Last Sunday…
Climax Control was still taking place but it was about an hour after my match when I was sitting in the locker room and feeling a joyous sensation pour through my veins. For all the harsh words that I said about Mercedes Vargas coming into tonight’s match, I know the weight of what this victory is going to mean in the long term. Glancing at some of the action that was going on as of this moment, I pull out my cell phone and search through my Twitter feed. I don’t live life on social media like a lot of my contemporaries do, but I keep up just enough to know what’s taking place. Going through my notifications, I glance at a tweet from someone familiar… but someone I hadn’t seen in ages…
“Andrea, it’s been so long” the tweet read. “Why I haven't saw you since beating your ass and causing you to leave UWA?”
So much for that joyous sensation, right?
“How are you”, the tweet concluded. At that instant, I was very tempted to throw my phone across the locker room, but I managed to maintain my cool… even if seeing those three rotten letters still smelled like garbage two years later. Instead, I took a deep breath and put my phone away. I reflected back on the victory that I just achieved and thought back to the stupid tweet I read.
“She’s not worth the anger”, I thought to myself. “It’s not like she’s accomplished anything in the last two years. Why bother wasting time thinking about someone that truly doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Then again…”
I paused my train of thought, again connecting the dots back to my win over Mercedes Vargas.
“When I was in that hellhole, I was never capable of doing the things that I have been doing now…”
With that… I had myself a longer reflection of the past…
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Flashback: January 31, 2017
UWA was far and away the worst time I’ve ever had in professional wrestling. For all of OCW’s faults, UWA made OCW look like the most perfect paradise you could ever find in professional wrestling. Back then, I was only 22 years of age… though my 23rd birthday wasn’t too far away. I was the total opposite of what I am now. My confidence was shaky. I was far from focused on the right thing. During this time, the tag team I was involved with was still alive. Chelsea LeClair and I were tag team champions in a separate company at this point and UWA had started a brand new cruiserweight division not that long ago.
“I’ve got one shot at this title” I remember telling Chelsea at that time, before the title match I was set to wrestle that night was going to take place. Chelsea and I of course, were on much friendlier terms back them. “If I don’t win this… it’s the back of the line for me and I really don’t want that!”
“You’re too good of a wrestler to allow that sort of thing to happen” Chelsea told me. Even though she was supportive at this stage of my career, I didn’t feel any reassurance whatsoever from my then-best friend. “You come from five generations of tradition and Cam Knowles doesn’t know a damn thing about what you can do when you’re focused on your own morals and not those of someone else.”
“Thanks for that”, I told Chelsea… even though something really wasn’t feeling right deep down. I had that title match but knowing that I had hardly any singles wrestler experience at this point in my mainstream wrestling career, the confidence just wasn’t there. I wasn’t thinking about how glorious winning that championship was going to feel. I was thinking about the consequences of what would happen if I were to lose. I was thinking too much about being at the back of the line. I was thinking too much about the criticism toward me from the UWA locker room that had already begun and how much worse it was going to get should I lose the match. I wasn’t aware of the weight that I was putting on my shoulders with all the pressure on me to win knowing that if I lost to Cam Knowles on this night, I’d be nothing… or at least that’s what it was feeling like.
“I just want you to know that despite Myra’s attempts to separate us that I am always going to have your back”. Chelsea told me. I cringed, not wanting to think about Myra Lynwood, the mentor that had been abusive toward me at that point, or how she was going to feel about me in the event of a loss.
“I trust you on that, Chels. Look, I need to go, okay?” I responded… feeling the nervousness that was still boiling in me… “I think I need to be alone. I have to concentrate. This is the biggest match of my career and the consequences of losing this match… god… I already know how catastrophic they’d be.”
Chelsea gave me a perplexed look as if she wanted to understand, but couldn’t.
“It’s just wrestling, Andrea” she responded in all her ignorance.
“Right. I wouldn’t expect you to understand considering it’s all about the television for you and not about the wrestling. I’ll see you later.”
“Hey, I’ve got a party all set up just for you”, Chelsea told me as I walked by her. “If anyone deserves to have a moment of glory right now, it’s you.”
“You just had to jinx it didn’t you?” I walked out of the locker room at that point without offering up another word. I was annoyed that Chelsea would take some premature measures but in hindsight, I don’t blame her. After all, she was way more confident in me than I was in myself.
“I’m nothing if I lose this…” I continued to think to myself. Sitting on a metal crate in the hallway, Clarissa Vega is approaching me and this just brings up a feeling of dread deep down inside. While we’re friends now, best friends at that, at this point in time, we weren’t anything even remotely close to that. She looked at me with the same skepticism that surrounded me during the early stages of my career.
“I just want to be left alone right now” I told her. Clarissa, however, wasn’t going to have it.
“Alone time is best after what happens tonight… you know… when you lose and all.”
“WHAT?”
“Andrea, I’m just being honest. You don’t have it in you right now.”
“You’re telling me that I can’t beat Cam Knowles” I snapped back. “Is that it? That I don’t have it in me to be a singles champion and to make a name for myself in my own right? God, you’re just Myra’s stupid puppet. What the hell do you know about wrestling?”
“You CAN beat him, Andrea. On the surface, Cam may be talented but he’s a generic flash in the pan that is ultimately going to flame out because he doesn’t stand out whatsoever. You’re very much capable of beating someone like that.” I rolled my eyes, feeling like Clarissa was just trying to soft-serve her honesty at this point. Still, I let her continue with what I felt was a bunch of nonsense. “I didn’t mean to say what I just did as ‘you don’t have what it takes and you never will’. What I meant to say was ‘you have what it takes, but not right now’. I know that Myra has been extremely harsh and abusive toward you. I know that her expectations of you are astronomically high. And I especially know that she favors Chelsea far more than she does you.”
“Do you really give a shit, Clarissa? You just let it happen.”
“I just do what I’m told” she shrugs in a nonchalant manner. “The fact is, the lack of confidence in yourself is so great that it’s a miracle if you win tonight. You’re letting the words of other people… who in the long run aren’t going to matter… get to you. Cam’s just a flunky and you’re going to let someone like THAT beat you because you’ve let other people tear down your confidence?”
Clarissa’s next word isn’t a word, but a shocked gasp as I smack her right across the face.
“I don’t CARE about what you think.”
“So why are you taking offense to what I’m saying?” she asks me with an angry tone in her voice as she holds her jaw. “I wouldn’t be giving Myra another reason to be pissed off at you. It’s not wise.”
“Fuck Myra! I hate that bitch with every fiber of my being!”
“But if you lose this… she’ll be angry!”
“She can go to hell for all I care… and so can you! I’ll prove you BOTH wrong. I’ll prove this horrid locker room wrong! Cam’s NOT better than me and he’ll never be! You may have nailed your evaluation on him dead on, but that’s not hard to do. I KNOW he’s got future flameout written all over him.”
“So where’s your confidence, Andrea? This toxic culture is clearly getting to you.”
“Fuck off!”
I slid off the crate that I was sitting on and brushed by Clarissa without saying another word or even looking at her.
“I’m nothing if I lose this” I would think to myself again and in a repeated fashion on a constant basis as I was just desperate to find some alone time in preparation for a match that, while I refused to admit it to Clarissa, I really had no belief or confidence in myself of winning. In any case, I was determined to do my very best no matter how bad things were already beginning to grow in UWA for me.
Forty-five minutes later…
“YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT!”
Hearing that scream that accompanied those words as I was pinned into the lockers by the aforementioned Myra Lynwood was bad enough. But hearing those words on top of ultimately losing that Cruiserweight championship match to an opponent I knew deep down was inferior to me in the grand scheme of things just made them even worse. The tears were already forming in my eyes staring back at Myra and Clarissa who was off to her side.
“HOW to you LOSE to someone like THAT?” she screamed at me. “I swear to GOD, Andrea… you’re the most USELESS protege I’ve EVER had! GOD, why did I agree to take you under my wing when I didn’t even want you in the first place?”
“Because Chelsea wasn’t going to go with you, without her” Clarissa told Myra.
“Right.” Myra continued to glare at me. “All YOU’VE ever done is be COMPLETELY useless! You’re ALWAYS ruining everything! Honestly? You’re NEVER going to amount to ANYTHING in this business, do you understand that? Once Chelsea truly becomes too good to carry your ass, your career’s over! You’re NOTHING without her and you’ll NEVER be ANYTHING without ME! I’M the only reason why you even have a mainstream career and THAT’S how you repay me?”
The tears strolling down my face leave me incapable of responding which only angers my abusive mentor even more.
“ANSWER ME YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH!”
“I’m sorry”
“Oh I’ll give you SOMETHING to be sorry about when I end your useless existence right now!”
“Myra…” Clarissa interrupted. “She’s not worth your energy right now. You have more important things to focus on.
“You’re right…” Myra responded. “I suppose it’s your lucky day then, Andrea.”
Myra would let me go but not before she gave me one last shove into the lockers before she stormed off. Clarissa followed her for a moment before turning towards me.
“You’re welcome” she told me, leaving me confused as she left the room with Myra.
“DAMN IT!” I said as I punched a locker open in frustration. The locker busted open as I held my hand which was throbbing in pain with what I just did. The devastation of losing that championship match knowing I was in the back of the line of the cruiserweight division with Myra running up the score in the worst way was just too much for me to bear at that point as my face was flooded with tears.
“That was my last chance to be UWA Cruiserweight Champion… and I blew it”... I paused, letting the tears flow some more. “now I have to be at the back of the line while other people have their chance…”
My emotions continued to get the better of me and they caused me to slump all the way to the floor.
“That was my one chance to prove all the haters WRONG and I BLEW IT!” Taking another devastated pause, I came to realize there was not one ounce of happiness going through me at the moment. “I don’t know how I am ever going to recover from this…”
This moment was essentially the beginning of the rock bottom of my entire wrestling career up to this point. At this stage of my career, I felt like I just couldn’t catch a break. It wasn’t just losing title match after title match in the face of people thinking that I wasn’t going to amount to anything, it was letting down my wrestling family that had spanned more than five generations and a hundred years, it was feeling like my entire dream of being a wrestler was turning into a living nightmare. I was feeling like any hopes and dreams I had of wanting to become the wrestler and the champion I wanted to be were further slipping away.
But the darkness and the rock bottom of my entire career wouldn’t last forever, even if it did last a lot longer than I was hoping it would. But persevering through it… it made me stronger and in the long run, even if it wasn’t in UWA, it made me better. And knowing this and reflecting back on this time helped me realize how worthless and pathetic that nonsensical, needless troll tweet that former UWA peer sent in my direction truly was… especially in the face of just defeating an SCW Hall of Fame bombshell in Mercedes Vargas in only my second match in Sin City Wrestling…
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Last Sunday…
I had been walking out of the venue once I finished my reflection on the darkest moment of my wrestling career. Heading into the parking lot, I paused, let out a sigh, and once more thought about the win I just got over Mercedes.
“Wow… I really have come a long way…” I said with pride.
“You sure have”, I heard the voice of Clarissa Vega say from a near distance, which caught me by surprise but of course, I was always happy to see her considering the best friends we’ve become ever since that terrible day. “And what that third-rate, UWA reject has to say about you means jack shit!”
I laughed at this.
“You read that too?”
“She may have beaten you then, but she wouldn’t stand a chance against you now. But… forget about her. She’s nothing. How about Mercedes?”
I smiled at the mention of Mercedes Vargas.
“I beat her because I knew that I would” I said, reflecting the confidence that I’ve grown over time. “I could have cracked like I had done in my early career and put so much pressure on myself… but no… I played it cool. There wasn’t a fiber of my being that doubted I was going to beat her and ‘pull the upset’”
“Andrea, knowing you like I do… that was definitely no upset.”
“I know… but I’m prepared for what’s going to come next after this, for better or worse…”
At this point, Clarissa and I walked through the parking lot together reflecting on the match that I had won earlier in the night and we caught up on some old times… times that… while harsh… definitely turned me into the wrestler that I am now.
September 27, 2019
“Don’t call it an upset” I said to open up my match thoughts once the cameras came on me. “I said I was serious about becoming one of the top bombshells on the roster when I walked in here and I’m well aware that there weren’t going to be much eyes on me considering I’m an unknown presence for the most part. I’m aware that my initial debut victory didn’t open too many eyes. But that’s the thing… I’ve always been one of the greatest elements of surprise. I didn’t bring up the fact that I beat some Hall of Fame members in the past just to brag about it, I brought that up because I wanted to make the point that I wasn’t going to be intimidated by an opponent such as Mercedes Vargas and last week at Climax Control, that is exactly what I did. How many of you thought that I was going to beat her, honestly? I’m going to guess that there wasn’t very many that can do so. But ask those that know what I am all about! For many of you, my win over Mercedes is a surprise. But for those that know me well enough, my win is NO surprise! I went in there expecting to beat her and that’s what I did and now I KNOW that there will be more eyes on me. My time to be under the radar has abruptly ended and this company has definitely come to notice that with my next match.”
“Now… I know my opponent is just as heavy as Iron Maiden… so I could easily walk into our match this week and use my debut as a precedent to beat Bobbie Dahl right? WRONG! Bobbie is a notch or two above my debut opponent. I’m no idiot. I know what I am going up against. It’s not just a woman that is one of the largest Bombshells on the roster, it’s against a woman that just recently became the number one contender to the Roulette Championship with a win over Kate Steele and Sierra Williams… who I know is a big deal around these parts. That’s no easy feat, but then again neither was Mercedes Vargas. Still, don’t walk into this match thinking that I’m going to be some kind of message that you want to send to Sam Marlowe. Don’t walk into this thing with such an overconfidence that you look right past me, thinking far too much ahead. Of course, you’d know about overconfidence right? You said it yourself going into your match with Kate that you were going into it with zero expectations… that you got overconfident at Summer XXXtreme and that it ultimately was a costly factor for you. Congratulations, you learned from your mistakes for that one match. You beat Kate Steele and Sierra Williams with zero expectations placed on you. But the question that I want to pose to you right now?”
“Did you learn from your mistakes from Summer XXXtreme for just that one match or is this going to be something that you are going to carry with you for the rest of your career? Think about it! You’re the number one contender to the Roulette Championship. You’re naive if you think there AREN’T going to be expectations placed on you because there ARE going to be expectations. Logically, because you’re a contender to a championship and I have yet to attain such in Sin City Wrestling, you’re expected to beat me. I acknowledge that with no shame at all. I’m still largely new to this company and the bombshells have yet to learn every layer of me there is to know with only two matches under my belt. Plus, those expectations don’t have to come from you. They can be from anyone around you. The type of wrestler you appear to be on a psychological level is that of someone that sails in whatever direction the wind blows. One week you’re overconfident and you get caught by the seats of your pants seeing your heart and soul collapse right to the bottom of your stomach knowing that you should have won that match, but you blew it because you got too cocky and the next… you’ve turned off all the emotions, blocked every ounce of confidence from your conscience, and you’re wrestling a little more scared, suppressing some sense of belief in yourself out of worry that you don’t want to be caught with your pants down again. With all that, you bounce back with a win. Are you going to stay as guarded as you’ve been or are you going to go back to being the overconfident, cocky bitch you were before Summer XXXtreme?”
“The answer is up to you, but I’m going to tell you straight up that with me, there is no right answer to your plight.”
“Come in with the confidence that you did from beating Kate and Sierra and what’s going to end up happening is that you’re going to grow overconfident and look right past me and as a result, the psychological cycle continues and I’m going to beat you and shatter your confidence before you even get to Sam Marlowe.”
“Come in with no expectations and the guarded demeanor that you did against Kate Steele and Sierra Williams and risk being exposed as being too passive and too guarded, with a suppressed sense of urgency and with me taking advantage of you being far too conservative and guarded for your own good. I can get a great sense of when an opponent is one or the other.
“Either way, I don’t plan to make this easy for you at all. I know that I’ve got everything that it takes to beat you and perhaps even put myself in the running for the Roulette Championship in my own right because I have the one intangible that you don’t and that’s being able to win the uphill battles… being able to fight against the odds that are stacked against you and being able to overcome every obstacle that comes your way no matter if they’re a psychopath or a Hall of Fame member… no matter if they’re big or small… no matter if they are man or woman and it’s those intangibles that make me what I am. It’s those intangibles that I grew early in my career that makes me capable of being a champion at any given time against any given opponent. You think I grew the ability to defeat someone like Mercedes overnight? Hell no! It doesn’t work like that. In the early part of my solo career… I STRUGGLED!”
“I grew up in toxic locker room environments full of people saying that I wasn’t going to amount to anything.”
“I was mentored by someone who never believed in me and did everything she could to torture me until I was out of this business for good”
“I went through the ringer in the worst situations imaginable… at one point having so little confidence in myself that I was ready to just give it all up and head back home to my family in complete and total shame knowing that my departure from wrestling would be the end of over 100 years of family tradition going back five generations and that was a cross I knew I couldn’t afford to bear. I became the wrestler that is more than capable of beating you by struggling, by losing, by being as weak as I used to be, by being beaten down physically and psychologically again and again to the point where I felt like my childhood dream turned into a living nightmare. My career at one point was a weekly torture chamber that so few of our contemporaries would be able to survive. Through those struggles, I built the wrestler… the phoenix… that I am today so while you may be bigger than me in size and currently bigger than me in stature I’m far bigger than you in spirit, in resiliency and in determination and at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to determine this match in my favor! I KNOW you don’t want this match nearly as bad as I do and when I beat you, not only am I going to put myself in the Roulette title conversation in my own right, I am going to prove that I’m not a one-hit wonder… that my win over Mercedes is unquestionably a sign of things to come instead of some upset that nobody will remember a year from now.
You need this match more than I do… with all the pressure and with momentum for your future title shot on the line… but I WANT it more, Bobbie Dahl… and there’s not a damn thing you can do to slow me down!”
With the intensity and determination coursing through my veins, I make my departure from the scene, thus ending the promo shot that I had just finished up.
