(camera comes on to show the trademark monolith standing by its lonesome in the ring)

(Ben Crane enters wearing his black hoodie with the hood up and his head down)

(no music, no fanfare, just makes his way to the ring)

(once he climbs in, he pulls a mic out of the pocket of the hoodie and sits down in front of the monolith)

(he pulls back the hood and looks over the crowd)

Crane: Ok, guys, ol' Ben Crane's got a lot to say tonight, so make yourselves comfortable. Take off your jackets, sit back in your chairs and listen. Back in November I guess it was, I'm retired from the business, kicking back in my old Kentucky Home, just chillin out. And even though the business I love had taken a BIG ol crap on me, I still cared. I still watched. And you know what I saw? I saw Vince Mcmahnon and Hulk Hogan just completely ruin their companies respectively. I mean, it was clear as day. Show after show, week after week it just kept getting more boring and more boring. I gave up on TNA completely. They were doing absolutely nothing to keep my interest. At least WWE still had CM Punk and gradually he became the only reason to watch WWE at all.

And it's at this point, I realize I had made the right decision to get out when I did.
Because guys like me, from the era I come from basically went extinct. And somewhere down the line, it became who could win over the kids and make the teenage fangirls scream the loudest. How much merchandise you could push or how many talk shows you could get booked on. Whether you could wrestle or entertain became a moot point.

But then, I finally got around to watching Punk's DVD. And my mind was blown. I swear him and I must share some of the same brain chemistry or something because we are a LOT alike. What intrigued me about the DVD was when they got to part about his contract almost expiring and him taking off. At the time, I was rooting for him to go. Because the WWE had done nothing but hold him back and bury him since he'd been there. Now he's one of your top guys and you want him to stay? So what was it that brought him back? He had a desire to change things within WWE. Who wouldn't? But didn't think he really could make a difference. Then his buddy Joey Mercury tells him that he can't change anything from his couch. And THAT'S what did it. So Punk signs a new deal, gets his old theme music back, probably a good deal more money, who knows what all he got. But first and foremost, he came back to change things.

I'm sitting on MY couch thinking "Yeah! He's right. If I don't like what wrestling has become, I've got to get off my ass and change things!" So, I start training, getting back into shape and I'm not that far off. So I put in a call to XWF. This time, though, I want leave Firefly in the past. I took so much crap and got mocked so completely the last time I was him that I just didn't want do it again. Then I told em, "I just want to be me. Nothing else. Same wrestling style, but no fire, no trying to be the craziest bastard in the company, I just want to show up, and wrestle my match and compete."

When I first got here, that's what I did. And right off the bat, first match I believe, I get Sebastian Duke and it's gold. It clicks, match felt good. Awesome. I'm thinking again, I made the right call. However with the exception of Duke and maybe Sid Feder where ever the hell he went, nobody in XWF really caught my eye. No knock on the guys here, I'm just saying for my own personal taste, those were the only two guys really doing something special. After the match I had with Feder and then him going off to hang out with Amelia Earhart, the front office was generous enough to give me some title shots and a few more matches with Duke which were just as good as the first. But other than that, it's really become a grind for me. I'm showing up to wrestle and competing like I orginally wanted to, but it just got to where there wasn't any electricity, any.....fire.

So i decided I needed to amuse myself. That's why I went and got that douche Randall James. I was gonna try and recreate the Lantern spectrum. I, the Black Lantern, James the Blue and hell I could've recruited another 7 to be in the crew. We could've taken over this company. It really could have Blackest Night for XWF. But no, no you guys (points to the crowd) just didn't get it. It just wasn't too low brow and stupid enough for you morons was it? You need a John Cena to come out here and tell you to "never back down". You need some cheesy knock off of dancing with the stars with horrible theme music so you can all laugh and say "oh my god, look how terrible this is!"

Well, let me tell you something, I've BEEN him. I've BEEN Fandango. I've had everyone laughing at me, telling me how much I suck. That's the reason I left. I put up with that when I was kid but I'll be damned if I'm gonna put up with it as an adult. Bur mostly, I didn't want to give you freaking bottom feeders the thrill.

However, you did open my eyes to one thing. When I decided to put James on the shelf personally, you blood thirsty parasites actually had compassion for him. And I didn't get that at first but finally it's clicked in. It's the Doomsday principle. See in the early 90's, Superman had become passe. Wolverine and Punisher had come in bringing lethal justice and good old Kal-El just didn't hold up to those guys. So DC decides, well, let's kill him off then! If our fans aren't interested in him, let's dump him. Enter Doomsday. A Kryptonian genetically designed soldier shows up and has one of the most epic fights comic books has ever seen. Ending with both guys landing one final punch. Doomsday is out cold but Superman is dead.

This character that nobody cared about anymore, who's time had come and gone, all of sudden was all anyone was talking about. "They killed Superman!" And it created this ground swell of emotion from people who hadn't even picked up a comic book before. By killing him off, DC had him made him more popular than had been in decades because no matter how old school he was, we still cared about him.

And after all my ideas have been rebuffed by you people, by being just thrown to random people with no rhyme or reason. No reward or consequence. It's not doing it for me. So tonight, I'll come out here and job for whichever of the three guys they have me against this week. We all know that'll happen. But next week? Next week, on Warfare, I initiate my own Doomsday Protocol. Either you people and the boys in the back start appreciating what I can do for this company or you won't have to see me again. Either someone back there shows me something or i'll just go home and be bored on my own. Next Week, will either be a new beginning or the beginning of the end.

(Crane moves the mic from his mouth, lingers, and then drops it)