. I recognise my part in the chain of events that led here.
You know about my personal fallout from that incident - the subsequent psyche referral and the re-evaluation of my psychological profile, the increase in my therapy sessions and the courses of medication that followed. You might know about what was wrongly described as a suicide attempt, and the watch I was placed under. I hope you are aware of the struggles I've been having since then, and understand the efforts I've been making to change. I am fully aware of the terrible things I did in 2014 under your banner; I would hope you have taken note that I have not done such things in 2015. Not that I expect to be in any way rewarded simply for treating other people like human beings. I simply wish that I could in turn be treated like something approaching a human being myself.
When I joined EXODUS, I fought with the Seikigun - I fought for your cause - because I believed in this company. I am certain you know me well enough not to question my love for wrestling. I recognised in EXODUS a company with a similar passion for wrestling as my own, a passion I wanted to be a part of and a company I wanted to help thrive. This year, I joined Beowulf in Storm because I believed in this company. And when he and Nicholas Gray approached me regarding The Imperium, I agreed to side with them because I would still dearly like to be able to believe in this company.
Do I believe in this company right now, however? No. I must honestly say that I don't. Not any more. I want to, and I have faith in a large number of specific individuals, but I no longer believe that EXODUS as a whole, singular entity retains that passion for wrestling.
Many of my doubts coalesced following incidents on Twitter over the last month. For a start, I simply cannot agree with your exhortation to "take the high road" by allowing the racism and homophobia of Anwar Saad to go unchallenged; what sort of message does it send to the world, to our fans, to our shareholders, to the media, when a member of the (R)Evolution roster posts remarks like that on social media and nobody from the company but his immediate peers is permitted to respond to them? Similarly, what sort of message does it send when Carey keeps making ill-informed personal insults regarding the neurological condition with which I struggle, almost always unsolicited, without any repercussions? Is any (R)Evolution-specific disciplinary action being taken? If it is it's clearly not working, because he keeps on doing it. I would be a lot more willing to take the high road in such circumstances if I had any faith that the behaviour of the (R)Evolution roster would be addressed in a productive manner by their trainers or other staff. Unfortunately I do not.
I try to be patient. When you ask me to change something about my behaviour as a representative of your company, I do so. I keep my feelings about Chandler and Andreas off social media now at your request (despite repeated and unprovoked attempts by the former to bait me). You know how hard I've been trying this year to keep myself under control. My company medical records have full details of my cognitive therapy and mindfulness programmes. But somehow my condition is fair game for the likes of Carey and Leander, while I get a public dressing down for exposing the flawed argument of a racist? And then, after what I must remind you was my first disciplinary incident in eight months, you tweet that I'm "almost as bad as Lifer".
If you remotely believe that I'm "almost as bad as Lifer" I can only draw one conclusion: you no longer have any perspective on your own roster. I'm far from the first person you've publicly dismissed or snapped at in recent months, and sadly the incidents of you doing so seem to be getting more and more frequent again (you don't need me to tell you your own history in this regard, but you seemed to have conquered it earlier this year). If my behaviour on social media is unprofessional and reflects badly on EXODUS, then what must you say of your own? Every day it seems you're insulting one of your own employees, or talking about how this or that member of your roster is a headache. How stressed you are. How you were supposed to have left all this behind. Which - I remember Autumn Effect 2 well - you indeed were. I feel compelled now to tell you - as someone I used to call a friend, even if that aspect of our relationship has now passed - I think you need to step back entirely for your own good. Sell your shares, move away from the area, if those measures are what it takes for you to find peace. You've distanced yourself too much to be any good to the company, yet you remain too close for your own mental health. All you're doing right now is making things worse for everyone, yourself included.
I'm not saying any of this to insult you, patronise you or anger you. I'm saying it because I believe it's what's best for you and what's best for EXODUS.
I suppose this letter is also to inform you that once my current contract expires, I will not be re-signing. This decision is divorced from the personal sentiments I just expressed, but nonetheless, I no longer feel that myself and EXODUS Pro constitute an agreeable match to either party. I suspect you will agree with me on that front.
I have not made this an open letter, but you have my consent to reproduce it if you wish on the condition that it is reproduced in whole and unedited.
Yours sincerely,
Laurel Yunokawa
========================================
Backstage in a venue. The noise of cheering fans, somewhere in the distant auditorium, echoes through the corridors. Laurel Anne Hardy is wearing black trousers and a white tuxedo shirt; a jacket hangs over a chair behind her, and a bow tie rests on the seat.
"Black... I ain't got long right now mate, but that's fine, all I got to say is to the point anyway," she begins, then swallows lightly and shakes her head, grimacing.
"I ain't gonna lie, I'm feeling pretty frustrated with... well, everything, or at least a lot of things, but come Monday night, I'm liable to be in a state of mind to just fight. Kinda depends how things go tonight... but Black, what you won't get out of me is me tryna end you. I respect you too much for that an' I hope you don't buy into the crap that gets thrown around about me. It's everywhere, it's in XWA an' GFP for damn sure, but especially EXODUS; in the promotional stuff, it's always about how unstable I am. How I might let my opinion of one person affect my opinion of another in a match. Like I'll snap on you just because you're mates with Carey... like I would've snapped on Fiona just because of my stated respect for, and at least passing friendship with, Sally Talfourd... people act like I can't tell the difference between GRENDEL an' Christian Kane. But listen man, I promise, whatever you get out of me, it won't be me trying to break you. Just like I didn't against Christian. I won't let myself be that person, even if I do look for a little release."
A knowing smile crosses Laurel's lips for a moment. "You know what though? I have a feeling I'm not the only one. After how your night ended last time, against Chris Strike... to be an inch from the Triple Crown, and get it taken away by Jimmy Riley... something tells me you might have some steam to blow off too. You want a goddamn battle, work out some of that frustration? I know that, mate. I know it well. And I'll be quite happy to serve as your punching bag if you'll be mine. I'll bring as much fight as you want. If you want it, I'm ready to unleash hell, not because I'm unstable - but because of my respect for you and how much I respect what we do an' how we do it."
She winks and flashes up a peace sign with her left hand, while her right scoops up the bow tie.
"I need to finish gettin' ready now anyway, but Black... however we both end up feelin' on Monday night, let's make it one to remember, yeh?"
========================================
Backstage in a venue. The noise of cheering fans, somewhere in the distant auditorium, echoes through the corridors. Laurel Anne Hardy is wearing black trousers and a white tuxedo shirt; a jacket hangs over a chair behind her, and a bow tie rests on the seat.
"Black... I ain't got long right now mate, but that's fine, all I got to say is to the point anyway," she begins, then swallows lightly and shakes her head, grimacing.
"I ain't gonna lie, I'm feeling pretty frustrated with... well, everything, or at least a lot of things, but come Monday night, I'm liable to be in a state of mind to just fight. Kinda depends how things go tonight... but Black, what you won't get out of me is me tryna end you. I respect you too much for that an' I hope you don't buy into the crap that gets thrown around about me. It's everywhere, it's in XWA an' GFP for damn sure, but especially EXODUS; in the promotional stuff, it's always about how unstable I am. How I might let my opinion of one person affect my opinion of another in a match. Like I'll snap on you just because you're mates with Carey... like I would've snapped on Fiona just because of my stated respect for, and at least passing friendship with, Sally Talfourd... people act like I can't tell the difference between GRENDEL an' Christian Kane. But listen man, I promise, whatever you get out of me, it won't be me trying to break you. Just like I didn't against Christian. I won't let myself be that person, even if I do look for a little release."
A knowing smile crosses Laurel's lips for a moment. "You know what though? I have a feeling I'm not the only one. After how your night ended last time, against Chris Strike... to be an inch from the Triple Crown, and get it taken away by Jimmy Riley... something tells me you might have some steam to blow off too. You want a goddamn battle, work out some of that frustration? I know that, mate. I know it well. And I'll be quite happy to serve as your punching bag if you'll be mine. I'll bring as much fight as you want. If you want it, I'm ready to unleash hell, not because I'm unstable - but because of my respect for you and how much I respect what we do an' how we do it."
She winks and flashes up a peace sign with her left hand, while her right scoops up the bow tie.
"I need to finish gettin' ready now anyway, but Black... however we both end up feelin' on Monday night, let's make it one to remember, yeh?"
========================================
Wulf,
You're my brother, man. I don't know if you understand how much you did for me. I don't know if I can ever repay the debt I owe you. Every day of my life, I owe to you. And that makes this so, so hard.
I just wrote Jon Collins a letter laying out some stuff. Stuff me and you have talked about before a bit. Some stuff we haven't. Among that stuff, a decision I became certain of as I was putting everything down:
Once my contract's up, I'm done.
I'm not walking away from what we started. I'm gonna see my contract out and I'll fight by your side until that day, and in spirit at least, beyond it. But me being signed to the EXODUS Pro Wrestling roster, flying out to the RIMAC every two weeks, being in matches? On the day my contract runs out, that ends.
We'll talk about it more in person soon, no doubt. We can talk about it with Ruby and Abby, and Nick and Stacey and the others. But this is a decision I've thought hard about and I don't see any way I'm going to change my mind. I'm sick of fighting for a company that doesn't want me. I'm sick of working to defend people who'll never treat me as anything more than a live grenade at best or an idiot child at worst just because they can't smell past their own shit. I'm sick of getting nothing but insults and disdain for trying to make up for my mistakes and work on my flaws, when people like Carey and Hardaway and Brooks don't try a goddamn iota to change their shitty ways and still get all the fucking patience in the world, and fucking Zack Lifer, and you know how I feel about him, but holy fuck he keeps getting reprieve after reprieve no matter what he does - and they act like I'm lucky to even be considered on the same level as him?
For this, this discourtesy, I give my body and my soul. I give my time and my energy and my health. And no matter how much I give, I can still count on my hands the number of people who treat me like anything more than dirt.
No more. Done.
I'm sorry.
Your sister always,
Laurel.