Titles... there's only one thing I want!
The camera feed cuts without warning to a shaky, handheld shot outside in the loading dock. Sodium floodlights throw hard yellow light across cracked asphalt and stacked road cases. A battered, faded powder-blue 1973 Buick LeSabre convertible sits crooked across two unmarked spaces, top down, engine ticking like it just died rather than was parked. Crushed beer cans line the back seat. A fast food bag has been wedged under the windshield wiper on the passenger side. The Bayou's loading dock door is visible in the background, propped open with a milk crate.
In the driver's seat, sprawled like a man who has genuinely nowhere else to be, is Elvis Hunt.
His Hawaiian shirt is open, naturally. His black glove is on, naturally. A sweating can of domestic beer rests on the gut that sits above his wrestling trunks like a shelf built specifically for that purpose. His red high-tops are crossed up on the dashboard. A cigarette burns between his fingers, the ash growing dangerously long without him noticing or caring. He is talking to a member of the production crew who wandered outside on a smoke break and found him here. The handheld camera operator is already shooting. Elvis becomes aware of the camera the way a man becomes aware of a bartender. Slowly, pleasantly, like it was always coming.
Elvis takes a long pull on the beer, sets it back on his belly with the practiced steadiness of a man who has never once spilled a drink accidentally in his life. He looks at the camera. He does not sit up. He raises the cigarette slowly and takes a drag, exhaling through his nose like a man in a stock photo called "contentment."
ELVIS HUNT: Hey. Hey, turn that thing up. You got good lighting out here. This is good. I like this.
He gestures loosely at the surrounding loading dock with the beer can.
ELVIS HUNT: You know what this reminds me of? The parking structure at Caesars. Level four. I spent a long weekend there once. Long story. Point is, I felt real comfortable. I feel comfortable here.
He taps the ash off the cigarette onto the asphalt beside the car.
ELVIS HUNT: I'm gonna address the people inside for a minute. That alright with you, chief?
He is talking to the camera operator. The camera tilts slightly, which Elvis takes as a yes.
ELVIS HUNT: Good. Okay. Hey. Spinebuster PRO.
He raises the beer can in a toast to the camera.
ELVIS HUNT: Happy to be here. Genuinely. Baton Rouge, I was through here... oh, maybe 2019? There was a woman. There was a poker game. There was a misunderstanding about whose poker game it was. Beautiful city.
He coughs once. Not a sick cough. A man-who-smokes cough.
ELVIS HUNT: Now I know everybody out there is waiting for me to walk through those doors and make my big speech about championships. How I'm gonna climb the ladder, how I'm gonna take the title, how I'm gonna be the face of this company. And look, baby, I'm not gonna insult your intelligence. I know what the bit is. I know how this works.
He pauses. Rolls the beer can between his palms.
ELVIS HUNT: I just don't care about any of that.
He burps crudely.
ELVIS HUNT: I mean it. The Spinebuster PRO Heavyweight Championship? Beautiful belt. I'm sure whoever's got it worked real hard. I don't want it. The tag belts? Come on. You need a partner for that. I don't do partners. My last tag team experience ended with a court date and a very awkward apology to a hotel manager in Laughlin, Nevada, and I am not revisiting that energy.
He finishes the beer. Places the empty can with tremendous care on top of the three other empty cans stacked on the back seat like a shrine.
ELVIS HUNT: And the Swamp Water... whatever that is. The sponsor belt. Look, I've drunk worse things than swamp water and I still wouldn't wear it.
He finds another beer on the floor of the passenger side, cracks it open without looking.
ELVIS HUNT: So, no. No titles. No ladder climbing. No blood feuds. No "I'm coming for you, champion." I'm not built for grudges, man. I don't have the attention span.
He takes a slow, thoughtful sip.
ELVIS HUNT: What I do have... is taste.
He pauses to let that word sit there.
ELVIS HUNT: And I have been in this building for four hours now. Four hours. Setting up my car in the parking lot, finding the vending machine, finding a better vending machine, walking around... and I have absorbed a certain amount of information about this promotion. I have listened to people talk. I have read the materials. And one name keeps coming up, and every time it comes up, people talk about this woman like she is the second coming of the entire concept of authority.
He taps his cigarette again.
ELVIS HUNT: April Monday.
He says it the way you'd say the name of a vintage wine. Slowly. With appreciation.
Elvis points one finger at the loading dock door.
ELVIS HUNT: Hear that? I know. I know. And look, I respect the love. I respect the passion. The woman built something here. The Monday family, that whole legacy, the father, the tag titles, all of it. Real. I see it. I am a man with a very, very selective attention span and even I stopped and read the whole history page on the website. I read the whole thing. I paused a casino documentary to read it. That is not nothing.
He shifts in the seat slightly, which is the closest he has come to sitting up straight this entire time.
ELVIS HUNT: But here is what nobody is talking about, and I think it is important. April Monday is a ten.
He holds up all ten fingers.
ELVIS HUNT: A full ten. In a building full of... look, I am not gonna be disrespectful about the fan base, but I will say I've been evaluating my options and the field is thin tonight. April Monday walks through those doors in that suit with the gold on it and the rings and the red hair and those green eyes...
He takes a very long sip.
ELVIS HUNT: I stopped breathing for maybe four seconds. Me. I stopped breathing. I got a 301-pound resting heart rate that hasn't spiked since 2017, and this woman gave me palpitations.
He whistles like he's impressed.
ELVIS HUNT: Now. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Elvis, she runs the company. She is a Monday. Her father is a legend. She has been in the ring, she has broken barriers, she is probably ten levels above your tax bracket and maybe fifteen levels above your current hygiene standard, and you are absolutely correct on all of those points.
He flicks the cigarette butt out over the car door. It lands in a puddle.
ELVIS HUNT: And yet.
He lets that sit.
ELVIS HUNT: Here's the thing about Las Vegas, baby. Las Vegas is built on the idea that the odds don't matter when you're sitting at the table. I have watched broke men pull inside straights. I have seen a guy in a fanny pack take forty thousand dollars off a guy in a thousand dollar suit. I have personally won two hundred dollars on a slot machine at an airport in Reno at six in the morning with no sleep and a corn dog in my hand. The odds mean nothing. You sit down. You play the hand.
He reaches behind the seat and produces, from somewhere in the chaos back there, a single red plastic rose. The kind you get from a vending machine in a gas station. He holds it up to the camera with complete sincerity.
ELVIS HUNT: April Monday. I am not here for your title. I am not here for your power. I am not here to cause you any kind of professional problem whatsoever, because I have got nothing but respect for what you have built. I am simply and purely here to ask you, woman to man, in front of this camera and these fine Spinebuster PRO fans...
He sits up. All the way. For the first time. 301 pounds of hairy, slurred, beer-smelling sincerity looking directly at the lens.
ELVIS HUNT: Would you like to go to dinner? With me. Specifically with me. I know a place. It is not fancy. But the people there know my name and they stopped spitting in my food about six months ago, so things are trending upward. I will wear a shirt that is buttoned. I will brush my hair. I will brush my teeth, April, I promise you, I will brush my teeth. I am putting it on record right now.
He holds up the plastic rose a little higher.
ELVIS HUNT: I will pay for everything. Obviously.
He pauses one beat.
ELVIS HUNT: Put it on my tab.
He settles back into the seat, rose still in his hand, beer resting back on his stomach, cigarette smoke still drifting up from the pavement puddle nearby. Completely and utterly at peace.
The camera holds on him for a moment. Elvis Hunt raises his beer can at the camera one more time, a slow, lazy toast to nothing and everything, and takes a sip.
Read full promo →
