Post by A.C. Smith on Apr 25, 2013 12:05:25 GMT -4
Our scene opens today at a site very familiar to any hardcore sports fan. We're at Radio City Music Hall, the location of the NFL Draft, and we see dozens of workers milling around and setting up for the 2013 renewal of the event. Banners are being hung, tables are being set up for teams and prospective draft picks, and television representatives are on the scene to block out camera shots and supervise the building of their sets.
Our camera shot, which is from a location on the floor, slowly zooms out as the large white NFL banner is hung behind the stage. We pan to our right, and we eventually see three men, two clad in New York Jets jerseys and matching green face paint, standing on the second level of the building. However, we instantly recognize the man in the middle as the Big Apple Asskicker, A.C. Smith, thanks to the APW Xtreme Championship belt draped over one of his broad shoulders.
That immediately identifies the two men in costume as Bobby the Bavarian Man-Bitch and Stevie the Slovakian Slobberknocker, and while we can't see if their faces are naturally discolored thanks to their face paint, we get the idea that neither part of the pair is happy. We switch to a view on the second level closer to them, and we hear Bobby grumbling.
Bobby: “Stevie, you REALLY thought the draft started on WEDNESDAY?”
Stevie: “You could've corrected me!”
A.C.: “No, no, he couldn't have. I love you, boys, but this is hysterical.”
We see Smith smiling, all the while struggling to stifle a few stray chuckles.
A.C.: “On the bright side, at least you won't see your beloved Jets bungle their first-round picks in person this year. Remember when you could've had Dan Marino?”
Bobby: “Or Warren Sapp.”
Stevie: “Or Anthony Muñoz.”
All three men shake their heads, and it's as if this video is replaying over and over in their heads.
A.C.: “Well, to say the draft isn't an exact science is an understatement.”
Bobby: “Remember when 'Peyton Manning vs. Ryan Leaf' was a legitimate argument?”
Stevie: “Or when Tom Brady slipped to the sixth round? Christ, how many people want a do-over on THAT one?”
A.C.: “Long story short, if you use the draft wisely, you're set for years. If you screw up, you're hosed for just as long, and as a coach, you may be out of a job before you get the chance to rebuild. But hey, no pressure.”
Smith rolls his eyes.
A.C.: “It's a tough business. You know, Bill Walsh even shopped Joe Montana before the 1983 draft to see if he could get John Elway. That was a year after Montana won the MVP award in Super Bowl XVI, and the first of three championships he'd win in San Francisco.
On one hand, you can't blame a quarterback guru, and one of the greatest offensive minds in football history, for wanting to build his team around John Elway. On the other hand...”
Bobby: “On the other hand, you're willing to give up Joe Freaking Montana to do it?”
A.C.: “Exactly. The draft causes normally sane men to do some pretty crazy things. Your Jets mortgaged their future to draft Johnny Lam Jones in 1980. They thought they were getting an Olympic champion who was going to be the next Bob Hayes...except they forgot one little thing.”
Stevie: (shaking his head) “He was a receiver who couldn't catch.”
A.C.: “Precisely. The Chargers gave up every high-value asset they had to get Ryan Leaf, thinking they'd be a championship contender for years to come with him at quarterback running the offense. Instead, he turned out to be one of the biggest blunders in the history of the draft, and San Diego wouldn't make it back to the playoffs for nearly a decade.
The list goes on and on. I can name a high-profile bust from the history of pretty much any team in the National Football League, and at the time, most of them looked like fantastic picks. Hell, the most famous quote from the 1983 draft came after the Jets took Dan O'Brien over Marino.”
Bobby: (disgruntled and looking mad at the world) “'Obviously, the Jets know something that the people up here don't.'”
Dead silence for a moment, but it's broken by uproarious laughter from the Big Apple Asskicker, who bends down and grabs his suddenly-aching side. Bobby and Stevie, again, look far from happy, but they can't say their friend is wrong.
A.C.: (between titters of laughter) “I'm...I'm sorry...”
Stevie: “No. No, you're not.”
A.C.: “OK, you're right!”
Smith regains his composure, but still wears a huge grin on his face as he takes a deep breath and speaks again.
A.C.: “Six Hall of Famers and nine more who made Pro Bowls came out of the first 28 picks of that draft class, and all we remember is that one quote about the mistake the Jets made.”
Stevie: “My dad bought me a Ken O'Brien jersey after the draft thinking he was the next coming of Joe Willie Namath. Then Marino went nuts in 1984, I outgrew the shirt, and he burned it.”
Bobby: “If we'd had Marino, think of all that WOULDN'T have happened. Hell, not having to live through the Fake Spike game would have been enough!”
Bobby and Stevie both shake their heads, reliving the infamous play over and over in their minds like a car crash they can't avert their eyes from.
A.C.: “You guys should probably find a bathroom and wash your faces off. We've got to leave pretty soon, especially with security being as tight as it's going to be at JFK when we try to leave for Venezuela.”
Bobby and Stevie nod and walk off, and we hear them grumbling some more about the O'Brien debacle as they exit the frame.
Smith chuckles once more at the futility of his friends' favorite team, which has arguably bungled its sport's draft more than any other franchise in professional athletics. Again, though, he composes himself for the cameras, and he focuses on the lens near him before opening his mouth to speak.
A.C.: “At this time of the year, everyone associated with the draft thinks they know everything about every player who may or may not hear his named called by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. This guy's going to be good. This guy isn't. He's a sleeper, he's a bust. He's going to be an All-Pro, he's not going to make it off the practice squad. The rhetoric can get a little bit old if you don't absolutely love the draft, which is why I won't disparage anyone from knocking the way things go down over three days in April every year.
Me, though? Even though I don't necessarily have an NFL team, I love the draft. I love the passion the fans have, the optimism in the air, the sense of, 'Now that we've got our guy, NOBODY can stop us.' It's a turning point in the off-season, the time where, 'Wait until next season,' becomes, 'Look what we've got, and try to stop us this fall after we come together as a team.'
The thing is, as we talked about earlier, the draft isn't an exact science. Sure-thing players fail. Guys you've never even heard of make Pro Bowls and become the best in the league at their positions, like Washington Redskins running back Alfred Morris did one year ago. The draft is great, but no Combine test can ever truly determine if a player will help a team win a Super Bowl or not, which provides a certain aura I can relate to.”
Smith pauses, glimpsing quickly at his APW Xtreme Championship.
A.C.: “Six months ago, if you were to ask someone who the longest-reigning champion on the Overdrive brand would be at this point, I wouldn't have even been on the radar. Most people would have gone with Terry Marvin. Some people, looking for a wise-guy pick, may have gone with Evan Harrison, or Mark Mania, or Level-One, or Kurt Noble, or Chris Hart, or new arrival Azrael Goeren. But nobody, and I mean NOBODY, could have foreseen the way things worked out in the Xtreme division...except me.
I won this title in December, and I've fought off EVERYONE who's tried to come for it since then. Michael Lively, an APW Hall of Famer, had three different chances at it. I pinned him cleanly all three times. Delikado couldn't take it from me, and neither could Buckson Gooch. Suddenly, the guy nobody expected to be a force on Overdrive, the guy everyone thought was full of hot air when he debuted in April of 2012...well, he's been the Xtreme Champion for over four months.
You may be asking, where is this going, and how does this relate to the match I have this week in Hugo Chavez country with Level-One? Well, Level-One is undoubtedly going to release some hate-filled diatribe against me later this week before our match. I'm not knocking the approach, one that's obviously worked for him in the past and is a vital part of who he is. The problem is, not everything is as clear-cut as he thinks, and I proved that several weeks ago when we locked up for the first time.”
There's now a sense of defined purpose on Smith's face, one that wasn't there before when he was talking about the NFL Draft. He continues.
A.C.: “Level-One said a lot of things that week that pissed me off then and have the same effect now. Yet when we met in that ring, he had a much, MUCH harder time than he envisioned. By his logic, he hated cops and hated pretty much anyone else in APW, so he would have had no problem with little old me. Well, he was wrong.
I gave him the kind of fight very few others have been able to bring to him. Several times, I was a second away from a victory that would have shaken Action Packed Wrestling to its foundation, like I did when I knocked out Biggs and pinned C.J. Gates earlier in my APW career. Level-One beat me that night, but I proved to the wrestling world that I was on his level, and that everything I've done since winning the Xtreme Championship was no fluke.
Now, Level-One and I are set to do battle again, and I couldn't be more excited. As I've alluded to several times in the past 12 months, I came to Action Packed Wrestling for all the great matches that I hadn't been able to do battle in before. I've faced, and beaten, a lot of big names in my 11-year career, but I hadn't had the chance to face guys like Level-One before signing my contract.
I got that chance a few weeks ago. I didn't win the match, but as the saying goes, experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. And unlike a lot of people Level-One has vanquished over the years, I'm back for a second go-round this week, one that I have every intention of taking full advantage of.”
Smith pauses briefly, and we hear some sound checks being performed on several floor-level microphones before he opens his mouth to speak once again.
A.C.: “Level-One has this habit of trying to put himself above everyone and everything. He's supposed to be this all-powerful, all-knowing force that destroys everyone and everything in his path. Yes, he beat me a few weeks ago. I'm not going to go against 11 years of being an honest, hard-working man and go against that fact.
But you know what undoubtedly pisses off more bullies than anything else? When you stand up to them. When you take their best shots, go with them blow-for-blow, and don't back down. I'm one of only a few people in APW who can say they do that on a consistent basis, and Level-One isn't the only person of that ilk you can ask about that. Talk to Terry Marvin, whose match with me at Test for the Best was one of the biggest threats to the Summer of Showtime. Talk to Michael Lively, who had to bolt to Asylum once he realized he couldn't beat me no matter how hard he tried. And talk to any number of people I went through prior to my arrival in APW, guys who thought they were God's gift to wrestling before they made the mistake of messing with the Big Apple Asskicker.
Level-One, I took your best shots a few weeks ago, and I'm not backing down. I don't know why you're probably expecting the exact same outcome in round two of our little rodeo here, but you're wrong to do so. If you think, for one second, that holding the outcome of one battle over my head is going to decide this match before it starts, you're taking me for one hell of a fool and outing yourself as one in the process.”
We see that Smith is starting to get angry. Redness rises to the surface on his chiseled face. His brown eyes are locked in a perpetual, never-wilting glare at the camera lens, and his nostrils flare ever so slightly.
A.C.: “I don't care how much you may hate cops, and why that's undoubtedly going to lead to a win. I don't care how much you may hate me, and why that's undoubtedly going to lead to a win. I saw through that charade the first time around, as you felt when I didn't back down in our first meeting and when you woke up in pain the morning after.
Level-One, most of your matches are over before they begin, and there's something to be said for that. Your reputation is towering, you're gifted from bell-to-bell, and there's always the chance you'll stoop to the ultimate low to do what you have to do. That psyches out a lot of different wrestlers, some of whom are among the best in our business.
The problem is, that shtick doesn't work with me. I've gone up against men who are ACTUALLY dangerous, guys who are trained killers and the REAL scum of this Earth. Doing that gives you a sense of perspective, a sense of people whose bark is worse than their bite.
Whether you want to admit it or not, Lester, I took everything you could muster when we first locked up. And through it, I learned something a lot of your opponents don't. You're not a machine, not some unbeatable monster. You're a man, with strengths that overpower some wrestlers and weaknesses that can be exploited by others. And if you think, for one minute, or even one second, that I MAY be intimidated by you this Thursday night on Overdrive?
Well, then you've got another thing coming.”
Bobby and Stevie re-emerge from the bathroom, their faces rid of the green goo that hid them just a few moments ago. Smith hears their footsteps from behind and turns around, holding up an index finger to signify, “Give me a minute.” They oblige, and Smith turns back toward the camera.
A.C.: “Level-One, if you want to go on your usual hate-filled diatribe, comparing me to the idiots involved in some bungled case from years or decades ago, I'm not going to stop you. In fact, if I see that you've done that, I'll agree with you that our match is over before it starts, just not the way you think it is from your narcissistic perspective.
Unlike almost everyone you've ever faced, I'm not intimidated by you, and I'm not backing down from our match this week. I'm not going into it with a mindset of, 'Don't do anything stupid.' Doing that would mean I'd be wrestling not to lose, which is deadly. I've never approached any match like that in my entire life, and I'm sure as hell not about to start now. Instead, I'm going into this match the only way I know how: Full speed ahead, and with the intention of using everything I know about my opponent from past encounters to my benefit en route to a win.
Level-One, I respect what you've accomplished. But I sure as hell don't respect how you've done it, and I've made it clear as of late what I do to people I feel that way about. You may be seen as one of the best to ever grace the squared circle. But this Thursday night on Overdrive, I'm going to show you that everything I've done over the past four months, including the test you weren't counting on earlier this year, is no fluke. Thursday night on Overdrive, I go from the sleeper that nobody saw coming to the guy who sprung to new heights by revolutionizing his sport.
Thursday night on Overdrive, I beat Level-One.”
On that note, Smith turns around, walks for a few seconds, and meets up with his friends. The reunited trio walk further away from the camera as a group, and our scene fades to black.
Our camera shot, which is from a location on the floor, slowly zooms out as the large white NFL banner is hung behind the stage. We pan to our right, and we eventually see three men, two clad in New York Jets jerseys and matching green face paint, standing on the second level of the building. However, we instantly recognize the man in the middle as the Big Apple Asskicker, A.C. Smith, thanks to the APW Xtreme Championship belt draped over one of his broad shoulders.
That immediately identifies the two men in costume as Bobby the Bavarian Man-Bitch and Stevie the Slovakian Slobberknocker, and while we can't see if their faces are naturally discolored thanks to their face paint, we get the idea that neither part of the pair is happy. We switch to a view on the second level closer to them, and we hear Bobby grumbling.
Bobby: “Stevie, you REALLY thought the draft started on WEDNESDAY?”
Stevie: “You could've corrected me!”
A.C.: “No, no, he couldn't have. I love you, boys, but this is hysterical.”
We see Smith smiling, all the while struggling to stifle a few stray chuckles.
A.C.: “On the bright side, at least you won't see your beloved Jets bungle their first-round picks in person this year. Remember when you could've had Dan Marino?”
Bobby: “Or Warren Sapp.”
Stevie: “Or Anthony Muñoz.”
All three men shake their heads, and it's as if this video is replaying over and over in their heads.
A.C.: “Well, to say the draft isn't an exact science is an understatement.”
Bobby: “Remember when 'Peyton Manning vs. Ryan Leaf' was a legitimate argument?”
Stevie: “Or when Tom Brady slipped to the sixth round? Christ, how many people want a do-over on THAT one?”
A.C.: “Long story short, if you use the draft wisely, you're set for years. If you screw up, you're hosed for just as long, and as a coach, you may be out of a job before you get the chance to rebuild. But hey, no pressure.”
Smith rolls his eyes.
A.C.: “It's a tough business. You know, Bill Walsh even shopped Joe Montana before the 1983 draft to see if he could get John Elway. That was a year after Montana won the MVP award in Super Bowl XVI, and the first of three championships he'd win in San Francisco.
On one hand, you can't blame a quarterback guru, and one of the greatest offensive minds in football history, for wanting to build his team around John Elway. On the other hand...”
Bobby: “On the other hand, you're willing to give up Joe Freaking Montana to do it?”
A.C.: “Exactly. The draft causes normally sane men to do some pretty crazy things. Your Jets mortgaged their future to draft Johnny Lam Jones in 1980. They thought they were getting an Olympic champion who was going to be the next Bob Hayes...except they forgot one little thing.”
Stevie: (shaking his head) “He was a receiver who couldn't catch.”
A.C.: “Precisely. The Chargers gave up every high-value asset they had to get Ryan Leaf, thinking they'd be a championship contender for years to come with him at quarterback running the offense. Instead, he turned out to be one of the biggest blunders in the history of the draft, and San Diego wouldn't make it back to the playoffs for nearly a decade.
The list goes on and on. I can name a high-profile bust from the history of pretty much any team in the National Football League, and at the time, most of them looked like fantastic picks. Hell, the most famous quote from the 1983 draft came after the Jets took Dan O'Brien over Marino.”
Bobby: (disgruntled and looking mad at the world) “'Obviously, the Jets know something that the people up here don't.'”
Dead silence for a moment, but it's broken by uproarious laughter from the Big Apple Asskicker, who bends down and grabs his suddenly-aching side. Bobby and Stevie, again, look far from happy, but they can't say their friend is wrong.
A.C.: (between titters of laughter) “I'm...I'm sorry...”
Stevie: “No. No, you're not.”
A.C.: “OK, you're right!”
Smith regains his composure, but still wears a huge grin on his face as he takes a deep breath and speaks again.
A.C.: “Six Hall of Famers and nine more who made Pro Bowls came out of the first 28 picks of that draft class, and all we remember is that one quote about the mistake the Jets made.”
Stevie: “My dad bought me a Ken O'Brien jersey after the draft thinking he was the next coming of Joe Willie Namath. Then Marino went nuts in 1984, I outgrew the shirt, and he burned it.”
Bobby: “If we'd had Marino, think of all that WOULDN'T have happened. Hell, not having to live through the Fake Spike game would have been enough!”
Bobby and Stevie both shake their heads, reliving the infamous play over and over in their minds like a car crash they can't avert their eyes from.
A.C.: “You guys should probably find a bathroom and wash your faces off. We've got to leave pretty soon, especially with security being as tight as it's going to be at JFK when we try to leave for Venezuela.”
Bobby and Stevie nod and walk off, and we hear them grumbling some more about the O'Brien debacle as they exit the frame.
Smith chuckles once more at the futility of his friends' favorite team, which has arguably bungled its sport's draft more than any other franchise in professional athletics. Again, though, he composes himself for the cameras, and he focuses on the lens near him before opening his mouth to speak.
A.C.: “At this time of the year, everyone associated with the draft thinks they know everything about every player who may or may not hear his named called by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. This guy's going to be good. This guy isn't. He's a sleeper, he's a bust. He's going to be an All-Pro, he's not going to make it off the practice squad. The rhetoric can get a little bit old if you don't absolutely love the draft, which is why I won't disparage anyone from knocking the way things go down over three days in April every year.
Me, though? Even though I don't necessarily have an NFL team, I love the draft. I love the passion the fans have, the optimism in the air, the sense of, 'Now that we've got our guy, NOBODY can stop us.' It's a turning point in the off-season, the time where, 'Wait until next season,' becomes, 'Look what we've got, and try to stop us this fall after we come together as a team.'
The thing is, as we talked about earlier, the draft isn't an exact science. Sure-thing players fail. Guys you've never even heard of make Pro Bowls and become the best in the league at their positions, like Washington Redskins running back Alfred Morris did one year ago. The draft is great, but no Combine test can ever truly determine if a player will help a team win a Super Bowl or not, which provides a certain aura I can relate to.”
Smith pauses, glimpsing quickly at his APW Xtreme Championship.
A.C.: “Six months ago, if you were to ask someone who the longest-reigning champion on the Overdrive brand would be at this point, I wouldn't have even been on the radar. Most people would have gone with Terry Marvin. Some people, looking for a wise-guy pick, may have gone with Evan Harrison, or Mark Mania, or Level-One, or Kurt Noble, or Chris Hart, or new arrival Azrael Goeren. But nobody, and I mean NOBODY, could have foreseen the way things worked out in the Xtreme division...except me.
I won this title in December, and I've fought off EVERYONE who's tried to come for it since then. Michael Lively, an APW Hall of Famer, had three different chances at it. I pinned him cleanly all three times. Delikado couldn't take it from me, and neither could Buckson Gooch. Suddenly, the guy nobody expected to be a force on Overdrive, the guy everyone thought was full of hot air when he debuted in April of 2012...well, he's been the Xtreme Champion for over four months.
You may be asking, where is this going, and how does this relate to the match I have this week in Hugo Chavez country with Level-One? Well, Level-One is undoubtedly going to release some hate-filled diatribe against me later this week before our match. I'm not knocking the approach, one that's obviously worked for him in the past and is a vital part of who he is. The problem is, not everything is as clear-cut as he thinks, and I proved that several weeks ago when we locked up for the first time.”
There's now a sense of defined purpose on Smith's face, one that wasn't there before when he was talking about the NFL Draft. He continues.
A.C.: “Level-One said a lot of things that week that pissed me off then and have the same effect now. Yet when we met in that ring, he had a much, MUCH harder time than he envisioned. By his logic, he hated cops and hated pretty much anyone else in APW, so he would have had no problem with little old me. Well, he was wrong.
I gave him the kind of fight very few others have been able to bring to him. Several times, I was a second away from a victory that would have shaken Action Packed Wrestling to its foundation, like I did when I knocked out Biggs and pinned C.J. Gates earlier in my APW career. Level-One beat me that night, but I proved to the wrestling world that I was on his level, and that everything I've done since winning the Xtreme Championship was no fluke.
Now, Level-One and I are set to do battle again, and I couldn't be more excited. As I've alluded to several times in the past 12 months, I came to Action Packed Wrestling for all the great matches that I hadn't been able to do battle in before. I've faced, and beaten, a lot of big names in my 11-year career, but I hadn't had the chance to face guys like Level-One before signing my contract.
I got that chance a few weeks ago. I didn't win the match, but as the saying goes, experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. And unlike a lot of people Level-One has vanquished over the years, I'm back for a second go-round this week, one that I have every intention of taking full advantage of.”
Smith pauses briefly, and we hear some sound checks being performed on several floor-level microphones before he opens his mouth to speak once again.
A.C.: “Level-One has this habit of trying to put himself above everyone and everything. He's supposed to be this all-powerful, all-knowing force that destroys everyone and everything in his path. Yes, he beat me a few weeks ago. I'm not going to go against 11 years of being an honest, hard-working man and go against that fact.
But you know what undoubtedly pisses off more bullies than anything else? When you stand up to them. When you take their best shots, go with them blow-for-blow, and don't back down. I'm one of only a few people in APW who can say they do that on a consistent basis, and Level-One isn't the only person of that ilk you can ask about that. Talk to Terry Marvin, whose match with me at Test for the Best was one of the biggest threats to the Summer of Showtime. Talk to Michael Lively, who had to bolt to Asylum once he realized he couldn't beat me no matter how hard he tried. And talk to any number of people I went through prior to my arrival in APW, guys who thought they were God's gift to wrestling before they made the mistake of messing with the Big Apple Asskicker.
Level-One, I took your best shots a few weeks ago, and I'm not backing down. I don't know why you're probably expecting the exact same outcome in round two of our little rodeo here, but you're wrong to do so. If you think, for one second, that holding the outcome of one battle over my head is going to decide this match before it starts, you're taking me for one hell of a fool and outing yourself as one in the process.”
We see that Smith is starting to get angry. Redness rises to the surface on his chiseled face. His brown eyes are locked in a perpetual, never-wilting glare at the camera lens, and his nostrils flare ever so slightly.
A.C.: “I don't care how much you may hate cops, and why that's undoubtedly going to lead to a win. I don't care how much you may hate me, and why that's undoubtedly going to lead to a win. I saw through that charade the first time around, as you felt when I didn't back down in our first meeting and when you woke up in pain the morning after.
Level-One, most of your matches are over before they begin, and there's something to be said for that. Your reputation is towering, you're gifted from bell-to-bell, and there's always the chance you'll stoop to the ultimate low to do what you have to do. That psyches out a lot of different wrestlers, some of whom are among the best in our business.
The problem is, that shtick doesn't work with me. I've gone up against men who are ACTUALLY dangerous, guys who are trained killers and the REAL scum of this Earth. Doing that gives you a sense of perspective, a sense of people whose bark is worse than their bite.
Whether you want to admit it or not, Lester, I took everything you could muster when we first locked up. And through it, I learned something a lot of your opponents don't. You're not a machine, not some unbeatable monster. You're a man, with strengths that overpower some wrestlers and weaknesses that can be exploited by others. And if you think, for one minute, or even one second, that I MAY be intimidated by you this Thursday night on Overdrive?
Well, then you've got another thing coming.”
Bobby and Stevie re-emerge from the bathroom, their faces rid of the green goo that hid them just a few moments ago. Smith hears their footsteps from behind and turns around, holding up an index finger to signify, “Give me a minute.” They oblige, and Smith turns back toward the camera.
A.C.: “Level-One, if you want to go on your usual hate-filled diatribe, comparing me to the idiots involved in some bungled case from years or decades ago, I'm not going to stop you. In fact, if I see that you've done that, I'll agree with you that our match is over before it starts, just not the way you think it is from your narcissistic perspective.
Unlike almost everyone you've ever faced, I'm not intimidated by you, and I'm not backing down from our match this week. I'm not going into it with a mindset of, 'Don't do anything stupid.' Doing that would mean I'd be wrestling not to lose, which is deadly. I've never approached any match like that in my entire life, and I'm sure as hell not about to start now. Instead, I'm going into this match the only way I know how: Full speed ahead, and with the intention of using everything I know about my opponent from past encounters to my benefit en route to a win.
Level-One, I respect what you've accomplished. But I sure as hell don't respect how you've done it, and I've made it clear as of late what I do to people I feel that way about. You may be seen as one of the best to ever grace the squared circle. But this Thursday night on Overdrive, I'm going to show you that everything I've done over the past four months, including the test you weren't counting on earlier this year, is no fluke. Thursday night on Overdrive, I go from the sleeper that nobody saw coming to the guy who sprung to new heights by revolutionizing his sport.
Thursday night on Overdrive, I beat Level-One.”
On that note, Smith turns around, walks for a few seconds, and meets up with his friends. The reunited trio walk further away from the camera as a group, and our scene fades to black.
