The video begins and we see the inside of a hotel room. On the wall is a beautiful photograph of the Chicago skyline and the camera focuses on that for a moment as it’s the thing that stands out most in the otherwise standard looking hotel room. Beneath the photograph is a bed, and on the bed lays the SCW World Heavyweight Championship. The camera films this scene for a moment before Zoe Sperling steps in to the shot and picks the title off the bed, looking at it before looking in to the camera and smirking. “You know it’s still awesome being able to pick this up? Let’s hope that continues,” she says before smiling confidently and turning to the camera. “So, it’s Saturday night, we’re in Chicago, Illinois, and tomorrow night is the big one, Apocalypse, and tomorrow night will hopefully be my third year in a row headlining that event, which is pretty crazy when you think about it. It was supposed to be two years ago at this event that I got my first ever opportunity at this championship, a match I had to fight for the opportunity for, a match against Shilo Valiant that never happened due to the craziest of circumstances. So I guess it’s been two years now that my journey with this championship really began, it’s been two years now that I’ve been fighting at every opportunity to prove myself not just as the Best Female Wrestler in the World but as one of the best in the world, period. And in those two years I’ve had a lot of different people who’ve told me that I wasn’t good enough. In those two years I’ve had a lot of different people tell me that they were better than me. In those two years I’ve had to face a lot of different challenges, but I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge.”

“Still, despite everything else I’ve been through I know that tomorrow night is one of the biggest challenges I’ll ever have faced. That isn’t because of the number of people in the match. It isn’t because of the stipulation of the match. It isn’t even because of the event that it’s at or the opponent I’m facing. Admittedly the fact that it’s Apocalypse makes it mean something more to me, after all it was at Apocalypse in 2009 that I got my first ever taste of pay per view. I was only on the pre-show admittedly, but just being a part of that gave me the taste for it, it gave me my first feeling about what it was all about, and I knew from that moment that I wanted so much more. And now here we are, five years later, and it’s sometimes hard to believe how far I’ve come,” she says with a grin, looking at the championship again for a moment before looking back in to the camera. “Like I said though, tomorrow night is one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced because tomorrow night I step in to the ring for a match that I wanted. This isn’t a match that I can blame on anyone else, this isn’t a match that I can shake my fist at SCW management for and curse them for putting me in, this was a challenge that I wanted, that I offered, a challenge that I needed to prove to the world that I belong where I am, that I deserve to hold this championship, and that I deserve to represent SCW. And representing SCW isn’t something that you can demand to do either. It’s something that you’ve got to earn, it’s something you’ve got to prove you’re deserving of, and it’s an honour that not too many people get to have.”

“People always like to talk about numbers, don’t they? People talk about Jason Wheeler being a seven-time World Champion, they talk about CHBK being a five-time World champion, they talk about Xander Valentine holding the World Championship for one hundred and eighty nine days, a feat he accomplished in 2005 and yet a record that STILL stands today, nine years later. They talk about sixty seven different championship reigns, including my own interim championship reign, accomplished by thirty nine different people. And the most recent of those is the one hundred and thirty three day reign of Shaun Cruze, the former champion, the man who’s challenge I accepted, the man I have everything to prove against tomorrow night in the United Center. And there are so many numbers that I could throw out here, so many numbers that I’ve talked about in the past, so many numbers that are meant to decide who is better than who, so many numbers we used to justify everything we say and everything we do, but here’s the truth of the situation I find myself in right now. Tomorrow night all those numbers don’t matter. Tomorrow night there is only one number that matters, and that is ‘one’. That is how many people get to walk away from Chicago as the SCW World Heavyweight Champion,” she says, nodding her head in a determined way. “I know that there are a lot of stories going in to this match as well. I know Shaun Cruze has been talking a lot about the past. He’s been talking about all the previous times we’ve fought. He’s been talking about how much he has to prove against me. He’s been talking about how this time will be the time that he does something he hasn’t done before. But tomorrow night the past doesn’t matter.”

“Tomorrow night is about THIS championship,” she says, holding the title up to the camera with pride. “There is no story that’s bigger than this championship. Tomorrow night we find out the Under Attack main event, we find out the champion and we find out the challenger, and god knows as focused as I am on my match with Shaun I’m going to have half an eye on the match between David and Regan because I have so many personal issues with both of them. But while that may be true there is nothing more important to me than facing Shaun, than beating Shaun, than proving that everything I’ve fought for, everything that I’ve fought to accomplish in the past year was worth it. That’s the truth as well. That’s me putting everything out on the line. You see I know that that can be hard to believe sometimes, that it can be hard to believe anything that anyone in this business says, and I don’t blame people for having their doubts either considering how much deception there is in this business. So, if you’ll indulge me, that’s what I’d like to spend the rest of this video talking about: deception. Deception is a huge part of the business after all. We deceive people all the time. As human beings we’re programmed to deceive people for our own benefit. We’re programmed to lie as a survival instinct, we’re programmed to do whatever we need to do in order to achieve whatever we need to achieve, it’s built in to our DNA. It’s part of our survival instinct. We say whatever we need to say, we do whatever we need to do, in order to get the things that we think we need, and believe me when I tell you that I know a thing or two about deceiving people in order to get what I think I need.”

“When it comes to liars in this business, I’ll be the first one to admit that my history is absolutely filled with lies,” she says, bowing her head a little ashamedly. “Hell, do you know why it was that people first paid attention to me in a big way? It wasn’t the Women’s Championship reign. No, they gave me some attention for that, but that wasn’t what really catapulted my name in to the spotlight. What put my name in to the spotlight was the revelation to the world that I was having an affair with a married man. I lied to everyone about that. I lied to the world and it came back and it bit me in the worst possible way. That wasn’t the first time I lied though. You all remember the night that David Helms kissed me in the middle of the ring, right? We’d been lying then. We’d been lying to the world for months before that. And Ravyn and me told plenty of lies, both as a part of Infamous and as Dark Fantasy. We said whatever we needed to say to get an edge. My professional life, my personal life, my entire life has been filled with deception, so believe me I know more than just a little about it. I like to think that I learned my lessons though. I like to think that I learned what lying does to people. And I try not to be that person anymore. I try to be honest with you guys as much as I can. I try to tell you how I really feel, what really matters to me, because I know I’ve made mistakes in the past but I don’t want those mistakes to define my entire life. I want to be someone you can be proud of. I want to be someone this company can be proud of. I want to represent SCW as champion with dignity and respect. But doing that is difficult, and I can understand why there are those who prefer the lies.”

“Over the past year especially I’ve done everything I can to be a better person, I’ve worked incredibly hard to stand for something that matters, I’ve worked incredibly hard to stand up for what I believe in, and I’ve worked incredibly hard to restore some integrity to my name. I like to think now that when I make you guys a promise that you know that I mean it. I like to think that when I give you my word on something, or I tell you guys a secret, that you can trust that it’s real. And that’s one of the problems I have with Shaun Cruze, because when it comes to deception he’s the current king. I asked in the build up to Rise to Greatness what a promise from Shaun Cruze meant, implying at the time of course that it meant absolutely nothing. That’s how I feel about his word as well,” she says, taking a deep breath and shaking her head slowly. “You see it’s like I said last time, I’ve listened to a lot of the things Shaun Cruze has had to say since Rise to Greatness, I’ve watched him stand in the middle of the ring and disrespect me, disrespect Shawn Winters and disrespect the World Championship. I’ve listened to him talking about himself, about how important everything is to him, and I’m aware that I’m not the most selfless person in the world but honestly to be criticized by Shaun, to be called selfish by Shaun, to be told that I’m no better than him, is just insulting because the truth is Shaun that I’m nothing like you. I look at the things you’ve done and I know I would never do those things. How many times have you attacked someone from behind? How many times have you stabbed people in the back? How many times have you said one thing and done another, and then made whatever excuse you could to try to justify it to yourself?”

“You think I don’t recognise that, Shaun? I do. You think I don’t remember all the terrible, selfish things I’ve done? I do! But unlike you, I’m trying to be a better person. Unlike you, I’m trying to be the kind of person that people can be proud of. Unlike you, I’m trying to prove I’m WORTHY to represent this company. And for as much as you claim you’ve learned, as much as you claim you’ve changed, as many times as you promise you’re a different person I’ve seen it all from you before, Shaun. I asked what a promise from you means, but honestly Shaun what does your word mean? What does the word of a man who’ll tell any lie he needs to tell mean? I know I’ve talked about it before, and I know that I said the past doesn’t matter going in to this match and tomorrow night it doesn’t, but right now it does. You want me to believe you’ve changed. You want the world to believe you’ve grown. But Shaun, it was barely a few months ago that you were talking shit to Silas Mason every day on Twitter, barely a few months ago that you were calling him every name you could think of, and the FIRST TIME that your title reign got difficult you turned around and you made a deal with him. And that deal you made was to hurt me. That deal you made was to injure me. That deal you made was to stop me from being able to compete in the biggest match of my life – the biggest match of ALL our lives – all because you wanted it your own way, all because everything had to be Shaun Cruze’s way, because that’s all you care about is yourself,” she says, clearly still angry over everything that’s happened despite her victory. “Now I may have done plenty of things I’m not proud of, but Shaun? I am NOTHING like you.”

“I’m trying right now to be a good person. I’m trying right now to be the best person that I can be. I’m trying right now to be the best champion that I can be. And I’m trying right now to prove to the world that I’m as good as I’ve always thought I could be. That’s why I accepted your challenge Shaun but it’s also why I accepted William Mason’s. You see William and you have a lot more in common than you’d probably like to admit. You’re both selfish. You’re both egotistical. And you’re both self-aggrandising. You’ll both say anything and do anything to get the power you both crave. And in the past William has done to me just what you’ve done. He’s attacked me from behind. He’s tried to hurt me. He’s tried to take me out thinking that it would improve his own prospects if he did it, but unlike you and just like me William hasn’t ever been given a shot at this title before,” she says, looking at the belt again. “I gave him that. I gave him that to prove to him that I was better than him, to prove to him that for all his bragging, for all his ego and for all his backstabbing he wasn’t ready to hold the belt. I gave him an opportunity he’s never had to step up to the biggest stage, and I saw the look in your eyes when I did. You couldn’t believe it. You didn’t understand it. And you were fearful of it. You were fearful that if he found a way to beat me that you wouldn’t get what you wanted. You were afraid that if he beat me that you would lose your hopes of getting a rematch. But that’s the difference between you and me Shaun, because you wouldn’t have done the same thing in the same situation out of fear of losing what you had, and I did what I did because I wanted to prove I deserved to have it!”

“You want everything to be your own way, don’t you Shaun? You always have. When you can’t get what you want you lash out in anger. You talked about what happened between you and Regan this week and you made me laugh. You talked about the consequences of your actions, and about how you didn’t realise it would upset people. But of course you didn’t realise it, because you don’t think about what they think. You don’t think about what the locker room thinks of you. You don’t think about what the fans think about you. You don’t think about what management thinks about you. You do whatever you can to make your own life easier, and then you deal with what happens next as an afterthought. You threw a woman off a stage without a care for what her friends would think because she got in your way, and then you made every excuse you could on social media to try to get them to forgive you, and why? You lied to them. You lied to the world. Yet you threw her off the stage without a second thought when she got in your way because she was in your way, and yet you want sympathy? You want respect? You want me to believe that you’ve learned a lesson and that you can change?” she asks, shaking her head sternly. “You’ll never change Shaun. You’ll never change until you’re given proper reason to change. You’ll never grow up until you’re given proper reason to grow up, and tomorrow night if I beat you in the middle of the ring and you realise there are no excuses, if you realise there are no second chances, if you realise there are no more cards for you to play, maybe then you’ll finally have the reason you need to ACTUALLY grow from it all.”

“Did you know that I used to admire you once, before I got to know you? Did you know that I used to have so much respect for you? I mean, it’s like you said, isn’t it? You’ve fought your way to the top of two different companies. You’ve proven yourself at every level of this business. You’ve done things that I’ve never done, that I can only dream about doing. The fact is Shaun that you are a world class competitor. But it’s not that that shines through, is it? It’s not the fantastic matches you had when you were holding the World title that people remember, it’s the controversy. It’s not the fact that you went for so many months without losing a match that people think about when they think about you, it’s the deal with Silas Mason, it’s the two-faced comments, it’s the egotistical bullshit and it’s this whole ridiculous notion of being the ‘impact player’,” she says, laughing and shaking her head. “It’s being satisfied with the ‘impact’ you make being one that leaves people disgusted. It’s being proud that people are talking about you and not caring what they’re saying, and once again Shaun I used to be just the same way. I used to think it didn’t matter why the world was focused on me as long as they were focused on me, and do you know what I got for that? I got hatred. I got booed out of buildings. I got spat on by fans. I got told I was worthless. I got told I meant nothing. I got told I’d amount to nothing. And it didn’t matter how good I felt I was, it didn’t matter how many matches I won, it didn’t matter how hard I worked because all they saw was the things I did. All they saw was the lying. All they saw was the deception. Is that what you’re proud of Shaun? Is that what you want your legacy to be?”

She pauses for a moment before shaking her head slowly. “Tell me honestly Shaun, do you even care?” she asks, pausing for a moment to consider the possibility that he didn’t and then looking at the championship again. “This is what matters to you, isn’t it? It’s not the legacy you’re leaving behind. It’s not the impression you make on people. It’s not what they say about you, what they think about you, it’s this. Your entire world revolves around being the World Champion and you’ll do anything to make it happen again. So go ahead. Seriously, go ahead. Do whatever you think you need to do. Make whatever deals you think you need to make. Line up a plan B, a plan C, a plan D and a plan E. Do whatever you think you need to do, and then come out to that ring tomorrow night and fight me and I’ll do whatever I need to do to ensure that this championship stays with me. Because you’re right about one thing Shaun, I do want to be champion. Being the World Heavyweight Champion of this company means everything to me, it’s something I’ve sacrificed for every single day for FIVE YEARS to achieve, and when I lose this title – and I know I will, maybe at Apocalypse, maybe some time after – do you know what I’m going to do, Shaun? I’m not going to threaten to walk away. You said you didn’t have the strength to climb the mountain over again, right? That’s another difference between us then, because I will ALWAYS find the strength to climb it. I don’t wait for handouts. I don’t give myself stupid nicknames – impact player, the uncrowned champion – I just go out to that ring and work my ass off EVERY NIGHT and that’s what I’ll do again. It’s what I’ll ALWAYS do! It’s what CHAMPIONS do!”

“And so there it is, Shaun. There’s the biggest difference between you and me. There’s the single biggest thing that separates the two of us. I’ve spent five years to get this point, and even in my darkest days I still took on EVERY challenge that lay in front of me, I still went above and beyond to do everything I could to prove myself. You’ve spent four years taking every shortcut you can. And you’ll lie, and you’ll cheat, and you’ll backstab, and you’ll try to hurt me, try to put me on the shelf, try to take me out, all in the name of being able to say that you’re the champion, right? But you don’t know what it means to be champion Shaun, and this Sunday I’m going to show you. So like I said make your plans, do whatever you need to do, prepare yourself in whatever way you need to prepare yourself, and then come out to that ring and fight me because I’m already prepared. You talked about your legacy, about defining your legacy, about picking up where you left off, but this match is just as much about legacy for me as it is for you,” she says proudly. “Only my legacy won’t be the same as yours, my legacy will be one I can be proud of. My legacy will be to stand in that ring, put this title on the mat, and tell ANYONE who wants some that they know where to find me. My legacy will be to prove myself EVERY NIGHT, to take on EVERY challenge, to stand up against EVERYTHING that’s in front of me, and to never give up. I spent a whole year with one singular goal in mind, to prove myself on the biggest stage, but now I need to prove myself again. And that’s why this Sunday Shaun I’m not going to give up, I’m not going to cower, I’m not going to run, I’m going to STAND TALL in the middle of that ring in front of those fans, representing those fans and representing this company, and if I beat you Shaun, if I prove myself again, then I’ll lift that title over my head and I’ll celebrate with the people, I’ll celebrate with the fans, and I’ll do it with a sense of pride knowing that I didn’t need to deceive anyone to get what I wanted. Tomorrow night you’re not just fighting me Shaun, you’re fighting my dreams. And if I beat you then maybe you’ll learn, or maybe you’ll JUST BE JEALOUS!”

She lifts the title proudly. “And that’s not deception Shaun, that’s nothing but truth.” She steps forward and kisses the camera as the video then ends and the replay button flashes up on the screen.