It Ain't Easy Bein' Dean

--The camera pans around a sparsely populated hallway backstage, with few ring technicians and other unimportant staff standing around making small-talk. The camera continues to swivel, passing a set with a make-shift sign reading, "WCF Interview Area," and coming to a stop on a small set of stairs, which itself leads to a heavy black curtain. After a few moments, one of the men, a 40-something with a greying beard, presses his head-set against his ear, his eyes widening. "H-h-he's coming," he stutters taking a few steps back. Another of the men, this one a young, tanned, soul-patched spiky haired douchebag asks, "Who?" and puffs up his roided-out chest. The bearded man looks directly into the camera and deadpans, "Dean Ambrose." Immediately after the words leave his mouth, the unmistakably warbled voice of the man whose name he just spoke says, "Did you motherfuckers miss me?" The camera swivels onto Dean as his boots echo off of the metal staircase, each footfall heavier than the next. His mouth contorts into a grin as he makes his way over to the group of stunner workers, eyes crinkled in a happiness unlike Ambrose. As he stumbles closer to them in his signature ungraceful-yet-in-control style, the grin only grows. Dean jabs the bearded man in the shoulder playfully and say, "What's up Rich? How're the kids? Does your wife still have that bangin' bod I remember?" As Rich begins to speak, Ambrose cuts him off. "Where's Todd?" he asks slyly, wiping his wet lips with the back of his grey denim jacket sleeve. The workers shuffle in place, their eyes fading from their previous terror of Dean Ambrose to a hint of sadness. Dean looks around, still smirking, until finally the young spikey-haired douchebag speaks up. "Todd died, Dean," he says, looking up to meet Ambrose's eyes. "What do you mean he died?" Ambrose says, the crinkled eyes gone but the smile not-yet-faded. The douchebag reaches over to pat his shoulder and Dean socks him in the face, causing a steady stream of blood to flow from his nose before he even hits the cement. Dean snatches a mic and practically sprints away, heading toward a door that reads "Gorilla Position."--





--"My Own Summer" by Deftones hits the P.A. system to a surprisingly loud pop as the lights dim, but Ambrose abandons his normal entrance routine and instead bee-lines toward the ring. As he reaches the end of the ramp, the heavy STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! of his boots ceasing their reverb on the steel, Dean paces around ringside, microphone in hand. The fans begin to chant, "Dean! Dean! Dean!" but Ambrose, full of emotion, yells into the microphone.



"Shut up! All of you! I've got something to say!" The fans take this well, noticing the slumped shoulders and hanging head of Ambrose, who now is making his way up the steel steps and ducking into the ring. He sits cross-legged in one of the corners, hunched over so the only emotion that can be read is the slow shaking of his shaggy hair. He raises his head, pulling his thick brown locks away from his eyes, which as the camera zooms in can be seen to be red-rimmed and puffy. The entire arena is engulfed in silence now, besides the occasional murmur.--

{ Dean Ambrose }
"You know... to be fully transparent... when I got the call that WCF wanted ol' Dean Ambrose back between their ropes, I took my phone and I slammed it back down on the receiver without even saying a word. I didn't want anything to do with the people in this company... hell. I didn't want anything to do with professional wrestling ever again. Every dollar I ever made in this industry has come back to haunt me. I'm not only referring to my joints that just don't bend the way they used to anymore, I'm not talking about the scars scattered throughout my body... no. I'm talking about something I had to come to terms with after my last run in WCF."

--The murmurs and whispers throughout the arena begin to strengthen as Ambrose pauses, wiping a bead of sweat from his already matted forehead. As he begins to speak again, the gravelly warble becomes more evident in his voice.--

{ Dean Ambrose }
"I had to deal with the fact that I'm a sick, twisted, ugly individual. I had to force myself out of bed in the morning to go and look at a deflated, lost cause in the mirror. I live for nothing more than to carry on in my meaningless existence. No goals, no aspirations. No family to push me through my hard times. I sacrificed not just my body, my well-being, and my mind in the years I spent in the professional wrestling industry... I sacrificed my life. Wrestling became my life. And I know the burning question on all you people's minds... do I regret it? Do I wish I would've stopped the 16 year old Dean Ambrose from heading into that high-school gym to be hit in the head with a steel chair for $25 and an I-O-U for training? Would I have gone to college and gotten an education, would I have preferred to be a desk-jockey for some fucking law firm?"

--Dean grabs onto the top rope with his open hand and hoists himself to his feet. His eyes are no longer reddened, and the former meekness prevalent in his voice is gone, replaced by exuding confidence. He shakes his head, rapidly, his soaked hair flying madly around, flicking sweat onto the ringside fans.--



{ Dean Ambrose }
"Not. At. All. Y'see, I always knew, even as a naive, starry-eyed kid that Dean Ambrose wasn't cut out for that. I knew, as a child, I wasn't destined to do much with my life. Growing up on the streets of Cincinnati, slinging dope and gangbanging was about as far as a kid from my side of the traintracks could go. Professional wrestling didn't destroy my life, it didn't take away my chance of being normal... it saved it. You have to take the good with the bad. The scars, the cuts, the broken bones, and the pain... they're all outweighed by the fact that I'm alive. It's sad a friend had to die for me to realize that, but it's true."

--Dean, now practically screaming into the mic, stops and gasps for air as the audience applauds rapidly, as chants of "Dean Am-Brose!" rain down. Ambrose slicks his sweaty hair back, grinning at the crowd.--

{ Dean Ambrose }
"I love being alive. I love the feeling of going fast, I love the feeling of being scared. I love the way I feel as a steel chair is driven into my skull by one of the biggest motherfuckers I've ever meant because the blood that comes pouring out of my head means that I'm here. That it's real. And it's damn real. Dean Ambrose is damn real. Dean Ambrose's desire to be something is real. And he knows exactly what he wants to be... the WCF United States Champion."

--Ambrose pauses to look directly into the camera, sneering as the fans erupt with cheers. He motions for the belt around his waist as he raises the mic back to his snarling lips. "I mean I only deserve it, don't I?" he asks, cocking his head to the side. "Not only did I beat THE MOST ELECTRIFYING MAN IN ALL OF SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT," he begins, arcing a brow in a Rock-like fashion, "in my return match, not only did I just beat that gorilla named Ryback, the very man who demanded a title shot earlier..." Ambrose trails off, grinning despite himself. "I beat the United States Champion, Cody Rhodes. I drove his head straight into the mat, rolled his feminine body over and pinned him for the 1...2...3. If that doesn't mean I deserve that United States title, I don't know what does."

Dean Ambrose drops the mic and raises his arms as the fans chant his name, soaking in the applause as the camera fades to commercial.--

(END OF PROMO)