Can you feel it?

See it?

Hear it today?

If you can't, then it doesn't matter anyway. You will never understand it 'cuz it happens too fast, and it feels so good, it's like walking on glass. It's so cool, it's so hip, it's all right, and it's so groovy, it's out of sight. You can touch it, smell it, taste it so sweet...

But it makes no difference 'cuz it knocks you off your feet.

I'm not insane. These genius ideas are flowing through my brain like chocolate from a fountain, delicious and made even cooler because they come FROM A FOUNTAIN. And these ideas are NOT the ideas of an insane man.

No. I can assure you all, I am quite in control of my mind, AND of my actions.

And I am quite content to have all three sets of your eyes (six eyes, to be exact, though Shaman is old, so I don't know how effective those things are anymore) focused directly upon me, as this was my plan.

Ever since The Ghost turned my eyes (see all this "eye" stuff? And SEE how I used SEE like a pun?!) toward this company, I have suffered, sitting idly by and watching the likes of "The Sheep" John Grant and Shaman rape this beautiful United States Championship, robbing it of not only its surface glittering, but any sort of value it may hold as an actual championship.

I watched them soil this championship, and I wept. Then I vowed to right the wrong.

And now I have done so.

This championship is already worth something again, now that it is in my hands. It shines anew each day, no longer a brown dwarf but a supernova of glittering gold. Each time I touch it, I can feel its life, rejuvenated, resurrected. And the thanks for this solely rests on my shoulders, a burden I carry wholeheartedly.

I feel all of your eyes, you Three Stooges (Moe Mancuso, Curley Korver, and Larry Shaman), all of the moronic eyes in each arena and through each monitor, watching me. The faceless and nameless idiots in the crowd look upon you (well, two of you, right now, and the other of you in times long forgotten) like some sort of gladiators, Herculean in strength and action, larger than life, living superheroes. These same eyes look upon me like a vermin, a lost rat, searching for sustenance, scurrying and searching through the entrails of greater beings felled in combat in the grand arena. And you know what I say to that comparison?

It's really not that far off from the truth.

There's a fundamental difference between you three, the fallen warriors in the arena, and myself, the rat. And don't get cheeky and say it's that I'm a rat and you're people. It's nearly as obvious, though: I'm alive, and you all are dead. While the three of you kill each other for the right to rape this title again, fall over each other's bodies to try and get to what I, above all others, so rightfully deserve, I will survive because I had in abundance the one thing you idiots lacked.

A plan.

Wanton destruction is no plan, gentlemen; it is the firing of a bullet at an enemy soldier with your eyes closed, the random button-mashing of Street Fighter. Sometimes you hit the target, sometimes you complete the goal, but when facing off against a person with any semblance of a plan, guess what?

You're fucked. SIDEWAYS.

I want all eyes on me at Meltdown, because that's where they NEED to be. The unwashed masses will see what a true champion looks like, a man that is willing to fight with everything he has to defend the honor of his well-earned belt, and status. And the three of you will see, too. You will see that, even with all three of your crosshairs on me, I will keep what is mine.

You want it all, but you can't have it. It's in your face, but you can't grab it.

That's what your eyes will see, the jaws of defeat when victory was staring you in the face all along.

And you will know my name it The Cog when I show you all what it takes to be...

A TRUE champion.