Free Advertising (Lillie KOTW Promo #1)

Ugh, this again? The never ending saga that is the implosion of the World’s Finest, or at the least the second version of it? Which one are we on? When the World’s Finest first formed, it had a few fun members, the second one added the ‘Next Generation’, and the final form is something completely different. This has become the final few seasons of That 70s Show. Goodbye Eric! Hello to another guy who wants to bang Donna! Someone should come up with the Rise and Fall of the World’s Finest and premiere it soon? Someone should re-imagine what the virtues of the team actually consisted of. Someone should do something, right? Hmm.. Maybe somebody already did?

Believe it or not, somebody did. Sure, the CGI isn’t all that great, the de-aging wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Instead, a certain somebody decided to try their hand at the creation of something so exciting to the niche audience. People are still fans of the World’s Finest, right? Maybe all they have to go off of would be the legendary saga of two leaders fighting with each other, a childish brat wanting to fight with two wonderful talents from DOMINION. How in the world did Violet and Lillie even get a shot at those titles, anyways? People need to see the story, the TRUE story of the World’s Finest, told as always by those who knew them best. They needed a screenwriter, a director, a producer, a caterer, stunt doubles, explosives experts, and even the guy who would bring in a puppy to bring the stress down on the set. Those things were needed for this particular venture.

The stress puppy had his working boots on.

Of course, to get everyone excited about the world premiere, some advertising campaigns were needed. Interviews, movie trailers that only showed thirst trap pictures that didn’t even include anyone in the cast. It was a necessary evil to really get the point across. Of course, the ever pleasant Lillie Saint was the head of such advertising, lying about the fact that she wrote a tell all book. It didn’t get past the second page, under the chapter that read “Why does she look so old???”.

Most interestingly was her appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast. If they weren’t getting baked, they were talking about how amnesia causes the greatest inventions to be created. She acknowledged that she had forgotten so much about creating a car made of bubble wrap and how it would save so many lives, but wanted Tesla to make one. Those were things that weren’t related to the World’s Finest and their legendary world premiere that is coming soon. That part of the interview was a little more telling. Let’s take a look.

(Interestingly enough, they went to a commercial break, sponsored by some shaving club for men and the International House of Pancakes. Evidently, the idea of changing their name to International House of Burgers had come and gone. Maybe a prank? Didn’t matter. Across from Mr. Rogan was Lillie Saint. She was very excited to be there, maybe a little antsy once they began taking hits together during the earlier part of the show. How relaxing, how candid. Once it was back on though, it was time to get down to business. Just what would she say about the premiere of the World’s Finest, and just as important, her views on the match coming up at King of the World.)

“So, you have a movie coming out. World’s Finest. No need to have a tagline apparently. You directed and starred in it along with others who are clearly not the World’s Finest members. Did you feel this was necessary going forward? And when will it premiere?”

(Lillie leaned back in the chair, looking at her coffee mug that was supplied by the producers of the show. Still seeing the steam pouring out of the never ending cup, she smiles and thinks over the questions that were asked. It was so easy to talk about the problems in the World’s Finest that have been taking place over a year ago. The cracks in the armor that would never be replaced, she thought.)

“I wish it didn’t have to be made, Joe. The kicker behind this whole thing is I feel everyone has a fairy tale view of what the World’s Finest is. The narrative was so simple at the start. We would fight for the good, defeat the evil. By the time I even joined the group, a lot of evil was dying off quickly. You’d see ninety members of the Underworld magically show up, but they would never last. You’d see people pretend to be part of the World’s Finest, and duck out within one match. The original World’s Finest had a unique core to it though.”

“I’ll admit, I didn’t watch Wrestleworld outside of some matches here and there. While I’m not a big wrestling fan, I liked some of the fighting. You were added in later, right? I remember another red headed woman there.”

“Yeah! Alyssa Grace. Alyssa is a sweetheart, and I felt bad when I found out she was leaving the company. That actually was one of the things that brought me into the group along with Violet. They briefly recruited some guy named Ares, and he flaked during the cage match they had with the Underworld. So, when that was done, they needed some new members, hence Vie and I joined up a few nights later.”

“I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m pretty sure some of this will be covered. What was the atmosphere like within the group when you first joined?”

“Reno was awesome. Nobi was cool, too. You had Stephanie Matsuda and April Song running the show for us. Now, since I was one of the new kids to the business, much less in this group, I sat back and listened to what they had to say. I had just come off a win against Drago Santiago when Reno recruited me, so there was a little bit going on at that point. So, it was Vie, myself, April, Matsuda, Reno, Nobi, and Hana. For the most part, everyone was pretty chill at first. Vie was quiet towards me, but I understood why. I especially understand now. So, with this huge group of people, there were the two voices that led the charge. It was easy to understand the direction at first.”

(Rogan sat himself back, looking through his notes once she finished. He kept on the small talk with Lillie while researching a few things.)

“Obviously this didn’t last very long. By the time January hit, you were in a war of words with Hana Nakajima over comments she made on social media. What made this happen?”

“As time went on, I noticed more things about her. I’m not going to dive into all the details, but she was on the verge of becoming a pretty big star. She was wrestling all over the world at that point, and having big matches for other companies. She wasn’t getting a lot of those matches here though. Look, I was still the newbie, and I was trying to make my break to getting more out of what was being given. Vie, Hana, and myself were drafted to Dominion after Dreamworld happened. She was out pretty quick, and I shot her a message to see what was up. Nothing. Again, she was a busy person so I didn’t deep dive into things and continued putting in work on Dominion. So, Jaywalker was backstage at one of the shows and told Vie and I that we were going to be on a Chapter event. He wanted us to officiate a match with April and her. Before the match even happened, Vie and I talked about it and we both agreed that we would correct some bad calls if one of us made one. Neither one of us had much experience as a referee. What got us through the match was watching each other while paying close attention to the match. I was making a bad call, she corrected me. She was making a bad call, so I corrected her. Evidently, Hana didn’t like that and decided to blame me for losing to April. Now, let me ask you a question. If someone messed up a call for you during a martials arts tournament, would you go and talk about it on social media, or would you find the person after the match and talk to them about it? Maybe even yell at them for the bad call?”

“I’d have no problem finding them and talking to them about it.”

“Right! That makes sense! We were in the same locker room that night, and she didn’t say a word to me after the match. She went right to her phone and complained about it, calling me a ‘stupid bitch’ in the process. I noticed the tweet when I got home, and sent her a text. No response. Got ghosted for that. So, I responded on twitter to her since she decided she wanted to use the public forum to air out a complaint rather than dealing with me in person. She continued complaining afterwards. People on DOMINION were asking me what the deal was. Emiko, who is now my sister in law, even asked why this wasn’t handled in person. Obviously, a bad call made during a match wouldn’t drive this type of animosity, since I’m assuming we both knew that I would apologize for it without any question. It became so petty and childish, and I’ll admit that it really hurt me when it happened. So, rather than fixing the problem, we both made it far worse as we headed into War of the Worlds.”

“Okay, so you two were going at it on social media. Where were the leaders of the group during this?”

“Matsuda calmed it down the first time, and I apologized to her for making the group look bad. I thought I was going to get kicked out! I reached out to April, same thing. She calmed me down for a moment and said to let it pass. So, I did. That just seems like something that would make sense. Hana kept on twitter, making the backhanded comments and taking pot shots any chance she could. So, I fired back. Where I come from, if somebody is going to be hostile as long as she has, they would get socked in the mouth for it. Of course, I would never see her until the World Domination match. I even said on social media that I’d be more than happy to enter the match early with her to settle this in the ring before others would join in. That never happened. Now, whether she had something to do with it or not, that’s not my place to decide. I wasn’t there until I was asked by Jaywalker to draw a number, so I did. Of course, I got into the match later, and had a mini war with Kimberly in there. Hana didn’t try to attack me once until she saw my back was turned and threw me out. This was long after she began slutshaming me on twitter and in other media appearances. Naturally, I was pissed off.”

(Joe Rogan’s mind was about to explode from all the detail in the war of words. He took a sip of his drink and shuffled through more of his notes.)

“This is crazy to me. I’m not going to say anything necessarily about her since I don’t even know her. I’ve seen her on social media a few times through retweets from others, but didn’t really understand the context of it. If I have this correctly though, April joined Hana, attacking people as well. They won the Tag Titles, what are those called?”

“Campeonatos De Parejas.”

“And then you and Crazy Violet defeated them for those titles on the last big event for the company. Now, you two are facing off in a rematch. Has the tension simmered since you won the belts?”

(It didn’t take much thinking for Lillie to shake her head in denial. She knew that so many other things happened during that span of time, but it was a necessary jump forward to talk about their match coming up.)

“Of course not. She got to the point where she blocked me on social media, an..”

“Wait, she actually blocked you on social media after what she had said?”

“Yep..”

“And she won’t talk to you in person, so she’s just having free reign for herself to say all kinds of things.”

“Oh, things get told to me all the time. She’s going to say what she wants to say. She’s going to whine and complain constantly while April Song stands in the background and nods in silence. I still don’t get that part, but her mind was made up. She’s made the same attacks that Hana has, just using physicality instead of whining constantly. When we got to that match at Violent Ends, I couldn’t even stand being in the ring with Hana. It was absolutely disgusting.”

“I figured you two would have been brawling non-stop during the match.”

“I would have loved to get a chance to fight her, but I couldn’t get within five feet of her without smelling something awful coming from her.”

“What? I have to hear this one.”

“I know that wrestling is a sweaty sport, and I’ve been in there with people who were on the gross side. My first match in Wrestleworld, I took on Beau Cassidy, and it was clear that he must have been on a Taco Bell binge the day of because he would be ripping them left and right. I was in there with Mark something, I can't remember his last name, but he was caked in shitty cologne. So, you get used to those things in the ring because you can’t simply stop the match and tell them to wash their stuff off. In that match, Hana had something going on with her breath. I don’t want to say too much, but every time she exhaled, you could smell something awful.”

“Gross, was it something she ate?”

“Something like that. Like I understand when people are in relationships, you do things. Can you honestly tell me that you didn’t take the time and rock out some mouthwash after though? We both got knocked down late in the match and were way too close for comfort, and she let out this huge exhale. I had to turn onto my side away from her and look at Vie. She had a grossed out look on her face, so I think she knew quickly why I had to get away from her for the moment. That’s the strangest part, Sabertooth is a pretty clean guy, always dresses nice and has cool cologne. How Hana could walk away with that kind of breath though, it had me floored!”

“Oh wow! Yeah, that would stop a lot of people from wanting to be around them. Now, you did win that match and now you two are fighting again at the event, King of the World it looks like. What are your thoughts on walking in as the Champions and facing them again? I’ve noticed that you haven’t really talked much about her partner though.”

“I mean, I feel bad.”

“After everything that was said? You feel bad about it? Take us through this because I know if I had somebody turn their back on me, I’d like to figure out why they made their decision.”

“That’s the worst part, Joe. To this day, I still don’t know why April Song went the way she did. She always carried herself a certain way from the day I met her, but something really changed around January. She grew this attitude like she didn’t even want to be in the wrestling business anymore. It wouldn’t stop her from getting in the ring and fighting, but she focused more on tag team wrestling and nothing else. I’m convinced, and nobody has really argued it with me, that April is reaching her end as a professional wrestler. By the time you get to a point where you’re so burned out on wrestling, you’ll do more tag team matches in order to conserve your energy and really carry that fire back so you can do more singles matches again. I do tag team wrestling because of Violet, I love working with Vie so much. When you see patterns like that coming from a singles wrestler, who was an amazing one, and resort to doing less in the ring even during tag matches.. To me, it’s concerning. With April, this whole rivalry and issue she has with me, it’s just professional to me. That’s someone who wants our belts, just like it was someone who wanted the belts from her when she had them. She had so much fight to her, she headlined one of the biggest matches in company history when she faced Matsuda and Claudia at Dreamworld. She has always been one of the most talented wrestlers in the company. Now, it just feels like she knows she’s being passed through by others without getting much out of it. It’s hard to ignore those things.”

“Are you saying you have passed April Song? I can imagine you saying that you and Crazy Violet have passed her and Hana as a tag team, but all together?”

“In the ring, at her current state, I can beat April Song. She showed a little fight at Violent Ends, but it wasn’t the April Song that I saw when I first got here. You know MMA, obviously. When someone is reaching their end of the rope, you can see a guy who has a hall of fame career being beaten by a nobody. It would trigger the question ‘How much more can they take inside of the ring?’.  With April, I know she can go when she’s still motivated, but the motivation hasn’t been there. It isn’t talent or age that are slowing her down, I know that. The girl was one of the most respected members of the United States Air Force before even becoming a wrestler. That was something that drew me to her from the start. She had that respect that she enforced. When we first began talking to one another, she would give me all these tips in the ring. I needed those tips, absolutely, but it was the way she carried herself that told the biggest story. Now, she doesn’t have any of those things. It could be emotion blinding me from how good she is now, but I just don’t think she’s as good as me inside of the ring. With people like Jay Jones, Cynthia Rose, Emmanuelle, Devon Slayton among others coming up the ranks and even becoming Champions or challenging for those titles at King of the World, I feel like April is upset about those things. It has to really be an eye opener when people are defeating you, or being considered before you for matches like that. Maybe the Underworld rivalry took a lot out of her.”

(It was clearly bothering Lillie that she was saying those things about her former friend. Hana, she couldn’t care less about when it came to being an in-ring threat, but April Song was the main event. She was the star. Joe noticed the frustration in the eyes of Lillie, moving his microphone down to ask her if she needed a minute. She waved it off with a forced smile.)

“So, it’s always hard to make a legitimate prediction on your match coming up at King of the World. You’re in there with your long time tag team partner, someone you know very well as a partner and as an opponent with Crazy Violet. The Crimson Bouquet, the..”

“Campeonatos De Parejas.”

“Campeonatos De Parejas, yes. You’re facing Nakajima and Song to defend those titles in a return match. What is the prediction for the match?”

“I have all the faith in the world in Vie. She’s been through so much, and is such an amazing teammate and an amazing friend. We’ve won titles elsewhere, and here we are, getting ready to put the CDP on the line against Sweet Melody. If I didn’t predict that we would win the match, I’d be doing both of us an injustice. Even though we don’t have the greatest winning record as a team, I know we’re going to do anything we can in order to keep the titles. We want to be one of the best teams in history, and are hellbent on proving the world wrong any time we can. Vie is going to be ready, I’ll be ready. Whether those two are going to want to bring their best or not, that’s for them to try. When they were at their height as the Champions, we took them down. I expect nothing less at King of the World. After this, I just hope that somebody else can come along who would appreciate the titles the way that Mac and Murphy, RZD, or Drake and Jones did. Maybe some others can come up, finding their footing as a team and bring their best to us. Maybe Hect and Jordan ought to challenge us, or that new team of Supreme Machine and Daniel Horror. Somebody can come along and give us one hell of a fight, I know that.”

“Alright, so the premiere of the World’s Finest will be shown at the Dolby Theatre. I heard some strings were pulled to make that happen. What will people be seeing, and how important was it for you to make sure that people see the true side of what the World’s Finest was all about?”

(Finally feeling like herself again, Lillie smiled at the thought of the film being shown at the Theatre. So many crazy premieres have happened there, she was honored to have the chance to show her directorial debut at one of the finest theatres on the planet.)

“Well, first I want to talk about the premiere. Thanks to some connections I have gotten over the years, we’re having it at this amazing theatre with a full blown red carpet affair. Everyone is going to be there, having a grand time. I’m excited to see some of the faces of the past and some of my best friends and family there to witness it. When it comes to the film though, I need to say it from an objective point of view. I’m not here to make anyone the hero or anyone the villain. I want people to come in with an open mind, see how this entire situation took place, and really get to see what happens backstage when they’re so used to seeing things exclusively on television. You don’t get to see Nobi’s real attitude unless you see it backstage. Actually, you kind of do, he’s a gem all around. I love Nobi. It’s the other things. The trials and tribulations that the team had to go through in order to put down the Underworld for good. The inner workings of what was a well respected faction.

I want people to enjoy what they see, and understand that this is something that happens a lot in professional wrestling. We’re all competitors inside of the ring, and competitors tend to have a lot of pride. It can be cutthroat, it can be uplifting, it can be a lot of things. The World’s Finest as I saw it early on was one of the most wonderful experiences in my life, something I still hold dear to me. It was the turmoil that you’ll see that eventually led to us being in the place we are right now. I only hope that there can be a sequel where all of the World’s Finest can get back together and face the peace that we fought so hard for initially. A lot of that, in reality, is going to fall on what happens at King of the World. I feel, when we get that win, some eyes are going to be opened and hopefully it’s the eyes of the people that can make this right. I have high hopes.”

“Everyone, I want people to check out King of the World coming up on November 7th on Pay Per View. There will be some fun matches to watch, and judging by the way this interview went, some very emotional ones too. Lillie, it’s always a blast talking to you. We definitely need to talk with Elon Musk about that Bubble Wrap Car. Got anything else for us?”

“Yeah, I just want to thank everyone for supporting Vie and I, as well as Wrestleworld all together. We put in a lot of work to give people an amazing show with very hard hitting matches and there’s so many more things we can do. Fresh matches, new opponents that you want to see. If you want to see something, always speak up and make them listen. It’s such a busy venture for everyone, but I know they hear the feedback. If they didn’t, Vie and I wouldn’t have gotten these titles. We gladly defend these for you, and that will never change. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.”

“Thank you Lillie.”

(It wasn’t the most traditional interview. A lot of things were said that were from the heart by Lillie Saint while still putting on her best effort to get people to watch and enjoy Wrestleworld. It was her first job out of college, and one that has given her so much to appreciate in terms of friendships. The World’s Finest was that opening, and she will never forget it. She slowly pulled her headset off and looked over at Rogan while enjoying some small talk before the shot faded out.)