History is what we are.

[A.C. Smith]

Baltimore, Maryland
Friday, May 17, 2013

It's morning in an upper-class part of the city, and our scene opens in a neighborhood that boasts several expensive houses. We segue to one of them, a gorgeous brown tudor home sitting atop a hill and only accessible by a long driveway. Through a large window, we can see an attractive woman in an old t-shirt and sweat pants milling around a state-of-the-art kitchen.

Our view changes to one of the inside of the house. We see the granite countertops and finely-polished mahogany cabinetry in the kitchen, as well as a stove, refrigerator, and George Foreman grill, all of which appear to be new and as advanced as humanly possible in terms of technology. However, what strikes us the most out of anything in the kitchen is the woman cooking breakfast for three in it, one we've seen before and haven't forgotten.

Roxanne Landis, a former New York Police Department officer, moved to Baltimore after leaving the force and divorcing her husband. She's in her mid-30's, but looks much, much younger, and the outfit she's wearing shows off her ample cleavage and hourglass figure.

Suddenly, the doorbell rings, sending melodic echoes throughout the house. Roxanne is clearly surprised, and she waits for a few seconds before responding to it.

Roxanne: (slightly annoyed, yelling) “It's okay, boys, I'LL get it!”

Roxanne begins the walk to her front door, and opens it while mumbling to herself.

Roxanne: “I do too much around here. God forbid those kids wake up before...hi.”

Roxanne's gaze moves upward, and her jaw drops. The man at her door is her former partner on the force, the Big Apple Asskicker, A.C. Smith, wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and a smirk.

A.C.: “So I was in the neighborhood.”

Roxanne: “How...how did you know where I lived?”

A.C.: “It's on your business card that you gave me in New York a few months back.”

A pause.

A.C.: “Look, I just figured I'd drop in and surprise you. If you'd rather I leave and come back later, I can find something to do. There's racing at Pimlico, the Orioles are home, there's plenty of places to eat...”

Roxanne: “You think Pimlico is a pit, you hate the Orioles, and you don't like crab cakes.”

A.C.: (flabbergasted) “How do you REMEMBER this shit?”

Now it's Roxanne who's smirking, smiling a knowing smile that only a former partner would understand.

A.C.: “Really, I can leave if you want me to.”

Voice #1: “Mom, what's going on?”

Voice #2: “Yeah, where's our breakfast?”

Roxanne turns around and sees her two sons, who we know were named after Bobby the Bavarian Man-Bitch and Stevie the Slovakian Slobberknocker. The one on the left is 15 years old and looks like he just woke up, while the one on the right looks to be around 11 and full of energy. Meanwhile, Roxanne is a little frazzled by the state of events at her house, and isn't quite sure what to say to her offspring.

Roxanne: “This is, um...”

A.C.: “I'm just a friend of your mom's. Don't worry, I'm headed out.”

Roxanne: “No, stay. Really, it's fine. Boys, do you want to set the table?”

Older boy: “Not really.”

Roxanne: “Bobby! Either you set the table or you don't get breakfast. Your choice.”

Bobby rolls his eyes in the classic language of rebellious teenagers, but he heads to the dining room, and Stevie follows shortly after as Smith looks on, impressed.

A.C.: “Boy, you told HIM.”

Roxanne: “You're a friend, you're just stopping through on a road trip, and you will only speak when spoken to until my sons leave the room. Understand?”

A.C.: “And now you've told ME, too.”

Now it's Roxanne rolling her eyes as she goes to the kitchen to supervise and dish out the food. Smith walks in, admiring the house as he kicks off his white Nike sneakers and shuts the door.

The quartet begins milling around a huge table in the dining room. Smith doesn't have food in front of him, but Roxanne pours him a glass of orange juice before she sits down.

Silence follows as Bobby wolfs down his french toast and scrambled eggs. Stevie, though, pipes up after a few moments.

Stevie: "So Mr. Smith, what are you doing here when you should be in Brazil for Mayhem?"

Smith smiles a huge grin as Roxanne's eyes grow three sizes. Clearly, her sons know more than she wants them to.

A.C.: “Nice try, Roxie. Well, Stevie, I decided to take a little road trip, that's all. And call me A.C., all right?”

Stevie: “Mom, how does he know my name?”

Roxanne: “That's...a long story, honey. Just eat your food. I, uh...think I left something in the kitchen.”

Roxanne leaves to regroup.

Bobby: “You should probably go talk to her.”

A.C.: “Thanks for the lesson on women, Bobby. Trust me, I know your mother, and I know enough not to mess with her...”

Roxanne: “A.C., GET IN HERE!!!”

A.C.: “...unless, of course, she asks very nicely. Excuse me.”

Smith leaves the dining room, and Roxanne is standing in the kitchen, with her arms folded just below her breasts, inadvertently pushing them up.

A.C.: “You know, unless you're trying to seduce me, you should probably move your arms.”

Roxanne finally looks down, and throws her arms up in anger.

Roxanne: “You have my number. You couldn't have just told me you were coming?”

A.C.: “I didn't realize your kids would be home. And by the way, you never said you didn't tell them where they got their names from.”

Roxanne: “That's my decision. Not yours.”

A.C.: “And that's fine. But do they even know I was your partner? Do they know our history? Or do they only know what you want to tell them?”

Smith moves closer to Roxanne, and the two look into each other's eyes with matching levels of intensity.

A.C.: “Look. You can wish what happened that one night didn't happen. But it did. And deep down, both of us will always wonder if we could've had something more. Just because your ex-husband, and those kids' father, decided to be an asshole and mistreat you doesn't mean that all men are shit heads.

I came here because I missed you. And I thought maybe, MAYBE, you missed me too.”

Roxanne: “I did, but that's not the point.”

A.C.: “What IS the point, then?”

Roxanne: “I left New York to get away, and to get my kids away, from every piece of baggage I had there. I left my ex-husband, I left my job, and I left the guy who I had a one-night stand with out of confusion!”

That scream invites Bobby and Stevie into the room. Roxanne's eyes begin to well up, and Smith shakes his head.

Bobby: “What's wrong, Mom?”

Stevie: “Yeah, what happened?”

A.C.: “Don't worry about it, boys. You wouldn't understand. I, uh...I should go.”

Smith finishes off the cup of orange juice he has in his hand before depositing it into a dishwasher located under the sink.

A.C.: “Guys, I need you to take care of your mother. She's a hell of a woman, and you don't know the half of it.”

The boys nod.

A.C.: “I'll see myself out.”

Smith turns to leave and puts his shoes on, but Roxanne follows him as he opens the door.

Roxanne: (softly) “I'm sorry.”

A.C.: “Roxie, you can't rewrite history, no matter how much you want to. What happened between us happened, and now it's your call how you want to deal with it. I won't bother you, I won't pursue you, until you make that decision.”

Smith walks out of the open door, and proceeds down a few steps and to his red Lamborghini Diablo in the driveway. We see Roxanne looking on sadly as Smith mumbles the same phrase to himself.

A.C.: “You can't rewrite history...”

Smith gets into his car and drives off, and our scene fades to black as the Lamborghini picks up speed moving away from the house.

---

We fade back up on Smith sitting alone at a secluded corner of Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He's checked into his Delta Airlines flight, which stops in Atlanta before landing in Rio de Janeiro at 8:53 a.m. local time Saturday morning, and it appears he's loaded up with magazines, crossword puzzles, and other forms of in-flight entertainment for the 12 hours he'll spend winging his way south.

Unlike earlier, the Big Apple Asskicker is wearing his APW Xtreme Championship over his left shoulder, and he clutches it tightly with his left hand while holding a clear, plastic water bottle in his right. Smith brings the bottle to his lips and takes a swig before putting it down next to him, and once the liquid is down his throat, he focuses his brown eyes on the camera and opens his mouth to speak.

A.C.: “You can't rewrite history. It's a lesson learned all too well by a bunch of people with great expectations and selective memories. You can work as hard as you want to make people forget the things that don't fit your vision of who you are, but what you've done, or haven't done, makes you the person you are, whether you like it or not.

See, I caught Nathaniel Havok's diatribe earlier this week. And what I saw wasn't a legend, or someone who is legitimately a great champion. I saw someone in denial. A man who acts as though his shit doesn't stink, that every win exists as some sort of plan laid out by God, that every loss is something people must immediately forget as through it never happened.

That attitude isn't one of a champion, or one of someone who is destined for greatness at Mayhem this Sunday in Rio de Janeiro. That attitude is one of someone who has no idea what he's getting himself into. It's one of someone who thinks he can play mind games with the Big Apple Asskicker, and someone who, in taking all of his time admiring his own reflection in the mirror, did absolutely no research into the guy who did more for the APW Xtreme Championship than he ever did or will ever do.”

Smith's face is red with anger and rage.

A.C.: “I've said many times that I joined Action Packed Wrestling a little over a year ago to have the kind of dream matches I'd never been able to have before. And when I accepted Nathaniel Havok's challenge a few weeks ago, I thought this match at Mayhem would fit that bill. He's a two-time Xtreme Champion, a Hall of Famer, a guy that, I thought, knew what it took to win a match like the one we'll have this Sunday.

What I DIDN'T count on was Havok making the exact same mistake so many of my prior opponents have in his last chance to make a statement before Mayhem. Instead of the intense Nathaniel Havok who only lost the Xtreme Championship because he also held the World Heavyweight Championship, he reverted to the lowest common denominator, assuming that I'm just another Johnny-come-lately who knows nothing about the Xtreme division or wrestling in general.

As anyone who has ever met me can attest, that's not me. I've been in this business for 11 years, and I've done things with this Xtreme Championship that nobody before me, Nathaniel Havok included, has ever done. I took a title that so many before me cared two shits about and turned it into one of the most prestigious championships in all of professional wrestling.

Evan Harrison, who beat Nathaniel Havok earlier this month, didn't give a damn about the strap. Nick Watson sure didn't. But since beating Watson for it in December, I've become the longest-reigning champion on APW's flagship brand, and that's not by accident. I've taken a lot of pride in defending this title against all comers, including some of the best in this business.

For Nathaniel Havok to even INSINUATE that he wants this title more than I do? That's flat-out disrespectful, not to mention wrong. Michael Lively, a Grand Slam champion and an APW Hall of Famer, tried to take the Xtreme Championship from me three different times. And on all three occasions, I sent him back to his dressing room empty-handed. Hell, after I beat him at RassleMania IX, the biggest stage in wrestling, he went crying all the way to Asylum, where he's trying to regroup after I took EVERYTHING he had from him.”

Smith pauses, taking a sip from his water bottle.

A.C.: “A lot of people have abused the phrase, 'He has no idea what he's in for.' With Havok, though, it couldn't be more true. He's taken me for some fool that's quaking in his boots at the thought of facing him at Mayhem, and that's dead wrong. Since late-December, I've put my title up against anyone that wanted a shot at it. Michael Lively, Delikado, Buckson Gooch, and others have tried to take it from me. They're all top-notch wrestlers, but they've all failed.

You know why that is? It's because I don't get intimidated. And I don't get intimidated because, in my time with the NYPD, which Nathaniel Havok tried to shit all over, I went up against guys who were actually WORTH being scared of. Gun-toting drug dealers. Knife-wielding pimps. Underworld bosses who took the term, ' scorched earth,' as seriously as anything they'd ever done.

But according to Nathaniel Havok, none of them hold a candle to a guy who...well, hasn't looked all that dangerous at all lately. He tried to back out of his match with Evan Harrison under the guise of it being too early on the card. Once it was over, though, we found out the real reason for it, which was that he just wasn't good enough to beat him. If Nathaniel Havok's undergone some ridiculous, radical transformation between then and now, one that turns Havok into the guy I signed up to face at Mayhem thinking it would be one hell of a match, he's done one HELL of a job at hiding it.”

Smith rolls his eyes.

A.C.: “And for him to knock what I did as a police officer? That's just ignorant. In my four years on the force, I helped clean up the streets of New York, and I did so going up against guys that were ACTUAL killers, not just wannabes who tried to pass themselves off like them. I did more good for my city in four years than Nathaniel Havok will EVER do for ANYONE, and deep down, it probably disgusts him that I've outshined him.

Was I a wrestler first and foremost? No. But after my love interest was supposedly gunned down, I went into a deep depression, as anyone in that situation probably would. And Havok, if you'd taken so much as five minutes to do ANY sort of research on me, you'd have known that wrestling saved my life. It gave me an outlet for my aggression, a new passion, something to pour my heart and soul into for my own benefit. And all I've done in, ahem, my SECOND career, is spend 11 years headlining events all over the world, winning six different World Championships, and entertaining the best fans in the world.

Nathaniel Havok says he's got a ton of things going for him. Unfortunately for him, even ONE bit of rational thought isn't in that arsenal. Ignorance is bliss, which would explain why he's so upbeat going into Mayhem. And he says I have no idea what I've signed up for? Havok needs to go back to that mirror he loves so much, and THAT'LL show him someone who is biting off way more than he can ever hope to chew.”

Smith grabs his water bottle and finishes it off, chugging the last of the H2O before hurling the empty container off of the screen and into a nearby recycling bin.

A.C.: “Havok even conceded that, instead of him being in my head, it's the other way around. Inconceivably, he then tried to use that to his own benefit, and that's another way he's signing his own death warrant come Sunday night. This is far from the first time I've been in someone's head over my 11-year career, it sure as hell won't be the last, and I've yet to find a single time where that's been a DISADVANTAGE for me.

Nobody has ever beaten me in a battle of mind games. Ever. Not once, despite many attempts by people who opted to underestimate me. Havok isn't the first to regard me as some big, dumb oaf who just happens to have something he wants. Again, though, he failed to do even the slightest bit of research on his opponent, and that won't end well for him.

No big, dumb oaf has ever built an 11-year career as successful as the one I've had. No big, dumb oaf has ever done more with a championship belt than I have with the APW Xtreme Championship. And no big, dumb oaf has ever outsmarted as many great wrestlers as I have . At some point, doesn't the uneducated colony of men in the locker room have to realize, 'Hey, this guy's no joke?'

Apparently, though, Havok has decided to take the lazy route, and in hindsight, that's not all that surprising. In his mind, he's been the Xtreme Champion since President Jeff stripped the title from him last year, and everyone since has just been some sort of a place-holder until he decided he was ready to carry the strap again.

The facts, though, things Nathaniel Havok has never exactly had a great fondness for, say otherwise. Havok made a big deal of being a champion for over 600 days. But in my five months as APW Xtreme Champion, I've done more for this title than any prior champion before me, Havok included. I've given it a sense of pride, a sense of tradition, and a sense of meaning that had NEVER existed when Havok, or anyone else, called themselves the champ.

It's going to take one hell of a man to take this title from me. It's going to take someone who's focused, someone who is more mentally-ready than anyone has ever been in the long, storied history of Action Packed Wrestling. At his best, maybe Nathaniel Havok is that man. But now? Heh. NOW is a different story.”

Smith allows himself a slight chuckle.

A.C.: “Now, despite how he's built himself up, Nathaniel Havok has gotten lazy. He's banking on me being intimidated by his previous accomplishments instead of what he's actually capable of doing this Sunday in Rio de Janeiro. He's refused to do anything resembling research on the man who currently holds the title he calls his own, and that's going to prove to be the biggest mistake he's ever made in his APW career.

Havok isn't the first to make that mistake. In fact, there's a long, decorated list of some of the best wrestlers ever that have taken me for granted. But they've all got one thing in common. When all the chips were down, and everything was on the line, it wasn't them coming out on top. It was me. And in approaching this match the way he has, Havok has denied himself a chance at the title he calls his before the contest even starts. He's in line for a serious beating, and when it comes, the only person shocked by it will be him.”

Smith pauses and looks to his right. However, his look turns into a surprised, sideways glance, and as the camera pans, we see why, as Roxanne stands near a telephone.

A.C.: “How did you...”

Roxanne: “I worked security here for a little while. I know this place inside and out. Can I join you?”

A.C.: “Yeah. Sure.”

Roxanne sits in a chair to Smith's right.

A.C.: “Where are the kids?”

Roxanne: “Back at the house. Their grandparents came over for a little while.”

A.C.: “What did you tell them after I left?”

Roxanne: “The truth.”

Smith looks at Roxanne, and a slight smile forms on his face.

Roxanne: “I'm sorry about earlier. I freaked out. You didn't deserve that. You're, well...”

Roxanne lets the rest of the sentence drift away, possibly because not even she has decided the lengths of her relationship with her former partner.

Roxanne: “Can I wait with you until your plane leaves?”

A.C. pauses.

A.C.: “Sure. I'd like that.”

Smith and Roxanne hold hands, and we see them beginning to talk as our camera zooms out and our scene fades to black.