[REC.]
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming today.”
1:00 PM – The time of Gavin Taylor’s scheduled press conference had come. Gavin sat behind a table adorned with the Team Smashmouth Unicorn Puke logo, the Trios trophy set to the left, and the Team SUP trophy set to the right. Between those trophies sits “The All-Star” himself, Gavin Taylor, clad in a sports coat and the latest Gavin Taylor t-shirt available through ShopSCW.com. But the talk amongst the murmurs in the press hall isn’t about the shirt available for $24.99. The attention of the reporters is focused squarely mere inches above Gavin’s eyes – the tinfoil cone wrapped and set upon his temple. To his credit(?), Gavin does not appear to be uncomfortable in his current “attire”. He has the microphone sitting in place as he adjusts it. As it is, Ava St. Claire – also clad in the Gavin Taylor t-shirt and a tinfoil hat – stands off to the side, a microphone of her own, as she initiates the scene for the reporters within. This task for her is not to be envied, if only for the headpiece covering her ginger locks.
“Now, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that the purpose of this press conference is to provide media relations pertaining to the upcoming pay per view event, SCW Body Heart and Soul, in general and the SCW World Tag Team Championship contest featuring my client, “The All-Star” Gavin Taylor and his partner, Nicole “Ducky” Kinneck challenging Ace Marshall and Autumn Valentine for the Championships,” Ava very painstakingly explains. After all, in her role as agent to The All-Star, she is doing her very best to ensure that there is as little embarrassing content leaking out from this setting. “We would like to ask that you keep your questions brief, one question and one follow-up if necessary, and keep on topic. We don’t want to turn this into a water cooler or a sewing circle. Please… please… respect our wishes. Thank you.”
She looks to Gavin, who nods his head. Ava nods her head back in response before turning to go out of sight. Before she gets completely out of sight, she does pull off her foil hat, tossing it aside as she turns back to face Gavin, who is now the sole individual sitting on the stage. Gavin looks out into the room of reporters, some following the instructions and fashioning their own tinfoil hats. As he waits for the first question, Gavin sits back, propping his feet up onto the table.
“Alright, who’s going to kick us off here?” he wonders aloud. Gavin pulls the microphone off the table, setting it on his abs as he waits. “I mean this is a high-attention contest. The World Tag Team Champions. You know, that’s something I’ve done before too. It’s true. I was World Tag Team Champion back in IWC with Andre Jordan, back when the world thought I was just playing him for a fool. I mean, I was playing him for a fool, but the con was a lot longer than anyone thought possible. If anyone wants to ask me about that, go right ahead. Or my tag team with my beautiful and vivacious wife, Maddie. Just don’t sit on your hands…”
Finally, one of the reporters – an un-foiled one – rises from her seat. Gavin immediately recognizes her and points her out of the crowd. “Sadie, hi!” he blurts out. Sadie Sierra, a longtime wrestling web reporter and former trained wrestler, smiles half-heartedly as she waves back to him.
“Hi Gavin,” she says. She searches for the right way to ask what she wanted to ask, but lacking the ability to do so, she just shrugs her shoulders. “I’m sorry, I know that we’re supposed to follow a format here, but I just have to ask… what’s with the tinfoil hats?”
Gavin bites his inner lips as he receives the question. He should have expected that, even with the most explicitly laid out instructions forbidding questions about the tinfoil hats, there would be some intrepid reporter who takes it upon themselves to ask about the tinfoil hat. Still, he is able to suppress his disappointment and flash his hundred-dollar smile as he lifts the microphone to his lips.
“Let me ask you, Sadie,” he begins. “Are you a part of a team?”
“Yes,” Sadie nods. “The WrestlingNews team runs internationally with reporters, podcasters and a few legends contributing to them.”
“Uh huh,” Gavin responds, clearly not listening for the minute details of Sadie’s response. “And does that team support each other?”
“Of course,” Sadie innocently responds, probably understanding Gavin’s point but wanting to let him get to it.
“That’s what this is,” Gavin remarks, pointing to his own tinfoil hat. “Teamwork. My tag team partner… soon to be fellow Tag Team Champion if things go my way… believes in this. So, regardless of my own beliefs, I do this in solidarity. It’s what a good partner does. When Gavin Taylor does something, he doesn’t go halfway. He goes all in.”
“But your tag team partner isn’t here,” Sadie retorts. “So what’s the purpose of this then if it’s something she’ll never know about?”
“Again, it goes with being a good partner,” Gavin rebuts, shrugging his shoulders. “Total commitment to the cause. What if Ducky were to turn on her TV and, while looking for Rainbow Bright or Hello Kitty or.. or… I don’t know, Gargoyles… and what if she saw this press conference and there’s Gavin Taylor giving canned answers to mad-libbed questions without showing support to her beliefs. It would be disrespectful, one. B, it would probably break her poor little duck-shaped heart. And… where was I going with this?”
“C,” Sadie responds, before thinking about it. “Or three. You’re kind of all over the place here.”
“It’s being a good tag team partner,” Gavin says, bringing the circle back to his point. “That’s why the tinfoil. That’s why I’m supporting the point. Next question.”
The next question comes from Bruce Larkin from RingsideInside.net. He walks to the podium, adorned in his makeshift tinfoil hat as he clears his throat. Gavin puts a hand out.
“Give the man some room,” he instructs the rest of the room. “Don’t want any sort of germs spreading throughout here. Last thing I need is to be the man who brought the flu to the wrestling reporting community.”
Bruce looks up, adjusting his glasses as he goes to the microphone. Reading over his notes, he simply looks up to Gavin and utters one word in question…
“Aliens?”
Without another word, he abandons the microphone. Gavin smirks as he does.
“Look, it’s not impossible, is it?” he answers, trying to catch the room in a philosophical conundrum. Whether or not he was successful, he continues. “But we don’t want to give airtime to those people, okay? This isn’t supposed to be about tinfoil hats for Martian mind control. This press conference is supposed to be about Gavin Taylor and the pursuit of the SCW World Tag Team Championships. It’s a chance for me to call myself a Champion again and leave nobody with the room to say “Oh, you just made that replica Championship, it’s not recognized”, or “How come we never got to see the match where you won that title?”… such disrespect. So if you have any more questions about aliens or the like, please save them. If you have questions about the athletic contest that I’m going to be competing in Sunday night in Detroit, then please feel free to ask them to your heart’s content. I have no other plans today.”
There’s a lull in the room. After all, there are so many questions to be asked pertaining to the tinfoil and the pervasive idea that there are somehow aliens involved in SCW and the like. But Gavin appeared to be firm in his instruction, which quieted much of the chatter among the reporters. Gavin takes this opportunity to pull out a bag.
“Um, if you all look under your seats…” he begins, prompting many of the reporters to do exactly that. They all pull out matching bags to Gavin’s. “You’ll find today’s favors for this presser. Inside you have the latest in Team SUP merchandise with a t-shirt featuring this beautiful trophy I was gifted following our unprecedented Trios Tournament victory… these are all sized based on your pre-conference checklist, so you’re welcome. Rep the brand. Um… oh, this is fun. There’s an SCW Body, Heart, and Soul bingo card included for each of you – again they’re all different, but if you tweet me @AS_GavinTaylor on Twitter with a picture of your card when it’s completed, you’ll be entered to the drawing to win an exclusive one-on-one lunch da’terview with myself. Also, you’ll find a pack of the new Team Smashmouth Unicorn Puke-branded Skittles. The flavors were personally chosen by myself and Ducky. There is no puke flavor because, and I quote Xander, “If there’s a puke flavor, I’m going to personally buy every last package and force feed them to you, Gavin”. And a pen, a letter opener, some balloons for the kids… you know. Standard fare, and… oh! I see we have a question.”
Sure enough, Ignatius Agnew, the oldest wrestling reporter in the room at a staggering 38 years old, walks to the podium. He adjusts his glasses first, then the sheet of tinfoil placed onto his head that he did not bother fashioning into a cone. Gavin snickers, thinking in his head how ridiculous the man looked.
“Mr. Taylor,” he begins with a nasally-tinged professional tone. “In recent weeks, you have been unsuccessful in your endeavors when it comes to facing Ravyn Taylor and Syren in singles combat. As a holder of a Trios contract, do these setbacks inhibit your plans to cash in? Or are you confident in your ability to return to form in time for what we can only assume will be a single’s Championship contest?”
Gavin stares blankly. Not only was his inner psyche just prodded inappropriately, but he had his recent defeats put on full display. He sits up, putting the microphone back on the table as he prepares a professional answer.
“Well,” he begins, still trying to assemble a proper answer inside his head. “The destination of my Trios wish is yet to be firmly decided upon and confirmed with SCW management, so right now I’m really committing to this Tag Team run and I really feel like I’m in a good place right now. One-hundred-and-ten percent. Going to give it everything I have. Et cetera.”
Gavin checked out of the answer halfway through, and it became evident to everyone within the room as he started spouting off athletic clichés. Another reporter, Robin Robins of the wRRestler.org approaches. Gavin snaps out of his partially glazed state and acknowledges her… but not in a Tribal Chief kind of way. We don’t acknowledge them ever.
E-V-E-R!!
“Gavin, recent speculation has emerged that you are in fact related to one Ravyn Taylor, Taylor Chase, Taylor Swift, the owner of the Snappy Tailor, the Re-Tail Them veterinary service, and other such individuals who’s names or job titles encompass any variation of word “Taylor”,” she notes in a very disturbingly thorough preamble. “Do you have any comment about these allegations or the potential connection therein?”
“Yes, I certainly do,” Gavin forcefully relays. “Taylor Chase? My sister-in-law. That’s what happens when you get married. Your spouse’s siblings become yours by the nature of the law. Taylor Swift? Still has a thing for me. She keeps threatening to write a tell-all song about me, but hasn’t yet had the heart to do it. I think she still longs to one day become “Taylor Taylor”. But as far as Ravyn Taylor is concerned…”
“I HAVE IT!”
All eyes turn to the side of the stage, where Nicole Kinneck… Ducky, as the case would be in this regard… enters the press conference. She has a designer tinfoil hat perched upon her head as she moves in. Looking around the room, she begins to point out the different reporters and their hats…
“Nice,” she says, pointing to the first one, as well as every successive hat she sees. Including Gavin’s. “Nice… nice… nice… nice… nice… nice… nice…”
“Ducky…” Gavin calls out, breaking her from her nice spree. She turns towards the All-Star mildly startled, but no more than you would regularly see from Kramer on Seinfeld. So use that for your frame of image here. “What do you have?”
“Proof!” she says, moving to the microphone. She pulls it off the table and reaches under her tinfoil hat, procuring the obviously photoshopped image of Gavin, Ravyn, Taylor, et al. “I found this family photo of the Taylor family reunion!”
“Ducky, that’s…” Gavin begins before getting cut off.
“Pretty great detective work, right!?” she excitedly remarks. “We could totally start our private eye business on the side! “Gavi and Ducky’s Detective Services”! GDDS!! Think about it… I’ll get my guys on trademarking it!”
And, as soon as she rushed into the press conference, Ducky rushes out. Gavin watches her go, then turns over towards Sadie Sierra with a smug expression on his face.
“See?” he remarks, tapping his tinfoil hat. “I told you this was a good idea.”
“So you’re just going to ignore that display?” Robin asks in her follow-up. Gavin happily nods.
“Yep!” he says with a smile. “It’s easier to deal with that way than it is to actually confront it. Obviously someone… probably Ravyn’s own people… have a vested interest in making the world think we’re related, and honestly, it’s professional wrestling. I mean, who expected Jordan Majors to show up and suddenly end up related to Jake Starr? Or find out that Simon Lyman and Rachel Foxx share a father. Now, I knew Richard Lyman… and that one even shocked me. So who’s really to say definitively that we’re not related when the industry has been crazier?”
“I’m sure that a simple DNA test would…” Robin begins, but Gavin ignores the point as she’s already used her question and follow-up.
“We’ll never know for sure,” he says. “Thanks for your question.”
Gavin looks around the room and, in the absence of any further rushing to the podium, he begins to stand up.
“Alright, well, since none of you are actually going to ask about my Championship match, I’m going to head out,” Gavin remarks, motioning for the door. “There’s a gym about 5 minutes down the road and I’d really like to get a quick workout in before hitting the hay and beginning my pre-match rituals. And no, for those of you writing for 3xwrestling, that does NOT involve abstinence, thank you very much. Oh.. and my autograph signings at the South Detroit Foot Locker has been postponed. Apparently “South Detroit” is actually slang for Windsor, Ontario, the border is a mess and, most relevant of all, Steve Perry lied to us. I’ll see you guys after the show, and remember to get your bingo cards sent to me once and if you manage to complete them. Thank you.”
Gavin stands up, waving to the reporters who aren’t quick to gather around and try to force his hand to remain. Gavin stops again, going back to the microwave.
“Oh, and you guys can keep the tinfoil, B.T.dub,” he instructs. “Use it to cover some leftovers. The All-Star only ever provides the best in food wrappings.”
He winks before walking off the stage, approaching Ava who stands just off the stage. She holds her notepad pressed to her chest and doesn’t appear nearly as mortified as an uninitiated agent might be based on that press conference. Gavin smiles confidently.
“I think that went well,” he remarks. Ava can’t respond with anything but a platitude, so she shrugs with a half-hearted smile – enough for the All-Star to feel continued confidence. The scene fades.
[REC.]
The scene opens up inside a makeshift studio. There are low-hanging lights focused upon the Team SUP first-place Trios Trophy – somehow one of Gavin Taylor’s most prized trophies from his athletic career – set upon a table with a velvety red cloth. Behind the trophy, just off to the right, stands the man himself… the Man Who Would Be King… the Real-World Jedi… Professional Wrestling’s Kwisatz Haderach… the Obscenely Naturally Talented… among many other registered trademarked nicknames, “The All-Star” Gavin Taylor.
“You know, there was this little something that I promised someone… and Gavin Taylor is a man of his word. I mean, okay fine… I wasn’t a man of my word to my old tag team partner, Sabra Esther Mizrahi, when we ended our tag team peacefully so I could team with Ariel Phoenix. And I certainly wasn’t a man of my word to Ariel when I dropped her as a partner over voicemail. Did you know there’s a way to bypass even calling someone so you could just leave a message in their voicemail without them even realizing you called? That one definitely came in handy that day. And sure, I wasn’t a man of my word to Andre Jordan, when we rose to prominence in the IWC tag team division, became Champions, and then I cut him loose after months of telling him I was on the level. No… but I’m a man of my word today. I promised my current tag team partner, Ducky… you know and love her, I know… I promised her that I would come onto this stage, in this studio, and rhyme. So, without further dudes… Jack, Karl…”
Gavin motions off-camera for his All-Star Security to enter the frame. They do, flanking either side of The All-Star. Gavin reaches down, pulling out an All-Star SCW baseball cap and putting it on backwards before throwing a pair of aviators on his eyes.
“Give me a beat.”
Jack and Karl look to each other, each beginning to give different beats at different paces.
“My n… my name is… Jesus Christ, guys! Get on the same beat!”
After a few false starts, Gavin’s words of encouragement and intonation of Jesus Christ is enough to push the beat into one consistent rhythm.
“My name’s Gavin Taylor, and I’m the All-Star
I said from day one my star’s going to shine far
Maybe it didn’t come right off the bat
But you know your boy, GT, has a lot to say about that
I fought for myself, I made a lot of foes
I waited for a break, but no break arose
All anyone wanted was just for me to fail
They didn’t want SS All-Star to ever set sail
Heh… that was a good one.
But I kept scratching, and clawing, and fighting on through
I kept at it because it was all I knew how to do
When you’re an All-Star like me, success is a drug
Not like a real drug, though, that would make me a slug
But a burst of endorphins coursing through my veins
And I’d do what it took to just grab those gold reins
I said reins instead of rings because it’s like riding a horse
Which is something my haters know about, of course
Yeah, I said it.
But I’ve taken my time, I’ve been lying in wait
But the hunger for success would just not abate
So here we are, Body, Heart, and Soul
And you just knew that the All-Star would play a big role
It’s the Tag Team Championships, Lexy Corp and Team SU
We’re going to make those guys wish they came down with the flu
God damn, where do I come up with these rhymes?
And don’t sleep on us, we’re coming for the straps
No change in hell of this tandem failing at the graps…
Okay, so I feel like I should probably explain that last one. You see, when I say “graps”, I’m referring to “grappling”, which is one of the most basic fundamentals of professional wrestling. It was something that I, the All-Star, was capable of doing at a very young age…
BUT I DIGRESS…
Lexy Chapel needs to steps back, this night won’t go her way
Well, the night will be an extension of the day
Because Lexy surely knows just like everyone else
That Team Smashmouth Unicorn is taking those belts!
Body, Heart, and Soul… the All-Star embodies all three
And with Ducky beside me, we’re the ones that’ll be
The Supreme CW World Champions of Tag Teaming
Your faces will flush, and ours will be beaming
So bring it Ace, bring it Autumn, bring it Lexy and all
Because Team SUP? There’s no chance we fall!
You see… this is all very simple for me. This is about finally overcoming the hurdle that… guys… guys…”
Jack and Karl Barker stop their beatboxing, looking to Gavin. He motions for them to get out of the shot and cut the beat, instructions that they adhere to immediately, leaving the All-Star and his trophy alone in the shot once more.
“Two years ago at Day of Infamy… the event that had taken the place of Body, Heart, and Soul in January… I lost the SCW Adrenaline Championship to Asher Hayes. This month’s event… not exactly a kind memory, is it? So it’s only fitting that two years later, after having found myself, reinvigorated the All-Star’s standing within SCW, that I would now walk into the same event a new man. And to have one of my new best friends, Ducky, sharing the ring with me, well… that makes this event even bigger for me. I’ll be honest – I know that I haven’t done much since coming to SCW to make me likeable. But here we are, and Ducky is probably the best person for me to team with because she sees the good in people. She sees the good in me. And I feel like it’s her seeing the good in me that brought me here. So I can’t let her down…
I mean, also I’ve never met Pro or Nicole, and really don’t want them to hate me or poison me or anything like that. So I gotta keep it on the level.
Body, Heart, and Soul will show that time is a flat circle. Gavin Taylor is back in the title match. And this time, Team SU walks out Champions. Time to up the game again… the way only the All-Star knows how!”
"The All-Star" Gavin Taylor 