“Four matches, four wins in Sin City Wrestling. I won’t downplay how great that is but at the same time, I’m not going to just feel satisfied about it. Beating Mercedes, Bobbie and Bella… those are solid foundation wins in this division but why should I limit myself there? It’s not going to make me forget the early part of my wrestling career and how buried in the dirt that I was at one point.”
“You’re not a draw” I was told by UWA’s then Cruiserweight champion a couple of years back.
“You’re nothing special” the bikini model turned vapid whore wrestler would tell me.
“I will never wrestle you because you’re not worthy of facing me” I heard on a constant basis.
“It can be argued that I’ve proven much of that wrong, but a glittering start and a win on the biggest stage this company has to offer is nothing that’s going to satisfy me… not when I know I still have so far to go to get to where I want to be… not when I know that the match in front of me is that opportunity I’ve been hoping for… one that I’ve been hungry for since the disaster that took place months ago…”
October 30, 2019
“You know a homecoming is just more than thinking about wrestling, right?”
This question from Clarissa as we sat on my father’s couch didn’t draw much of a reaction out of me.
“You know my family is immersed in it that it’s impossible to get away from” I said in response. “...especially with what’s coming up in Tucson.”
“Don’t overthink it!”
“You know I don’t… not anymore…”
“Right, but earlier in your career… when that’s what you would do on a constant basis” I don’t feel any offense at all at Clarissa reminding me of how fragile I was during that time. “...things just snowballed in the wrong direction for you. Of course, UWA and its toxic nonsense will do that…”
“I love my family and all that but that experience nearly broke me away from them.”
“Andrea…” I became startled at the sudden voice of my father, but not too much to the point where it unnerved me. I stood up to greet him. “...great stuff back in Hawaii.”
“Thanks” I responded.
“You’ve done quite well for yourself, I’ve got to say. Two years ago, I wasn’t sure if you’d make it.”
“Yeah, I remember that…” I told my father with a slight hint of anger and bitterness. “...I remember when you would tell me that I was a disgrace to the family. It just feels really weird seeing you on the bandwagon so much as you are now.”
“You did prove me wrong” my father would admit.
“But did I even HAVE to prove you wrong?” I retorted, which caught my father by surprise. “I’m your daughter no matter what and for you to dismiss me as a disgrace to the family when things were going so wrong for me, for you to constantly criticize me when you never fully understood everything I was going through at the time… that’s fucked up, Dad. It doesn’t change how I feel about you, but I always thought it was very precocious of you to beat me down while I’m already in the dirt only to come around and act like I’m your pride and joy once I got my career going.”
My father says nothing, knowing that I’m right.
“Remember UWA? How that tore us apart?”
“Andrea… that was then, this is now. Why do you have to have such a chip on your shoulder? Your career is in a much better place. You just got a win on a big stage like High Stakes and you can’t even enjoy a homecoming for once?”
“Dad, I want to talk about how you treated me the night that I left that place.”
I was certainly not letting him get away for his past behavior now that I was confident enough to confront him.
“You took it as if it was a personal affront against you. How do you expect me to just come home every once in a while and act like none of this is awkward?”
“Andrea, now’s not the…”
“No” I interrupted. “I’m not going to wait another day to talk about it.”
Clarissa, concerned for me more than anything, stood up and interjected.
“I think you need to let her talk. I don’t know what happened two years ago when she left that company… but she clearly feels strongly about it now if she’s bringing it up.”
“What, Dad? You don’t want to face up to the fact that you fucked up?”
My father swallows his pride.
“If it helps YOU… then fine….”
I could sense my father’s reluctance to talk about the subject in the air.
“Ready to get your mind blown, Clarissa?”
“You’ve never told me about this… not until now anyway…”
I suddenly felt a bit of rage within me with the flashback that is about to come to mind. After all, this memory that I’m about to bring up isn’t just a family thing… for me… it was personal. Through everything that I endured in 2017… through the abuse by my former mentor, the constant torture of the failure I’d constantly suffer through that held me back from taking the next step… the moment I am about to remember was the rock bottom of it all…
September 2017
After all… on this day, in my father’s living room, I was about to do what nobody in my family would ever do: admit defeat. UWA had constantly beaten me down to the point where I knew that if I stayed there any longer that my career would be over. The constant struggle, hearing those words that I’d hear from my peers, hearing that I’d never amount to anything, hearing that I wasn’t worthy of facing them… and doing everything I could to prove them wrong only to prove them right in the end… after so long, it just destroyed me. I was THIS close to just calling it quits and being done with this business….
...THIS close to admitting that I didn’t have what it took to make it big…
And being in that living room with my father telling him what I was about to tell him… I knew that he was going to be upset. I was already dreading his reaction. My eyes were flooded with tears both as a product of having been broken down by that horrible company and knowing I was about to let down my entire family.
“What’s wrong?” he’d ask me.
“I hate to do this…” I initially said. “But… I have to look out for me and… you’re going to hate me for this…”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because six months ago, you called me a disgrace to the family” I reminded him. “And what I’m about to tell you is just going to validate that further!”
“I promise you… I’ll understand”
“Fine…” I took a deep breath during this brief pause. “I’m leaving UWA.”
My father’s eyes widened in surprise almost as if that was the last thing he expected.
“Wait… I didn’t just hear that right, did I?”
“I’m quitting. I’m done. That place… I can’t stay there any longer. I’m leaving UWA and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind on that.”
“Why?” my father asked me. “I don’t understand…”
I threw up my hands in anger and frustration.
“But you PROMISED ME you’d understand!”
“Well make me understand, Andrea!” The tone of voice slightly frightened me. “You can’t just drop this on me and expect me to immediately understand.”
“I’m miserable there” I said with a tear dropping down my cheek. “Everything that I grew up dreaming about just turned into a nightmare. I HATE that place! I hate the entire cruiserweight division and everyone in it. I’m TIRED of being ran down like I’m NOTHING, TIRED of being told I’m not good enough…”
“So just like that, you’re going to bring shame to our family?”
“NO! Dad… that’s the last thing I’d ever want to do…”
“You millennials are so fragile, I swear! I knew that training you to be a wrestler was a horrible idea” my father said. “You can’t even handle this. Some empty words from people that are going to mean nothing to you two years from now is going to turn you into the ultimate quitter?”
“I’m tired of being a LOSER in that horrible place!” I snapped back.
“Then start winning!” he responded insensitively, causing me to scoff in disbelief.
“REALLY? You think it’s THAT simple? I’m NOT going to stay anywhere that makes me miserable, Dad! That’s not how professional wrestling works! Besides… why should I limit myself to some stupid division anyway when I know I can expand my horizons and do something so much bigger and better than this? If this shames our family, I don’t care! I have to do this to save my career!”
“Back in my day… in the old days… our family wouldn’t act with such shame and give up like you’re doing.”
“THAT’S ALL YOU FUCKING CARE ABOUT, ISN’T IT?” I screamed at him. “You don’t CARE about me as a person. You don’t care about me as your DAUGHTER! All you care about is family legacy this, family tradition that… YOU’VE NEVER CARED ABOUT ME! I was always your least favorite just because I wasn’t the gender you’d want me to be.”
“Andrea… that’s not true…”
“REALLY? You’ve always been much harder on me than you ever were on my brothers! Where did favoring my oldest get him, huh? In fucking prison for 30 years for armed robbery and yet you NEVER treated him the way you’re treating me right now. Being a convicted felon doesn’t bring shame to this family, but me leaving a company I want nothing to do with does? If Rodrigo wasn’t so turned off by wrestling that he decided to do something else with his life, you would have NEVER bothered with me and you know that. If I was your son instead you’d be treating me so much different.”
“I think your failure to be anything in wrestling is getting to your head…”
“Screw you, I’m DONE with you!”
I had it with my father’s insensitivity at that point as I bolted out the door of his house. As a result, it would be quite a long time before I ever set foot in his living room again.
The present day revisited…
Clarissa just stands there completely shocked and stunned at what she just heard. My father doesn’t say anything or even react knowing that there’s nothing he can do to counter the story that I just told. In a reactive, reflective anger, Clarissa delivers a hard elbow right into my father’s ribs.
“What kind of father are you?”
“Clarissa…”
“I’m sorry Andrea, but… WOW. Your family is littered with sexist, Catholic assholes.”
“Well… that’s true…” I admitted with a sullen tone in my voice.
“So why do you continue to involve your family with anything involving your career? If they weren’t your family, you’d have nothing to do with them”
“Clarissa, that’s enough from you” my father said with anger in his voice.
“Dad, I already know what the sitch is with you. You’re so proud of me now because of all the amazing things that I’ve done since I left UWA… but those wins I’ve picked up in SCW so far aren’t good enough for you, are they?”
“Not when you’ve got the world champion coming up in Tucson…”
“Just what I thought!” I was the one getting angry now. “I know the drill. You expect me to come back here and give you and everyone else tickets for the bus trip to Tucson, the hotel rooms, the tickets to the event, backstage passes and all that… you expect to see me at ringside… you expect this to be some sort of happy, stereotypical family homecoming because I’m wrestling in my home state but most of all Dad you expect me to BEAT Alicia Lukas and anything OTHER than that is this massive disappointment that is a disgrace to our family, RIGHT?”
My revelations leave my father in stunned silence.
“I’m about to break some news that you’re not going to like. I didn’t get any tickets for anyone.” My father’s eyes widened in surprise when he heard this. “I’m going to Tucson alone…”
“Well, not QUITE alone…” Clarissa interjected. This gave me a small comic relief moment with a smirk on my face following this.
“...right… but none of you are coming with me. Facing Alicia is going to be a pressure situation in and of itself and I don’t need the ‘homecoming expectation’ OR YOUR expectations dragging me down. I didn’t come to your house tonight to catch up and celebrate my success story with you… I came here to tell you the way things are going to be from now on.”
“Andrea… you don’t need to be like this…”
“And you didn’t need to tell me how much of a disgrace to the family I was when I needed you the most. So here’s how it’s going to work. Clarissa and I are going to leave… we’re going to head to Tucson without you. I’m going to do everything by my own standards and not the standards of this family. You are not to be involved in any aspect of my career. You are not to question me, criticize me or debase me for any decisions I make or for any matches I lose. You are no longer to judge me based on my in-ring performance and I will not be contacting you indefinitely. I do whatever the hell I want to do with my life and career, got it? You don’t get to judge me and you sure as hell don’t get to revel in my glory with the way you treated me while I was down”
“I don’t understand…”
“When did you ever?” I said with my eyes narrowed. “The day that you finally decide to be my dad is the day you’ll ever have any contact with me again.”
My father is shellshocked as Clarissa and I walk to the front door. Before leaving, I turn to him once more.
“And by the way Dad… I hope you hate the boyfriend I bring home to you whenever that time comes...”
With that, I open the front door, with Clarissa and I leaving him stunned in the living room.
“Wow…” Clarissa said. “Karma is a bitch, isn’t it?”
“I love my father with everything in the world… but I had to set new boundaries” I responded. “He’s smart enough to get the message. He’s never, ever going to treat me like a child again”
Clarissa and I made our final departure not just from my father’s home, but from Sedona on the way to Tucson. I knew the moment I arrived that this wasn’t going to be a typical pseudo-homecoming… but I also knew that it’s just how I wanted…
November 1, 2019
“I knew from the moment that this match was announced that this wasn’t going to be some typical homecoming…”
I had a cold and calculated demeanor with the cameras came on and my thoughts about the biggest match of my Sin City Wrestling career to date started to take a hold on my mind.
“Once I realized that I was facing Alicia Lukas, all bets were off. Any of the satisfaction that I got from beating the likes of Mercedes Vargas and Bobbie Dahl was instantly forgotten. Any joy that I had from winning at High Stakes against Bella Madison was put on the backburner. Don’t get me wrong, those were some wins to be proud of but I know from the onset that if I were to beat you, that I can’t just focus and dwell on those wins and act like I’ve got it made just because I’ve gotten off to a great start here. I know I have. I don’t need anyone to remind me of that fact but I know going into this match against you that it doesn’t mean as much as it looks. I know that I can’t have my head in the clouds focusing on that great start and suddenly acting like I’m the shit and that I can do anything and that is far from the approach that I am taking into this match against you. In this weird sort of way, I respect you too much as a champion to do that. Have you once heard me brag about that great start? I haven’t. I hardly celebrate my victories because I know that the battles and the wars never end. I know the drill… I know you’re the heavy favorite. You’ve got the pedigree. You’ve got the records. You’re the most dominant Bombshell Champion we’ve had this side of Mikah the way you’ve been going this entire time. You were in that main event turning back another challenge.
Vintage Alicia Lukas, right?
You show up in a big match situation, you arrive against a challenger that is dead set on dethroning you and just that alone gives you the mental advantage that you typically have against your opponents, and then, while the likes of Steele and Zdunich and Salco among others give it their very best shot… it’s just never enough and Alicia Lukas wins once again… that’s the script right?
That’s the way things are written for our match? That I’m going to be just another one of them? That I’m going to be another statistic on the Alicia Lukas ‘pillar of dominance’? The only advantage I have against you is the home state advantage but I know I am going to need more than that to win this match. If you want to walk into this and see me as just another statistic then be my guest Alicia because guess what? I may not have the pedigree that you do, I may not have the dominance that you’ve had in this company, but that doesn’t mean that my back’s against the wall. That doesn’t mean that I can’t beat you because time and time again ever since I hit my stride in this business, all I’ve done is step up in a big match situation like this and surprise the hell out of people. Mercedes Vargas was just a sampling of that. Remember how they called that an upset? Are they going to call this one an upset too if I just so happen to pull things off with the home state crowd in my favor in a situation where I have nothing to lose and everything to gain?
I wouldn’t blame them if they did.
I know this is a big match situation… I know that the pressure is going to be on… but look into my eyes, Alicia. Do you see me cracking? Do you see me being weighed down by the pressure? Do you see the same fear in your eyes that you’ve seen in your opponents? Most of your opponents… the biggest reason why they lose to you… is because they allow you to get to them. You’ve got a hell of a loudmouth on you and a braggadocious attitude… I can’t fault you for that… not with what you’ve done in this company… not with what you’ve done in your career outside of Sin City Wrestling on top of that… in fact, I’m willing to admit that I can be just as braggadocious in my own right and should I beat you, I’m going to scream that fact from all over the rooftops because beating YOU? At THIS stage of your career? That’s something worth bragging about. Your opponents… they let your attitude… your swagger… these words that come out of your mouth… they let you get inside their heads and in some ways, you’ve already got them beat before the match even starts. I know what that’s like. In the early part of my career, that’s all I ever did and all it ever resulted in was coming up short again and again. You are the type of opponent I would always come across in my rookie year as a singles wrestler that would always get to me before that bell rang and then I’d self-destruct when I’d “prove them right”. You know how I became the wrestler that would overcome people like you, Alicia?
I turned off the noise.
I know what you’ve accomplished and impressive as it may be, I’m not going to go into this match on Sunday awestruck and feeling out of my element. I’m not going to go into this match feeling overwhelmed and that I can’t beat you. Someone like Bobbie Dahl or Bella Madison… with all due respect to their abilities… that’s the sort of thing someone like them would do, but not me. You’ll be the toughest test of my Sin City Wrestling career and one of the toughest I’ve had in my career PERIOD… but that noise? I’m tuning it out. I’m not going to listen to all the chatter about you, or all the hype of the people surrounding you, or hell… even though you’ve long earned the right to gloat and boast about what you’ve done, I’m not going to listen to a word of it. You’re a standard bearer… but standard bearers don’t scare me.
Because in OCW?
Beating the supposed standard bearers… that’s all I ever did. Different company, sure. A clearly inferior company to this one, absolutely but I was compiling the reputation of being such a big time standard bearer killer before I even got here and I would beat them because I’d shut off their fifth rate, amateur hour, sexist, half-dimensional noise that they threw at me with every chance they got.
I used to be the girl that would conform to expectations… but not anymore. I create and conform to those of my own. All that being said, I know that I can beat you… and I know that I WILL… even if I just might be the only person in this division that believes that I will… because defying expectations is all I do… even those of my own family. But the advantage that I have… that will make a difference in the end… it’s not the home state advantage as much as I love the fans that I have here… no… it’s an advantage called “failure”. What? Surprised that a word so negative can be used with such a positive connotation? As I said before, Alicia, I have nothing to lose with this match and as a woman and as a wrestler I have long grown past the point of being afraid of failure because failure is how I became what I am today. Should I lose… should I fail… against you this weekend, it’s not going to destroy me… it’s only going to delay the inevitable and it’s only going to build the future world bombshell champion that I know deep down in my soul I am beyond good enough to be someday. But should YOU lose? What’s that going to be like for you? With all your career accomplishments… for all you’ve done in this company… failure is few and far between for you and that… Alicia… is your biggest Achilles heel. That’s why I’m going to win on Sunday: because I know failure better than you know failure. I don’t know how afraid you are of failure or even if you are at all but what I know is that one way or another, I’m braver against failure than you are.
All that dominance…
All those big wins…
All those records… in this company and in others…
You’ve got to live up to all that. But I don’t. Advantage? Me.
Failure… it probably stings far worse for you knowing all that reputation on your shoulders that you carry around. Advantage? Me.
For all the big names you’ve beaten in this company… and then for you to lose to someone like me? The question isn’t whether or not that would bother you… the question is how much?
That’s a question I look forward to hearing you answer when I “pull the upset” on Sunday and I use that phrasing very loosely mind you.
So may the best woman win on Sunday… on a night where so many answers will be revealed… for both of us…
I maintain my cold, determined, confident demeanor as I shut off the camera and begin my final preparations for the big match situation I’m about to face in Tucson.
