Subject 15: Graves, Dorian

SUBJECT 15: GRAVES, DORIAN Pre-match research note. Filed in private. Not for transmission. ———————————————— The federation has provided. On Saturday night, in the cage I am writing this from the hotel room of, I said I would compete during the interval and that the office could book me as it saw fit. The office heard. The office booked. The opponent is Dorian Graves of Youngstown, Ohio. The match is in seven days. I am noting the federation's response because I would like to maintain an accurate record of the institution's behaviour. The office listened. The office acted. The office matched me with an opponent whose record (3-1) and standing (upper card, recent main event) constitute, in clinical terms, a serious assignment. I am being treated as a fighter who has lost once, not as a fighter who has been lost. The distinction matters to me. I would like to register that I have noted it. Now — the subject. ———————————————— PROFILE Graves, Dorian. Six feet, five inches. Two hundred and eighty-five pounds. Powerhouse archetype. Three wins (Dlamini — high-flyer, round one of the tournament; Rancid — hardcore, BCD 4 main event; DuHast — powerhouse, BCD 5, by pinfall in the centre of the cage, from the second rope). One loss. Hometown Youngstown. Father living. The father is, to a degree I find structurally important, the figure on whose behalf Graves appears to be operating. Graves filed a written statement, weeks ago. I have read it. Twice. He keeps a list. The list, as he describes it, contains the names of people whose behaviour at certain points in his life — and the behaviour of people connected to those people — produced consequences for parties Graves cared about. The list is finite. The names are specific. The list is, in his telling, the entire reason he is in this federation. This is the part of the subject's framework I want to examine carefully. ———————————————— ASSESSMENT The framework Graves uses is not, technically, the Code. It resembles the Code in certain structural features. The framework is rule-based. The framework is finite. The framework requires specific behaviour from its operator — discipline, patience, focused application. Graves does not harm at random. Graves harms with reference. The framework differs from the Code in the following ways. The Code is a perpetual instrument. It produces decisions on every opponent it encounters. There is no point at which the Code will be completed. The Quiet does not end. Graves's framework is a queue. It is designed to be exhausted. The list is, in his telling, finite. When the names have been worked through, the framework's purpose is concluded. Graves becomes, after the queue empties, something other than what he currently is. This is, in my professional assessment, the more interesting feature of his structure. The Code does not select its targets — they arrive and are categorised. Graves's framework selects in advance. The names are on the list before the man becomes a fighter. The fighter is the instrument by which the list is processed. I do not have a column for Graves. He is not first-column (he is not a pure competitor; the list is doing work the competition is incidental to). He is not second-column (the men I have placed in the second column have hurt people who could not fight back; Graves has not, to my reading of the available record, done this). He is not, however, ambiguous — I have read enough to have categorised him. He is something the Code did not, until now, have language for. This is the second time in three weeks I have encountered an opponent whose existence requires the Code to extend. I am extending the Code. ———————————————— CODE EXTENSION — STATUS I want to be precise about where the work stands. After Reyes-Montoya, I noted that I had identified a third category: opponents who are first-column, honest, earned — and superior, in a specific dimension, on a specific night. I noted that the Code did not yet have a response to this class of opponent. I noted that the Quiet was filing and that I would not write code while the filing was happening. The filing concluded approximately four days ago. The result is the following. The Code's third category is now defined as: opponents whose framework, on inspection, is honest. Not necessarily the same framework as mine. Not necessarily a framework I admire. But honest. An opponent who has done the work of constructing rules they live by, and who applies those rules consistently, and whose outcomes — when those outcomes work against me — are produced by the honest application of the rules rather than by deviation from them. This is the category Reyes-Montoya occupies. He is the first. Graves, I am now establishing, is the second. The Code's response to third-category opponents is not yet decided in every detail. I am still developing it. The response will not be — and I am being firm with myself about this — punitive. Third-category opponents are not, in any sense, my work. They are men I respect and from whom I learn. They will leave my matches outworked. They will not leave them changed. This is, perhaps, the most significant adjustment the Code has undergone in the years I have been refining it. ———————————————— THE MATCH I am preparing for the match the way I prepare for every match. The night before, the meal. The morning of, the hour of silence. The forty-eight hours without pain medication. The body has reported. The arm — the one that nearly failed in corner four — is at eighty-six percent. Range of motion adequate. Grip strength returned to baseline within ninety-six hours, which is faster than the protocol expected and which I am attributing to either the recovery work or to good fortune; I will not know which without a second incident I would prefer not to engineer for the data. Graves is not, structurally, a submission opponent in the conventional sense. He does not fight from the ground willingly. His framework prefers to end matches at the moment of maximum power deployment — the corner, the second rope, the throw. The Annihilator, when delivered, does not require him to survive a ground exchange afterward. He pins. My response is the response I would prepare against any Powerhouse opponent: keep the action low. Disrupt the lifts. Force the ground game he does not prefer. Make the match an exchange of joint exposures and counter-positions rather than impact deliveries. The Termination Code requires the opponent's spine to be positioned in a specific configuration that Graves's natural defensive posture interferes with; the Spinal Separator is the better setup for him, and from there I can transition. I am not predicting a result. I do not predict. I am noting what the work will look like if the work proceeds as planned. ———————————————— A NOTE ABOUT THE LIST I want to address one further matter for the record. I do not know if my name is on Mr. Graves's list. I have done my own audit of my history and I do not believe I have ever encountered a person Mr. Graves cared about in a circumstance that would have placed me on the document. But I have, on more than one occasion, been wrong about my own history; the lost years remain partially documented even to me. I cannot rule it out. If I am on the list, I would like to know. I would like to know before the bell. I would prefer to be told. This is unusual for me. I have not, in the time I have been at this work, asked an opponent to disclose anything about his framework in advance of a match. I am asking now because the third-category Code requires honest framework on both sides, and an opponent operating on his own honest framework should — in my new reading — be permitted to know that the man across the cage is doing the same. That is the new rule. I am extending the courtesy. If I am not on the list, the match is what it is. If I am, then the match becomes something specific between us, and I would like the opportunity to conduct it that way. ———————————————— The federation provided. I will compete. The Quiet has been quiet since the filing concluded. This is also new. — W.