Post by Graham Baker on May 3, 2020 21:49:17 GMT -5
"What have they done with my jealous one?
Who is gonna talk trash long after I'm gone?
When I was young
They used to find me pitching horseshoe crabs
Back into the sun."
-
The arena is empty. The fans have left. The crowd is missing. There are no competitors, only an absence of dust where the Havoc ring sat, just under three hours ago. Upon the barricades, half of which have been removed, a figure sits. They hang a denim jacket over their legs as they glance around the emptiness around them. They seem disheartened, confused, and frustrated. They sigh, before slinging their jacket over their shoulder and walking out of the arena. We see flashes of the post Cruiserweight Havoc reaction as the figure exits the building, looking out to the empty streets. A homeless man jingles a can of change, and the figure pulls their wallet out of their jacket pocket, dumping the contents into the can. They say nothing, before walking down the empty New York streets and into the night.
-
Who is gonna talk trash long after I'm gone?
When I was young
They used to find me pitching horseshoe crabs
Back into the sun."
-
The arena is empty. The fans have left. The crowd is missing. There are no competitors, only an absence of dust where the Havoc ring sat, just under three hours ago. Upon the barricades, half of which have been removed, a figure sits. They hang a denim jacket over their legs as they glance around the emptiness around them. They seem disheartened, confused, and frustrated. They sigh, before slinging their jacket over their shoulder and walking out of the arena. We see flashes of the post Cruiserweight Havoc reaction as the figure exits the building, looking out to the empty streets. A homeless man jingles a can of change, and the figure pulls their wallet out of their jacket pocket, dumping the contents into the can. They say nothing, before walking down the empty New York streets and into the night.
-
"A statistic, eh? Is that what I fuckin' am to all of you?"
We enter on Graham Baker, sitting in his apartment, his jacket hanging off of a mannequin as he runs his hand through his hair. He chuckles.
"I entered into Havoc with such a momentum that I should have been, literally, on fucking fire. I should have burnt down the goddamn entrance ramp. Those fans screamed for me, and I know there were men and women in this locker room screaming for me, so why the fuck didn't it work? Why'd I fall so short? Why, in my first Havoc appearance, was my big moment being one of eight men Lissie Hope terminated inside of a fucking minute? Why'd I let you all down? Why wasn't I given-nah, nah. This one's on me. Why couldn't I stand my fucking ground? Why couldn't I make good on what I'd promised? I carried my fuckin' heart and soul down to that ring, and all of you watched me fall short. All of you watched me fail. I couldn't score one elimination, couldn't last more than six fuckin' minutes, if that. I couldn't do it."
Baker slumps down to the ground for a moment.
"And if I couldn't do this, then really, what hope do I have against the world champion? I've made a career here, thus far, out of losing. Even if I fell short, I'd put on a show so good they'd be screaming for me to come back, booing to high hell when I lost. Now, I don't even have that to fall back on. Now, I can't even say I performed well. Six minutes-man, what a fucking joke that is, right? I should've just not bothered. I should've just stayed home. It's clear to me, at least, that I've hit that glass ceiling. I've hit that, y'know, that proverbial rooftop. Where the fuck am I supposed to go from here?"
There's silence, of course-the apartment's empty. Baker lays his head down on the hardwood floor, but ahead of him, he looks up. The Action Wrestling Television Championship sits out of his bag, as if positioned there on purpose. It looks him down, and Baker approaches it, pulling it out of the bag. He slots it on his shoulder, and glances down at it, tapping the plate twice with his knuckles. He sighs, and a wry smile crosses his face.
"Oh, yeah. Right. Up."
Baker glances back to the camera.
"The Action Wrestling Television Championship, not the shiniest piece of gold in the fuckin' chest, is it? Among the gilded championships that parade around this company, this," Baker throws a thumb at it, "is not the shining diamond that most embark on a voyage to Action looking for. I'm not most people, though. They can say what they'd like, that this belt's been passed around like a whore, that this championship doesn't have value, that anyone who holds this belt is just in a holding pattern, but I'm gonna fix that right quick. The Television Champion is the workhorse of Action Wrestling. Hell, this belt's he face of the goddamn television program. When Lissie, Frank, and Addie decided to have their little beef-sesh on live TV, which belt main evented the show?" Baker points a thumb to it. "And let's not forget who won the championship in that match, let's not forget who carried the belt home after it showed up every fuckin' Odin Balfore and WALTER in that locker room. Let's not neglect to mention that when Graham Baker won the Television Championship in the fight of a lifetime, the crowd popped hard-as-ever. It started a fire in me that night, set my momentum ablaze, and since that dog-handling fuck is gone and Carnivore's gone to the dogs, I've got nothing in my fucking way. The Television Championship is set for a renaissance, so to speak. A revival."
Baker holds the belt up before glancing to it.
"You want to knock me out of Havoc, Lissie? You want to open the path so a fuckin' oaf like WALTER can win the whole goddamn thing? That's fine by me, man, because in the next three weeks, no one's gonna give an ass-hair of a fuck about the main event of Evolution III. No one's gonna care who WALTER knocked out, no one's gonna play statistics and determine who had the most eliminations, because everyone's gonna be focused on me. Everyone's gonna have eyes for Graham Baker, everyone's gonna be eyeballing my fuckin' rise to the top. And once I've defended this title three times in the lead up to EVO-mind you, likely more than any other single championship in this fucking company during this time-I'm gonna defend it at Evo. I'm gonna defend it against whoever-the-fuck gets tossed against me, whether it's QDT, that whiny fuck Keeton, or even WALTER and Richards themselves. You think I give a flying fuck? You think I care? I don't."
Baker leans in closer to the camera.
"I thought Havoc peeled my purpose away and showed me as a fraud. It didn't. It showed me that if I want to fill my plate, I need to steal from someone else's. If I want to fill my mouth, I better be ready to empty someone else's. If I want to sit at the table with the legends and dine in the glory of this Valhalla, engage myself in the fires of this combat, I better drag a motherfucker out of their seat and stomp them fuckin' dead! No one is going to help Graham Baker to the top, everyone's had to drag themselves up, and I'm gonna make their rise look puny in comparison to how fuckin' meteoric mine was. Think-just under five months ago, I was runner-up in Cruiser Havoc, I wasn't top of the fuckin' mountain, nah. Now I'm on the main roster. I won main roster gold twice in my first month here-and even if it was the same fuckin' belt, who's counting? Havoc ain't so much a setback as it is a slap in the face, so little of a curse and so much more of a blessing. I needed to wake up and open my fuckin' eyes, realize I wasn't achieving the dream without hard work, and here I am, willin' to work myself to the bone to get what I want."
Baker lowers the championship, and steps back.
"Next week, I invite whichever stupid fucker wants a shot at my belt to come and eat at my table. Trade blows with me, but know, just as many made me look good in defeat, so I will do unto you. No mercy ruling, no going easy on 'em. I'm coming out fucking swinging."
Baker sighs, and slumps back down to the ground, championship on his shoulder. He glances down at it, and we see a cocky smile cross his face...before we cut to black.