OCTOBER 21, 2022
THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE
Gavin Taylor woke up in a daze. Having not left Minneapolis since his catastrophic defeat at the hands of Xander Valentine, Gavin was at a loss of what to do next. Typically, he left travel arrangements to his Agent, Ava St. Claire, but for reasons only Gavin knew, he left the arena without her. He drove himself to the hotel and immediately returned his rental car, not wanting to be tracked, and re-checked into a new room under an assumed name, Roy Sattler. Had he been himself, he’d have likely chuckled at the wit he displayed. Alas, there was something wrong within Gavin’s head.
Gavin took a quick shower, then threw on his cheapest clothes – some track pants and an SCW hoodie he had once been commissioned. It wasn’t much, but he was happy to not throw on a suit, prepared to meet his public. Throwing the hood up over his head, he walked down to the checkout desk.
“Room 241,” he said in a gruff, but audible tone. Gavin didn’t want to draw attention to himself – something many would consider a first for the All-Star – so he kept his head down as he slid the room’s keycard and his own credit card across the desk to the receptionist. “Checking out early.”
“Okay, Mr. Sattler,” the chipper receptionist responded, taking the cards as she used her free hand to type something into her computer. “If you’ll just wait a moment, I have to run your credit card and…”
The woman paused as she looked at the credit card. Scratching her head, she attempted to make sense of what she was seeing. “Says the card here belongs to a Gavin Taylor?”
“Shit!” Gavin thought to himself. He wasn’t trying to be careful, but he didn’t want to make a scene either. Sadly, for a man who just checked into a hotel as “Roy Sattler”, attempting to pay with a Gavin Taylor credit card might come as a shock, and he certainly wasn’t interested in causing a scene that would attract more eyes. Sighing, Gavin had one option if he wanted to get this dealt with as quietly as he could. He reached into his wallet again, this time pulling out a small stack of bills. He slid them across the desk to the receptionist.
“Is… is this a bribe?” the woman asked. She wasn’t as sharp as the women Gavin was used to dealing with.
“Cash for the room,” he responds, keeping his voice low. He reached across and grabbed his credit card back as the woman counted through the money. As she gets to the end, she nods her head, and Gavin was on his way.
Reaching down, he pulled the handle of his rolling gym bag up, rolling it behind him as he headed out to his new rental car. Gavin wasn’t usually one to think for himself, not when he had people to do that for him, but that didn’t mean he was incapable of it. As he climbed into his new wheels, Gavin was ready to head home.
But where would home be? Well… that was a decision he still had to make.
JUNE 5, 2023
*SLAP*
Gavin recoiled as the hand of Ava St. Claire slapped him straight across his face.
Twenty-four hours prior to this reunion, Gavin Taylor had entered Taking Hold of the Flame, a surprise to everyone in attendance and everyone watching from home. But no one was more surprised than the All-Star’s beleaguered agent, Ava, who had believed that Gavin was gone and not interested in returning.
“I guess I deserved that,” Gavin says, rubbing his cheek with a smirk on his face. “Nice to see you too?”
“Seven months!” Ava lambasts her client… her former client? She wasn’t sure… but it felt good to get her voice raised. “For seven fucking months, you didn’t call! You didn’t text! You didn’t email! You didn’t sent a fucking carrier pigeon!”
“In my defense, carrier pigeons aren’t commercially viable to sen-“
*SLAP*
“I deserved that one too,” Gavin nods.
“I just don’t get it, Gavin,” Ava remarks, shaking her head as she falls back onto her sofa. She pulls her hair back, looking at Gavin with an exasperated expression in her eyes. “If you wanted a break, you should have just told me that! We could have worked something out… we could have made something of it together! Instead you shut me out! You shut everyone out! I don’t understand and every time I think I’m coming close to understanding, you look at me and it just doesn’t make sense again! So what can you say? What can you possibly say that would make any of this even remotely okay!?”
“I don’t know,” Gavin says as he matches her shaked head. “I wanted to call you. I wanted to text. To send carrier pigeons. Whatever it was, I wanted to do it… but do you know what it was like? To go out there with the unwavering belief that you were the absolute best, only to be time and time again denied? To be brought up believing you were the best at everything because, for a time, you were the BEST at EVERYTHING, and then having to face the bitter realization that maybe, just maybe, you were lied to? To have everything you’ve ever known be false? It’s exhausting. It’s demoralizing. There was a time where I didn’t even know if I would ever lace the boots up again.”
Ava stands up, facing Gavin again. Gavin first turns his cheek towards her, offering it up to her. Ava doesn’t do anything, so Gavin reaches down, taking her by the wrist. He lifts it towards his face, lightly tapping her hand against his cheek, prompting he to “slap” him again. Exhausted, Ava collapses in Gavin’s arms, as the two hug.
“I missed you,” Ava said. Gavin nods.
“I know,” he says. “But now I’m back, and we have a lot of work to do. This “runner-up in the battle royal” thing is a big deal.”
“You didn’t win,” Ava says, shaking her head. Gavin begrudgingly agrees, but…
“But I placed,” he said. “There’s still a way to go, but we’re closer than ever before. We’ve got to make sure that whatever goes down between Selena and Kandis at Rise to Greatness… that I’m… no-no… that we’re next. You still got your media contacts?”
“Of course,” Ava confirms. “We might want to skip Bell Media for the time being. PR-wise, they just had a bit of a bloodletting, so it might not be a good image.”
Gavin nods. “Right, good thinking. But let’s get the wheels turning. Time to make the idea of me becoming World Champion not only plausible, but make it not happening impossible to fathom.”
Gavin and Ava would plot into the evening, in preparation for SCW Breakdown that week. Of course, we know what happened at that event: Gavin Taylor accepted a challenge from an unlikely, yet somehow very likely, opponent in Simon Lyman. Fourteen years in the making, to take place in one of the worlds’ biggest markets. But to get there, Gavin would have to go through Memphis, Tennessee, a place where Gavin had history…
“So… um… did you miss me?
I could say a whole lot about the seven months I was away from SCW… the eight months since I last competed in a singles’ match on Breakdown… wow. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? For eight months, no one has been able to turn on their TV sets on a Thursday night and see “The All-Star” Gavin Taylor doing his thing for free on the airwaves. That’s kind of mind-blowing, isn’t it? For eight months, I haven’t given you a single new one-on-one match. I know… I get it. But I really needed that time to get my head back on straight, to give you the absolute best Gavin Taylor that there ios available on the open market. And I think now, you’re going to get that Gavin Taylor.
When I stepped out from the back at Taking Hold of the Flame, I felt it then! I felt the electricity that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I felt the spark. I felt the motivation, the inspiration, and the drive. I felt my heart beating out of my chest. I put my ear out there and I was inundated by your chants… “GA-VIN! GA-VIN! GA-VIN!” I marched to that ring with a single goal: Eliminate one person… prove to myself that I could still get the job done. Not only did I eliminate one person, I had a hand in three eliminations. And yes, they mattered. Ravyn Taylor… well, I don’t think I need to recount our history. Let’s just say that the Vancouver Taylors were on my side as I sent her barreling over the top to the mats below. Then there was Xander. As much as he’s my bro, I have to admit that that one felt like a full-circle moment for me. It was the defeat at his hand that sent me on my spiritual quest to rediscover who I am. And Asher Hayes, the man I defeated and then lost to when I won and lost my first championship here in SCW… so yeah, it was kind of a big night for the All-Star. And while I may not have won the night, I certainly proved that I wasn’t going to be tucked away again. I wasn’t going to become just another face in the crowd. NOT THIS TIME! No, this time, The All-Star is here to define greatness. The All-Star is here to make his own way, to forge his own path, and to become the unequivocal BEST in the business! To be the best, you have to be willing and able to prove it time and again. So tomorrow night in Memphis… my old stomping grounds… The King is back!
And The King of Memphis… a title I gave myself the first time I wrestled here… is going to return to SCW in grand fashion, as I am set to take on Damian Marshall! Okay, so that sentence may not appear to be the most imposing of lines ever uttered in one of these wrestling promotional videos, but why not? Who could ever predict who is going to break out of the crowd? You never know. We had an overweight sex addict as our “Champion of Television” for two consecutive New Years days. Who would have ever predicted that? So you don’t know… Damian Marshall may just be a World Champion in grooming, and I, The All-Star, have every intention of treating him exactly like that. There was a time in my career where I would look at someone I had never heard of and assume the reason I had never heard of him was that he completely sucked. Not anymore! Now, I’m going to treat every challenge as if it’s coming from the future, trying to usurp my spot, and that makes me more dangerous. You know why?
BECAUSE I’M THE ALL-STAR!
That means that at Breakdown, I’m going to get my game on. I’m going to get the show on. Go play. Get paid. And prove again that I am simply sen…
No. That I am simply… a World Champion in waiting! Damian, you may be a future great… Pure Grit… but I’m The All-Star.”
"The All-Star" Gavin Taylor 