VS. FINNEGAN WAKEFIELD [PROMO 2]

There's a lot to unpack here in this box of shit you just passed me over to listen to, like a soggy blunt the token retard in the circle hands over to you with drool dripping off the end. What is this shit, Finn?

I'll just tell you right now, I'm not going to dignify even half of this bullshit with a response, but for the especially egregious bullshit you're spitting here I have no choice but to respond. You're wrong on one very important thing, and this is just you projecting your own insecurities onto me, but no. I seek out the best of the best and fight them to prove that I too am at the level of the BEST. So when I challenge the likes of Azumi, Raivo, and Arata - who you say I'm a discount store version of but that's rich coming from El Hijo del Brian Daniels here, rumbling his way to that APEX World Championship reign. I'm not fighting those guys because they metaphorically represent insecurities in my career like Darkane did for you, getting to complete a legendary World Championship reign in OWA that has now outclassed yours entirely - I'm fighting those guys because I have to fight that level of talent to prove I belong.

Also NAMI? I didn't train her, and I'm not sure where you got that idea from, but this wouldn't be the first time you're just straight up wrong about something. I'm sure she's doing good work and I'm not sure what she has to say about you but I've never even spoken to her once so maybe you need to worry less about what the OWA Goddesses Champion thinks about you and worry more about what I'm going to do to you on Saturday.

You're better than this, or at least I thought you were - but believe it or not, once you go to the ends of what is known and step out into the unknown, and realize that no matter what you are in wrestling or what you are in life, you don't matter. Nothing matters. Now there's two minds to have about that. There's the mindset that the mentally feeble employ, the excuses, the sob stories, the ultimatums. Then there's those that realize the meaninglessness is the meaning itself - in this world, we are all free to do what we want no matter our circumstances. It’s clear to see where each of us lies on that duality.

This is why I don't like you Finn. You're one of those pampered little princesses that needs things exactly how they want them and even one mishap and you just leave, the perennial definition of taking your ball home. Man's out here like Kevin Durant, hopping from team to team, from company to company - and just like Kevin Durant, you've got a championship to your name that I don't think you earned the right way. I know that you're going to justify this with that web of delusions you've crafted in your mind. But like every good Shaman, allow me to help you reconnect with reality, Finn.

You got lucky with APEX, you realize that right? A brand new company with the funding to rival some of the biggest promotions in the world and when they needed top stars to put on that pedestal and represent the company you slithered your way in here. While I can't take away from your skill and ability that got you the World Championship, here's why I still don't consider you a legitimate champion. You're not the top dog, you're the dog that tucked his tail in between his legs and went running off. You're not a prize fighter if you don't collect the prize. The fact that you devoted YEARS of your life in the pursuit of recapturing your top spot in OWA and the fact that your answer to failure was walking away and not getting back up to finish the fight that YOU started... That's where I draw the line. It's not just that I don't respect you. It's that there is objectively no reason to respect you.

I'm not wrong. What have you had going for you your entire career? You know forty-two different ways to put on a headlock, congratulations.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of your smug pretentious fucking existence thinking you're the hottest shit on the block because you're a "really good wrestler" or whatever the fuck your generic tagline is. You think you can hold your head high and turn your gaze away from me like I'm some decrepit crackhead on the sidewalk of a New York City street. I just don't care. I'm a man of many hats and a man of many faces. One of those is also indeed the fact that I am, at the end of the day, underneath everything else, I am every bit as good of a wrestler as you are.

Now if you take that away from the both of us, I'll still be everything else I am that has made me the legend I am today.

Take that away from you? And you're just a meager skeleton, a husk of a wrestler who was never anything more than just that - a "really good wrestler".

That was never enough for me. I don't want to go down in the history of this industry as just a wrestler. What I do in between these ropes speaks for itself. It's not what defines me. Being APEX World Champion or being a World Champion in general has always been such a small-minded objective for you.

In the time that your contemporaries like myself have gone on to become icons both in the world of wrestling and the even greater world outside of it, all you've done is be a "really good wrestler".

What I want to ask is though... What's the proof of that, really?

Because if one good World Championship reign is all it takes to make you famous then I guess I've been an industry level talent since 2012, but you and I both know it would be disingenuous of me to say that. Then again, being disingenuous seems to be second nature to you, because how else would you be able to say all the garbage you do with a straight face?

So what do you have going for you Finn? You told me you've known me for a long time but you've got to remember that goes both ways. When I was reigning as EAW National Elite Champion back in 2017 I remember you struggling down there in the New Breed Division. No one was calling you the best wrestler around back then. You were just stuck on the level of Moongoose McQueen and Franchise Demon. And that really was the story for the rest of your tenure in EAW altogether - mediocrity, disappointment, and failure.

Things changed though didn't they, and they changed tremendously. All of a sudden, there he was! The first OWA World Champion! Finnegan Wakefield had ascended to the next level!

But he never went any higher.

I know what it's like to chase a dragon that you can never seem to catch up to. For you, it was that peak, that glorious OWC reign that made you the man you were, and it wasn't until many years later, in another company after walking out on what could've been the World Championship win that would have defined your entire career that you were able to achieve anything that was even remotely the same.

But it isn't. I know it isn't because I've chased that same dragon too. When I won the SSW World Championship it felt meaningless. Yes, I defeated Darkane and Jacob Senn in back to back weeks to become the World Champion there, but it just didn't hit the same as my first World Championship win in my career as a whole because I didn't do it the right way.

That's why I'm here in APEX.  That's why I'm back on Kingdom. One way or another - not for anyone else, but entirely for me and that one stone I've left unturned - I have to do it. I don't care how many times I have to try and I don't care how many times I fail. I'll keep coming back until I make it happen, until I win that World Championship that will prove to myself that I am everything I claim to be and then some. This isn't destiny, this is brute force. I WILL make it happen, and I know that at my best, I can't be stopped, not by monsters and especially not by men who have mastered the art of the wrist-lock.

This isn't the World Championship run that will define you, Finn. This is a paper reign, and I'll be doing you a favor by bringing it to an end. Take some more time off, re-evaluate your decisions, and when you come back, I want you to look me in the face, man to man, and tell me that you were wrong, that you were sitting on a throne that you didn't deserve to sit on, a throne that will soon be mine, and the crown that I will put on my head will be the APEX World Championship.