Tobias Stevens
League Member
Nobody - The Next Unified World Champion
Place: Phoenix, Arizona
Time: 3:37PM
Date: Unknown
[The scene fades in to show a stationary view of a living room. Nothing special, in fact…this room is nothing like what a future World Champion would call home. It is not the type of apartment that a man that crisscrossed the globe on his way to earning countless heavyweight championships would condemn himself to living out of. The faded wood flooring and white walls with the slightest chippings coming off it to reveal a formerly bluish hue. Who would live like this? What kind of world renowned sportsman could be ok with this as his home?]
[The view oscillates slightly and the sudden motion of the image zooming in lets all who view this know that it is a simplistic handheld camcorder that records this. Not the five-thousand dollar piece of equipment specially made for a heavyweight champion, but a simple camera that could be bought at your corner Radio Shack for fifty bucks. A moment passes before a figure steps into view, taking a seat on the two-cushion, white leather couch which acts as the center of the camera’s view.]
[The man is not what one would expect when thinking of plausible competitors to contend for the premier championship in wrestling. He is under six-feet and maybe two-hundred pounds if he had a large enough dinner. His blue eyes are piercing yet somehow reserved when behind the simple framed glasses that now adorn his face. He has dark blonde, perhaps dirty blonde, hair and the slightest shadow across his jaw that comes from a day without shaving. He is dressed not in the expensive attire of a sports-entertainer but in the ripped jeans and black tanktop of a man who owns very little and whose life earnings have come from what he is able to do in the wrestling ring. He seems more like the man who has worked his whole young life, appearing merely in his early twenties, and still has not managed to collect on the ‘big break’ that your Troy Windham’s, Jay Phoenix’s, Kin Hiroshi’s, Joey Melton’s and Lindsay Troy’s of the world have been able to grasp. As he sits, unspeaking, before you it seems impossible for one to think of him as a man capable of taking what has belonged to the greatest wrestlers the world has ever seen. In fact, one has to wonder…]
[Who is this man?]
“I…am nobody.” The man says simply, a small expression of acceptance on his face as his words sink in, continuing with his arms set across his legs as he leans forward.
“I have never won a championship before. I have never even contended for a championship before. My only experience with any heavyweight champion has been in my training where day in and day out I worked with the world’s premier submission fighter in ‘Old School’ Jason Hughes. But while he has achieved so much and is now retired, I sit here today without any credentials to my name beyond two years of experience wrestling in front of the so-called ‘fans’ of the sport…many of whom wouldn’t know a headlock from a suplex.”
“I accepted my ‘spot’ as a rookie for long enough and with that came accepting the humiliations, the gimmicks, the crap from the veterans who didn’t care enough to see that I could make them look like gold in the ring…they saw my talent and my depth beyond being the boorish big man or the grinning sports-entertainer…they saw that their spots were at risk with me around and they made my life hell. I spent eighteen months in a promotion that forced me to mimic the Nature Boy of the 1980’s…robes and all. Enough was ****ing enough…to use the old cliché.” He pauses for a moment, bringing his hands up to cover his face before sighing and setting them back across his lap.
“I want to be at the top in this sport. You don’t enter professional wrestling without that being your ultimate goal and just as a high school basketball player dreams of the NBA and the kids playing flag football have visions of making the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl…anybody who dreams of being a wrestler has dreamed of wearing that which adorns the waist of Troy Windham. This is my golden opportunity and I refuse to allow it to slip from my grasp.” He says this as he extends a hand out towards the camera and slowly allows it to clench as a fist to accentuate his point. His other hand palms his fist, holding it tight as his eyes lower but he continues to speak.
“I’m stuck in a pissant promotion in Phoenix, Arizona wrestling out of high school gymnasiums with has been’s like Kael Law and never were’s like Jacob Cross. I’ve been trained by a man who was the dominant force of a promotion at the time where that promotion was recognized as the top in the world. I’ve got all the wrestling skills of a future champion….yet I’m stuck in Axis Wrestling. I’m supposed to scrape and claw my way to the top across years of painstaking matches, bleeding and sweating through fifty states and a dozen countries -- leaving a little part of me behind in every match -- before somebody is even going to think of saying ‘you should be our champion’. Why should I settle for that when the top promotion on the planet is all but saying ‘come…nobodies from across the world and become OUR champion’. This is simply a chance too delicious to pass up.” The man slowly stands from the couch, his eyes still intently on the camera as his full body is now in view.
“CSWA has seen marquee names go on to hold their precious championship. Hornet, Melton, Troy Windham and others -- each and every one…a somebody in this industry. Perhaps it is irony that the next World Champion of CSWA will be a nobody…a nobody, named Tobias Stevens.”
[He calmly walks towards the camera, passing it and then a moment later, without any further commentary the scene goes black.]
Place: Phoenix, Arizona
Time: 3:37PM
Date: Unknown
[The scene fades in to show a stationary view of a living room. Nothing special, in fact…this room is nothing like what a future World Champion would call home. It is not the type of apartment that a man that crisscrossed the globe on his way to earning countless heavyweight championships would condemn himself to living out of. The faded wood flooring and white walls with the slightest chippings coming off it to reveal a formerly bluish hue. Who would live like this? What kind of world renowned sportsman could be ok with this as his home?]
[The view oscillates slightly and the sudden motion of the image zooming in lets all who view this know that it is a simplistic handheld camcorder that records this. Not the five-thousand dollar piece of equipment specially made for a heavyweight champion, but a simple camera that could be bought at your corner Radio Shack for fifty bucks. A moment passes before a figure steps into view, taking a seat on the two-cushion, white leather couch which acts as the center of the camera’s view.]
[The man is not what one would expect when thinking of plausible competitors to contend for the premier championship in wrestling. He is under six-feet and maybe two-hundred pounds if he had a large enough dinner. His blue eyes are piercing yet somehow reserved when behind the simple framed glasses that now adorn his face. He has dark blonde, perhaps dirty blonde, hair and the slightest shadow across his jaw that comes from a day without shaving. He is dressed not in the expensive attire of a sports-entertainer but in the ripped jeans and black tanktop of a man who owns very little and whose life earnings have come from what he is able to do in the wrestling ring. He seems more like the man who has worked his whole young life, appearing merely in his early twenties, and still has not managed to collect on the ‘big break’ that your Troy Windham’s, Jay Phoenix’s, Kin Hiroshi’s, Joey Melton’s and Lindsay Troy’s of the world have been able to grasp. As he sits, unspeaking, before you it seems impossible for one to think of him as a man capable of taking what has belonged to the greatest wrestlers the world has ever seen. In fact, one has to wonder…]
[Who is this man?]
“I…am nobody.” The man says simply, a small expression of acceptance on his face as his words sink in, continuing with his arms set across his legs as he leans forward.
“I have never won a championship before. I have never even contended for a championship before. My only experience with any heavyweight champion has been in my training where day in and day out I worked with the world’s premier submission fighter in ‘Old School’ Jason Hughes. But while he has achieved so much and is now retired, I sit here today without any credentials to my name beyond two years of experience wrestling in front of the so-called ‘fans’ of the sport…many of whom wouldn’t know a headlock from a suplex.”
“I accepted my ‘spot’ as a rookie for long enough and with that came accepting the humiliations, the gimmicks, the crap from the veterans who didn’t care enough to see that I could make them look like gold in the ring…they saw my talent and my depth beyond being the boorish big man or the grinning sports-entertainer…they saw that their spots were at risk with me around and they made my life hell. I spent eighteen months in a promotion that forced me to mimic the Nature Boy of the 1980’s…robes and all. Enough was ****ing enough…to use the old cliché.” He pauses for a moment, bringing his hands up to cover his face before sighing and setting them back across his lap.
“I want to be at the top in this sport. You don’t enter professional wrestling without that being your ultimate goal and just as a high school basketball player dreams of the NBA and the kids playing flag football have visions of making the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl…anybody who dreams of being a wrestler has dreamed of wearing that which adorns the waist of Troy Windham. This is my golden opportunity and I refuse to allow it to slip from my grasp.” He says this as he extends a hand out towards the camera and slowly allows it to clench as a fist to accentuate his point. His other hand palms his fist, holding it tight as his eyes lower but he continues to speak.
“I’m stuck in a pissant promotion in Phoenix, Arizona wrestling out of high school gymnasiums with has been’s like Kael Law and never were’s like Jacob Cross. I’ve been trained by a man who was the dominant force of a promotion at the time where that promotion was recognized as the top in the world. I’ve got all the wrestling skills of a future champion….yet I’m stuck in Axis Wrestling. I’m supposed to scrape and claw my way to the top across years of painstaking matches, bleeding and sweating through fifty states and a dozen countries -- leaving a little part of me behind in every match -- before somebody is even going to think of saying ‘you should be our champion’. Why should I settle for that when the top promotion on the planet is all but saying ‘come…nobodies from across the world and become OUR champion’. This is simply a chance too delicious to pass up.” The man slowly stands from the couch, his eyes still intently on the camera as his full body is now in view.
“CSWA has seen marquee names go on to hold their precious championship. Hornet, Melton, Troy Windham and others -- each and every one…a somebody in this industry. Perhaps it is irony that the next World Champion of CSWA will be a nobody…a nobody, named Tobias Stevens.”
[He calmly walks towards the camera, passing it and then a moment later, without any further commentary the scene goes black.]