[ OPW - Chapter 1 ] - WINNERS DON'T DO DRUGS!™
Jan 11, 2021 20:08:20 GMT -5
ARP, Roger Wright, and 5 more like this
Post by Graham Clauson on Jan 11, 2021 20:08:20 GMT -5
Uploaded to YouTube on 1/9/2021
Video Title: WINNER’S DON’T DO DRUGS!™
[ As the feed begins, we see a still image promoting a new YouShoot DVD being released featuring our “heroes” on the cover.
THE SHOOT KINGS
What Was On TV Wasn’t Sh*t
Out now! BUY IT!
But, here’s a taste...
The image fades out to show both Graham Clauson and the man formerly known as Madman Szalinski, Jeremy Cundiff, sitting in front of the camera. Jeremy is sans-mask, wearing a green t-shirt with a logo that is blurred out (likely due to it being some copyrighted bullshit from Nintendo, this dude doesn’t know when not to sport anything 80’s-era NES on his swag) and glasses, Graham beside him in a plain black polo shirt and also wearing glasses. Man, these two looking like age is catching up wearing prescription eyewear...
Clearly mid-conversation, and clearly being done virtually through video call due to COVID restrictions, Graham is speaking as the clip starts. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: I wasn't always such a pissed-off person as people like to claim about me. It’s not that I’m angry or always pissed off, I’m what you can label as “intense”...
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Intense like when the Blue Diesel kicks in and you find yourself walking in circles in the same driveway for half an hour thinking you’re going home. You know when you’re dealing with this man!
[ Graham Clauson ]: Hell, long ago, I was a laid-back kind of guy, if that's hard to believe... I surely wasn't who I am now, better or worse. But you'd think someone like me would have a bit more weight to their name, you know...?
I mean, when I first hit the scene, it was a bit surreal... No one, not just anyone, gets thrown into the television Main Event for their first match... Fuck probability and even lightning-in-a-bottle - that's God shining down on you and saying...
[ Graham puts his hands around his mouth to focus sound forward, but deepens his voice into a surprisingly deep voice with that omnipotent edge to it. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: "Hey, kid! This is your opportunity! Don't screw yourself here, we know I ain't generous!"
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Straight up, I was the mid-card champ for life up until like 2008. That's the first time I started really getting serious main event pushes. I'd been on TV six years at that point. You got the ultimate trial by fire my dude.
[ Graham Clauson ]: Boy, is he not wrong... Like clockwork, my green ass got the tar beat out of me on television through the crowd by the World Champion... But not the way you'd think. No, somehow my family name actually meant something to the guy and he actually made me look like a star. Even I knew I shouldn't have been booked in that spot, but nepotism is a bitch in this business. It's all about who you know and what you can offer them, right?
[ Jeremy looks at the camera and shrugs, his eyes glimmering with the feeling of a shit-eating-grin, but his facial expression is having trouble not trying to agree with his clear agreement to Graham’s rhetorical question. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Let’s be real: I offered a second-generation pedigree, the look, and the gas tank. I wasn't meant to be their next big thing, but I was supposed to build the promotion as having legitimate, young stars coming through their ranks. Needless to say, I played that role for another week, but then the management smartened up to their fuck-up shortly before we were to go live. Their response?
I get booked to get squashed by the World Champion in a "Loser Retires" match. How's that for a thank you?
[ Graham chuckles slightly in his first few words as he continues, appearing to see some form of humor in this disaster of a situation he endured. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: That's the moment I should've known this business was going to do nothing but shit on me, and I've always had a deep, deep chip left in my shoulder from it. I did everything I could not to show it, but it was clearly visible. It felt like I was built up to fail from the start...
Instead, someone in the main office felt bad and sent me to the commentary table as a "more suitable punishment"...for doing the job they told me to do the week prior...
Feel free to queue the confused-look-GIF whenever you're ready, editing crew?
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Or the pookie. For real. I've trashed locker rooms for less.
[ Graham Clauson ]: So, being young and desperate enough to cling to the idea that maybe this may be some twist in the way blessings work, I sat there and did that job.
I trimmed up the beard a little bit, threw some product in it, put on some nicer clothes and put their roster over with a smile caked in the shit they were making me eat. But that was fine; it gave me an opportunity to show everyone why putting me behind the desk was a mistake - everyone knew what I was capable of from the two outings I had where I was able to get some offense in.
But, it took the appearance of two men to make that realization come to life: the asshole beside me as Madman Szalinski and Kris Keebler.
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Yeah, fuck that guy. Keebler's cool, though.
[ Jeremy lets a quick laugh out after taking a verbal barb at himself, Graham shaking his head with a smile as he continues to talk. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: While I was behind the booth, our company had just acquired the one that Jeremy and Kevin were coming from, and I guess creative thought the best way to do this was to pull a Greenwich, Connecticut and have their guys show up on our show and trash our belts.
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Not me. I came over to your show and told you I wasn't gonna trash your belts or your company. I knew EXACTLY what was about to go down and I wanted no part of it. So you'll see here in a minute why I wanted to rip this guy's beard off and wipe my ass with it. No offense, brother. We were played against each other.
[ Graham Clauson ]: Now, creative worked the fuck out of us, we had no clue this was coming through, so everything I said live was a legit curveball from the pitcher's mound and hit me right in the head. Seeing these two guys who had been working a feud with each other in their place show up on my promotion's show and shit on our championships? I'm sitting there after the feed goes off, and I'm sitting there with this itch to get away from the booth is just...it's fucking annoying, you don't have a damn butt-scratcher long and deep enough to get that kind of itch on your own taken care of. So…
I called the head of creative up and asked how I could get in on this a little more to help push it. Next thing you know, I'm on the last show of their promotion's show before they are absorbed officially into ours, and I lead the charge and burn their belts in a trash can with several other roster members. Someone also made the clever decision not to smarten Jay up to the fact that we were going to do this. That might have had something to do with Kevin being so pissed off.
My god, Kevin... He was beyond heated after that, and he wasn’t even the World Champion!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: I WAS, THE STUPID FUCKWIT!
[ Graham lets out an audible laugh, leaning back in his seat for a second and looking away slightly. ]
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: He didn't even beat me for the belt until two weeks later when the belt didn't even exist! God damn, son! I should’ve been more pissed off than he was, but he was the one destroying Gorilla Position! Legit was bouncing rolled-up papers off people’s heads!
[ Graham Clauson ]: HA! He was! Thinking he’s all Big Rig and shit, acting like he had pull with everyone and demanding to know who made the call, but yet here comes in the newly promoted executive of our merged promotion and drops a line that only you can imagine occurring in Atlanta, Georgia.
[ Graham stops, and a British accent comes out of nowhere. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: THAT’S THE FI'ISH I GAVE 'EM!
[ Hearing this, Jeremy nearly falls out of his chair in laughter. The reaction is clearly genuine from Jeremy, seeming to have been caught off guard in some fashion with this. Graham is trying to tell this story without having some laughter himself, occasional changes indicating he’s having some laughter escape while he’s finishing up what happened after this. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: So, I had just come back into Gorilla when he said this, and I can’t help but start busting out laughing because - you know, I’m a smartass - and Kevin and I legit get into a knock-down, drag-out brawl right then and there!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: And Ariel and I sat back and laughed the whole time!
[ Graham Clauson ]: And after this shit goes down, creative and the dumb British fucker who had the keys to the executive’s office saw it and goes “This would be a GOLDEN program, but this dude can’t wrestle here anymore. Oh well, I own the place, I’m throwing that out and you two are working together!”
And I’m like - EXCUSE ME, YOU CRUMPET-MUNCHER?!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Dead ass he asked him that!
[ Graham Clauson ]: So, I’m stuck behind the desk, watching this dude work Kevin for the right to be named the final champ of PWO and get a shot at our merged belt, and I had been riding Ariel and Jeremy’s shit hard-
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Pause.
[ Graham Clauson ]: Shut up. Anyway…
[ Laughter from both parties as Jeremy continues. ]
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: The Ariel stuff was what did it. Again nobody told me it was a work. I thought that every time you said something about her, it was yours. I didn't realize it was English Fuck's.
[ Graham Clauson ]: ENGLISH WAS IN MY FUCKING EAR IN THE HEADSET, YOU STONER!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Yeah, I should have known about the headset.
[ Graham Clauson ]: You’d think this guy had worked in the business for as long as he claimed and didn’t know that the headset is for the production truck to feed stuff to say for the commentators. Can you count to an actual number, Purple Kush OG isn’t a number - or did the pot kill all your brain cells? Do I need to remind you that WINNER’S DON’T DO DRUGS, or did you not hear me screaming it from the booth after you got pinned?
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you over the money they were paying me to work with G.I.R.L. and The Ben Affleck Lookalike.
[ Graham Clauson ]: And just like Affleck, this dude couldn’t work worth a fuck. And just to think, five years later Kevin hit me in the back of the head with a brick on live TV because I beat him two weeks later because English was legit chasing me like a dog in heat!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: What?!
[ Graham Clauson ]: You couldn’t tell that the Brit was a flaming ‘mo?
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: I had suspicions but...oh my God. That explains so much...
[ Graham Clauson ]: About me or him?
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Him. Never crossed my mind about you until you told me. I mean, look at Gina.
[ Graham Clauson ]: Yes folks, you heard it first on YouShoot - Brydon Talinsdale was a bonafide homosexual, and it turned out I was able to stay in the closet longer than he lasted trying to outrun Interpol! Taken out by darts!
[ This time, Jeremy does fall out of his chair while holding back his laughter as much as he can. He gets up back up, although appearing to sell the comedic effect as he clings onto his chair as if it’s the only thing holding him up. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Stop it, ya drama queen! Let’s not drag my ex-wife and broadcast colleague through the mud any more than they did on their own…
[ Jeremy gets back into his chair, breathing a little hard but recovering and getting back to the conversation. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: But that fucking brick shot - that hit was a fucking shoot hit, I took that shit unprotected to the back of the head and was out for three weeks with a concussion… Fucking bastard...
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Speaking of fucking bastards, what about Panda? That was a fucking disaster. They booked me to squash a sixty year old man who stiffed-
[ Graham Clauson ]: You mean Scruffy?!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: YEAH! That dude! Remember? He hit me in the fuckin' throat like five seconds in! I tried to elbow that dude's fucking face off, I would still be yelling HUT! HUT! HUT! to this day if the ref hadn't grabbed me!
[ Graham Clauson ]: I 'member! ...wait a sec, didn’t you break his nose?!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: His face was sponsored by Gushers™ after I was done. Like, I don't mind getting hit in the face, but if you're trying to really hurt me, I'm gonna get you back. I'm gonna wait until you get comfortable and then I'm gonna get my receipt out your ass. It's that simple.
[ Graham Clauson ]: That, or shove an actual pack of Gushers™ down your throat and wait for you to go into diabetic shock…
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: No, that's Skittles™. But yeah dude, tell them about Catholic Panda. They gotta hear this, I don't think we've ever talked about the backside of what happened there. We made a fucking career out of that one night. We got ten years worth of bookings out of that one night, and we became friends out of that one night.
[ Graham Clauson ]: And it was still one of the worst nights of our lives.
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: That's why you need to talk about it man. It'll be good for you. Trust me.
[ Jeremy then leans in towards Graham, but the microphone can audibly pick him up doing an ode to a specific legend. ]
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: Trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me…
[ Graham flinches, pulling away from Jeremy and wiping away at his ear. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: ...fine, if you so insist. And dude, don’t do that to me, my husband would enjoy that bullshit more.
[ The still image promoting a new YouShoot DVD returns before fading out. ]
[ On the screen appears a bit of text…
The Infamous “New Year’s Eve Shoot”
December 31, 2012
[ The text fades away, clips of the infamous shoot video that both Graham and Jeremy put out in 2012 - the video that forever solidified their pairing as a team and the Shoot Kings being akin to walking pipe-bomb promos - begin to play with an old sepia tone, film grain also being apparent in the clips. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: How dare us…? Seriously, you horse-faced cunt? What about you running your mouth after you shoved us out the door after we exposed all of your bullshit, bitch?!
[ A sudden white noise cut, only for a split-second. ]
[ Madman Szalinski ]: Hey, aren’t you supposed to be retiring soon, or will it be like a Funk retirement where it lasts as long as you have cash in your pocket? Aww, I let you run around and do whatever you want and you still want to quit?
[ Another sudden cut with white noise. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Look, I’m going to tell you how serious this is…
[ Madman pulls his own mask off, the man behind the mask cutting Graham off at the pass before he even has a chance to continue. ]
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: This issue goes way beyond some wrestling promotion. It goes beyond titles, angles, and faggot-ass vampire gimmicks. This shit started way before he came around, way before this Shoot Kings gimmick. This started about eight months ago. I was drinking myself to death, I was popping pills heavy. I was way too into drugs. I literally barricaded myself into the bedroom, didn’t speak to anyone else but my wife, the man beside me and one other person who stuck with me no matter what - or so I thought!
I’m talking about the person behind the stupid vampire bullshit, and I’m going to talk right at her. Not at her gimmick, because this is a goddamn shoot: I’m talking directly to Emma [ *BLEEP* ] right now. HOW MANY TIMES THAT SHIT WENT DOWN AND YOU CAME TO ME BECAUSE I COULD BE CIVIL?
[ As this continues, we see a text blurb appear at the bottom of the screen. ]
Look, we’re not total monsters - we censored the rest of her legal name because of y’all dumbasses who would take the mention as doxxing, lulz.
[ However, the scene continues. This text fades out about five seconds later. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: But you didn’t want to be civil, Emma! We took the bullshit of you making bad business decisions in hopes of rising your stocks at our expense and tried to turn gold out of it! Who in the fuck expects a talent to work four matches in one night, then tells them they have to work a fifth last-second when they were getting ready to go to the back and rinse the fucking stink off of themselves because y’all can’t decide when you want to get a ratings boost!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: On top of that, you had a floundering tag division that you were the face of! We should’ve seen that coming when you decided to bury any tag team that wanted to even take a sniff at those belts.
[ Another brief white noise cut. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: None of us should’ve had to even handle what went down in front of the entire fandom you had amassed, but you gave us no choice. So, we told you what we wanted to do after we had a big fight backstage, and you agreed to it. We agreed to take this widely-publicized political bullshit blow-up that got out to dirt sheets and turn it into gold by working it to our advantage! The next week, the three of us came out as a united front and began to push what we agreed upon, but you gave us zero indication of where we had to draw the line even after we had asked you multiple times over several days before we went out and sold it!
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: But no, what we did was too much and had to be posted online and given a “viewer discretion” advisory because it was more real than RealPlayer! Sadly, it was about as real as you feeding jobbers to a live panda!
[ Graham Clauson ]: You were willing to throw away a real friendship that existed behind the scenes because you were too busy drinking your own vag blood to realize that everything good that was happening there was because of the talent - NOT BECAUSE OF YOU! Sorry, we killed your precious Pandaland! We didn’t mean to, it was never our intent! But even Triple B and the CWC couldn’t even save you from your own selves! FOR FU-
[ Another cut with white noise, this one cutting in several times before completely cutting into the next part. ]
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: And that’s all good, folks… Because I got one thing that’ll make this all worth it!
[ Suddenly, Jeremy leans down, then back up to show a bottle of Triple Sec in one hand and a small glass tube in the other. ]
[ Jeremy Cundiff ]: I relapsed! Happy New Year!
[ Graham, looking over, seems to be focused on the tube. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Is...is that a crack pipe?!
[ This time, the white noise cuts in and stays with us for about four or five seconds. Afterwards, we find Graham, sitting in the same interrogation room featured in the “The Next Big Outlaw” segments. Although the remnants of Mr. Peanut have been clearly cleaned up, the rest of the room still appears strewn out like it did since it was last seen. Wearing a black baseball cap, black t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, there is no flash in his attire. The camera is zoomed out somewhat as a new bit of text comes up on the screen. ]
Present Day
Filmed January 5, 2021
The camera continues to zoom towards Graham, eventually stopping at a respectable distance of zoom - clearly still sitting on the table. There seems to be no desire to be a showman, either, within Graham. Cold eyes stare back, but suddenly his head cocks to the side as if he’s about to pose a query. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Does anyone else feel like they're watching a movie and not a wrestling show?
[ Graham pauses momentarily, almost as if he’s awaiting a response, but continues to prevent more than the few words of one’s response could be delivered. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Hell, y'all remember 2013 when I took a literal bury-that-dook shit on their tag champions and asked if I was watching some Lifetime Made-for-Television Mini-Series? I mean, come on, their promos were so long you may as well have charged $15 for admission and $5 for a Tic-Tac.
And that’s for a single Tic-Tac. Not a pack.
[ Graham has stopped speaking, but he seems to be confused after a few seconds of staring. He looks around to what can only be assumed to be a production staff or something, extending his arms and raising the volume of his voice. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: What, no cut-away? Good...
[ Graham returns back towards the camera. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Um, yeah… Those of you who know what Graham Clauson and what the Shoot Kings were about was taking shit to the comedic extreme and this would be something that would cause a cut-away to some comedic gag ala "Name Your Favorite Seth MacFarland Animated Show Here" deal, but not this time... Not this time...
What could’ve been comedic for those who hate me would be the look on my face finding out that Outlaw decided that I need to qualify for a fucking tournament...
[ Now we get a cut-away. We can hear Graham audibly yell “Really?!”, but it’s distant.
Sitting in his home on the sofa, Graham picks up his phone and appears to open up something. As he looks at what we can only assume would be the card announcement, we see his eyes glass-over almost like he’s going to snap - but he doesn’t. A twitchy grin becomes evident as the camera then gets a frontal shot of him in this expression as the world around him goes into hyperdrive. Sounds of bombs exploding, rapid gunshots, airplane engines roaring past… Mark Hamill laughing as DC’s The Joker? We are so going to get a copyright strike, I swear...
Back to Graham - guess he was serious about not giving us any genius cut-aways this time. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Well, at least my wonderful team who runs this shit didn’t pull one of the good ones from the archive and make me a liar. This isn’t the time for jovial bullshit.
If anyone remembers, my first tournament back in 2010 was my breakout performance, and conversely the exact reason why the Shoot Kings formed. I busted my ass, just to have the company make a fly-by-night decision to pull the trigger instead of holding off and letting the payoff build up and get some more in the bankroll. If it wasn’t for the fact that there’s a damn YouShoot DVD with yours truly and the former Madman himself spilling it all after all this time, I would tell you the full story, but you can go pay the nice men who run their operation to find out.
Once you watch that, you’ll understand how getting a slot in a tournament feels for me: I’m going to come in, and I’m going to end up making someone else famous. If you were me, you would know why this entire booking pisses me off. In every tournament I came into where the company actually had interest in keeping me around, I was pure destruction. It’s not me just shooting off to sound all important either, I made clean-sweeps to the finals.
And every time I win the final match, some stupid bullshit comes into play.
[ Graham’s voice suddenly goes up into a higher octave we did not expect, almost sounding like what one would assume to be a natural female voice - good lord, Bernadette Rostenkowski-Walowits, anyone? Are your ears bleeding? Are mine? ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: “Oh, let’s have you take your shot now. Oh, I need a boost in my ratings, let’s suddenly change the match that would be taking place from a one-on-one to a four-way dance. That’ll surely get my buy-rates up! Oh, we know that the guy we have won the whole thing is going to definitely catch people’s eyes and cause them to shill more money at us if we let him have a competent hour-long bout with our champion, but let’s go ahead and go with this other random fuckhead who looks like the Olsen Twins could eat them because, meth!”
[ On the last word, meth goes down to the standard, more baritone voice that we are used to from Graham. Your dogs can stop yelping now. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: The reason I’m bitter should be quite obvious, let alone have flashbacks. But the reason I’m bitter is also going to be the one thing that both Le’Andra and Fenrir are going to need to worry about those most.
You see, folks, I wasn’t just running my mouth when I told you that I’ve been busting my ass for over a decade to see no real fruits for my efforts. Some of my matches would make Dave Meltzer cream his pants if they would’ve happened in Japan, dead serious. But that’s not what the promotions that kept trying to sign me wanted, no…
They kept wanting the stupid shit that Madman kept bringing along. For ten years, it wasn’t about what Graham Clauson did. It was about “Hey, we’ll sign you if you bring your stoner friend along” to eventually be followed up with “Oh, creative doesn’t have anything for you anymore, good luck in your future endeavors!”
[ Graham, at this point, unleashes the anger that’s been building and slams his fists into the table he was sitting on, all before standing up, turning around and flipping it over as he yells. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: The fuck you mean you have nothing for me?! YOU ASKED FOR ME, YA TWAT!
[ Graham lets out an angry groan, clearly annoyed but still not facing the camera. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: ...but did you really ask for me?
No, you didn’t. And that’s where you all fucked up. You fucked up for a decade. For a decade, it was supposed to be me you were all praising and wanting to see me at the top of the ladder. But I played Sideshow Bob to a guy who, by the time his career in United Toughness Alliance was winding down, was lucky he could bump...
[ Graham raises his head slightly, but hasn’t turned around quite yet. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: ...if he were on his ass from edibles before going out to the ring.
[ Now he turned around. There you go, kid, you gotta actually look at the camera when doing a monologue promo - Basics 101. ]
[ Graham Clauson ]: Now we’re here. It’s 2021, and I got sick and tired of waiting for you all to wake up. You spent years dangling the Twinkie in front of me on a stick. I’ve had plenty of it for this pot to sit on the stove, and now the boil is too out of control for you to stop. That’s why I keep mentioning how long I’ve been busting my ass! I have had zero legitimate World Championship title shots where I didn’t have some random-ass fuckery thrown at me to prove to everyone that I’m more than just some stoner’s best friend!
But it appears that, no matter how much I tell you this… No matter how many times I prove it to you in front of your very eyes... The fans, any promotion's management, anyone with even a semblance of intelligence… For years, you look at me like I’m the local chain brand and these other fucks like Xavier Wolf and even LA Johnny Stylez are what you all want to see. You all want to be running around and soaking whatever the fuck he wants you to take in…
No more, though. We end that notion at the pay-per-view when I take out two of the recruitable party members from Expeditions: Viking and start leaving a trail of ruin through La Cosa Nostra. And while I’m doing that, I’ll make sure that Xavier and Scotty’s lives are going to be a living hell...whichever one of you has my ducat by the end of the night.
I told you all, that World Championship is coming home to Daddy…
Fenrir and Le’Andra? They’ll only be remembered as the first two murders in this spree, and I'm going to laugh while I read the obits.
Call CPD, the Kingpin is here. The shoot...is ON…
[ The feed ends with a cold-cut to black, a shotgun blast being heard as the cut occurs. ]