Quitters
Just when you think everything is perfect, something is not...
Monday Night RAW
Three Weeks Until TLC: Tables, Ladders and Chairs
Indianapolis, Indiana
Daphne Consuelos walked into the backstage area the next night with huge confidence. The thought of being Divas Champion had not processed in her mind yet. This had to be some dream, but if it was, please do not wake her up. She walked into the building, rolling her black luggage in one hand and with the Divas title hanging on her shoulder. With her other hand, she held hands with her boyfriend, Colby Lopez, who had his luggage in one hand and his golden Money in the Bank briefcase in the other. If you thought that Colby and Daphne had made up out of the blue, you are sadly mistaken because they were due to have the conversation about Daphne's moving arrangements. When she walked backstage, she had gotten a few congratulations from her closest friends—even Jonathan Good gave her a pat on the back and that was a lot for Jon to do. However, in the back of her mind, she was upset at the fact that April Brooks was no longer for the company, but she knew that April wanted to be there for Phil and she did not feel an ounce of betrayal because of that.
"Look Daphne, I have done a lot of thinking last week," Colby began, stopping her in the middle of the hallway. Daphne placed all of her attention on her boyfriend, letting him know that she was listening, "I know that you are struggling with find a place to bunk until you can find a house of your own, but if you want to bunk with Jon for the time being, then I am fine with it. I just want you to be happy and even though, I am not okay with the moving arrangement, I just need to learn to accept it and know that this is not forever. There was just a part of me that hates to let you go because of what occurred at SummerSlam, but, you had your reasons and I just hope you can find a little of yourself, while bunking with Jon."
Daphne was in disbelief—Colby was completely cool about her bunking with Jon for the time being. Was this all a dream because she was now Divas Champion and Colby is agreeing with her? What a wonderful week this is beginning to be for her, "Are you kidding me? Last week, you were angry about me even bringing up that. What made you change your mind?" she asked as Colby smiled at her.
"Jon told me the reason why Renee suggested that he should let you bunk in with him. I do not know if creative or Dunn has told you, but you might be doing an angle with Jon in the New Year—" Colby was interrupted, when his girlfriend screamed in disgust and moved her hands around in disgust as she gave her body a shake.
"Assbrose? EWWWW! No! No! No!" she shook her head as Colby laughed, placing his hands on her shoulders, trying to make her stand still, "I refuse to do the angle with him! I rather tag team with Los Matadores and El Torito—at least, they wear masks—wait, they're decent people—I'd rather stab a fork in my eyes then team with Dean Ambrose. Besides, I got the Brie Mode, Bitchsuelos and Fearless stable that I am working on right now and I think our first feud is with Emma—which is fantastic because she needs to redeem herself from what occurred earlier in the year." Daphne ranted on, but for a fact, she knew that she did not want to be Ambrose's little eye candy.
"It's either Jon or Nick Nemeth, but you need to remain positive. The storyline may not get the greenlight because people are just saying that it might be Vince's ideas rolling, but Hunter knows never to give you a storyline without it being planned from start to finish. Besides, there is no build-up to Seth and Daphne Anne breaking up, so calm down. Everything will work out for the two of us." Colby assured her as Daphne took a deep breath.
"Build-up never stops creative from putting their scripts into action. I'm just a little antsy because Vince McMahon is going to be in Stone Cold's podcast next week and Stone Cold does not bullshit around, so what if he brings up Phil? What if he brings up me? I am so worried because Vince does not like me, but I do not want the whole world to know that. Also, Phil is going to be on the Art of Wrestling podcast this week, so I'm afraid that this might be the moment, where Phil dishes on everything and everyone!" Daphne was anxious and Colby knew that for sure. He could sense her nervousness around her and he tried to rub her arms to get her to calm down.
"Daph, calm down!" he gave her a soft chuckle, "Phil is not going to talk shit about you and neither is Vince. He does not want the attention on the Divas, so he will not bring you up. He might bring up Punk, but I am not too sure about it, but everything is going to be fine. You're the NEW Divas Champion. The sky is the limit for you and you, along with the rest of the Divas are going to change the Division. I know that is a fact," Colby did his best to calm his girlfriend as he connected with a kiss on her head, "They may love power, but they will not use you to gain it. They are not that heartless."
Daphne had arrived at Jon's place with Jon, Colby and Renee. They assisted her with bring a few of her belongings into the spare room that Jon gave to her. It was nothing special and extravagant like it was when she was bunking with Phil, but in the other hand, it was a decent room and everything seemed to be clean about it. Daphne took the rest of the big boxes up to the guest room. Renee was going to be getting the turkey and the side dishes that she had ordered a few nights before, so that the four of them could have their American Thanksgiving dinner. It was just going to be the four of them and Daphne liked it that way because there was not going to be a bunch of people like there was when she went to Thanksgiving with her folks back in October, which resulted in Phil and Colby getting into a heated exchange of words. She sat on the queen size guest bed with black sheets as she placed her ear buds inside of her ears and listened to the Art of Wrestling podcast, which was hosted by Colt Cabana.
"People tweet me all the time that you can't change the company from your couch in Chicago. I absolutely disagree, because that's exactly what I did. When I split I from the company January, they changed everything. Part of me thinks they changed a lot to spite me, and that's fine, because certain people who deserved certain things, at certain times, got those things. And that's something I never got. I'm the fucking happiest I've been in at least three years. I thought this thing that I loved, that I thought I loved, it just made me so miserable all the time. When you boil it all down, I was miserable. I was unhappy. Fuck it, I made myself happy. I left. It wasn't an easy decision to make, but it was also a long time coming." Phil explained as Daphne listened to his words as she wanted to frown. She knew how unhappy Phil seemed to be within the company and it was not until she bunked with him back in August, where she saw him be the happiest that he has ever been in his entire life and what made Phil happy, made her happy.
As Daphne listened to the podcast, it was safe to say that Phil left nothing out. He opened up about every single detail that resulted in his departure with the company, but was said that the WWE fired him—on his wedding day! She was shocked and could not believe that the WWE could be so cold to him. Phil also mentioned how Vince McMahon would shoot down his ideas because he was not a favorite for Vince.
"I'm talking to Vince, and I tell him that since I cut that promo, we got more mainstream attention. Everyone wanted to interview me, whether it was GQ Magazine, the cover of USA Today … I had legitimate companies approaching me, just wanting to give me money to sponsor me. I had a big money deal on the table, and I went to Vince … I told him my idea, said I wanted to do this sponsorship thing. I deserved it. I got all these new eyes on the product, and he says 'nope, you can't do that. Sponsors for RAW would get mad, the other wrestlers would get mad.' A year later, Brock Lesnar comes back, and the motherfucker has sponsors." Phil ranted as Daphne could feel his anger and pint-up frustrations. She remembered Phil getting angry about this as she was in the exact same room as him. She watched him rant about this from the car trips from one city to another one.
Daphne grabbed the pillow from the bed and held it against her chest as she continued to listen to the podcast,"Yeah, um, and I remember telling Vince like 'hey, we should ride this until 'Mania or if I have to drop the title to Rock let's do a three way.' To me it was always about what's next, who am I working with next? Because if you're not working with anybody next, and that's a big problem with that place is they have no plans going forward for anybody. I think when they call a meeting Vince is like 'what's next for Cena?' Because that's all he cares about. And I think that's the wrong way to do business. But I was always trying to set myself up to work with somebody else." Phil explained as Daphne sounded interested in what Phil was telling Colt. It would kind of explain where the mindset of "what came next" came from.
"I didn't want to turn heel. Vince came to me and was like 'Rock's coming back and he wants to work a bad guy. You're the champ.' It was either I turn heel or I drop the title to Daniel Bryan and I was like 'well, I would like to work Rock, that sounds challenging,' you know. 'Well, you're going to have to turn heel.' And I was like 'uh, all right. Well, I would rather be a heel than a babyface anyway, even though I'm making these sweet checks that are going to get cut in half because of merchandise sales." Phil added on.
"But I was like... he told me, he goes, 'I'll tell you what, Phil, if you do this for me, I'll owe you one.' I was like 'sweet, great.' And to me, yeah, at the time, the goal was still WrestleMania main event. So I turned heel. Not the biggest sacrifice but still a sacrifice when you're babyface and you're making John Cena merch money and you're beating him in merch sales, yeah, to say 'no, I'm going to be a bad guy now' and five-year-old Johnny and Timmy aren't going to want to buy your shirt anymore, that's a thing. So I did that and then that's when I started getting like super beat up. That's when I tore my knee against John." Daphne widened her eyes as Phil informed Colt about his knee injury.
"I kept asking what was going on for 'Mania and Vince kept very disappointingly telling me that it was going to be the rematch between Cena and Rock. I was just like 'that's going to be awful, how about we do this?' And I was obviously... I mean, I guess if people want to call me a politician, I was trying to politic my way into the main event but it wasn't like 'let me beat everybody' it was 'hey, let's do a three way, it will be elimination. Have somebody pin me in fucking five minutes, I don't care. And then I'll be able to be like 'ha, I did the main event at WrestleMania' and I'll be able to move on. Fuck it, you know? It won't be such a hang up for me anymore, it won't be such a mind fuck.' 'No, you know, the Undertaker needs somebody to work and I think you're the guy to do it.' And I was just like 'okay, but after that, after that what happens?' He was like 'I don't know, what do you want to do?' I was like all right, I don't think he asks a whole lot of people what they want to do and since I was turning heel they again went back to 'oh, we want to put a heater with you'." Phil ranted on as Daphne felt bad for him in some way. All Phil wanted was to main event WrestleMania. He was someone that did not care about being eliminated or losing in five minutes, but all he wanted to do was to main event WrestleMania. That was all he was asking for. This was always the thing that lured in the back of his head. He thought that his career was not a success, until he main evented WrestleMania.
"So, and this, I don't know, this will probably blow some people's minds and then some people will be like 'oh, you're full of shit' but I don't fucking care either way: The Shield was my idea. What happened was, at the time the head writer was Eric Pankowski. He called me up one day and he was like 'okay, uh, nobody knows you're going to turn heel but we want to stick a stable with you. We want to give you Big Show as your heater.' I immediately groaned. I love Big Show to death but that's not a good idea. They wanted to put Daniel Bryan with me. I groaned. I said 'Daniel should be kept as far away from me as possible because, if anything, me and him should be like Bret and Shawn. We can be far apart and then we can come together when you guys need a fucking program for two or three PPVs, and we can always do it, and it will always be quality. There idea was a stable with me, Big Show, Daniel Bryan, and the only name they ever mentioned was Seth Rollins but they kept saying 'a guy from FCW.' So I went to Pankowski and I was like 'I don't like the idea. I'm willing to do the heel stable thing but why don't we pick three guys from FCW that are ready instead of using two guys, you know what I mean? They would just be treading water. Who cares? How many times are these guys going to turn?" Daphne was shocked with what she was hearing. Phil did not like the idea of a stable of the Big Show, Daniel Bryan and Seth Rollins? She admitted that the idea was pretty lame, but she wondered if Phil was against the thought of Colby getting into the main roster and stealing her from him?
"We've seen it, it's not fresh." Colt responded.
"Right. So I took the idea to Hunter, I took it to Vince, they agreed. Vince was immediately like 'who do you have in mind?' And I said 'Ambrose, Rollins, Chris Hero, or Kassius Ohno.' Hunter shot down Hero. They wanted Roman Reigns. They came to me and they were like 'what about Leakee?' I didn't... it wasn't my hill to die on. I said 'sure' because it made sense to me. Oh, they want their guy in, he's the pretty guy, but that's good because this guy can learn from working under me. The idea was they were supposed to be my group. Things fucking change. They like to take other people's ideas, make it their own idea, and then tout how awesome they are. So it then became Hunter's idea and up until the PPV they were like 'oh, we were told we might not be with you.' And I was like 'this whole entire time you're supposed to be with me' because the idea was they're with me, they're with me, they're with me, I go on to fight Undertaker, and then I have these three guys to work with after WrestleMania." Phil explained as Daphne thought it was a pretty smart thing on his part, but it sucks how scripts are changing constantly. That was the one thing that annoyed her was the constant script changes.
Daphne continued to listen to the podcast, before something caught her attention,"I pitched all that, they loved it, things got changed, I didn't really care. Those three guys got called up, they're all fucking doing fantastic right now, mavel tov to them. Especially Rollins' girl, Daphne. I mean, she is such a talented young woman that has busted her ass off the independent circuit. When she won the Divas Championship, there was a part of me that felt happy that she was able to achieve that, but there was also another part of me that was fucking upset. I mean, at SummerSlam, her fucking boyfriend saw her breaking down to pieces and he does not do shit for her. He doesn't even go to consult her. I had to find her a week after it all happened to pick up the pieces that he failed to pick up. I took his girl and helped comfort her and tell her that there is life outside of professional wrestling, but Seth calls her a few weeks later, saying that he misses her and all of that crap and tells her that she needs to keep fighting for the Divas? It's like 'dude, did you not see that your girlfriend is not the same, fun loving woman that you fell for?' Honestly, Daphne has been so much shit and I have been working my fucking ass off to change her habits and help ease her mind and he ruined her chance at getting better! Daphne needs to find out that Seth is not good enough for her and that he does not give a shit about her well-being that he only sees her as a prize to be won. I saw her as a person, but she choose what she choose and she has to stick with it." she took her ear buds out of her ears and threw them towards the end of the bed. The tears came screaming down her blue eyes as she covered her mouth, not wanting anyone to hear her sadness. Was this how Phil felt about Colby? That he was not good enough for her? Who was he to say that? She could not listen to anymore, knowing that it was going to ruin her if she did.
So, what did you all think about what Phil said? To inform you all, all, but the last paragraph was actually from the podcast. The last part was made up; the part from "Especially Rollins' girl..." to the end. I kind of wanted the readers to know about Punk's emotions about everything and besides, we have not heard from him in a while, so I decided that this would be a good way to bring him back to the story. This chapter is one of the huge turning points of this entire story and this is when Daphne will begin to transform and become someone for the better. How do you think Daphne took the podcast? Will she retaliate or not? Thank you for reading and please, favorite, follow and review! :)