the author's openly advertised fetish

ok so basically as per usual i was in the nxt 2013 mines and. ok nxt corey we all know the luck motif right. thats something were all familiar with by now. i mean his signature submission hold was literally called lucky 13. anyways building on top of that, one thing i cant stop noticing about corey is how he literally never talks about his family. like every time he says "my family" he's without fail referring to carmella and his kids. never his parents or brother. especially his dad he hasnt mentioned live or online for like. 10 years. now. what you may not know is that his dad was also a wrestler. and so is his brother. and heres the thing. his brother not only inherited their dads wrestling name, but also IS STILL A WRESTLER, whereas corey was famously forced to retire. NOW. i found this one 2013 segment where corey says "my father used to tell me, you have to fail before you succeed. again and again and again. and maybe, if you're lucky, you'll slip through the cracks.". its genuinely so serious to me that corey literally wears his bad luck on his skin (his neck tattoos). i used to think it was just a classic case of wrestling daddy issues. but god its so much more than that. HES the one separating from his dad...because he thinks of himself as inherently unlucky. to me he reads so mental illness too like even before his concussions. he kept sort of degrading himself under a mask of false pride; calling himself the "savior of misbehavior", calling everyone that actually supported him the "filth parade", he was an asshole and nobody liked him and he was 100% aware of that at all times. so he actively chose not to inherit his dads name, so as to not dirty it with his own mistakes. he actively chose to cut most if not all contact with his dad because he was unlucky. and he fully believed that his dad valued luck above everything else. corey graves sees himself as an unmatched row on the big slot machine of life. just a failed experiment. a gamble that didnt pay off. a career that never was. everything that happens to him only reinforces that idea; every lost match, every lost opportunity, every concussion, every injury, an early retirement without ever even graduating from nxt. "you had a move, right?" "one?" "what was it called?" "...i don't remember." HE THINKS EVERYONE FORGOT. he thinks that sjk meant nothing to anyone. that his entire wrestling career was just erased without ever leaving an impact, as soon as he retired. ITS SO FUCKED UPPPPPP

even someone who doesn't know all of that can still, to this day, see the impact the og bloodline had on solo. the way he almost visibly breaks when tama compares him to roman, when anyone even brings up roman or the usos. the hurt in his voice when he yells "because i hate that damn family!".

i cant tell you why because im a few beers in but this is a load-bearing interaction for corey graves lore