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Brett Sinclaire vs. Ravyn Taylor; SCW Television Championship
Topic Started: Mar 11 2017, 04:40 AM (166 Views)
Team Desire
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SCW's Queen of Queens/The Goddess of Desire
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SCW Television Championship
Brett Sinclaire vs. Ravyn Taylor



2 RP limit for singles; 4 RP per team (2 per character)
Deadline: Noon ET Wednesday, March 15, 2017
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Ruppy
That Caring, Creative Soul Sitting In the Corner
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Distractions.

Like it or not, distractions can happen at a moment’s notice and end up destroying everything you had planned. They’re just as much a part of life as breathing, and while it’s easy to say you can’t be distracted, curiosity is extremely difficult to ignore for even the most focused of human beings. Even the dedicated planners who try to account for every last little detail, even the most insignificant ones to leave nothing to chance, can find everything falling apart with one simple distraction from, perhaps, the most unlikely of sources. It’s an unaccountable burden that is always present no matter how hard you prepare for it, and sometimes it can even end up costing you everything.

Retribution was a night full of these unplanned distractions. PUNK HAZARD was so caught up in making a statement to the world that one rogue action by a now former member would be the undoing of everything they had strived for. Kelcey Wallace had been so distracted by her desire for revenge without fully realizing it that she threw away a chance to win her match and ended up regretting it with one accidental kick from her partner. And while it wasn’t anywhere close to being as significant as instances like those, a distraction is the reason Brett Sinclaire doesn’t have two title shots to his name. It wasn’t any distraction within the match itself that cost him, however… rather, despite his best efforts, he’d been so distracted by matters going on outside the ring in his life that had been weighing on his mind for weeks now that he lost focus in a battle royal, the one kind of match you never, if you can help it, want to find yourself distracted in, and his elimination came before he fully realized what had happened. Missing out on a U.S. title match did sting, as it would with anybody on the hunt for a title, but a chance to fix everything awaited him on the next Breakdown.

If he showed up in Atlanta the way he was now though, then the TV title would once again be lost for sure, and Brett had to fix this now to truly know he was ready to move on.

With a week off following Retribution before SCW’s touring schedule resumed, Brett knew he had to take full advantage as he made his way back up to Manhattan, because he wouldn’t get a chance otherwise to attend to what he needed to. Dr. Hillman and Donnie had both attempted to get in contact with him, and he knew that ignoring their calls was no doubt going to concern them (especially the therapist if she believed Brett was beginning to relapse), but this was a personal matter he had to attend to, and the only person joining him was someone in a similar situation, that being his brother Matthew. The two of them had met up at the airport and rented a car for the trip they needed to take, and the gravity of the task at hand was noticeable when the two didn’t bother trying to catch up, instead trekking mostly in silence as they navigated the Manhattan traffic until they finally arrived at where they felt they were going to hopefully lay everything to rest once and for all. Only then was the silence broken.


“Well… here we are.”

“I have to say, the place still looks like it’s in great shape, though that’s probably because we aren’t around anymore to make a brotherly mess out of it.”

Matt smiled at his brother, but his attempt to lighten the mood quickly faded when Brett ignored the comment and got out of the car as his brother followed. It was a nice effort, but Brett didn’t feel like this was the time to make jokes, especially when the situation at hand seemed to have hit him far harder than it did his brother, and the former A-Lister just wanted to be able to get some answers and finally put his past to rest once and for all. If he was going to finally become TV champion and move on from there, he knew someone like Ravyn Taylor was going to find every last little detail to scrutinize him over in an effort to get inside his head, and the less baggage he had tied to his mental state, the better his chances of pulling off what many might consider the impossible. It was that reason alone why he had returned to the home he had grown up in, and in addition to being an understanding moral support, Matt was there because the signs had started to show for him as well and he wanted to nip it in the bud before he ended up going down the same dark road of self-destruction Brett had already tumbled down. When they reached the front door, Brett’s hand easily made its way to the doorbell, only to stop just shy of pressing it as doubt began to creep in and second thoughts began to form. Seeing the hesitation, Matt put a comforting hand on his brother’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring smile, and Brett’s finger closed the distance from there. It took a moment after the noise sounded throughout the house, but soon the door opened and the brothers Sinclaire found themselves in the presence of an aging woman who could only stare at the two of them with a mixture of delight and disbelief.

“Brett? Matthew? Is it really you? It’s been so long…”

“It has been, and we’re sorry about that mom.”

“Please, do come in you two. I apologize for the mess, I wasn’t expecting any company today, especially a surprise visit from my boys.”

The two men were led inside as Matt shut the door behind them. To their surprise, other than looking a little neater than they remember (the house was a bit messy, but nothing like how it would look when they were much younger), not much seemed to have changed about the old place. While Matt seemed to be soaking in the nostalgia, Brett seemed more focused on examining his mother, taking careful note that the years didn’t seem to have been too kind on her to some degree. She was much older and far more frail-looking than the strong and determined woman he remembered raising him, but age couldn’t hide the kindness that her eyes and her smile always seem to radiate with. As she offered them a seat on the couch before shuffling off to the kitchen, Brett looked around the home and let his eyes come to rest on a certain picture frame that rested on top of the old TV set. When Matt tried to get his brother’s attention, he noticed where his gaze was locked and decided to carefully guide him into their seats, starting to feel that coming here may have been a bad idea after all with how Brett had been reacting thus far. The frame in question held a simple family portrait, though if one looked closely they could see traces of light pencil that seemed to have crossed out all the faces and had a number of small words and phrases scribbled along the edges that were impossible to make out from a distance. The only thing that snapped him out of this trance-like state was the smell of chocolate as a pair of cups was placed down on the table in front of them.

“Is hot chocolate alright boys? I know you used to love warming up with a cup when it got cold out, though if you’re too old for it I can-”

“You’re never too old for hot chocolate, especially with all this talk of a winter storm we might be getting in the coming week.”

“I’ve got to head down to Atlanta by next Wednesday night, so hopefully I can get out there before it hits. Otherwise, it’s going to be a nightmare.”

“Well, you boys should be careful when you’re traveling around. I’d hate to see anything happen to my children. So, what brings you both by to surprise your dear mother? My birthday isn’t for a few months still.”

Matt had paused before he could take a drink of his hot chocolate, not knowing how he was going to answer that. Truth be told, this wasn’t exactly the scenario the brothers had envisioned when they got to this point, and a very key part of the puzzle was still missing, but Brett seemed to indulge in the warm beverage, perhaps more so in an attempt to clear his head for the next move than trying to warm up. He carefully set his cup back down and knew it was time to bite the bullet, but the sooner they got this over with the better it would be for everyone.

“Actually… we were hoping we could talk with dad about a few things. There’s been some… incidents within the past year for me and Matt told me some signs have been surfacing for him as well, and someone who’s been trying to help me through it kind of struck a nerve the last time I talked with them. I thought trying to get to the bottom of it all would-”

“Hey, are you alright mom?”

Matt cut Brett off when he noticed the mere mention of her husband seemed to have turned their mother’s spirits down quite a bit, especially now that she knew the reason for their visit wasn’t exactly a friendly trip to catch up with her and see how everything was going. Brett bit his bottom lip in response before he went to try apologizing, but before he could even get a word out the woman slowly rose from her seat and carefully made her way over to the picture frame her oldest son had been staring at not too long ago. Without turning to face them, she spoke, the suddenly somber tone in her voice almost breaking the brothers’ hearts.

“These… ‘incidents’ that you speak of Brett… did they happen to involve some sort of single-minded desire to achieve a specific goal, to the point where everything else was irrelevant as long as you could succeed in that one task?”

“That… sounds pretty spot on actually.”

“I’ve had hints of that as well in my own work, but my bosses have ignored it thinking it’s just a really driven desire to complete a project, but I don’t think getting obsessive over making sure every last little bug is worked out before saying I’m finished qualifies as ‘driven.’”

“How did you know…?”

The woman slowly grabbed the picture frame and turned to face her children, and the look of pure hopelessness that her face now wore was enough to drive even the most emotionally indestructible of people to tears. Matt tried to gulp down plenty of hot chocolate just so the burning sensation could try to distract him from the sight before him so it wouldn’t feel like his heart was being torn out, but Brett didn’t bother to hide the tears that slowly began rolling down his face at this sight.

“I had truly hoped this would never be the case, but it appears your father unintentionally left a legacy of madness behind after all. I feared this day would come, but I guess I just hoped in vain that the worst of it would be only one of you having a minor case of it that would never develop into anything. Then again, I suppose trying to be a wrestler is too mentally taxing at times to allow that to be the case for you, wouldn’t it Brett? I’m… I’m terribly sorry that it happened to you, that my genes were not enough to overpower his in that regard. It comforts me only slightly to hear that yours hasn’t developed yet Matthew, but I still fear for the worst. Brett… how bad did it get?”

He knew he’d been asked a question, but Brett didn’t even know how to process what he’d just heard, even if it did make any sense to him at that moment in time. There was no sign of their father, and their mother clearly knew more than she was letting on, but under any other circumstances it might’ve been the better option to just let sleeping dogs lie and return to trying to prepare for his impending title match. They’d come this far, however, and Brett knew that unless he had all the pieces to this puzzle, his past was going to continue to interfere with his future and he was going to get nowhere. The moment that line of thinking even surfaced in his head, he could almost hear his inner demons trying to convince him that this was a giant waste of time now and he should just take off, but running away just wasn’t an option… not in this situation. Almost as though he felt he truly knew what answer she was looking for, he just let his mouth give the answer without really thinking about it, his heart fueling every syllable.

“The last wrestling promotion I worked in, before the one I’m with now… they held a mini-tournament to crown the first ever champion for a new title, one that had a revolutionary concept at the time. I made it to the final match and I was positive there was no way I could possibly lose. However, due to the impressive performance of someone else earlier in the show, the match was changed and she was added it to replace another person, and I ended up losing to that very wrestler. I was so irate that I felt like I’d been robbed of a title and a moment that should’ve been mine that… I started developing an unhealthy obsession for that one title alone, always trying to find a way to hunt for it no matter who held it, and when I finally got my turn to call myself champion… I lost the belt in my very first defense, and under circumstances I felt once again robbed me of everything. I went off the deep end, so to speak… I became deranged and unhinged in the ring, desperate to get what I thought was ‘my baby’ back, and when the company shut down before I had that chance… the last thing I truly remember after all of that was kind of living in a dump somewhere here in Manhattan for God knows how long until a friend managed to track me down and get me some help.”

Brett slowly hung his head as he finished, not knowing if he could really see the reactions to what he’d just said. It was a story he’d told a million times by now it felt like, but the details were brand new to his family. Only knowing part of the story, Matt nearly dropped his cup as his mouth hung open now that he knew the full details, fully realizing that things had been far worse than Brett had made them out to be when they’d chatted over the phone before Retribution. As for their mom, she just seemed to slowly nod as her eyes carefully examined her firstborn, taking in just how much this had affected him as everything seemed to become crystal clear to her upon this revelation. Slowly she set the picture frame down on the table and slid it towards her boys, and once they were able to get a close look at it they could see exactly what had been written in now, words like “PERFECT” and “SUCCESS” and even “NUMBER ONE AT ALL COSTS” scribbled at pure random in a handwriting that was barely legible, and there were plenty more that actually couldn’t have been read as they resembles squiggly lines more than anything else.

“I’m terribly sorry that you had to endure all of that Brett. You never should have dealt with any of it to begin with… even you shouldn’t be dealing with the most minor of inconveniences caused by it Matthew. It… it won’t be much solace I’m afraid, but… while you may not be as lucky as your brother Brett, you are lucky it did not get any worse than that. Your father… is another story I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean mom? I’m sorry, but this isn’t making a whole lot of sense.”

“…Matthew, do you remember when I asked if you were able to loan me some money because I had something really important to take care of?”

“Of course, I gave you an entire paycheck of mine because I still had quite a bit of money to spare for another week or two. And you don’t have to call it a loan… you don’t have to pay me back any of it, even if you wouldn’t tell me what you needed it for so I knew how to approach it for a potential tax write-off.”

“I insist on paying you back someday Matthew. A mother should never need to ask her children for money without setting a good example by paying it back. I just wish I could’ve told you the reason then and gotten it over with… maybe you two wouldn’t need to be here now for the reasons you are. Brett, dear… do you remember when I tried to call you some time back.”

Brett just nodded, not finding the strength to form any words at the moment after pouring his heart out for the most heart-wrenching telling of his ‘rise and fall’ story he’d ever given. It was the call Donnie had mentioned to Dr. Hillman during Brett’s last session before he abruptly ended it by walking out instead of giving her any answers. As soon as he’d swiped the phone from his then-personal assistant and wandered off to someplace more private on the movie lot, he remember having a lengthy conversation with her about his wrestling career that also seemed to double as a bizarre means of letting his dad know how he was doing, even if he never got the chance to actually talk with the man at that time. The reason why still felt like a mystery to him, but there seemed to be a reason why his mom would reach out to him and relay tales of the successful portions of his career while trying his best to omit any (then) recent setbacks, which hadn’t been too hard considering the ego he’d had at the time.

“Talking with both of her during that time and getting your help was what I’d hoped would be an important step for your father. You see… it was around that time that I had to have him committed.”

“Committed?”
“Committed?”

“Boys… when I first met your father, it was hard not to fall in love with how confident and driven he was. He always pushed himself to be the best at everything he did and inspired others to do the same. I did everything I could to earn the right to be his forever, and when we finally tied the knot it was the happiest day of my life, the only days coming close to topping it being the days each of you were born. I should’ve paid more attention back then… after we were married, I began noticing a few… eccentric behaviors your father would engage in every now and then, almost like a sort of ritual to motivate himself for whatever he would do. There were times when it felt like he was pushing himself too hard to accomplish a task that he didn’t need to try and obsess over as much as he did. I didn’t realize there might’ve been a problem until you boys became old enough to participate in sports.”

“I remember that… I tried to avoid it because I didn’t think I would ever be the ‘sporty’ type, but dad practically strong-armed me into playing football, basketball, baseball, tennis… he’d even try to work the both of us to death half the time it felt like by doing extra practice drills for hours on end with us even if we’d just finished an actual practice and were dead tired. I don’t think he was truly right about all that extra practice making us ‘unbeatable machines’ though.”

“Your father was obsessed with the desire to succeed, and while some people might feel that’s a good thing, his obsession was to a very unhealthy degree. If it was just him, maybe it wouldn’t have turned out so bad, but he pulled you guys into it because he felt that his own success wasn’t enough unless he built a legacy and forced the two of you to carry it on and build upon it after he couldn’t move anymore. I don’t blame the two of you for moving out as soon as you were old enough to live on your own, especially after you stood up to him about not wanting to be an athlete for the rest of your life Matthew. He had no right to try and force any of that upon either of you, and maybe if he hadn’t… maybe you wouldn’t be dealing with similar issues today, but perhaps that’s just more blind faith on my part than anything else.

After you guys left, it wasn’t so bad for a while… he was hurt that he felt he’d lost a son, but he still invested himself into keeping up with your wrestling Brett. I think that’s what kept him going for a time… although eventually I had to try and limit how often he watched you when he became so upset with your failures he would start tearing the house apart, blaming himself for not being there to ‘guide you to victory’ as opposed to anything you did that you likely couldn’t help. I think when I had to cut him off altogether was when you started doing the Hollywood thing. Even though you were still wrestling, some part of your father thought you, too, had abandoned him and what he wanted you to be. He started trying to focus on rebuilding his own success, obsessing over the idea that if he could create a legacy that would eclipse anything you two would ever do that he could force you to come back home and join him so he could back off before he hurt himself. I tried to stop him, I made attempts to reason with him that he was out of line, but it was almost like I was talking with a brick wall. All he ever did was push himself farther than his body was ever supposed to go… when he hospitalized himself because his body finally shut down under all the exhaustion, the doctors had someone evaluate him and they told me he had something called obsessive–compulsive personality disorder, something similar to OCD but instead of simply being a habit he felt he needed to do or else it would annoy him, it was deeply ingrained into who he was and who he wanted to be, to the point where he tried to force every little detail of his life to be perfect to the point where he could never possibly fail no matter the situation. Considering how mad the very idea of his body failing him because he pushed it too hard made him and his attempts to actually leave the hospital before he was properly discharged… I had no choice.”


“So… now he’s in one of those institutions?”

“He was… when I called the both of you, I was still trying to help him even while he was in there, as much as the doctors would allow me to while they tried to help him in their own way. For a time, things looked like they were going to get better after that, but… sometime around June last year, they stopped allowing me to visit him, and all they told me was that his situation had gotten worse and keeping him isolated and heavily monitored was the best answer. They kept me updated when they could, but then we reached the end of November and I got the last call… his OCPD got the better of him and he was so desperate to escape to, as I was told, prove to the three of us that he was a husband and father we should respect and be proud of that he tried to escape by throwing his own body against the walls trying to knock them down. He… he went headfirst at full force on one of them, and just… stopped moving afterwards…”

The poor woman couldn’t continue on any farther as she finally broke down crying, and Matt was almost immediately out of his seat holding her for dear life so she had somebody to lean on when she needed it most. Brett, however, just sat still as a statue with wide eyes as he tried to process what he’d just heard, his face almost completely drained of all the color as he stared vacantly at his mother and brother. The true horror of this was how the dates lined up according to what he’d been told… when his father had hit his lowest point and had to be isolated was around the time he’d hit his lowest point as VWA closed down and Brett was left to wallow in madness and misery because the object that felt like it had become his sole purpose for wrestling was forever beyond his reach. The date of his father’s death fell around the time Brett took his first crack at trying to become TV Champion to turn everything around on a personal and professional level at long last, only to fall short because of his own tunnel-vision getting the better of him. Hell, hearing that trying to juggle being an actor and a wrestler is what drove his dad over the edge in the first place by the sound of things almost crushed his soul entirely. He’d told people whenever they’d taken shots at him for being “just another actor trying to make wrestling his launching pad” that wrestling came first and he wasn’t about to simply abandon it just like that to go full-on Hollywood star, but he’d never truly stated the exact reasons why, hiding them behind the ego he’d developed where no one could find them… in reality, he couldn’t abandon the sport just in case finally finding wrestling success would help his dad back off on his bizarre obsession and be proud of him, but silver screen stardom was the backup plan in hopes that success in any form would be the answer. Apparently, they both had felt the same about how well that idea would work out.

“Mom… where is he now?”

It had come out a little colder than he’d intended, but it was more directed at himself than anything else, almost as if saying those words disgusted him on some level, but he knew what he needed to do next. Matt looked at his brother in shock, but surprisingly their mother seemed to calm down a little bit as she motioned to the picture frame, specifically to flip it around. As Brett carefully pulled the photo out, to his surprise the back side contained an address for a cemetery that actually wasn’t too far away from here, within walking distance in fact. Even if it wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, he knew what he needed to do from here if he was to have any hope of accomplishing what he came back home for in the first place. Slowly he stood up and started heading for the door, but paused to glance back at his family members as they just watched him, and Matt had a feeling he knew why Brett had paused.

“This is… a lot to take in for me Brett, and I can’t imagine how you’re feeling about it right now. I’m just… going to stay here with mom for the time being. I think I know what you want to do, and you should go if you feel it’s what you need. But… please come back here afterwards, alright?”

Brett nodded, knowing that one of the side effects of their father’s excessive training regiments had been a bit of a dent in Matt’s emotional stability when something truly heavy came along to test it, and learning about the death of their father and the details behind it was just too much for him to take all at once. He didn’t plan on being gone for very long though… just long enough to do something he felt he needed to do. He ignored the presence of the rental car, feeling that it was better to walk if he was going to do this right in his mind, and the exercise would help keep him from losing too much ground before the major task that was lying in wait still. At the pace he moved, it took him maybe seven or eight minutes until he finally reached the cemetery a few streets down, and while the search for the specific grave didn’t take that long it still felt like an eternity to Brett. When he did find it though, he slowly sank to his knees as the sight all but confirmed everything he’d been told on this day. The headstone had his father’s name and years of birth and death inscribed into it, making it as clear as humanly possible that the man he needed to question the most was forever gone. Still, with tears running down his cheeks again in a greater amount this time, Brett slowly turned his head towards the sky and just let his heart empty out everything that had been weighing on him for the longest time all finally put into perspective.

“I never thought I’d find you here of all places… not for a very long time, and definitely not when I needed you the most. There’s a part of me that feels like I should hate you, despise every fiber of your existence with all my heart and soul because you were the starting point for everything that virtually destroyed my life for what felt like an eternity. All the success I wanted, the roads I was willing to walk just to get there, no matter what I did even if it wasn’t the person I wanted to be seen as… it was all for you, to make you proud of me so you could know that everything you did for me, even if it was excessive and out of line in hindsight, paid off and I was able to succeed just like you wanted me to. I let your obsession feed mine, I let my insecurities guide me down a road that only ripped me apart and left behind a shell of a man when the last shot went right through my heart as I lost that title after chasing it for so long… I should hate you, but I can’t bring myself to do that, not after what you suffered through because of something beyond your control. We can’t control every little thing about what happens in our lives or how they’ll shape us, but… thanks to you, I know the difference when it comes to how driven I need to be to make it to the top at long last. I know what I need to do next, and I don’t plan on turning back now. I’m going to march into Breakdown on March 15th and despite her best efforts, I’m going to give Ravyn Taylor the hardest battle she’s ever fought in her entire career. Win or lose, this obsession dies at Breakdown before I give it a chance to start consuming me anew, but if I’m going to kill it, I need to push myself beyond my limits, knowing what I can and can’t do regardless of whether Ravyn tries to catch me off guard or if she plans on choking me out. I’m sorry that you feel I let you down before we got to this point dad… but I swear to you that I will make it up to you, and I’ll do it without sacrificing myself in the process. Just you watch dad… because I’m going to evolve into an athlete both you and SCW will be proud of, and I’ll make sure everyone knows exactly what kind of fight they’re in for as I keep walking down this new road, knowing that I’ll have your light guiding me as we make up for our mistakes. We can do this together… we will conquer our demons and be reborn, and it starts sooner rather than later.”

Brett slowly lowered his head, letting his gaze fixate itself on the headstone again. Mentally and emotionally he was more drained than he’d ever been in his entire life, even when he first fell into the depths of madness. But there was a brand new fire burning inside of him, a whole new purpose to his fight as far as he was concerned, and Breakdown was going to be the debut of a Brett Sinclaire who no longer needed the TV title to feel like he could finally move on from his past. He still planned on taking it regardless though, to challenge himself and his capabilities as an athlete without pushing himself too far for all the wrong reasons. After seeing what it had done to his father, Brett couldn’t afford to make that mistake a second time. After all, next time he might not come back at all, and there was no telling who else he could bring with him if he wasn’t careful. Nobody deserved this fate, but the former A-Lister was ready to learn from it to grow, both as a wrestler and as a human being.

This was one distraction that was actually necessary in order to prepare for what was on the horizon for a man who had been to the edge and was prepared to fight to keep from ever going back again.


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I know this is going to seem a little unusual considering who we’re talking about here, but I’m going to be honest with you guys… I’m not sending an open letter as opposed to showing up on camera this week because I’m trying to imitate my Breakdown opponent, there’s no significant meaning behind why I’m doing it this way. To put it simply: due to some recent personal events I feel like getting in front of a camera at this point in time would be a bad idea. Don’t worry, I’m going to show up to Breakdown focused and ready to compete, so there will be no excuses for what happens in that ring on Wednesday night in Atlanta, Georgia.

I’m not going to make excuses for what happened at Retribution either. My head simply wasn’t in the match, and a battle royal isn’t the kind of match you don’t want to have undivided focus for. It would’ve been nice to walk away with a U.S. Title opportunity, don’t get me wrong, but the reason I’m not concerned with it is because I can give all my attention to the match that awaits me come Breakdown. In hindsight, having to focus on only one title makes it much easier to prepare for what lies ahead, because I don’t have any lingering factors like an irate Regan Street obsessed with the U.S. Title or somebody from the battle royal taking offense to the fact that they didn’t win it to have to try and consider. All I have to worry about is Ravyn Taylor, who is more than enough to worry about as it is, and whatever happens from there.

Since I briefly touched on the topic of distractions and admitted that Retribution was a night where my head wasn’t where it needed to be, I have to ask you Ravyn: do you feel distracted still by the likes of Dante McCaffery? For as insignificant as you no doubt believed him to be, he made it a point to try and outsmart you for the longest time, and I doubt even you could’ve predicted what he pulled in Tactical Warfare. Considering you’ve admitted to being intrigued by the idea of the TV Title, having to defend it every single week with very little time to truly prepare for your opponents, I’m sure the last thing you can afford is any distractions, especially when Dante never really seemed to make it clear if he was done with you or not, simply that he seems to be done with PUNK HAZARD.

Why would I even bother bringing that up though, right? After all, on Breakdown it’ll just be you and me for that title, and your issues with him are hardly any of my business. Well Ravyn, as I’ve tried to prepare for this match, I came to understand something about you. It’s no secret to anyone at this point that you have a high IQ, and you love making sure people are aware that you believe there isn’t a soul out there that’s capable of outsmarting you. If it was just you trying to rub your intelligence in everyone’s faces, then maybe I wouldn’t really be saying anything. However, the more I’ve heard you address your previous opponents, the more it’s become clear to me that there’s far more to it than that. It’s never just been about flaunting your intelligence to the world, because by now that’s be a dead horse beaten so far into the ground you might actually be able to see the core of the Earth. No, whenever Ravyn Taylor addresses an opponent, she has to make it clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is impossible to outsmart her no matter who you are or how many degrees from the best colleges the world has to offer you might happen to have to your name, and that by even trying to address her in return she is already inside your head thinking three moves beyond where you are because no matter what you say, she can tear it apart eight ways from Sunday and retort in a way that will leave your head spinning.

I would say it’s admirable that you’re so dedicated to trying to achieve an absolute victory over your opponents to leave them with no response to how they fell short against you, but when you’ve been to the very edge of insanity and even questioned what value your life had at any given point regardless of what you’ve done up until then, you tend to pick up on a few things when you’re being helped back onto stable ground as you try to pick up the pieces and figure out how to move forward again. It wouldn’t surprise me if you were familiar with the term obsessive–compulsive personality disorder Ravyn, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if you were aware you potentially have it but are simply in denial, which is not the right place to be no matter how much you can use success to forget about it. You’re far too confident to really have any sort of anxiety about life or your career unless someone threatens you or someone close to you directly, but how often do you actually allow that to happen in all honesty? The personality of Ravyn Taylor is one that must mentally destroy an opponent as harshly as possible before you attempt to repeat the results inside the ring to add insult to injury, but what happens when that isn’t exactly how things turn out?

Don’t get me wrong Ravyn: I’m almost expecting you to go off on me for thinking I know you in any capacity to try and make any sort of attempt of trying to get inside your head for a change, and in the process you’ll no doubt tear into me for the days when I thought I was the greatest thing to ever grace Hollywood thinking that it’s all there really is to me beyond my pursuit of the TV Title in particular. I don’t need to know you in-depth to know that the concept of losing does not, under any circumstances, go hand in hand with you at any point in time. If I was wrong, then you wouldn’t need to write half a book on me trying to tell the world every humanly possible reason why I don’t have a hope in hell of beating you on Wednesday, March 15th. There is no holding back or going halfway with you, it’s full throttle until you feel there’s nothing left to pursue, and by the time the bell rings even if you feel your time to do so is limited you’ll have a gameplan all set up for me that you’ll look to execute to perfection in order to retain your title, whether it involves actually defeating me or trying to make me defeat myself like what happened when I challenged Kennedy for that title currently sitting around your waist.

Maybe you’ll surprise me and your plan won’t be as exact in detail as I should probably expect from you. It would certainly catch me off guard a bit, but how likely is it that you would go into battle without having every exact little detail plotted out hoping to control this match even if it seems like I have the upper hand? That just doesn’t sound right by your standards even on a limited amount of prep time, and surely even you’re aware that despite the challenge in not having as much time as you’re used to in order to get ready for an opponent, not having a complete gameplan by your usual standards is almost asking for your title reign to come to a premature end. Considering you even admitted leading up to your first defense of that title that you enjoy planning out every possible scenario to ensure you cannot fail, you’ve given me no reason to believe I am in the wrong about the kind of person you are. Unfortunately, as I know all too well and you surely do too, life isn’t so easily prepared for. No matter what kind of plan you make Ravyn, even if it isn’t as well thought out as you’d prefer, there will always be that one X-factor you’ll never see coming. Perhaps it could be interference from an unlikely source, maybe you’ll simply underestimate me for one brief second and that’s the opening I choose to capitalize on… for all I know, maybe you could be so focused on trying to prove it’s humanly impossible for me to win this match because no matter what I bring to the table, I can’t outsmart you and I’ve already lost that you could overlook the most insignificant of details while preparing and it could come back to haunt you.

I remember spending time particularly looking back at your battles with Kelcey Wallace and the war of words between you two leading up to that point. You made it clear that you were absolutely hellbent on proving that Kelcey couldn’t possibly be perfect and you were going to put an honest blemish on her record no matter how hard she would try to stop you. Was that really it though Ravyn? Or were you simply hardwired to try and end her beliefs of perfectionism because the only being that should be perfect around here is you? We all have different ways of defining the concept: Kelcey defined it by keeping her record clear of pinfalls and submissions for the longest time before losing all of that changed the way she looks at this business. You clearly define it by the lengths you will go to in order to outsmart any foe on every possible front to ensure total domination. As for me, I’ve come to learn that trying to do anything perfectly leads to an unhealthy obsession that’s only going to cause more harm than good in the long run. There’s quite a difference between being determined to achieve something and being obsessed with achieving something, and I’ll admit it took me a long time to finally realize the difference. It’s a lot harder than people realize, but what you’re going to see is a determination to try and become SCW Television Champion, and not because I feel I need that belt anymore. If I had continued on the path I was going down, the TV Title would’ve inevitably become another obsession that was likely to send me back into oblivion as opposed to trying to help me get my life and my career pieced back together. I think I’ve managed to do a decent enough job in the wake of the past few months without that title though, so is winning it absolutely necessary for me at this point?

That reason alone is why I won’t be making the same mistake again. I don’t need the TV Title for the reasons I was chasing after it, but I have no problem trying to take it because who would expect me to be able to put up a fight against Ravyn and potentially defeat her? Certainly not Ravyn at the end of the day, but for as much as I’m expecting her to criticize me about how I view the concept of evolution, that’s the true beauty of it: sometimes evolution takes you down paths you’d have never expected or thought possible, and in those cases perhaps the best laid plans don’t even hold any value anymore.

It’s been fun Ravyn, but all good things must come to an end eventually, and that does include your reign as TV Champion. But what do I know, right? I’m just the next person in line to face you for that title and if you make it past me you’ll have two opponents set up for the future weeks to look forward to. What could I possibly do to overcome you when all signs point to another TV Title opportunity blown for the likes of Brett Sinclaire?

I think the real fun will be in finding out once the bell rings Wednesday night.
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The next chapter in Ravyn’s current arc. Dante McCaffery appears with permission.

Enjoy.

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Ravyn Taylor's Diary
March 3rd 2017
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