You know, there’s an art to taking. Most people think it’s a blunt thing—snatching what doesn’t belong to you, clawing at scraps, desperate for something in your hands. But that’s theft, not taking. Taking is precise. It’s knowing the moment, and knowing yourself well enough to understand that if you don’t reach for it, no one else will hand it over. 

I learned that in a kitchen. I was a novice chef under a man who fancied himself a mentor. I earned the right to stand in his place. To create, to lead. But when the moment came, he slammed the door in my face. He told me I wasn’t ready, that someone else deserved it more.

He thought his word carried weight heavier than my work. And so, I did what I had to. I didn’t wait for his blessing. I took it all. His title, his reputation. I became Arcadia’s premier chef not because he allowed it, but because I refused to be denied. That was the day I understood: the world does not reward patience, pity, or permission. It rewards taking.

Doom takes too, but his art is crude. He waits for walls to fall, then scavenges what’s left in the rubble. A vulture doesn’t hunt—it circles and swoops when the prey is already bleeding. He’ll pretend it’s inevitability, that the world collapses into his lap because it must. But all it shows is passivity. Doom doesn’t take with intention. He lingers. He waits. And then he calls chance by another name. That’s not mastery. That’s luck dressed up as destiny.

Nox takes differently. He contaminates. He poisons. He finds something someone else built and infects it until it collapses in his hands. He’s proud of it—this slow rot, this corruption—but it’s hollow. He can’t create, he can’t build. He can only ruin. A parasite doesn’t own what it drains; it survives only until the host expels it. His art of taking is nothing more than mimicry. Empty. Fragile. Temporary.

And then there’s Foley. Felix doesn’t even believe he takes. He convinces himself he’s a judge, a man doling out righteous verdicts. But watch him closely. Every act of judgment is a theft—stealing dignity, stealing peace, stealing lives—wrapped up in the language of justice. He tells himself he’s noble when he’s just another butcher, hacking away under the pretense of morality. His is the most dangerous form of weakness: delusion. He thinks he’s clean when his hands are stained red.

You see, that’s what separates me. I don’t sit and wait like Doom. I don’t leech like Nox. I don’t pretend like Foley. I take. Indiscriminately. I have made an art of it—every rung I’ve climbed, every soul I’ve stripped bare in that ring. And at Ring King, the masterpiece continues.

Because the OSW World Championship is not something I’ll beg for, hope for, or disguise beneath holy words. It’s mine because I will make it mine. Because I will do what I have always done: take what others can’t hold. And when the dust settles, the only hands holding that crown… will be… mine.