Chapter 10-Page-18-Ultimatium
Dec27
on December 27, 2013
at 12:02 am
Gabrielle’s idea of multi-tasking.
Well, it does stand to reason that there’s only one Upstart girl who hasn’t shown up this chapter yet, but you can bet that her actions will affect things for the rest of Season 2. No surprise that it has to do with Sabrina keeping her job.
Voting Incentive!
This chapter’s worst kept secret. Vote to see what’s coming up on Wednesday and help us ring in the New Year!
So, now the BIG question…
Is Sun risking her own job in this match?
What for? Sun didn’t do anything to get fired over.
Maybe, if she doesn’t win that is.
At the end of last chapter, Sun said she could help Gabrielle collect on the Ultragirl bill if she gave her the right motivation. The big question is what Sun’s motivation is.
Precisely. I can’t imagine HER job suddenly being on the line is any motivation for her to help Gabs out.
There it is. I think Sun is aiming for a title shot.
is this like the anime sekai de ichiban tsuyoku naritai?
lolz.. Mo Chen you know this anime, also you Latindragon..
that is why..
Gabrille hanged out with the likes of Chloe, Yvonne, Blackwidow at one point..
I bet Chloe De Sade, just took a time off, “Suspended” is just a excuse, but really she is not..
Sabrina VS Sun..
COME ON!!!
SABRINA…..
DON’T SCREW THIS MATCH UP..
WIN..
I’M BETTING ON YOU TO WIN…
Does Sabrina have it in her to fight her BFF?
Wait, is this happening now?
It’s probably why my match is on later. So if things don’t go Sabrina’s way, the crowd won’t be too disappointed that she’s gone cuz they’ll be able to see me!
yeah, it’s a good time to stretch and get a drink…
You DO usually get stretched pretty good during my matches.
Yep, next update.
A huge match on free TV with zero build up? Yeah I don’t see it going that long. Could Sabrina follow in Austin’s footsteps and take her ball and go home?
“Don’t you dare”?
Honestly, if Gabs hadn’t already announced the match, I’d think she should sack the silly girl just for that comment. She’s gone beyond just thinking she can ignore her boss’ orders when it suits her. Now she thinks she can start giving orders right back!
She should have sugar coated it. Don’t you dare, please!
The “Boss’s orders,” were crap the last time Gab gave them. And this time she’s forcing Sabrina to fight her “best friend,” just because of her petty hurt pride. And for her job no less when she did nothing wrong. Who wouldn’t be pissed?!
Also I take that “Don’t you dare.” As a indication that Sabrina had a idea who she was going to face in this match. She just didn’t want it to be so.
You have this entirely backwards. It was Sabrina’s pride that refused to allow herself to accept a “tainted win”, when doing so would have provided the company that pays her salary the best route out of the Vince fiasco.
A workplace is not a democracy. You might think your boss’ orders are “crap”, but if you think you can pick and choose which ones you follow, you’re going to find yourself on the dole soon enough.
Your last sentence is key, though, and it gets to the heart of what a brilliant stroke this is by Gabrielle. Sabrina doesn’t want it to be so. As we’ve already seen, Sabrina is hesitant to do her job when it requires her to do something she doesn’t like. This test requires Sabrina to either do that, hopefully learning a valuable lesson in the process, or defy a perfectly reasonable order, in which case she’ll prove herself unworthy of her position, and Rival Angels can wash its collective hands of her for good.
Your last paragraph is FN on the money, at least from Gabrielle’s perspective. I think that’s why you two get along. XD
I’m afraid you’re the who is backwards on this. It’s a promoters job to make matches that people want to see not ones they want to forget. All Gab did was take a good match and make it horrible by putting in a crook id ref and getting involved herself. Sabrina didn’t need or want all of that interference, she could have won that match without it and have been a worthy champion for it. Not like the current and previous one.
Gabriel can’t see that she brought all that frustration on herself because she’s too high on her own power-trip. Even the boss needs to know when there doing the wrong thing otherwise all they will do is run there company into the ground. You shouldn’t be so hard on Sabrina just because she’s the only one with a spine to do it. Sabrina’s last match and this one would have been so much better if Gabriel hadn’t gotten involved. But like most wrestling management bosses she has to go on a ego trip and ruin it. They need to know there place and stay behind the scenes instead of being in the spotlight ruining matches, the landscape, and making paper champions that aren’t even worth the paper there printed on.
Honestly with all the crap Gabriel has done just because of her own ego and you have the nerve to say Sabrina is all about her own selfish pride. More like it’s the other way around.
I don’t think Gabrielle has made any bones about the fact that putting Vincent in as referee was a mistake. It was not her idea to do so, (I believe her response to Michael when he first voiced the idea was “I hate it”,) but she knows that ultimately, responsibility for what happens in this promotion lies with her.
And that’s the key. The responsibility is hers. NOT Sabrina’s. All this [i]ex post facto[/i] rationalisation of Sabrina’s actions are just that.
Panel 7: looks like Sabrina already knows Sun will show up :).
Sabrina is going with her worst fear…and she was right.
Yeah, I can’t see this ending well for either woman wrestler in this match. Talk about putting one friendship on the line here. 🙁
With what Sun has promised to her, I could see things ending up well for her.
Panel 1: Silly female TV announcer, ethics is what you do when nobody’s watching. Since that is impossible for a bombastic bimbo like Sabrina, the best she can do is morals when everybody’s watching when it is all an act perpetrated to make sure Sabrina’s reputation remains squeaky clean.
Panel 2: Good thing Jeff Krew is here as the voice of reason to set Dawn straight. Too bad he has to break the bad news to all the Ultramaniacs out there that their hero is as good as fired. The one chance she had to be a champion and she passed it up for her morals? This isn’t Gil Thorp! She can kiss any hope of being a champion goodbye.
Panel 3: Wait a minute, Dixie. I thought things got out of control because SOMEBODY tried to use the Vince Russo playbook and failed miserably because of it?
Panel 4: Oh, right. Trying to put accountability on She Who Must Never Be Held Accountable For Anything Because Nothing is Ever Her Fault. Good luck with that; the Ultramaniacs are frothing.
Panel 5: At least she’s benevolent. Or maybe she hasn’t forgotten the main event push she gave to a rookie only to be repaid with disobedience and controversy. Now it’s either a huge buyout or Sparta Kick her into the Midcard Abyss and wait until she quits.
Panel 6: At least it’s only one woman. The usual MO for the evil executive is the handicap match that breaks down into a company-wide beatdown. Also counts as part of her stay in the Midcard Abyss.
Panel 7: Usual Ultradork reaction.
Panel 8: Hey, it’s Miss Wrestling!
Overall: Finally, after so long, Sun Wong is ready to give Sabrina the wrestling lesson she has sorely needed since the beginning of this comic. After being humiliated and exposed to the legions of Ultramaniacs as the spot monkey she always was, will Sabrina finally learn humility? Or is nothing ever truly Sabrina’s fault?
haha! Dixie! 😛
I like you! You make me look tactful.
Are. You. Kidding. ME!?!?! So Sun…basically whines to Sabrina “why stay at this other company with models. come back to Rival Angels” Sabrina comes back only to be disrespected by Sun and now has to wrestle Sun to keep her job. I can honestly see Sabrina either winning or losing but once again Sun proves to be the most unlikable character in the history of this comic.
There does seem to be a bit of irony there.
See now I want to make it to the big leagues just so that I can kick Sun. Even just one kick would make me happy. ‘Course a whole bucket full of kicks would be better.
I still don’t really buy Gabrielle’s line in this – she asked her obviously crowd-favourite ‘good girl’ to do something bad-girl, was surprised when she got the opposite reaction, now she’s got her fighting for her job? Bizarro. Brenda / Callie / Snowie.. does the boss drink a lot in that fancy room you guys watch the shows from?
How does Sabrina make money for Rival Angels if she gets fired? Peoples obviously want to buy her stuff and watch her matches – check out the crowd – but they can’t do that if you fire her. What kind of exec puts her own pissy little ego in front of making loads of money? Stupidhead!
.. Does Gabrielle actually want Sun to win here? Swerve!
All I can say is she usually has a glass in her hand
I think she was asking about Gabrielle.
It’s actually quite clever on Gabrielle’s part. Sabrina could be a valuable commodity, but she can’t be putting her priorities ahead of the company’s, especially in such a high-profile setting as a title match. That’s NOT her job, and quite frankly she hasn’t earned the right to go into business for herself out there. What Sabrina has to do is simple: her job. Wrestle a match. That’s all.
I’d be willing to bet that if Sabrina shuts her mouth, stops bitching about how unfair everyone is being to her, (something you’d all have loathed if it came from Brooke, but which you forgive in Sabrina,) but just comes up a bit short in the match itself, she’ll earn herself a reprieve. The point isn’t to fire Sabrina, it’s to teach her some humility. Now, if she goes off the rails again, then it’s probably better to cut the ties now. It doesn’t matter how much merch you move if you’re a locker room cancer.
Here and in your reply to Kobra you manage to ignore the equally important fact that this is a sport, is competition. It is not unlike pro football (of either variety), baseball, etc in that regard. Both have groups of people who are employed by a business, who are competing for pride of place within the org as well as for the organization as a whole. In this light Gabs (or dixie rofl) is and properly should be constrained by the meta-rules of sportsmanship and fairness. But of course you were never comfy with such notions, finding the heel path to be easier.
How does any of what you just said invalidate my point? Gabrielle has to deal with a circumstance that is very nearly unprecedented in modern sport: An overt and blatant attempt by a match official to decide a contest. You want to use handegg as an example? Fine. What would the NFL do if, in the middle of the Super Bowl, a referee gave a team’s star quarterback a flying dropkick in the back, injuring him? Rule the play dead? Tell everyone to go home, they’ll have to have the game another day?
There’s no GOOD decision to make, at that point, but the league would have to figure SOMETHING out. So what happens if the league decides to press on with the game, but one team refused to play? I get being upset with a bad situation, but that team’s job is to play when the league says to play. Sabrina has exactly the same responsibilities.
I just think Gabrielle chose a dumb solution to the initial problem. If she’d canned the match, fired the official and just had a clean rematch the next week then she’d have a solid TV champ and whatever plans she had for the division are only set back by a week.
I can’t see a single down-side to that? Sabrina wasn’t even thinking business (she was thinking outrage / honour / etc) and she got closer to getting it right than the boss.
You have your opinion, I have mine, and Sabrina has hers, but the thing is it wasn’t ever any of our responsibility to decide. We can second-guess decisions in hindsight all we want, but then and there, it was Sabrina’s responsibility to do her job.
Sabrina decided her priorities were more important than Gabrielle’s, so chose to ignore that. That decision is going to have consequences.
Sabby just has to remember that training session gone wrong a couple of years ago about motivation to kick Suns ass.
OMG!!!
It’s Chloe DeSade! I knew it!!!
:p
WIN. XD
Panel 4-6: it could’ve been Chloe talking ;-).
Okay, all I can say is… if Sun really intends to wrestle Sabrina in earnest, she has just lost ALL respect from me. All. It’s a cutthroat business, but there’s a difference between going up the ladder and taking away a person’s dream and livelihood. Sun being mad is one thing (justified or no), but being willing to end her friend’s career because of a tiff? That’s low, not just in wrestling but for any human being with any kind of self-respect.
Albone, you have your work cut out for you if you want to salvage Sun from being the most hated character in RA now. Remember that she was arguably the most popular not long ago… there are some lines crossed that can’t be uncrossed and Sun is VERY close to that.
I don’t think we’re in “warn the boss” territory yet. I would wager that he knows exactly what it is about Sun that people have always loved, and that this situation will end up showcasing it in the end, possibly in an unexpected way. The character development for the Upstarts has been one of the strongest points of the comic, in my opinion, and I don’t think Sun’s personality shifted entirely from “underhanded but loyal” to “completely self-serving” while off-screen.
On the other hand, I would bet that Sabrina’s going to know she’s been in a match tonight.
Yep, Sun has had a heads up to train for Brina. She not as good a Brina on the whole, but she’s not far behind and this gives her an advantage.
The bigger advantage for Sun is Sabrina’s inability to keep her emotional state from affecting her decision making.
Sounds like you in our early days. But you learned. And she can too, probably sooner…
Some of us are still IN our early days, Granny Bren 😀
Speak for yourself! I’ve never been more proud of Sun. If she hadn’t seized that opportunity for herself, it would just have fallen into someone else’s lap. It’s up to Sabrina to handle Sabrina’s business. Sun’s handling hers.
Things got out of control because people didn’t do what they were told? Hell no! Things got out of control because of someones incredibly crappy match making! But god forbid the person in charge ever fess up and admit when they were wrong. I mean what did you think a baby face like Sabrina was going to do? Take a tainted win like that? Any true competitor wouldn’t take such a pathetic win. Sabrina didn’t do anything wrong Gab, you did when you listened to that tool bag ass of a assistant. And as for that back stabbing bitch Sun, you go to Japan and whine to Sabrina to come back, then all you do is back stab and treats Sabrina crappy when she does come back. Frankly I hope Sabrina ultra kicks her head off!
If Sun gets a chance, she might hit the appropriate Backstabber/Lung blower, unless Sabrina Ultrakicks her first.
Gabrielle’s in the driver seat on this so even though she didn’t like the match idea of Vincent reffing, she’s not going to lament about it now.
I’m trying to think over this page, but it’s weird. I can’t hear my own thoughts. Instead, I just hear two guys shouting “THE STUNNER! THE STUNNER! OH MY GOD, HE HIT MCMAHON WITH THE STUNNER!” and I can’t imagine why. Ahem.
You can be shore that if Sabrina is given the chance she can and will Ultra Kick Gabs teeth down her thought for this. now THAT will bring in business!
Damn you Al!
This is not the match-up I wanted to see… Why did you have to take my two favourite characters and pit them against each other! Why, damn you why!
Well, I hope Sabrina like flipping burgers, in my mind Sun’s going to win…
It seems like you’re in good company with your two favorite characters. 😉
Sabrina will try roller derby or the local veterinary before McD’s. 😛
I’m sure there are other rosters that would welcome Sabs with open arms.
I’ll talk with Bethany Christian next time I see her.
Endless possibilities along with rematch consideratons! XD
Roller derby doesn’t pay.
That’s very true. BRA/FAWN is at the top of the list.
I’m not sure. I can see Sun giving ‘Brina a helluva battle, but maybe at the end laying down for her just a teensy bit to give her the win. That kinda move would preserve the friendship, satisfy the fans, p.o. Gabrielle, and keep Sabrina in the company. We shall see!
Two thoughts:
1) “p.o.-ing Gabrielle” probably shouldn’t be a goal of Sun’s.
2) In Gabrielle’s place, if the match played out the way you suggest, with a hard-fought, competitive bout that ends with Sabrina winning with a small amount of non-obvious help from Sun, I wouldn’t actually be “p.o”-ed at all.
On #2, you’ve got a point.
Now this I going to be one hell of a match. You strip away all the lead up and hurt feeling, and you have two incredible high fliers who are about to have an mid-air battle in that ring, add in all the extra stuff, and we’ve got a recipe for the kind of chaos I thrive on
Awesome, I hope it delivers on your expectations. 🙂
WHAT’S MYSTIQUE DOING HERE IN RIVAL ANGELS?!?!
/Don West
actually there’s a small part of me wondering if a “Fingerpoke of Doom” isn;t about to take place instead of a regular match. i mean Gabby is ticked off that Brina didn;t take a tainted win so how better to show that Brina’s learned her lesson by forcing it on her a second time.
Since i highly doubt Sun wants brina fired she’d be quick to go along with it and also being Sun let her bust brina’s chops in the process by freaking her out. also fits in with the idea of Darth Yvonne claims of helping Brina get/keep her job and sun works for Yvonne so…
It’s an interesting idea, but it’s got some drawbacks. Teasing a Sun vs Sabrina match and then giving the punters a fingerpoke is going to piss them off, and while you can do that under the right circumstances, coming off of the Vince fiasco is probably not the best time for that.
Also, Gabrielle said that Sun needed to collect on that bill Sabrina needs to pay. I don’t think lying down for her really suits that statement.
Lastly, while it might be letting the blonde off easily, it WILL be a bit humiliating for her, so I’m not so sure Yvonne’s suit would be necessarily helped by positioning herself as being behind Sun’s laydown.
Mystique is crafty and can be anywhere she wants to be. Maybe she’s been Sun this whole time! XD
Whether Yvonne is on Sabrina’s side or not, you can be sure that she’s aware of Sun’s actions.
I love the bit you wrote about Sun busting Sabrina’s chops in the process. LOL
Panel 4: a big boooooooooo for Gabrielle. Does she have to worry for her own position?
Nah, Gabrielle is positioning herself as the Vince McMahon of the company, which she *is*. She knows that the boss can be presented as a heel and still draw!
Let’s say all the advantages are in Suns court. Home turf since Brinas been absent. Sun, like a true heel, has likely been studying up since she’s known this was coming. Also Sun has Damage Inc. in her corner even if she told Yvonne she would rather fight alone. And then add motivation. Even if it’s Sabbys job on the line, that girl would rather not have to fight her friend. Sun has already felt slighted at least twice and no problem laying down some hurt
All the advantages are there for Sun to beat Sabrina, though Sabrina would tell you that Sun is the better wrestler of the two anyways. I suppose Yvonne would be the wildcard. After all, Yvonne did tell Sabrina that she’d see Sun ‘before the night is out.’ Was Yvonne setting Sabrina up, or something else?
I think Albone has figured out the Buffy-like formula, which is that people care more about ‘Brina if she’s in a lot of trouble!
I DO love me some Buffy. 🙂 Whedon rules!!! XD
It’d be a great twist if Sun came out and body-slammed Gabrielle from behind, though. 🙂
OMG, YES.