{The screen fades in and we fades in and we find ourselves sitting on Beale street in Memphis, and this is where we find David Striker sitting on a bench on the street itself-listening to the street music and the people generally enjoying themselves on a late June evening when his fellow Phantom Troupe member Kyle Gibson comes walking up and takes a seat next to his old friend}
“Been trying to call you, Dave.” Kyle said simply.
“Sorry, I needed some time to be alone and think.”
Kyle nodded in return, “I hear you, but you’ve been doing a lot of that lately…all of this thinking.”
David nodded quietly as he watched the people milling about, enjoying themselves but otherwise didn’t say anything yet.
Kyle didn’t push his concerns or anything yet, so he continued with “So CJ’s got himself a promo out of BB King’s later for his match on Breakdown. Have you done any thinking about your promo yet?”
Shaking his head, “Nope.” David said flatly.
“Why not, usually you’re like six or seven sheets of concepts into the bloody thing by now.” Kyle asked, actually kind of surprised by his friend’s course of action.
“Just…not in the mood really.” David replied with not even a half-hearted attempt at shrugging.
Kyle’s eyes narrowed in thought as he asked the first thing that entered his mind which was-”Was it Jake’s match over in the Caribbean this past weekend and all that happened there?”
“Nope, however that’s the kind of clusterfuck that I really hope that we don’t get dragged into anywhere like SCW or Five Lakes or anywhere else that we wind up here soon.”
A look of realization suddenly crossed Kyle’s bearded face as he said “AH! It’s that bit of rolled up BS then?”
“What do you mean?” David asked without looking at his friend.
“The “place that shall not be named in your presence” as Dylan called it when I talked to him yesterday?”
David snorts back an angry noise before slowly nodding his head in agreement, but otherwise he says nothing,
After several long seconds became minutes of waiting for David to say something or anything, Kyle’s frustration finally shown through as he said bluntly “Come on man, talk to me. You and I, we’ve been best friends since kindergarten…don’t do all this closed up bullshit on me of all people!”
David takes a moment and gives his oldest and closest friend a serious long look before finally nodding. “Look, you know that I’m proud of this thing we created right? I took something that was originally meant to be a tribute to faction over in Strong Style Wrestling that DJ and I were lucky enough to turn into a successful tag team in Project Honor into something really killer.” David explained in a tone that hinted at his level of both frustration and stress. “But then when I decide to take it to that next step and I started to pull the gang together to make try and make something truly epic out of it, I thought that…promotion…would be the perfect place to start because Griffin and Super Tiger had been there, along with rest of the gang…but Jake warned me about the bullshit and I…”
“Only for your brother to be proven right about the other place, I get that just like how I get that you don’t care for your brother’s constant use of his previous experiences to prove how right he can be about certain things, Dave. But sometimes you got to let things go.” Kyle said in a respectable tone.
David let out a very dry and dark chuckle that sounded much more mirthless than anything. “Seriously though, I honestly thought that the other place was going to be a killer place to get things going like here in SCW, so I threw all of my effort into it and the more that I put my effort into it, the more that I threw my heart into it…we just kept getting more and more screwed over and it started to bleed over into how things were going here in SCW, Kyle.” David explained as he leaned back against the bench. “It was like the harder that I worked…”
Kyle simply shook his shaggy head, “You’ve got to let that other place go, brother. They wouldn’t know real talent if it walked up to them and gave them a long sensual lap dance and paid *THEM* for the pleasure instead of the other way around. You should not let them get into your head like that, especially with that tournament coming up this week on Breakdown.”
David slowly nodded at that comment, “Yeah, I caught Chris Lawler’s promo on the match…he looks like the very thing that I’m trying not to be, brother.”
“An overworked, hard fighting bastard who hasn’t held an actual title in a while despite his best efforts?”
“...something like that. Am I really heading that way?” David asked seriously.
Kyle turned and looked at his longtime best friend seriously for several minutes before he slowly nodded his head in agreement. “You are one of the hardest workers that I’ve ever known, David. But you’ve always measured what you did in equal portions with your ability to have fun. But dude, you can’t let what happens in the other place hamper what we’re building here in SCW…I mean SCW is the place where you got that urge to build something great. So do *that*, and leave the bullshit of the other place to Jaime Corvin…I mean if she and little band of killjoys had any actual real talent, then they’d be right here in SCW alongside everyone else who’s actually been real earners. Don't let other people's fucking bullshit grind ya down and keep you from having your rightful fun!"
David’s only thought was to nod in agreement before he snaps his fingers, “Thanks, Kyle. Guess I just really needed to hear that…”
The two men exchange looks for a few seconds before David got a really wicked smile on his face. “And I think I know how to cut my first promos as well!”
{The screen static jumps for a moment and we find ourselves looking at David Striker, he is leaning forward in an old business chair that has obviously seen better days and he is flanked to either side by both Kyle Gibson and Irvine, both men have dark looks on their faces as the "Front Man of the Dope Show" slowly raises his head to look hard into the camera}
David: When I heard that I was going to be in this single elimination tournament for the SCW Adrenaline championship, I honestly expected the very best from my first round opponent in Chris Lawler...but instead I find him wasting something much more precious, something that cannot be measured in physical wealth for its worth is incalculable...and while it lacks a physical, tangible form, it's worth is no doubt greater than all of the sum of what resides in all of the vaults in the world.
Words.
A lot of people might laugh at the concept but think of it this way;
We spend our entire youth throwing them around like the entirety of reality is one cheap hooker after another, we start to realize the true worth of them in middle age, struggle to keep them in old age, and finally we lose all of them in death. We, as a global people, wipe out and entire ethnic group like we have over the eras and while we keep everything physical and believe it will forever enrich us, instead we become poorer because when you eliminate every single person that speaks a different language, then that language is gone and the world is poorer for it.
Which leads me to you, Chris Lawler.
Look, I get it that we have a large number of people to cover from myself and yourself to Yuyo, Fall St. Patrick, Gavin Taylor, Marie Jones, and Ravyn Taylor...but that doesn't stop a person from addressing their first round opponent and you deny me that unique pleasure of watching you try and string together the words to try and get under my skin, to gry and get me to focus so much on you and beating you that it causes me to lose in the end.
No, I see you fumbling around in the dark like a virgin on prom night with his date at a Best Western.
{David lets out a very dark, humorless sounding "chuckle" that ends just as quickly as it starts}
David: But the truly funny thing is that while you talk in circles about how you're going to simply going to go through all of us to get at Bree at Rise, you neglect the fact that you still have to fight each one of us in turn, a totally random battlefield of your fellow contenders at *that*...but you're more than likely looking at me with my current track record and thinking that I'll be a real push over because of my losses here in SCW lately.
But Chris, you could not be oh so more wrong.
No, Chris at Breakdown you are going to step into the ring with me first and I promise you that all of these precious dreams of yours of stepping into the same ring as Bree at Rise will vanish like so much smoke upon the water because I am sick and tired of always coming out second these past few weeks….and while I’ve been fine with certain things in the past, we all have our limits and to be quite frank, I believe that I have hit mine by watching a certain little biker bitch sneering at me like I was nothing more than some splatter of mud on her boot.
It’s not pride or arrogance that drives me at this singular moment, Chris. It is the singular desire that enough is enough and it’s time for a change.
And if certain people, like the rest of you all in this little tournament with me, don’t like what I have to say about it…then you are more than welcomed to line up and get knocked the fuck out of my way as I prove each and every single one of you until you all understand that I’m not something to just mock and sneer at, but I have freaking *EARNED* My spot here in this company, I have proven myself with my blood and sweat that I am one of the toughest bastards around and that I have proven myself to be one of the toughest Underground wrestlers in the history of Supreme Championship Wrestling right behind the Woman Scorned!
So you all will have to excuse me if I have such big plans for this tournament because I fully intend to make the most of this chance and yes, I know that I’ve said that about the TV and Underground titles in the past…but since when did having a driving need to make the most out of every chance become something that one considered to be “arrogant” about, eh?
It doesn’t.
It means that no matter how many times you’ve been to the championship buffet and missing out on the fucking chicken eggrolls, you’ve always got that next chance for them and I want my chicken fucking EGGROLLS!
{David then surges to his feet, kicking the old chair out from behind him as he does so, his ice blue eyes alight and practically glowing with a fiery passion that hasn’t been seen in quite a while}
David: I won’t apologize for that outburst…especially if you’ve had the chicken eggrolls from Formsa in Fayetteville Arkansas…my god those things are fucking addictive…but my point being is that even after having to deal with a lot of bullshit in the other place as of late, I feel like myself here in SCW and I feel the need…no, let’s go with I feel the *urge* to make a number of marks here and yeah, I know that I’ve done that already by having taken Kimberly Williams to the limit and bringing the most sadistic match ever in the Long hard road out of Hell here to SCW….but I want to make my mark by being a champion here, I want people to point at the Adreline or Underground or Television or any of the other fucking titles here, see my name on the list of past champions, and go “God [i]*DAMN* now that was a fucking match!!”[/i] and I want to be remembered not only as a past champion…but what I did for that title, no matter what the title is!
I want to leave my mark here in SCW because SCW is letting me be fucking *ME*, it’s not reminding me of the past sins of my older fucking sibling who has gone on to become bigger than some fucking little trollop’s desire for revenge…no, the powers that be here in SCW take one look at me and say “Get the fuck out there and be the best chaos bringer that you can be!!”, end of fucking story.
And *THAT* is what I’m bringing to Breakdown this week, my desire and urge to go through each and every single one of you to become the next top contender for Bree’s title at Rise to Greatness, and then I’m going to leave the pay per view with that title held high above my head…and I know that nobody expects me to do that because of the combined egos of everyone going into this tournament and I get that, but it won’t make any bloody difference because while I’m on one hand looking towards the future with me facing Bree at Rise…I’ve also got both feet right here in the present, looking right at you, Chris Lawler.
Now I know that you’re got a lot of shit on your plate and something big bothering your mind…but you need to forget that *shit* and focus on the fact that I’m right there in front of you, I’m still going up and down those the roads, hitting every singular minor and major promotion in order to sit at the learning trees of every great and not so great that this industry has ever created in order to expand on my horizons and I have learned a great deal from all of my mistakes this far and at Breakdown, I fully plan on using everything that I’ve learned…from some of the most wicked transitions from strikes to submissions and even some of the most blatant of bloody methods to get what I want…so while you are digging around in your past, obsessed with Bree, I’m coming to go to war with you and our fellows in the tournament.
But you see Chris, while you're acting like a pertualent child, standing in the road playing twilight games via your own projection of your equally sad reality, Chris. But if anyone can understand a driving need to prove yourself to be better than what others precieve that you are then you're stepping into the ring against the right person at the wrong time because if you need someone to be an agent of ill fantasy to reave these illusions that you have about proving yourself greater as you try to take control and try to force them from simply treading weakly on reality to making them manifest, then I am your man.
But you see, that's where everything will stop being all buddy cop movie as the light of false reality fades away to leave the reality, *me*, as the night demon that rages of true reality, cold and hard, as it rages and calls your name.
I want to continue to be the same fun loving guy that I was when I first got here to SCW, Chris, but right now I need to face facts and be the kind of monster that my father knows that I can be in that ring, I need to rip and tear until I get the job done and done right, until there is no more question about why I have received all of the shots that I have or why I should be given more.
I need to repay the faith that SCW has given me in the only currency that it wants from me;
Proof.
And I will give both SCW and its Faithful just that, I will give them exactly *that* by defeating each and every single wrestler in this tournament…until either I am successful or I am too bloodied and broken to continue.
Either way, Chris. Either come at me full force with your full attention…or stay the fuck home.
Because in this match, there cannot be any second guessing yourself…not when there is too much for us to *PROVE* to ourselves.
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