“I used to be that girl… you know, the one that knew how to have fun. The wrestler that I was when I first broke in and the wrestler that I am now are completely different. When I first started, I was a lot more lighthearted than I am right now. I wasn’t necessarily bubbly, but at least I knew how to unwind every now and then. Now? As much as I hate to say it, Chelsea made some good points during our conversation in Tucson. There came a point where I stopped having fun and started to be more serious about this business than before. Was it becoming the star that I always dreamed of being? Was it all the big wins I got in OCW? Was it one particular match that changed my attitude about this? A combination? The abuse I took in GCW and UWA? At some point, things changed… but before that happened… wrestling used to be so much fun…”
Flashback: October 2016
My days in GCW weren’t the greatest by any stretch of the imagination but on this particular night, things were incredibly happy. I held one half of GCW’s tag team championships beaming in pride at the sight of the first mainstream championship I would ever win.
“Andrea!!!”
My smile grew wider when Chelsea walked into the room carrying the other half of the tag team titles. We exchanged a huge hug and this was the moment where I felt that more than a decade of friendship culminated with the two of us living our dreams in our own way.
“Girl, do you have any idea how happy I am right now?” I would ask her.
“ME TOO!” Chelsea exclaimed with delight. “After all we’ve been through together this feels like it was all worth it and all that cheesy, not so fun, wrestling stuff…”
I could only laugh and smile at Chelsea’s charm at the time.
“Yeah, we really have been through so much together” I remembered. “But we’ve always been there for each other through the good times, bad times, fun times and… well… not so fun times. This feels amazing! Beating those two bubbly brats and finally ending that insufferable reign is probably the best feeling I’ve had in my entire career so far!”
“I know, right? Andi, you were amazing!”
“So were you! We’ve always made a great team for the last… gosh, 13 years?”
“Something like that” Chelsea said with a chuckle. “I love you!”
“I love you too, Chels!”
We exchanged a hug with the feeling like nothing was going to ruin this moment for us.
“Hey, let’s get the hell out of here!”
“Chels, the show is still going on…”
“I don’t care…” Chelsea says with another laugh. “We did our part! We won the tag team titles. I say we party!”
“Do you have a rave on your mind?” I asked with a fun tone in my voice.
“Rave, booze… in my case anyway… boys, falling all over the floor, making a fool of ourselves… yeah… something like that!”
I raised my eyebrows with surprise, but at this point, I didn’t care.
“You’re right, Chels. Let’s party!” Chelsea beams with a smile as soon as I say this. “We don’t need to stick around for the boring stuff. We’ve earned this reward!”
Chelsea and I left the locker room and walked down the hallway.
“Andi?”
“Yeah Chels?”
“We’re always going to be best friends, right?”
“Of course…”
We continued to walk down the hallway, arm in arm like the best friends that we were at the time, the both of us clearly unaware of how much we would change in the coming years.
November 25, 2019
“I leave you alone in my house for one hour and you do THIS?”
I ask Chelsea this question with complete annoyance in my voice as Chelsea looks a bit doe-eyed and dumbfounded. There’s a massive “Congrats Andrea” banner hanging from my ceiling with a lot of apple cider and ginger ale encased in ice buckets. There are pink and lavender balloons all over the place with a huge white cake with pink, cursive “Future World Champion” written on it.
“Surprise?”
“Chels, you know you’re not supposed to be drinking alcohol. It’s bad for you!”
“Don’t worry, Andi” Chelsea bats away a sinking balloon. “The cider is the non-alcoholic variety and the ginger ale is the soda kind.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked her. “After the tense conversation we had last time, you go and do this? You have the audacity to call me out and suddenly you want to throw a party for me? For what?”
“Did you not qualify for a world title match?” Chelsea asked me.
“I did” I said as I rolled my eyes. “But qualifying for that six pack challenge is absolutely no cause for celebration. Heck, even if I were to win that title, I wouldn’t even have a celebration at all. It’s too tacky, Chels.”
“But… I went above and beyond for this!”
“I don’t care, Chels. This looks like any other old celebration that you threw for me prematurely.”
“God, I thought beating Keira Fisher was going to lighten you up. Excuse me for having hope that you’d start having fun again anytime soon. What the hell am I going to tell everyone? To go home?”
“What do you mean by everyone?”
“Hey Chelsea, when can we…”
My eyes widened at the unfamiliar voice that was coming from the hallway and I would feel very annoyed at the sight of a sudden, random cheerleader coming into my living room being flanked by five more behind her.
“Cheerleaders, Chelsea?”
“Yes! I told you I went above and beyond for this! Come on girls, let’s show Andrea how to have fun again!”
I could only feel embarrassed as the cheerleaders came out and stood in front of the cake.
“Ready and… GO!” Chelsea would command the cheer squad.
“Give me an A!”
“Shut up!” I’d say to the cheerleader.
“You may want to go with something a little more creative” Chelsea said to the cheerleader. “My best friend here doesn’t have any spirit.”
“Excuse me?” I interjected.
“Who qualified for a title shot?” Chelsea asked the cheerleaders. “ANDREA!” They said!
“Who’s going to beat Seleana Zuckerberg… Zdunifucker... um… however you pronounce her last name?” She asked. “ANDREA!” They responded!
“Who’s going to break the dynasty of the most egotistical, self-important bitch on the roster?” Chelsea asked.
“CHELS! COME ON!”
“ANDREA!” the cheerleaders responded.
“And who’s going to become the Bombshells World Champion very soon?”
“ANDREA!”
The cheerleaders hooped and hollered and I just stood there and took in the embarrassment of the cheer squad coming up to me, cheering for me and waving their pom-poms in my face. My annoyance and anger was only getting worse as the cheerleaders stepped back away from me.
“Chelsea, you have done some stupid things but this has to top every single one of them”
“Andi, you really… REALLY need to lighten up” she responded with a tone of anger in her voice. “I knew that this process wasn’t going to be overnight, but GOSH, you’re so wooden that even the hardest cock on earth wouldn’t be able to penetrate you.”
“Process?” I scoffed at the notion. “What gives you the right to have any sort of ‘process’? You’re not my manager”
“Maybe I SHOULD be! You’re not exactly a public relations darling right now”
“I really hope that wasn’t a serious suggestion! You wouldn’t help me at all! In fact, all you’d do is make things worse because that’s all you ever do! Chels, you’re such a fuck up that I’d bet my life savings you’re Charlie Sheen’s long lost daughter”
“Still hanging on to what I was, are we?” Chelsea responded.
“You can’t talk considering you’re trying to make me have ‘fun’. You need to move on. Those days are over. You know what ‘fun’ gets me? It gets my guard down, that’s what. It does nothing but distract me and leave me open for anyone to take advantage of me just like they did back in my rookie year. Hell, you know what ‘fun’ gets me, Chels? It gets me to YOUR level and I refuse to stoop to that. So why don’t you take your stupid little cheerleaders and get out of my house. Hell, why don’t you get out of my life while you’re at it?”
“You can’t be serious” Chelsea said with a tinge of disappointment in her voice. “I’m just trying to help you. Seriously. I understand that getting over yourself takes time and all but why do you have to be so mean to me? Why do you have to act like I’m so far beneath you?”
“Because you are, Chels” I answered back.
“You ladies can leave now” Chelsea said to the cheerleaders. She took a brief pause as the cheerleaders left my home, much to my relief. Chelsea on the other hand, wasn’t done with me yet. “So that’s all I am to you? A ‘fuck up’? An inconvenience? I know that I’ve done some awful things to you that has fractured our friendship, but so have you… what with pretending you’re SO much better than me and all.”
“I don’t need to pretend because I am!”
“And that’s the kind of attitude that’s going to get you humbled by the likes of Alicia Lukas… AGAIN.” Chelsea sighs and shakes her head. “All I wanted Andrea… was to be your friend again but you’re acting like I’m doing something so horrible. You’re acting like you don’t want me to be a part of your life. I thought that… by trying to lighten you up a little… just to have any kind of fun for a change…”
Chelsea pauses for a brief half-minute.
“I’m listening…” I told her.
“Sorry…” she said with tears in her eyes. “...I thought that by trying to lighten you up a little, you wouldn’t put so much pressure on yourself for the world title match and you wouldn’t be so bothered by having people in your corner for your next match. If only you knew every detail of how I’m trying to help you. I want my best friend back, that’s it! I don’t like this Andrea at all! There’s something that you’re not telling anyone…”
“How would you know that?”
“Because there is something… I don’t know what… but there is something in particular that is doing this to you. It’s not the early part of your career because you overcame that and became a success story in OCW and all that and hell, even back in OCW you were even having fun with the way you presented your old promos and all.”
“You’re a psychologist now?” I asked Chelsea.
“Whatever it is that is bothering you, Andrea… you need to deal with it because if you don’t, you’re never going to be a world champion anywhere you go”.
I raised my eyebrows at the sudden boldness that came out of her.
“You know deep down in your heart what it is, don’t you?” she asked me. I did not respond to this question. “I know you do… but don’t act as if I don’t know what that feels like, Andi… because I do. It sucks when you put in so much hard work and determination into something trying to prove all your haters and critics wrong yet you never get to do that because of circumstances out of your control. Does it not?”
Again, I didn’t respond.
“I really hope for your sake that you figure out who you are, Andi… and even though we both don’t know that… I know for a fact that this wooden bitch that takes everything mega seriously and acts like others are beneath her isn’t you at all. You’re dealing with some unresolved issue that you’re too afraid to say anything about. Later…”
Chelsea begins to leave after giving me my latest food for thought. However, she quickly turns around and snatches the cake from the table.
“Oh and I’m taking this because I spent way too much time and money baking this for someone that couldn’t appreciate my gesture.” Those would be Chelsea’s parting words before she walked out the door. Stung by this some, I sat down on my couch.
“She’s not going away anytime soon…” I realized as I took notice of the balloons on the ceiling sinking to the floor. “...especially when she keeps being right.”
I sat back and reflected on that hidden pain, that unresolved issue, that Chelsea mentioned.
Flashback: A few months ago…
“It was hard, Clarissa” I told her as we sat inside my living room prior to my Sin City Wrestling signing. “I felt like I was robbed…”
“It’s tough…” Clarissa said to me. “You were by far the better wrestler in that ladder match. It’s a hard thing to deal with… not being a world champion when your heart knows you should be.”
“But I’m working on dealing with it” I responded. “Still, the emptiest feeling in the world is being the better wrestler and yet still losing. I’ll be fine! I’ll be over this! I’ll get another chance to prove that sexist, old boys club wrong and it’s that hope that I’ll get to that level again that keeps me from just… falling apart…”
I took a sigh as my phone rang. It was a familiar Florida area code and I knew right away it was the offices of OCW.
“Hello?” I said as I heard the office speak on the other end. “I’m okay. Yeah…. Wait… what?”
I became so confused when I heard the words “OCW is closed” on the other end.
“...can I call you back? I really don’t feel like talking severance with you right now.”
I hung up the phone and left myself in stunned silence.
“Andrea?”
“...that hope I just mentioned is gone…” Clarissa widened her eyes during my intermittent pause. “The company is gone.”
That sick, empty feeling began to invade my soul.
“I’m sorry, Andrea”. Clarissa paused and put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah” I lied. “It’s fine. That place was starting to not feel like home anymore anyway.”
“Good” she said to me, with the impression that this sudden shocker of a closure wasn’t going to bother me. But within, that empty feeling was growing fast. Yet, I was closing off my feelings living in denial and even then, I couldn’t help the fact that the aforementioned world title ladder match I lost months prior to this was destroying me more than I’ve ever let on.
That’s because in my heart, the reality that I would never get to avenge that was making it come apart at the seams… and up until now, I’m the only one that is aware of how torn it’s been ever since.
November 29, 2019
As I began to reflect on what was coming up for me, I was feeling a great sense of confidence. Whether or not it masked whatever pain I was dealing with wasn’t clear to me, but when I thought about my win over Keira Fisher to qualify for D2D, when I thought about the opportunity for momentum that I had against a former Bombshells World Champion, when I thought about the possibility of closing out the year by becoming a world champion myself, some excitement flowed through me. Granted, this excitement came with the caveat of caution as I knew I couldn’t get on that high horse again… especially not after that match with Alicia Lukas from a while back going down the way it did. Still, I was forgetting about my issues and focusing on the task at hand.
“I’ve kept things close to the vest since my match against Keira, as usual. I’m not really someone that likes to express as you can tell from my lack of social media activity but I am definitely going to say for a fact that qualifying for that title match in a couple of weeks really does mean so much to me. It means more to me than any of my opponents could ever understand. All in all, I’ve had a great 2019, there’s no question about it. I began the year by kicking off the most successful singles championship reign of my career to date. I kept that momentum going by beating the “legends of OCW” in a tournament that saw me advance all the way to the semifinals. I even had a world title match earlier this summer which… let’s NOT talk about that right now. I’ve had a solid year aside from that one match and I’ve hit the ground running in Sin City Wrestling. It’s not every day that someone comes in and takes the company, this division, by storm like I have. It’s not every day that someone comes into this company and they have a world championship match on their fingertips before they even hit 10 overall matches. But that’s the unique situation that I find myself in. Six matches into my SCW career and I’m already challenging for the world title? Doesn’t get much better than that. I’m stoked and I’m thrilled beyond words for this opportunity and it’s going to give me a chance to close off the year fulfilling a dream that… God… I can’t describe it right now… especially since I’m getting a little too ahead of myself. I have a match this weekend to deal with and that’s all about one thing and that’s having the most momentum possible going into that match.
Seleana Zdunich is going to be no easy challenge considering that, not only is she a former world champion here, but she’s one of the few Bombshells on this roster that can actually say that she’s beaten Alicia Lukas. Of course, let’s also take into account that her wife is one of the most decorated stars that this company has had in all its years. It’s not a challenge that I can’t overcome though. I may be a wild card when it comes to this entire picture but I know deep down that I have already established myself as a main event contender for the time to come and I’m going to do all that I can to ensure that I can maintain that momentum. But… there is one thing about this match that I DON’T necessarily like….
At this point, I pause and reflect on that detail.
“I don’t like the fact that I’m going to have people in my corner. It’s not a personal thing, it’s a pride thing. Nothing against Sierra and Alicia at all, but still. It’s not like Crystal and Roxi are going to get involved or anything. They’re above trying to cheat. I’ve never needed people in my corner but so be it. I’ll deal with it. The fact of the matter is Seleana, I know that you’re going to be going into this match with the same motive as I do and at the end of the day, momentum is the one thing that we both can’t afford to lose. You did well in your own right, qualifying for this match against Mercedes Vargas a while back. That’s not an easy challenge to qualify for the six pack challenge. But I can sense a weakness in you that’s very familiar to me. You seem to be the type of woman that lets what other people say about her bother you. I’ve noticed you take a verbal stand against people in the locker room that have complained that you keep getting opportunities at the Bombshell World title and while I do sympathize with your side of things, this also concerns me that all this “talk” bothers you to the point where you even have to mention it. I say that because such a behavior reminds me of Bobbie Dahl. You remember her right?
You remember how in my third match in this company, I stepped up and beat her?
Do you also remember how that night, before our match happened, she spoke up about my words about her leading into that match and she made it as clear as day that they absolutely bothered her? Yeah, those words were very much inside of her head and it just made it all the more easier for me to beat her. Look what has happened to her ever since. The girl’s lost her mind. Do you want the same thing to happen to you? I doubt it and I trust that the same thing won’t happen to you because you’re far more mature than she could ever be. Basically, I am asking you a favor. Don’t focus on that hearsay on Sunday, focus on ME because I’ve proven that I can take advantage of any lack of focus that my opponents bring to the table. It’s not just Bobbie, it’s High Stakes against Bella Madison who I know for a fact was still hung up on her first loss in SCW at that time. I not only beat her, but since then? She seems to be worrying too much and stressing out about her shortcomings instead of focusing on trying to be a better wrestler. Keira Fisher possibly had the same issue too. I know that the loss to Mercedes that she had was still stinging her to some degree and again, I took advantage of it. So are you going to make the same mistakes that Bobbie and Bella made against me? I hope not.
You’re taking on someone that has handled adversity better than both of them put together. Yeah, Iost to Alicia Lukas, my only loss on record to date. I could have been like Bella and just let it eat at her and fall further down the hole. I could have been like Bobbie and just let those words she spoke of me just bother me and drive me insane like Bobbie had done with my words. But I didn’t. I bounced back. I got my opportunity against Keira. I took advantage of it. I’m the head of the “bombshell rookie class” here, Seleana… and even then, I use that term ‘rookie’ very lightly. You want someone to step up to you SO bad?
I’m your girl for that!
You want to beat Alicia more than I do? More than anyone else in that match in a couple of weeks does? Prove it, because I’m not convinced. Winning your matches and taking advantage of your opportunities is one thing, Seleana, but actually beating Alicia is a whole different thing. I recognize that you’ve done it before, when you took that title from her but not even six weeks later, she took it right back from you and ever since then, she’s had your number. I’m even willing to bet that Alicia has grown tired of beating you by this point. How many more chances against her are you going to waste? Are you one of those wrestlers that’s the bridesmaid but never the bride? I suppose I’ll know a little bit more about you come Sunday. For now, what I know is this. I’m coming for the dream that I’ve always wanted. I’m going to gain that momentum. I’m going to set myself up for the success I’ve always known I had in me. I’ll avenge that loss, I’ll be that Bombshells world champion defying the expectations of SO many and I’ll atone for SO much more than that loss, I’ll tell you that much.
I’m warning you now, Seleana…
Don’t look past me. Just because I’m not Alicia Lukas, AKA your greatest obsession, doesn’t give you the right to do that. I guarantee I’ll make you pay for that mistake if you do…
I maintained my focus and determination as I walked up to the camera and shut it off for the time being.
