[Mark Ward]

 Post all roleplays for this match here.

Limits: 1 roleplay per week, 10,000 max

Good luck!

[DistortedAngel]

 “Believe it or not, I'm stronger than any belief, stereotype, profile, or idea you have of me. I'm driven and self-made with a perception unique to my own. You'll hate that and say I'm not special. I'll allow you to believe it because deep down, you already know I am.”
― Charles Lee




Grizzly Parker’s Office Trailer
Rockport, TX
12.05.2001
4:47pm



Troublemakers. Vagabonds. Undesirables

Graham ‘Grizzly’ Parker had seen his fair share of society's worst come crawling in hopes of making some quick money, a quicker escape or an easy lifestyle banging rats and scamming rubes… Mostly though, it was a bit of all of the above blended into a shitty mixture of minor felons with home done tattoos who weren’t hard enough to peddle drugs but too lazy to work a checkout without needing a smoke break every 15 minutes.
Dime a dozen, and worth half as much.

They’d come in full of piss and vinegar, overacting trying to prove they belonged. You know, as if a prerequisite of being ‘carny’ was simply acting like a scumbag on a 4 day meth binge. They’d try to speak kizarn, calling everyone marks as if they weren’t the biggest one themselves.
No, most didn’t get it- they just wanted to be big time hustlers like it was just a get rich quick scheme with all hype and no substance. No-one ever got rich from this shit, Grizz contemplated while trying to brush down the wiry hairs protruding at odd angles from his overgrown beard, there were no gold mines or money pits in this world.

Nothing guaranteed and nothing owed.

“That is quite the ask…”

She looked so small in the chair across from him, although maybe that was his own size impeding his judgement- at 6’4 and pushing 260lbs there was a reason he had been bestowed the name ‘Grizzly’ in his career in professional wrestling and one that stuck long after it all went rather abruptly to shit. She couldn’t have been more than 5’4, maybe 100lbs soaking wet although he suspected the chip on her shoulder was probably 10lbs of that based on how she carried herself.
Thick red hair that fell around her face drew out the freckles strewn across a slightly crooked nose, however it was her eyes that had caught him most off guard- clear in the most peculiar shade of blue, if it could even be called that. Something about them seemed so sad and yet determined like she carried the weight of something she should have been too young to bear.

“You gave most of the assholes out there a chance.”

Grizz couldn’t help but chuckle in agreeance, knowing her observance was spot on. Most would only last a few days, barely long enough for Grizz to even bother remembering their names- only the stories of the shitty stuff they’d try to pull. Some would try to impress pretty young underages looking to rebel before taking them behind a tent with the expectation there’d be high fives and congratulations all round, others would try to greedily line their pockets in hopes they might slip through the cracks and that their count wouldn’t be checked.
It was said that there was no honour among thieves, but these days it seemed like the supposed thieves were the only ones left practicing it.

“Can’t deny that.”

She had told him her name was Amber, but that most people just called her Red. Thirteen years old with her whole life packed away in a duffel bag resting by her feet- god, it made him wanna throw this shitty society into the sun and watch it burn to ash just seeing such a young girl already so… cynical.
‘Society wants to be fooled, I want to learn the smoke and mirrors’, that's what she had told him thoughtfully, ‘the world is far more interesting when you are the only one who can make sense of others' confusion’ she had quipped.
He wanted to dislike her, if only so he had a reason to say no… how tragic it was for a thirteen year old to have a better understanding of the world than people who had lived lives twice to three times as long.

Freak shows and fortune tellers still drew cause the world wanted to believe in the absurd, that appreciating oddities made them far more cultured than the yeast infection they were trying to hide from their significant others.
Being a spectator made people feel important- like the carnival was there solely for them and it's part of the reason professional wrestling had taken hold so strongly.
Oh, how they had all forgotten such humble beginnings...

Grizz had loved the profession from his first day till the day he was blackballed in shame, exiled from a world he fought so hard to build because he was guilty until he was unable to prove innocence. It was his headline, his first love and his pet project- night after night they’d put on shows and invite locals to test their luck and see if it were all as ‘fake’ as they would so loudly proclaim.
At no point was his smile greater, missing tooth and all, than when those same loudmouths begged for reprieve in front of a baying, bloodthirsty crowd.
Now, for the first time in 27 years, he was questioning himself and his devotion to the art form as a young redhead asked for an opportunity to be a part of it.

“You’re hesitating. You give opportunities to everyone right? Second chances and clean slates- yeah I’ve heard some of those scumbags bragging… A few easy dollars, a quickie with the next trailer park Barbie in a short enough mini skirt for her age not to matter.”

Amber paused, softening her expression into something more contemplative.

“They want an easy ride, I want to learn- so what makes them better than me?”

Grizz wasn’t equipped to answer that question, not emotionally at least, nor was it something he wanted to reflect on for longer than necessary. He saw too much of his own daughter in her- fiery, passionate and entirely reckless… It broke his heart to even consider that his own daughter could ever be in a place like this, asking the same questions to someone without real answers.
He was getting old, the salt and pepper reflecting back in the mirror said as much, however it was the moral fibres tugging where dollar signs previously ruled that put things into perspective.

“They ain’t… That's why.”

It wasn’t an answer, hell he wasn’t even really aware of the words falling from his lips until they seemed to hit the floor. Amber shook her head in defiance, clearly frustrated by the brick wall she’d seemed to be banging her head against.

“You got fire, you got spirit and be damned if you aren’t more motivated than any of the other shitbags pretending like they care beyond getting paid- but you’re underage, you’re a goddamn liability. This is my livelihood sweetheart, that might not mean much to you but at the end of the day it's my ass on the line and frankly? I refuse to be responsible for you being found in a ditch in the middle of nowhere over a petty disagreement.”

A pause fell between them, heavy like they’d both just been breathing lead.  

“Go home Amber. Go home and hug whoever you’ve got and hope they never let go.”

Grizz tried to avert eye contact, unable to stand his soul being dragged through every synapse a moment longer- however Amber maintained her steely gaze as her tone turned cold, drenched in moxie.

“If you won’t give me a chance then some other piece of shit promoter will…”

Neither of them spoke for far too long, her words hanging in the air unpleasantly. Both of them knew the connotation and both didn’t dare be the one to break the stalemate and show their hands.

“A chance. Just one… Give me the chance to fuck up if you want to be proven right so badly.”

He didn’t want to be proven right. Never in his life had he wanted to be more wrong about something, about someone. She spoke with a quiet desperation that tore through his chest and all he wanted to do was throw his hands in the air and yell obscenities to whatever higher power hated him so fucking much.
She reminded him of his daughter Cassidy, of his ex-wife Sadie, of every lost opportunity and chance for a better existence that he’d squandered along the way- had she even blinked in the past two minutes, he wasn’t even sure he was breathing anymore.

Amber wanted to scream however her voice got lost somewhere around her tonsils and left her with little more than a laboured sigh to cross the threshold. She couldn’t even sit still, her hands wrung until they were red and painful. Grizz frowned, the furrow of his brow deepening the leathered skin into angry ravines.

“Jesus fucking Christ, so help me if this goes tits up…”

Every syllable felt squeezed out, tinged in uncertainty.

“One chance. You get homesick- find your own way. Screw around like all these other douchebags- you may as well start walking. Steal from us or fuck me over- you’ll be wishing for that ditch I mentioned earlier.”

What was supposed to come off as intimidating, a last ditch effort perhaps to be convincing, glanced off the redheads facade as an easy half smile crossed her features. Grizz had been expecting some sort of gratitude, a kind word or show of appreciation if only to ease his preemptive sense of guilt however there was no exuberance, no outward celebration- just a fucking cheeky smile. God, he was already regretting the decision…

“Oh, I guess I better give this back then.”

Casually, bordering on lazily, Amber rummaged in her jeans pocket before laying a heavy looking silver watch- the face had been scratched to hell and the metal had long since lost the best of it's lustre from years of heavy wear. Grizz quickly snatched it up with instant recognition and realization that he had been left with little more than a heavy tan line where the watch would normally have rested.
An inscription on the back confirmed the ownership despite having almost been worn out from years of wear rubbing against sweat and oil in the skin, however the words ‘Daddy’ and ‘Love Cassidy’ could be scarcely made out while the rest had become illegible at best and incomprehensible at worst.

Maintaining her coy half smile, Amber anticipated the question with an answer before Grizz could muster the words, adding in a vague shrug just for show.

“Earlier, when we shook hands- you complimented my grip for my size. Figured if you said no, at least I had your watch… Guess it made sense at the time.”

Everyone wanted to be fooled. Bewildered. They just weren’t aware of it.

“Why do you wanna do this… I mean really…”

Amber took a breath that seemed to suck the remainder of the air from the room, she could almost hear the watches second hand ticking as Grizz snapped it back around his wrist. Tick. Tick. Tick. Thunderous yet entirely inside her own head.

“... I wanna learn how to disappear.”



******


“Second chances. Third chances. Fourth chances.

How many exactly do you want Myra? Don’t get me wrong, I think it's fucking wonderful that you found a place willing to look past all your obvious narcissism and overt need to play the victim card like it's a black American express. I think it's phenomenal that you found yourself a little niche where you can be overlooked and ignored once the novelty wears off, when you don’t squeak quite as loudly every time you get punched to the point all the mongrels lose interest in kicking you around.

I’m real happy for you.

I’ll be happier though when I move past you.

See, I wanna like you.

Honestly.

I wanna be like, ‘yeah that Myra Rivers chick is pretty cool and I don't wanna knock her teeth out as much as other people’, oddly specific I know. It's just that… It's just that I can’t.
Maybe it's a personality flaw in me, maybe it's the massive hypocrite in you- I guess we’ll never know but when it comes down to it, you just irritate the ever loving fuck out of me.

You have all this potential, all this talent- you walk into places and you turn heads and then you take all that good will and praise and you fuck everyone around you dry with it, you ram it so far down peoples throats that you take their gargles and splutters as a form of consent… then you wonder why people dislike you?

Yeah, I don’t get it either.

It's not even that part that really irritates me though, the other stuff is rather inconsequential- you know, like your current win loss record.
What irritates me is what you do next and why I think your hypocrisy would get you stoned.

You take that dislike, the irritation, the disappointment and you feed it into your trauma, you justify your bullshit with everyone's disdain.
You have this perfectly decent clean slate and you smear it with the remains of your trauma then blame it all on the fact that people think you’re a piece of shit. Know why they think that Myra? Cause you fucking act it and then call everyone else out for mentioning it.

Shocking, I know.

You relive your trauma cause it makes you feel validated in the way you feel- hell I get it, I’ve laid awake at night for years praying I don’t sleep so that the nightmares don’t get me, I spent almost a decade trying to drag myself out from the emotional mire just cause I can no longer stomach the taste of quicksand.
I continue to do thing that haunt me cause it's the only skill set I fucking have.
I get it Myra, I get it more than you’ll ever give credit for- which is fine cause I don’t need you telling me how okay or not it is to feel.

You’ll tell me yours is different though, that I don’t understand.
How could I, or any other pleb, possibly feel the way you have cause woe is fucking Myra Rivers- woe is Myra Rivers cause she can’t catch a break, cause the world looks down it's nose at her, cause she just wants to make good but can’t help sticking her face into an angry hornets nest before complaining it's their fault she got stung.
You wanna wallow in your misery, but you don’t want anyone to acknowledge how much you enjoy it.

It's called emotional masturbation, and like the regular kind, no one needs that on their wrestling program.

Whether you like it or not- you always have choices, and you keep making them. Your poor attempts at decision making don’t come down to others opinions- I’ll tell you to jump off a cliff but you can’t blame me when you actually do it.
That's the difference between us- aside from the fact I’m really just that much better than you at basically everything this industry has to offer.
I’ve been chewed up and spit out more times than a piece of gum in a homeless camp, thrown away cause I didn’t fit the mold of what people around me wanted- fuck it, I still don’t fit that mold… Know what I do though?
I move on Myra. I pick my shit up, I dust myself off, I say thanks for the kick in the ass and I move on my merry fucking way.

We’ve all gone through shit, what defines us is how we get past it. It doesn’t make you special to play groundhog day with your pain, it makes you disappointing and mediocre.
You want pity and sympathy just so you can throw it back in peoples faces, telling them you don’t need it when it's the only thing holding you together. Can’t say i’m surprised though considering the name change to Rivers, after all… Cowardice and narcissism, like water, are always drawn to the lowest point.

Comparing us and our approaches to wrestling are like comparing apples and oranges- except in this case it's like apples and… well, trash.

Notice I haven’t brought up Carnage? That's deliberate. Figured you’d have that covered, you’d have enough to say about how I only won cause of my stablemates and that it's all rigged against you cause you weren’t in cahoots with the right people.
How about you take that argument and throw it in a flaming dumpster, then jump in after it…

What you forget, which I presume is very obviously deliberate and the reason I’m about to blow so many holes in your argument, you'd think I’d just searched it on Pornhub, literally every one of my wins is without run in. Without interference. Without someone in my corner telling me how to do my damn job. Without needing to have my existance validated everytime someone made me look stupid.
My record over there is 22 and 4- that's not a typo, that's your eyesight… Get it checked.

In case you forget, or in case you missed my match with Millie Vanillie last week- I don’t fucking lose very often, especially not to people too goddamn ignorant to make an arguement that doesn’t centre around their inability to be logical.
That's not to say I’m unbeatable- it's been done plenty of times but it's always to people who earn it, you have deserved it cause they were better… Not cause they pissed and moaned that the world is so very unfair.

Life sucks and then you die.

Been there, done that. Got bored and stood up.

You are so far from your glass ceiling and yet all you wanna do is complain that it exists, that instead of breaking through it and proving yourself- you’d rather just curl up and plug your fingers in your ears in hopes that maybe if you wish hard enough it’ll all just go away.
I came here for a clean slate too, and I plan on making the most of it- I’ve lost track of how many chances I’ve been given but it's surely more than I deserve, the way I see it… I’m one good shot to the head away from being taken behind the garden shed and having a slug put between my eyes.
Fuck knows it might be the only thing that might keep me down.

You and I, we’re both nearing the end of our careers- not because we want to, but because it's just the way we are. How many more times do you think you can do this, build yourself up and let everyone else down before you realize it just isn’t worth the effort anymore?
Probably about the same amount of times I can bleed before the doctors refuse to give me another fucking transfusion cause there will be more of others peoples blood in me than my own and apparently my mangled insides don’t agree with it.

Fuck it, I told myself I’d play nice this time and look what happened… I nearly pulled a Myra and said ‘look what you made me do’, but I resisted cause the low hanging fruit just isn’t as fun when it's so plentiful.
So you know what, call me all the names you can fathom and tell me all the ways I can go fuck myself like that's somehow innovative, tell me that trash promotion I’m champion of doesn’t mean shit like that foul-mouthed ice-cream hater Jessie didn’t pull that one from her shallow bag of tricks already.

I’m begging you to prove me wrong- give me a reason to believe you aren’t that generic, Wal-Mart branded, dime store version of me that you’re trying so hard to replicate… or even better, just go home Myra.

Go home while your legs still work you silly bitch, and leave all this fighting nonsense to those of us who can actually throw a punch.”

[Myra Rivers]

 “It was supposed to be the last company that I ever wrote for…” I wrote as I was in a deep reflective mood, writing things down inside of a journal while I sat quiet and alone in my Saxon hotel room. Some feelings of emptiness and bitterness swept me as I continued to reflect on Carnage Wrestling, the most recent company that I had competed in prior to arriving in Sin City Wrestling. “I don’t hate the company. I wouldn’t even be writing about it now if my next opponent didn’t trigger any flashbacks to it for better or worse, but when you think about the long, year and a half journey that I spent there as ‘Myra Lynwood’, it really makes you wonder where things went wrong, why things went wrong, what should I have done differently…

I took a pause, instantly feeling some regrets. Still, my composure was such that I continued to write.

“When I arrived in August of 2018, I had just left GCW. I was about a year removed from UWA. I went into Carnage looking to relive some of those GCW days… where the most evil person in wrestling as I was at the time was going to walk in, take over, dominate, win a few more world titles and completely change everything that company was about. Note that this was my mindset at the time, it would never be a mindset of mine now. I was willing and determined to rebuild a career that had stagnated at the time and I was willing to do anything to get there… even if that meant working with Andrew Watts…”

Writing down the name ‘Andrew Watts’ definitely caused me to roll my eyes. It was already sickening enough to know that he had wrestled for Sin City Wrestling in the past.

“...the Sinners… GOD, I was desperate. But I did what I had to do. That anti-Paragon stable that had formed was supposed to ‘take over’. Andrew Watts. Take over. Laugh. Out. Loud. Anyway, I became a tag team champion with Nova Sinclair in about six weeks, defeating two members of Paragon.

Remember that word.

Paragon.

It’ll be a key part of the story!

I was a tag team champion, my 16th overall championship, my 4th tag team championship and I felt like the Sinners were on their way. Life’s good, right?

Try a sudden, life changing curveball putting a wrench into things…”

I stopped writing in the journal that I was putting together, thinking about how I was going to publish this chapter of a book that I wanted to publish at some point in the future. During this pause, I flashed back to that life changing curveball I had just mentioned in my writing…

October 2018

“This is SO beneath you, Myra!!!”

Another night, another fight with my younger sister Adrianna who had long hated what I had become during those years when I was among the most hated wrestlers in the business. She had always believed in the wrestler that I was in the first half of my career, even if she had been long gone for about three years. At this point, I wasn’t caring one bit about the role model that I used to be. I was so deep in the dark. Beneath my defiant, dark, self-centered exterior was a professional wrestler and a woman in a hell of a lot of pain. I didn’t want to express that pain. I didn’t want to express how inadequate I had been feeling as a professional wrestler for the prior five years. I had just wanted to take the shortest of shortcuts possible to get to another world championship and to the top of the world just like I felt as if I was entitled to be.

“Shut up, Adrianna. Why do you ALWAYS have to nag at me? Newsflash, the Myra that you knew from years ago is GONE! She’s BEEN gone for more than three years now. I don’t care that I won the tag team championships by nefarious means. The mission is what matters and that mission is making sure that PARAGON doesn’t exist anymore.”

“How can you keep going like this, Myra?” Adrianna was raising her voice at me, clearly showing a funny way of being concerned for me. “I thought when you left UWA last year… you were going to change. You couldn’t stand being in the shadow of someone else and following someone else’s lead… yet, there you are following the lead of ANDREW WATTS! You’re BETTER than that! You’re SO much better than him!”

“I’m using him…” I said with a scoff. “I wasn’t going to be just some newcomer that was going to be forgotten about. I’m just doing what I have to do to make an impact and I already have.”

“Right… because double agent worked out SO WELL with UWA…”

“Can you just SHUT UP already?”

“I thought with the way you left GCW… with leaving with your head held high… with respecting the opponent you beat on the way out… that there was hope… for the sister I knew and loved to come back…”

I had just about had enough with my sister at this point and I grabbed her by the shoulders, pressing her against the wall.

“You are SO lucky you’re my sister… because if you WEREN’T my sister… and if I didn’t promise my mother in a prayer 10 years ago after I met you that I would take care of you… then I would beat the shit out of you! I’M the only one that matters here, okay? I do what I want! I run this the way I want! I don’t care about the values and traditions I was trained on. Those made me WEAK and if you say otherwise… I’ll…”

“But cheating to win tag titles and following someone else’s lead isn’t weak? I really hope you’re not completely gone. I don’t know how much more of this I can stand.”

“You know what, screw my mother. Why don’t I…”

I was quickly and suddenly interrupted by the doorbell ringing. I grunted in frustration and I let my sister go as I reluctantly bolted toward my front door. Without even looking at who was there, I opened the door with so much anger.

“WHAT?” I screamed without even seeing who it was.

“Department of Public Safety” an officer-resembling woman told me. “I have some important news about your daughter…”

This calmed me down and made me forget about the argument with Adrianna.

“Is… she okay…?” I asked nervously.

“She’s fine… but her father has died of his brain tumor… and you’re her only living parent now…”

My eyes widened in shock upon hearing the news. It was at this moment that the darkness within me, that drove me to be the most manipulative, selfish, egotistical woman I had ever been without a care in the world, began to fade. I had taken my life outside of the ring for granted and deep down within me, I knew that karma had responded in the most improbable of ways…

Present Day

Snapping out of my flashback, I continued writing in the journal.

“Kimberly’s father passing away changed everything…” I wrote. “...the next day, she was at home with me and I’ve been doing the best I can to raise her ever since. For once, I couldn’t think about me anymore. She didn’t know I was a wrestler… not for another six months at least… but my conscience completely fluctuated between doing the right thing for my daughter and putting myself and my needs ahead of her. As time went on, I couldn’t… in good conscience… continue how I was. At the same time I was dealing with this, the Sinners fell apart quickly because Nova bolted from the company and I was stuck with a wrestling student I was training who had ZERO mainstream experience as a partner, Andrew Watts became a big bust (not the first time this has happened), and by the end of 2018… there were no more Sinners… and I had Paragon breathing down my neck for a rematch. I knew that I had the odds against me… something I wasn’t used to. How in the world was I going to remain a tag team champion against the machine of the company with an inexperienced rookie by my side?

The answer?

I didn’t.

Paragon won.

I knew then… that I couldn’t continue to carry on the way I was carrying on anymore…

December 2018

“I’m so sorry….” I told Adrianna with tears in my eyes. I was swept up in regret from all of the horrible things I had done in my career for the last three years. “...what have I been doing with myself for the last three years?”

Adrianna sat next to me, stunned yet supportive considering that the words “I’m sorry” were words that she never thought she’d hear from me. She’d continue to listen as I walked through all the awful things I had done during the darkest part of my career.

“I’ve pushed SO many people away… I permanently ruined my friendship with the best friend I ever had when I cheated on Kimberly’s father with my best friend’s boyfriend... and then I tried to run her out of professional wrestling…

I took two bright young women in Andrea and Chelsea as my proteges and I RUINED them…”

“Not Andrea… necessarily…” Adrianna reminded me.

“Do you realize how AWFUL I treated Andrea? I’m SHOCKED that she’s even in wrestling at ALL, let alone doing what she’s doing in OCW. Look at Chelsea though… her career has gone down in FLAMES… and it’s all because of ME! I abused those two… and I know that it’s not who I am but… I’d been so broken for so long and… I can’t carry on like this anymore. I don’t want to live in darkness for the rest of my career because I know at some point, Kimberly is going to get older and she’s going to know about ALL of this and… I could NEVER imagine her being so broken up over her own mother being a monster… I… I have to stop carrying on like this… and I have to do it today…”

Adrianna and I exchanged a big embrace. As the tears fell, the darkness within me melted away.

“You have a LONG road to redemption ahead…” Adrianna said. “But I know that you can do it. Somehow, someway, you’re going to do it. I knew you were going to come around someday and I’m so happy that you finally did.”

“I have to be a good mom…” I told my sister. “I have to be a role model for Kimberly. I can’t let her down… not again… I need to be the woman that I want her to grow up to be…”

“You will Myra…” Adrianna told me. “You will…”

When the dust settled, the horrible person I had been for the prior three years was gone. The road to recovery… and the road to redemption… was about to begin.

Present Day

Remembering the night I had broken down and decided not to be “evil” anymore actually caused my own eyes to get misty. It caused me to put down the journal for a moment and reach into the drawer nearby. I pulled out a picture that I had taken a few months back with my six year old daughter and I was feeling quite regretful and sullen, almost as a piece of me was missing.

“I miss you so much…” I said to the picture before I put it down. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the journal and pen and I kept writing away.

“Kimberly brought back the light…” I wrote. “Going into 2019, I was completely refreshed. I was free from the insecurities that had caused me to be the horrible person that I was. No longer was I going to be the woman that cheated on my 2nd ex-husband. No longer was I going to be the woman that was toxic to the career and the livelihood of my 3rd ex-husband… (sidenote: I’m WORSE than Madonna on this marriage thing…) No longer was I going to be the woman that tortured Andrea Hernandez and put her through hell just to be a massive bully to someone I didn’t like… (believe me, this is the worst of my regrets now)... no longer was I going to be the woman that abused Chelsea LeClair and ruined her career with said abuse for multiple years… (she has stated that she’ll never forgive me)...

I was going to be the (no pun intended) paragon of virtue that I was before… the woman that fought for what was right for the business… the role model that my mother was to me... the woman that fought for the very values and dignity of this business. God, winning a match fair and square for a change and qualifying for the Starmaker ladder match was an AMAZING feeling. I felt like I was back… I felt like I was fighting my inner darkness and that I had a chance to win. Consider this…

Back in 2008, I had my big breakthrough moment in a ladder match with a title shot at stake…

This Starmaker ladder match… it was essentially the same thing. Nearly 11 years later. Same situation as that breakthrough moment. It felt like DESTINY… I was going to win this ladder match all over again and I was going to be a five time world champion the RIGHT WAY and finally prove to myself once and for all that I really am one of the greatest wrestlers of my generation…

Sadly…

It was too good to be true.

Fucking Bryan Crucifix…”

I was feeling some of that bitter anger that I would experience quite a bit, more than I’ve publicly admitted, during my Carnage Wrestling career.

“...I felt like that moment was taken from me…” I wrote. “It was an empty, overshadowed feeling. Kimberly had just learned that I was a professional wrestler for a living and I dedicated that match to her and I felt HORRIBLE for her that I couldn’t win. Bless her heart… she inherited her father’s… such a nurturing and forgiving heart… mine though… it wasn’t in the best shape.

Little did I know at the time that the ‘empty, overshadowed feeling’ I experienced when I lost that Starmaker ladder match would be the norm for me while I was there…”

Again, I took a pause from writing as I reflected upon that empty feeling that I would come to know time and time again. Once again, I was finding myself in a flashback mode…

February 2019

It was the morning after that Starmaker ladder match and I was still feeling empty. Kimberly’s forgiveness helped but there was still a part of me that was really feeling lost. I knew that I was fighting the darkness within me that was trying to make a comeback. I was doing the best that I could to ignore those whispers from the dark.

“You’re not good enough…” a whisper had told me. “...you can’t succeed in Carnage Wrestling.”

“Maybe your father was right about you…” a second whisper in my mind had told my conscience. “...maybe you’re always going to be the failure that lets everyone down. You don’t stand a chance at becoming a world champion again.”

I sighed, trying everything I could on god’s green earth to put the thoughts aside. I was alone, walking outside on a cloudy morning, looking down at the black Nike sneakers I had worn that day as I trudged through a park.

“What are you going to do now, Myra?” the dark whisper had asked me. “How much longer can you fail your daughter? You need to make a move… you need to do something. If you don’t do anything, you’ll be irrelevant. No title pictures for you! Come on! Give in. You’ve done it before. If nothing stopped you from leaving Kimberly behind with her father three years ago, then you’re not above ANYTHING…”

“Shut up… shut up… SHUT UP!!!!!!!” I yelled out loud.

“Are you feeling alright?” I heard behind me. I turned to see Scott Lockley Jr., the son of my wrestling trainer, looking at me. “You’re still not taking yesterday’s loss too hard, are you?”

“I don’t know what to do…” I admitted to Scotty. “I have to keep up the good fight… I just don’t know how. That Starmaker seemed like my ONLY chance. How do I pull through this? What can I do so I don’t just… you know… fade away… back into the dark?”

“You’re going to have to take the initiative…” Scotty told me. “If you don’t want to be unnoticed, then take a stand. Fight for something. My father trained you to always seek out opportunity when all seems lost… and I hope for your sake you remember how he trained you on that because of the fight you’re having? It’s a tough one. I don’t envy you, Myra. You walk a fine line. It’s tough when your worst enemy is yourself…”

“Yeah…” I admitted with a sigh. “It almost certainly is.”

Scotty had comfortably wrapped an arm around me and we walked through the park together. For me, this felt great considering that I still had people that believed in me. At the moment, I didn’t know how I was going to pull through with the fight. I just knew that I had to do SOMETHING to stay in the picture.

March 2019

“I’m not fading away…” I remember telling my future boyfriend Jason Schneider as we hung out at a seafood restaurant in Baltimore. This particular night was very important for me in my journey to redemption. Having moved past the gutting heartbreak and the devastating emptiness that I experienced after the result of that Starmaker ladder match, one of the longest friends that I’ve ever had in professional wrestling looked at me with a smirk on his face, a smirk that I knew all too well.

“You shouldn’t…” he told me. “The Myra that I knew back in PRW wouldn’t let it happen.”

“I made such an awful mistake years ago when I let my last match pre-pregnancy get to me the way I did…” I told Jason. “I could’ve made the same mistake after the Starmaker, but I didn’t. I realize how strong I am and how strong my own daughter makes me.”

“It’s that strength that I’ve always admired about you…” Jason said in response. “...I knew that you were going to find a way to pull through.”

“I’m going to be alright as far as Carnage Wrestling goes…” I said. “I’m going to force myself into the picture. I’m not going to be just another wrestler on the roster while the same old, same old dominate that scene. I’m going to do everything it takes to ensure that I get myself out there and I’m not going to allow the status quo to swallow me whole…”

Of course, it bears mentioning how I didn’t realize at the time that for essentially my whole entire Carnage career that getting myself noticed and out there would truly be a struggle for me.

“I’m going to use some Carnage points…” I said, referencing the points system Carnage once used for title shots. “...I’m going to cash in a few of those points to face Paragon’s Eli Goode for the Ultraviolent Championship. Yes, “ultraviolence” isn’t my main thing… but I can do it… and I’m going to win that title…”

“Why don’t you just go for the big one?” Jason asked. “You know you’re good enough to win that on any given night.”

“You’re right… but a challenger has already signed, sealed and delivered” I responded. “I don’t like Crucifix at all for the empty feeling he left me with. But at the same time, I’m not going to disparage his victory by adding myself to the match. It’d be selfish of me and it would disrespect what he accomplished. So… getting back at Paragon for what happened with the tag team titles by taking that away from Eli Goode? I’ll take it…”

“That’s the Myra I remember…” Jason said with a smirk. “...but, while we’re here. Feel like sharing a secret with me?”

“About what?” I asked with a chuckle.

“Paragon” Jason said. “It seems… personal. You’d fit in with them if you joined them… but… you don’t like them at all… do you?”

“Between you and I…” I said… looking around the seafood place to ensure that there wasn’t anyone near. “...no…” I responded with a whisper while shaking my head. “As wrestlers? I don’t mind them at all. They’re great at what they do. But the way they carry themselves…”

I took a pause and pursed my lips for a few moments, letting out an annoyed sigh. I had been in Carnage for seven months at this point and I was already seeing the roots of what the company was about. I definitely wasn’t liking it but I was doing the best that I could in order to contain this disdain that I had for Paragon… a disdain that would only grow with time.

“It’s like they’re the end all, be all of the company isn’t it?” Jason asked me with a laugh. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone if you feel… you know… strongly about it…”

“...yeah… that holier than thou attitude…” I continued to confess. “It rubs me the wrong way. They have all the spotlight and it’s about time someone at least put a dent in that. I beat Eli fair and square and win the Ultraviolent title from him… then I leave no doubt. I may have changed and I may have seen the light again… but light or dark… I didn’t come to Carnage Wrestling to play second fiddle to Paragon, I’ll tell you that much right now. I’m determined to take a swing for the fences and deliver…”

Later that night, once the bright lights came on, I had made the announcement that I was cashing in some Carnage Championship Points to take on Eli Goode in April of 2019 for the Ultraviolent Championship. It was a decision that I knew I had to make and it was a no brainer because I knew that without making that move, I would fade away from the spotlight. I wasn’t about to disappoint my daughter by doing so. I had that championship match marked on my calendar. I had counted down the days. I even trained at a level I hadn’t trained at since my PRW days years prior. It was all or nothing for me… a match that I had to win…

...for my daughter, most importantly…

But also…

For the fight…

I wasn’t going to let Paragon beat me again… not like they had done with the tag team championships…

And on that fateful night against Eli Goode in April of 2019?

I didn’t.

Championship number 17 was in my grasp.

God was that the best feeling in the world…

April 2019

I opened the door to my Miami home and I walked in, setting down my bags, walking into nothing but silence. I put down my stuff and it certainly felt weird. But nevertheless, I heard Adrianna scream “CONGRATULATIONS” as she jumped out from behind the couch and exploded a small confetti popper! Her humor made me chuckle as I opened the top bag and I pulled out the Ultraviolent Championship I had won from Eli Goode days prior, slinging it over my shoulder. My sister and I exchanged a hug!

“I did it, Adri…” I told my sister. “I finally proved that on any given night, I can be a true champion! It’s been a LONG time since I’ve won a championship fair and square like this and this has got to be one of the greatest feelings in the whole world!”

“You weren’t going to let the Starmaker get you down… and you didn’t…” I heard Scott Lockley Jr. say from behind the kitchen counter. He revealed himself and had a confetti popper himself, but when he activated it, nothing came out, much to his embarrassment. “...my father would be very proud of you.”

“Thanks guys…” I said with a smile, feeling like I had really beaten the darkness that had taken over me for many years before.

“And the best part about it sis…” Adrianna began to say. “You stuck it to Paragon! Taking that title from Eli is a nice little ‘fuck you’ to them! You showed them what a true pure wrestling champion is about.”

“Look… from a competitor’s standpoint, no shit it makes me happy…” I said, maintaining my smile. “...and they’re arrogant, conceited bastards and all, but they’re good at what they do. So, to be able to take a title from one of them… the RIGHT way… god it feels good…”

I paused as I felt an embrace from below. My heart filled with the purest joy imaginable when I saw Kimberly’s happy eyes look up at me. I wasted no time bending down to pick her up and hold her in my arms, along with the title slung over my shoulder.

“However…” I continued. “THIS… is the best part…”

“Mommy! You did it!” Kimberly told me. “You won the shiny!”

“I did!!!” I said, the joy of the love for and from my daughter locking the darkness away. “I did it for you! See… when you dream big and you never give up and you beat the bad guys… this is what happens!”

“I’m so proud of you sis…” Adrianna told me.

“I concur with that…” Scotty added.

“You’re back to being on top of your game…” Adrianna reminded me. “You’re back to being whole again!”

Present Day

“I could never forget that happy feeling…” I wrote in my journal. “Everything truly felt so perfect. I had made my daughter proud! I won a championship fair and square. As a little added bonus, it came against someone that belonged to a movement that I was slowly and gradually despising more and more with time.

The more they preached… the more I couldn’t stand them.

Eli… for example…

He carried himself as if he was a saint, he carried himself as one of the good ol’ boys of wrestling. I thought he seemed like someone that was a good sport and that represented the ideal values of the business. He sure as hell wanted to act like he was.

After I beat him?

He showed his… and Paragon’s… true colors to me.

He claimed that I “stole” the title… when I beat him fair and square. He claimed that I stole “HIS” title… one that belonged to me now. He went on camera and bitched about it, acting like an entitled sore loser… demanding that he get me in a submission match so he could make me tap out and take the title back…

At that moment, I lost ANY respect I had left for those bastards.

So in a sense? My next match in SCW? Against someone that is one of THEM?

Yeah… maybe it IS a little bit personal…”

My phone suddenly rang and this caused me to put down the pen and the journal one more time for the night. I saw that Adrianna was calling me on the other end. I didn’t waste any time answering the phone.

“Small world, isn’t it?” Adrianna asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked back with curiosity.

“The very reason you left ‘that old place’ coming back to you… you know… with the match you’re having at Into the Void…”

I let out a confident breath, taking it in and realizing the irony of my match with Amber Ryan.

“I want to say that I’m surprised… but deep down?” I paused, expressing a determined, yet angry look in my eyes. “...I always figured that it was inevitable. So be it.”

“Maybe it’s your chance to have the last word in that…” Adrianna suggested. “After all… ‘those people’... they were always in your way.”

Adrianna’s reminder of this brought up some old feelings of anger and being overshadowed, but not strong enough for me to really tap into those feelings.

“I’ll figure this puzzle out sis…” I said with assurance. “You know I always do. Is Kimberly doing okay?”

Changing the subject to focus on my daughter, even for a few moments, definitely sullied any old anger toward a chapter of my past.

“Yeah… she’s right here…” Adrianna responded. “And she wants to talk to you…”

My eyes lit up with joy, knowing that I was about to speak to my daughter. Adrianna put her on the phone for the next few minutes and we talked to each other, catching up on things and leaving me assured that she was okay.  

Kimberly would ask me if I was going to beat Amber Ryan at Into the Void the best way any six year old girl could ask the question.

I told her I wasn’t going to make any promises…

But I told her that I was going to do my best no matter what happened…

Amber Ryan may scare the pants off of some of the women of this division. But me, personally?

I could really give a rat’s ass about her reputation.

May 29, 2020

It was a darkening, breezy twilight back in Miami as I looked around. There were hardly any lights whatsoever as I sat, overlooking the sunset that was ahead of me. It was that daily reminder that I was getting close to the sunset of my career myself, but at this very moment, I was hardly worried about it. My mind was laser focused on the task ahead. The camera was in front of me, but I hadn’t turned it on yet. I was still forming some thoughts in my mind as I watched the calm, gentle waves tap the Miami beach shore.

“You know you want to…” I heard a darkness whisper to me in my mind. “...you want to make this all about revenge for the past… you want to purge… you want to take out a year and a half worth’s of frustration out on that bitch, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer these whispers going on in my mind at this point.

“There’s a part of you that’s bitter… and it’s okay to be bitter…” the darkness had whispered to me. “You were never going to get to where you wanted to be in Carnage. You knew that. That’s why you left. Go ahead… make it all about the past… go and get that revenge… you know you want to… you know you can… you know that you have it in you to end that woman’s career if you wanted…”

I let out a sigh, but one that was going to keep me composed. I wasn’t about to listen to that floating darkness residing in my conscience.

“I’m not going to…” I responded inside of my head. “...if I make this all about the past… if I make it all about ‘that place’... then who really wins? It’s best that I don’t give any of them the satisfaction. This is about taking the big step to get to where I need to be… for my daughter… for what I want to accomplish before that sun sets…”

The dark whispers in my mind abated… for the time being. The sun continued to set as I turned on the camera, sat back down in front of it, and began to express my thoughts.

“As my last match showed me, making the climb up the Sin City Wrestling ladder isn’t going to be easy…” I said, without any regrets whatsoever about a chapter that didn’t go my way. “...the thing is… it’s what I expected going in. I knew it was going to be tough and it’s a challenge that I welcome and there’s no way in hell I’m letting my last match get to me even if the result was far from what I wanted. But what’s up ahead though… it’s a small world, isn’t it? Yet, I look at what’s ahead… and as tempting as it is to use a recent past to fuel my motivations for this match… I’m not going to fall for it. Amber Ryan is just as much of a hyped signing as I was… if not more hyped. I’m not an idiot. I’m not exactly the coin flip favorite here… but is that going to scare me? Does that give me a reason to crumble and collapse into my own insecurities the way that Jessie Salco did before she faced Amber? It doesn’t… because I’m not Jessie Salco...  I’ve had my moments where I’ve cracked, Amber. I’m not going to hide from that. I’ve had my chapters where I was far from an upstanding citizen in this business, I own that. I wasn’t surprised that you walked in and beat Jessie… it was something that I expected. You know what else I expected?

Your holier than thou attitude that you carried into that match with her. Yes… that holier than thou attitude that’s SO familiar to me because of how long I dealt with it.

It’s that type of attitude that in the first half of my career, I would constantly shatter and humble. Feels good, doesn’t it, Amber? To walk in and face one of the more notorious bombshells in the history of this company, act like you know everything about wrestling, win, and have that rocket strapped to your ass with all the hype that’s coming from it. You feel like you’re on top of the world. You feel like you’re untouchable. You feel like you’re invincible. You feel like every opponent that you’re going to face is beneath you and inferior to you. I don’t need a crystal ball to know that you’re going to feel the same way about me and you know what? Go ahead. Bring that same attitude that you brought against Jessie. I dare you to treat me the same way that you did Jessie. Go ahead! I welcome it! I’ve accomplished more than enough in my career to know that there isn’t a damn word that you say about me or a damn feeling that you feel or express about me that’s going to bring me down! I’ve met FAR too many people like you in my 12 years of being a mainstream professional wrestler. But you call JESSIE the “vanilla gal”, right?

Look at you, nose in the air… going after a woman like Roxi Johnson right off the bat and thinking that you’re going to win everything ever just so easily. While I respect the fact that you’re one of the few people in the old place that has the guts to wrestle anywhere outside of Baltimore, you’re going to find out real quick that this isn’t Baltimore. You don’t get to come in here, with that big shot attitude and have the world handed to you. No, it doesn’t work like that in this company and I knew that when I signed here to start a new chapter of my career and start from the bottom again. I never, ever came in here with the expectations of shooting straight for the top and acting like I’m “hot shit” because for starters… that was “Myra Lynwood”... and “Myra Lynwood” is dead and buried along with that chapter of my career.

In before “you don’t have those expectations because you know you’re not good enough” because I KNOW that’s how you’d respond to that… being the vanilla, rank, arrogant, dime a dozen bitch you are…

Oh wait… is that the Amber Ryan vintage violent threat I hear… about how she likes to solve her problems by punching people in the face?

But Jessie is the vanilla one? Sorry honey, you may think you’re special because of everything you’ve done in your career, but to me, you’re just another bitch. Damn good at what she does, but when I look at you, I don’t see the special breed. I see just another gal from the same breed that this business has seen before. You hurt people. Yeah. And? Am I supposed to be afraid of a  big bad wolf that doesn’t exist?

Oh look at you comparing people to inanimate objects… that’s SO special, right?

Oh there you go calling someone ‘useless’ and ‘boring’. You must really like recycling, don’t you, Amber?

Oh there you go equating someone to “bait”, feeling the need to talk down to someone in the most basic bitch type of way EVER… in spite of ALL you’ve accomplished.

I want you to sit down and think about that one Amber. I may not have ever been someone that has ever had the strongest psyche in the world. I admit that my entire career, good, bad or in the middle, I have always worn my heart on my sleeve and gone with my gut rather than my head in the many matches that I have fought over the last twelve years. I’d be the first to admit that maybe my head is my weakness and I don’t run from that. I’ve fallen in some really deep shit over the years because of it… because of these moments where I’ve just fractured too easily… and I’ve done that because for YEARS… I’ve always had that chip on my shoulder. I’ve gone from place to place, pushing myself as hard as I can, expecting nothing but success and once that success is tasted, expecting myself to be the absolute BEST because I’ve always had that attitude that no matter what I do, it’s never good enough for me. I own that because I know what I’m capable of… though recently… I’ve started learning how to see things through a different glass. And you know what I see when I look through that glass and I look within myself?

I see YOU!

I see someone that reminds me FAR too much of the attitude that “Myra Lynwood” had carried for YEARS when the person that bore that name returned to the business from a two year retirement. Think I haven’t done the same thing, Amber? Walk into another company and act like I’m better than everyone? I’ve done that. I did that in what? Three different companies before I came here? I look at you and I see what I was before… I look at you and I see everything that I hate about myself because you carry that within you: I see all the symptoms of someone who is going to make a beeline for their own self-destruction, Amber. For ALL that you’ve accomplished, you STILL feel the need to talk down to people… and I already know you’re going to talk down to me like I’m nothing while trying to convince the world that I’m SO INFERIOR… I already know you’re going to feel like you’re THAT far above me… I already know you’re going to shove your trite, overplayed, vanilla nonsense down my throat telling me things that I’ve heard SO many times before…

‘You’re not special…’

‘You’re nobody’

‘You’re boring.’

‘You’re vanilla’

‘You’re so far beneath me because X, you’re so far behind me because Y…’

‘I’m going to hurt you… blah blah blah…’

Yeah, go ahead. Be predictable, Amber, because at the end of the day, that’s exactly what you are and you’re not the only one in Baltimore that carries such a holier than thou attitude either… if you know what I mean.

That’s right, Amber… FEEL the need to say those things to me. FEEL the need to open that mouth of yours and tell the world that I’m nothing. FEEL that burning, growing EGO within you push you to try to break me down and make all these empty, bullshit threats toward me that you KNOW you could NEVER follow up on even if you WERE to win this match at Into the Void… FEEL the need to try to minimize me in every single way possible… embrace it… bathe in it… I dare you to try to belittle me and say the same old shit to me… FEEL that need to do so… because guess what, honey… you EXPOSED yourself already with the shit you said to Jessie… the fact that you FELT the need to try to verbally break her down the way you did with the same old shit, the same old violent threats… LAUGH OUT LOUD, I WANNA HURT PEOPLE LAUGH OUT LOUD… it shows me that you’re NOT the confident, dominant wrestler that you so DESPERATELY want to prove yourself to be.

It’s basic psychology honey…

If you REALLY feel that grandiose about yourself, you wouldn’t need to be trying to verbally break someone down, try to minimize them as if they’re nothing, and try so DESPERATELY HARD to come off as being SO superior. If you’re THAT fucking good, Amber… what’s with the superiority complex, huh?

What’s with the need to try to proclaim right off the bat that you want to go after Roxi and “win everything”?

Am I a “low woman on the totem pole” too Amber? Oh wait… I am… in your world.

I took a pause and let out a sigh, briefly distracted by the fact that the street lights were already glimmering around me while the last ray of sunlight had already dipped below the horizon.

“Unfortunately for you, one of the earliest things that I learned in my career is that the opinions and words that other people may express toward me don’t matter… and I’m sorry honey, I’m not Jessie. I’m not the type of bitch that is going to let your stupid, piddly, worthless, vanilla-flavored words get to me so much that I’m cussing up a storm. When I first started doing this… I walked into this England-based company not knowing a damn thing about how the real world or the mainstream wrestling business worked. I had SO many people make me the butt of their jokes.

I had half the locker room mocking me over being a “loser” because I couldn’t quite get over the hump in the early going.

I had two women in particular… one of which labelled me as a “dumb Florida moron” and had tried to make it as clear as possible that I was never going to amount to anything in this business… another that said that I was in over my head and that I didn’t stand much of a chance to really be someone in wrestling…

I had ONE man in the locker room CONSTANTLY tell me that I’m shit seemingly every single day… even to the point where when I DID accomplish something special, he tried to drag it down by saying that it was against competition that was inferior to his generation…

I had all of these morons… 12 years ago… acting like I was just a joke that was always going to be one to them…

I silenced them ALL and I proved them wrong. NONE of those bastards are in the business anymore.

You want to stoop to the level of those people I wrestled with 12 years ago? Fine.

Because I know that at the end of the day, you’re only as relevant as I make you. This match is about moving up the ladder and really taking the chance to prove yourself and that’s what this is for me. This match… on a more personal note… is for me to prove who really has the power here… and spoiler… it’s not you. YOU need to carry that attitude that you carry because when you strip away the layers of everything that makes you who you are… what you’re left with at the core is a woman that knows that in her heart, she feels like she’s nothing without the business and the bright lights… what’s left is someone who has to CONSTANTLY validate herself either by carrying this obnoxious, pathetic, ME ME ME attitude… or by belittling her opponents and what? Amounting to little more than your typical high school bully?

YOU need this to validate yourself. YOU have already walked in talking about the destination that you feel you’re so grossly entitled to because you know that if you don’t reach that destination, you’re going to feel like you’re nothing. This isn’t about the love of this business for you, Amber… I know that… I know it because of the pleasure you take in hurting people. I know it because “Myra Lynwood” WAS in that place before and Baltimore only got to see that bitch that I was for the first four months I was there…

It’s not about the journey for you Amber, not like it is for me. You want to put yourself in that pressure cooker, be my guest. You want to be so focused on the destination that you’re blind to the journey, fine.

I’m at the stage of my career where it’s all about the journey… all about the love I’ve had for this business since I was seven years old. I’ve got my goals… to win a 5th world title… to win two more championships to get to 20… but I know the journey is what matters… you may want to think about that when I humble you, tear your ego to shreds and leave you… well…

Into the void…

Then again Amber… for as good as you are, for as much as you’ve accomplished… on the inside? As a professional wrestler? You already are a void…

And you know that… don’t you?

I took a bit of a confident breath, keeping my determined anger in check. Walking up to the camera, I shut it off. I knew that my words were going to have SOME kind of ripple effect. I knew that those words were going to tick her off and lead her into FURTHER being the try hard that I know she is, but when I picked up the camera and walked away, I smiled with confidence knowing that NOTHING Amber Ryan could ever say about me would EVER matter...

[DistortedAngel]

 “But remember, there are two ways to dehumanize someone: by dismissing them, and by idolizing them.”
― David Wong




Las Vegas Airport
Las Vegas, ND
26.05.2020
7:18am




Invisible in plain sight.

Amber remembered, with a faint cringe, the first time someone had referred to her in that way as if she had materialized in front of them instead of simply making her presence known. Perhaps that was the issue- differentiating those things instead of rolling them into a cliche and using that to explain everything not immediately understood.
Invisibility in its most well known form wasn’t real. It wasn’t viable- not outside the pages of a comic book or the technology of a movie studio, not outside an overactive imagination envisioning the world in simpler shades of grey.

Invisibility was for superheroes, and they weren’t real either.

Sure, when provided with the right stimulus an average person could be capable of extraordinary things. There were those born with abilities and endurances that seemed superhuman- deigned freaks and frauds alike, marvelled and disparaged simply based on their societal appropriateness.
A woman capable of setting her skin alight without suffering burns should have been awed and celebrated as someone in a cape who could jump higher and punch harder than they should- but the former is called a freak and the latter a superhero.

Yet people wondered why Amber was so goddamn cynical.

Normally she wouldn’t have chosen to sit out in the open, she felt like a sitting duck in these open spaces despite the fact she knew the paranoia was all in her head- that's why it was so potent, concentrated so deeply into an area that it starts to rot in saturation. No, Amber was firmy a creature of habit- she had to see the full breadth of the room, the exits and entries gauged and those who inhabited duly noted as though they were simply sentient furniture instead of people with thoughts and feelings about being compared to sentient furniture.
It was almost empty though- a bored female barista clearly questioning her life choices, not quite pretty enough to work the casinos but a little too much so for the streets, from a distance she seemed educated and hopeful but the spark was dulling further with every unicorn frappuccino. A navy suited and starched businessman enraptured either by the stock level changes or the funny pages, Amber liked to consider it as the latter if only to make him seem a little less generic.

And then there was Mac Bane…

Current Baltimore City Champion for Carnage Wrestling and all round pretty fucking decent guy- he’d made the trip for Climax Control with Amber, one of the few times recently it felt like they’d spent any real time together outside of Baltimore.
Were they dating? Amber wrinkled her nose at the thought of having to label it, they were consenting adults who really appreciated each other's company… in spite of the fact they had kicked the ever loving shit out of each other on more than one occasion in the ring.
He was her only singles loss since October, she had gotten her win back in March- but now she seemed to be slowly but surely losing the battle against his charm as well.

For the moment though there were more pressing matters at hand- like the fact he’d been entertaining fans for almost 20 minutes now… and he had her coffee.

At 6 foot 6 and 285lbs- he should have been quite the intimidating figure and yet he radiated a certain warmth and genuineness that Amber could never quite get her head around. He drew people in, made them feel like they were the only person that mattered and sent them back on their way with an easy smile that still sent tingles down her spine.
Didn’t change the fact, Amber silently mused, that her coffee was getting colder in his bear like hand with any second.

They were Carnage fans, animated and passionate. She wondered if they had spotted the redheaded world champion watching on with a wry smile in spite of her lack of caffeine- and whether they pretended not to. She had a reputation that seemed to permeate the space around her like a bubble, standoffish and acerbic she’d been called although she still wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not. Fiery and freezing like the second cousin to a warm puddle.

It was easier to simply not be seen and let the easy going Mac deal with the ‘civic’ duties.

She barely noticed the ‘One Man Wrecking Crew’ drop into the chair beside her until he gently placed a cup of coffee down in front of her before proceeding to half drain one of his own. Even his presence seemed to put her at ease…

Two viable exits, although one might require a little redecoration to get there.

“How the hell do you do it?”

Mac’s grin seemed to reflect her own, albeit with far more sincerity as he watched the fans excitedly chatting between themselves before piling off in the opposite direction.

“Do what exactly… Be this astoundingly good looking? It's genetic, but I’m sure you’ll get there one day.”

Sarcasm was an easy defense mechanism, automatic and armour piercing. Mac scoffed slightly, not inclined to disagree but clearly seeing through the thinly veiled attempt at distraction.

“Right, sure. I’ll work on that. In the meantime I was actually referring to you just, you know, blend in everywhere.”

Amber took a pause, picking apart each syllable in hopes there was something she might grasp onto whilst taking a deep sip of coffee and allowing the caffeine to touch her soul. Black and bitter, cause she didn’t need sweetening. The joke itself had gotten old long ago but it never stopped her making it, and besides it sounded far more cute and entertaining than being lactose intolerant.

“Well not being over 6’3 and 250lbs certainly helps my cause.”

Another pause, this time more so for effect- and what little good it might do.

“I spent a long time in my career trying to get noticed- walking around like the world owed me something. Whether it did or not doesn’t matter- the more I tried to get seen, the less it worked. It's only when I stopped focusing on that people started noticing not what I was- but what I could do.”

Resting her feet on the duffel bag at her feet, she could feel the material sink beneath them until it hit something solid. Metallic. Valuable, at least to those who believed it was.

“Don’t get many first impressions these days- I’d rather mine be based on what I can do, rather than how people presume I am cause I act like I’m a some kind of badass…”

Mac rested a hand on her thigh, his knowing smile softening. God he was so… punchable when he was trying to be adorable.

“Good thing you ain’t a badass then...”

Amber allowed herself a small chuckle, she hated how he put her at ease. She wanted to feed off the vitriol and self-loathing just like she’d always done, throw up the walls and tell the world it could go fuck itself when it tried to force its way through the facade.

“Well shit, glad I can count on you to build my ego.”

“Yes ma’am”

Mac gave her a polite nod, the same kind he’d likely give to an old woman after helping her cross a busy street- complete with shit eating grin. If he were wearing a hat, he’d have likely tipped it before she tore it from his head and threw it across the room out of spite.

There was no way in hell she deserved this man.

Maybe there was something inside him determined to stitch together unseen wounds, to prove to the world that deep inside her chest wasn’t just a black hole threatening to consume everything that loved her… She wanted to tell him to fuck off in the same breath as stealing the air from his lungs with a kiss, to cut him loose before he too got crushed under the immense pressure of her jaded life perspective.

Maybe he saw something in her that she’d lost sight of in herself long before.

Maybe he just really liked dumpster fires.

“You think too much.”

He was blunt in a spectacularly Texan way, and she appreciated that. He wasn’t wrong though, Amber had plenty of times lost hours upon hours dissecting a sentence spoken off-handedly or piecing together the perfect comeback for an insult too clever to be thought up by those she wanted to use it against.  Instead of a witty retort, Amber sipped away at her coffee, trying to pretend as though she wasn’t slightly offended by how accurate his statement was.

“Never seen a woman care so much and so little for what people think of her at the same time.”

“It's not so much I don't care, I just find it oddly amusing.”

Maybe she cared a little more than she let on. Granted, she’d never really craved the spotlight, that was a mere side effect of being particularly ambitious. She’d never sought out being famous or admired and found the idea of being someone's role model rather heinous- respect though. That was something worth earning, worth craving.
Damn, now she really wanted a cigarette.

Seemed like she was always craving something harmful to her health these days.

“Logic is beyond comprehension when people think with their emotions. Hate is far easier to grasp than recognition, and more immediately satisfying cause it fulfils something visceral. People just wanna be justified in the way they feel- even if it entirely defies reason…”

Swirling the remains of her coffee in the takeaway cup, the sloshing sound seemed diminished in comparison to the silence that had fallen between them.

“Let me put it like this- imagine if you went up to that guy over there…”

Amber pointed out the businessman with the newspaper, she could tell even several tables over that he had his attention despite the fact his eyes never left the paper. He wasn’t reading now, just trying to appear preoccupied as he readjusted his glasses while occasionally shooting cautionary glances towards the mismatched pair.
Distractedly though, his eyes always returned to the paper… Must have been a real good day for the funny pages.

“... a total stranger, and you told him I was gonna walk up to his table like an asshole and spit in his coffee. Regardless whether I do it or not, the guy already has an opinion about me based solely around something that I haven’t even done.”

A muffled laugh echoed from where the barista was idling, occasionally cleaning already sanitary surfaces in hopes the hours might pass a little quicker if her hands stayed busy, her outburst stifled further with the realization of the distance the sound had managed to carry. Clearly distressed by the idea of a hypothetical loogie floating in his latte art, the business man made a small show of neatly folding down his newspaper as though it might turn attention away from his perturbed expression and the sudden paleness of his skin.
Nervously, and with more noise than was seemingly required he shifted across three tables as though the change in distance was a contributing factor to the likelihood of requiring a hepatitis shot.

During all of this, Mac had failed dismally in hiding his delight at Amber’s odd analogy- her observations and perspective were certainly an acquired taste that many failed to receive as more than offensive and impertinent. Amber failed to react outside of a polite indifference to the unrest she’d created, instead choosing to down the remainder of her barely lukewarm coffee.

Twitching her lip, the dregs lingered on the back of her tongue for far too long…

Bitter and tepid, just the same way many would have described her.

“You know, you say these things like it makes you a bad person for noticing.”

Mac squeezed her thigh gently in reassurance.

“Are you saying it doesn’t?”

It wasn’t really meant as a question, however she framed it as such anyway. First impressions were another pigeonholing tactic- an excuse to write someone off simply for being a circle peg in a world where square holes were preferred.

“I’m saying you’re a good person- whether you realize it or not.”

Amber scoffed internally, immediately hoping that somehow the sound might not pass her lips as she curled them into a half-smile trying to pass as something more sincere. Maybe he really belieevd that- fuck, that had to mean something surely.
Being a good person was relative to the situation though, trying to define it was like herding cats… Admirable and somehow justified yet entirely useless and impossible. How many people in this industry alone validated the awful things they’d done in their lives by a sliding greyscale of ethics, the answer was far too many and Amber had never denied her status as one of them.
At least she was honest about it being a continuing trend.

Integrity didn’t make her a world champion. Ethics played no part in recognition. Decency and justice certainly didn’t bring her back from death's sweet embrace. Morality was all fine and wonderful, however it meant absolutely nothing when there was no one watching.

Ultraviolence hadn’t made her a shitty person. Nature had. Nurture had. Society had.

“... A common misconception, darl.”





******


“Paragon.

Defined as ‘a person or thing regarded as a perfect example of a particular quality’ and, or if you would prefer, ‘a person or thing viewed as a model of excellence’.

Did you know that or do you spew it just to sound provocative and get a reaction from those who do.

See I thought I’d bring that up seeing as you are so fucking hung up on it, so determined to blame and demean something that you swore you put behind you- hang on, why does this feel like deja vu…
Seriously though, I was content to allow sleeping dogs to lie, but you wanna come around and kick up a bunch of dust- well, consider this a lesson.
Paragon, for those not so much in the know, is a stable in Carnage that I happen to be a large part of, fun fact is that I actually was one of the founders and now… Now I lead it.

You’d think by Myra’s words that Paragon is literally Satan. Made her life a living hell, drove her off of her little self made pedestal, made her feel like the smallest person on Earth and it's all somehow my fault.
Paragon started as a group wanting to make the industry better, we formed in Carnage cause the company was overrun with self-serving pieces of shit determined to make a name whether it killed the company or not. We formed to make a difference and a difference we have- some might think to call us selfish and at times, we were. We had to be, like anyone wanting to be on top, like anyone wanting to see change.

I won’t sit here though and pretend like we didn’t do terrible things, that we were somehow saints cause doing good sometimes means you have to do evil and get your hands a little dirty.
You think this would feed into your arguments, that I was just as awful as you make me out to be cause of my affiliation- however you are missing one very crucial detail which makes your arguments towards me borderline null and void.

For a vast majority of your time in Carnage, for almost all of the time you felt ‘victimised’- yes I used air quotes- for all the time that you would tell the world that Paragon was the bane of your exalted existence.

I wasn’t there.

I was injured, Myra. Spinal contusion put me on the shelf for months- personal issues kept me there for over a year and a half. I’ll admit it, I’m not proud of how I let my personal demons consume me, chew me up and spit me out over and over again like a piece of bubblegum in a homeless camp.
I wasn’t there for most of your Carnage run even though I wanted to be, if I thought for a second I could scrape my broken body off the floor I would have gotten into that ring in a heartbeat. If I thought I could stay sober long enough to get between the ropes and throw a punch worth something, I’d have done so in the blink of an eye. If I thought I could put myself in a position to go out there and tell you all the ways you could go fuck yourself- the same way I’m telling you now- I’d have done so without hesitation.

I couldn’t though… and I didn’t.

I told myself all that time I didn’t need it anymore the same way you’re telling yourself now, I pushed all my desires and dreams down inside of me in hopes I might just forget who I was. I was in a shitty place Myra, and I don’t expect you to care but you need to understand.
It took me far too long to get myself right, crawl out from under the rock I’d made myself content with and face a bright light of reality that told me I couldn’t do it anymore.
I shouldn’t have come back Myra, I should never have returned last October…

I shouldn’t have come back and returned to my rightful place at the top.

By that point you’d already made up your mind, packed all your toys and had one foot halfway out the fucking door.

Not that any of it matters to you- after all it doesn’t make your precious narrative read quite as nicely when you aren’t the plucky little protagonist standing up to the mighty assholes, but instead an entitled never-was pissed off that she wasn’t quite good enough to back up her mouth.

So don’t you dare sit there all high and fucking mighty and tell me who you think I am just because of the people I care about- what happened between you and them, that's not a reflection on me sweetheart… that's a reflection on you and your inability to move on.
I’m not defined by those around me, I’m defined by everything I’ve done to get where I am and by the people I’ve beaten to get here.

Lets face it- you don’t give a shit about my reputation. You’d just as readily pick it apart as you would dismiss it entirely. That's the issue though, isn’t it… That's the hypocrisy.
In one moment you manage to contradict yourself by saying that reputation doesn’t matter before proceeding to try and over-inflate your own. You wanna make yourself sound important but heaven forbid anyone else looking like they belong, right?
No, you don’t get to pick and choose… That's not how this little dance of ours works.

Either disregard me entirely or fucking commit to your own ignorance.

Just don’t half ass it Myra, cause that's far more insulting than anything you could ever say to me.

See, when it comes don to it you’re a tedious bore who thinks they are an edgy rebel, an empty charlatan who thinks they are an underappreciated artist. I mean you walk around and talk like you were the only person in this industry who has ever had something bad happen to them, that you are the only person told all their lives that they weren’t good enough…
That's what blows my shitty little mind the most.
You actually believe this drivel.
You believe every stupid fucking word that falls out of your head and you take your own opinion as gospel- ooooohhhhh you went through some hardship and people didn;t believe in you.

Are you kidding me.

I haven’t lived, breathed, bled and died for this industry to be told by some jumped up, washed out, try-hard clinging onto the edge of the pro-wrestling cliff by her fingertips cause it's the only profession that wouldn’t laugh her straight out the door.
Personally I’ll be happy to stomp on your fingers and watch you tumble back to Earth, hell I’ll even record the screams for mercy and use them as my goddamn ringtone…

Oh shit, there I go being predictable… Insert insult here. Insert threat there.
Am I doing it right- please do give me pointers cause I’m clearly not used to being this fucking obnoxious and overbearing…
I mean you got one thing right at least- throw enough shit at a wall and something has to stick- I am a cliche. Walking, talking, breathing, bullshitting and built from the ground up like I was specially designed for this. I’m every single awful thing this industry has to offer rolled up tight and wrapped up with a pretty red bow.

I don’t go out there telling everyone I’m gonna hurt people cause I need to feel validated or I’m pretending to be some edgelord- it's what brought me to the proverbial dance, it's why I’m top class and you’re struggling to pass as second rate.
It's fact, it's inevitable and it works- I’m not gonna pretend to wax poetic and talk about how I’m wiping people off the face of the Earth and leaving only the best genetic material splattered across my converses, nor will I proclaim loudly from whichever mountain I’ve made from a molehill and talk about destroying people like i’m a shitty supervillain about to get owned.

It's convoluted and a waste of time… Just like you.

This was supposed to be civil. It was supposed to be two women, staring into the void of their career twilight questioning who will be the first to take a step over the edge. Women with reputations built on hard work and harder hitting matches- and then you made the mistake of opening your mouth and flushing all that credibility straight down the gurgler. You too whatever goodwill you had earned and blew it straight out the back of your own head cause you couldn’t help but allow your arrogance to spill out of that bleached asshole in the middle of your face.

Now, I couldn’t give a fuck what you have to say to try and backtrack. Sweet girl you made a mistake and now you can’t step from the firing line… Cause you see I might just be another bitch, at least in your mind, but to everyone else… you know, those with opinions that haven't been fucked to hell- I’m a weapon breaking pretty little things like they owe me. I’m nothing special and yet entirely undeniable. I’m goddamn awful and been told that my whole life, better off dead more times than I care to count.
I’m far uglier on the inside and I own every fibre of that… I am literally everything you wish the world saw you as, but you’re none of those things and that's why you’ll never measure up.

‘You’re only as relevant as I make you’.

Please, that kinda hubris will get you turned into antimatter.

Besides, I’d rather be nothing than made of anything by you. You giving me ‘relevance’ is like asking a scholarship athlete if they want a terminal illness and being offended when they say no…

For someone so late into their career you really have no clue about, well, very much at all. Contradictory, arrogant, woefully self-centred it's a wonder you can fit through the door by the size of your head- that isn’t ego though, that's years of inbreeding coming to the surface. You demand respect but refuse to give it citing that what people say doesn’t matter and therefore they are just fodder for your burgeoning career.
Well, supposed to be burgeoning but you messed that up too before I even got in the door… blame it on me though, it's far easier that way and I know you’re a fan of the path of least resistance.

Maybe you don’t think I have what it takes to set the world alight anymore, that I’m no longer good enough to hang with the best… and maybe you. That I’m little more than the next bombshell on the conveyor belt, still shiny and new fresh from the proverbial hype machine.
How about you just be real honest with yourself here- hell you don’t even have to be public with it, take a moment and allow yourself this touch of clarity amid the fog of toxic delirium that you wallow so deeply within.
I might not be the best, I might not set the world alight the way I used to- but I’m more than enough to leave you in a pile of cinder. If i achieve nothing more than that- and of course beating you, because obviously- at Into The Void then color me contented…

See contrary to popular belief- I don’t need gold, I don’t need the bombshells world title… well at least not yet, I have my own world title with it's own prestige to satiate that appetite for now and I’ve only got so many shoulders for belts to rest upon. I don’t even need to get my hands on Roxi cause she's smart enough to understand that there is more to our gambol than simple violence- not smart enough to figure out how to end it without bloodshed but I’m sure she’ll get there… Or not. I’m okay with it either way.

I’m a woman of simple desires, Myra… I don’t need a lot of things to make me happy.

The Carnage World title, a well made cup of coffee in the cold morning light… and the respect and human decency of my peers not to try and fuck with me.

Milli Vanilli didn’t get it, I mean Jessie Salco… my bad, force of habit. She wanted to square up and play tough, act like she had big balls and a stick shoved somewhere rather unpleasant. What happened to her, well, I’m sure you saw it and probably ignored it cause that's just what you do...
You aren’t Jessie Salco though, are you, and don’t get me wrong I’m not dumb enough to try make that comparison cause you see jessie’s loss to me meant something… It wasn’t just words through a screen and posturing trying to be the next big bad wolf on the scene and jockeying for position on the food chain.

With Jessie, I can respect her in defeat. She knew she was just a statement of intent, a message to be carried from the ring through the locker room and into the psyches of those smart enough to realize that the bar just got raised.

With you? Nah, fuck all that noise.

This is just for my own amusement now.”

[Myra Rivers]

 March 2019

I remember feeling this hot, passionate anger flow through me, having just heard an announcement that really bothered me. I remember being on that phone with my sister Adrianna, discussing what I just heard, feeling nothing but disgust.

“I can’t believe this is happening AGAIN…” I told my sister, almost yelling into the phone.

“What do you mean AGAIN?” Adrianna had asked.

“Someone comes back and they get handed a title shot against me when they did NOTHING to deserve it. They just walk right in and BOOM, instant title shot” I said with anger in my voice. “I got completely SCREWED by this in UWA, remember that? The whole ‘Ricky Octavious’ bullshit? I can’t believe this could happen to me again…”

“Don’t assume that you’re going to lose the Ultraviolent Championship…” Adrianna reminded me.

“I’m not… but SERIOUSLY…”

“I get why you’re upset, but I think what happened to you in UWA is triggering you pretty hard right now.”

“You’re not wrong…” I admitted. “But the facts are the facts. Magdalena Lockheart is barely coming back and she gets HANDED this shit… of course… the fact that she’s a Bridges bitch… when you take that into account… it shouldn’t be all that shocking at all… but…”

I paused, and took a deep sigh, letting out my anger as I wanted to keep things in perspective the best way that I could.

“....I’m not going to let her win. I’m not going to allow what happened to me in UWA to happen again. For my sake, for Kimberly’s sake, for the sake for what’s right for the business, I’m going to find a way to get it done. If I have to shock the world in the faces of people that are automatically going to assume that Magdalena Lockheart is going to just walk in and take this title from me, then so be it! Bullshit like this is EXACTLY what I fight against!”

“You’re going to win too… trust me…”

I said my thanks to Adrianna for keeping the faith in me before we went into some brief small talk prior to us ultimately parting ways over the night. As that defense against Magdalena grew closer, I kept myself as motivated as I could, the hatred in me that was born maturing at a pretty quick pace.

“You can’t beat her…” that darkness whispered to me, and I cringed the moment that I heard that whisper. “You know that if you don’t beat her, everything that you’ve worked so hard for in the last few months is going to mean nothing. You’re going to be so broken that you’re going to collapse right back into that darkness…”

“That could never happen…” I told myself in my head. “And even if it could, I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that it doesn’t…”

That’s exactly what I did… when I defended the Ultraviolent Championship against the most notorious rival I had in Carnage Wrestling…. I found a way to pull through. I righted the injustice. I had the biggest win in my Carnage career to date. The light had won this time… yet… the way I treated things was very peculiar...

April 2020

I had returned home to Miami after retaining the championship. Scott Lockley Jr. and I were having a date walking through a park. I was tired and sore from the match that I had against Magdalena Lockheart a few days prior. My then-boyfriend didn’t seem to mind that I was out of it for a bit. All I could think about was the burning rage and the passionate fire that tore through me during that match… how it pushed me to achieve what many thought was impossible.

“I’m so glad I made that bitch eat her words…” I told Scotty, who paused and seemed surprised by how personal I was taking things. “...all this CRAP about me… all this TRASH that she tried to paint me as… well… I’m SO glad I shoved a nice bottle of SHUT THE FUCK UP down her throat…”

“Easy… easy…” Scotty tried to reason. “I get that she’s not the most pleasant person in the world, but there’s no need to stoop to her level. A few, misguided words should not be pushing you to be so intense about this.”

“There’s a personal element…” I admitted to Scotty. “I don’t take kindly to people like her that just walk in and get handed something that they don’t deserve at all.”

“I understand… but the battle is over…” Scotty attempted to remind me. “...you won. You won’t have to deal with her again for a while…”

“I hope to hell you’re right…” I said. “...because something tells me that having her around me is not the best thing for me… especially since I am trying as hard as I am to atone for the wrongs that I’ve done…”

Scotty and I continued our date like any normal couple would and while not another word was spoken about Magdalena or Carnage Wrestling as a whole, there was still something stuck in the back of my mind… something that didn’t allow me to be TOO happy with that title defense even though I had silenced someone that I took to near-hating almost immediately…

Present Day

“I will never forget the first time I ever encountered the bitch…” I wrote down in my journal as I sat in my own living room back in Miami, at around 11:20 PM, long after my daughter had gone to bed for the night. I was continuing my journaling regarding my Carnage Wrestling days with the words on paper almost feeling therapeutic in a sense. “I never liked her from the moment that I learned that I would be defending my championship against her. Beating her was a thrill because in my book, I had just stopped someone from attaining something that they didn’t deserve. Yet, at the same time… something felt wrong...”

“What are you doing up?” I heard the voice of my sister Adrianna as she came down the stairs.

“I’m just running through some old memories…”

“Oh…” Adrianna said in an unimpressed tone, though I knew that tone had nothing to do with me. “...that place…”

Adrianna came into the living room and just sat on the couch perpendicular to the one I was sitting on. She pulled out her phone, plugged in some headphones, then popped the headphones into her ears indicating that she wasn’t interested in talking about Carnage… though I couldn’t blame her. Meanwhile, I kept journaling…

“...I was starting to feel like an outcast in the company…” I wrote. “But this feeling was something that I tried to ignore to the best of my ability because I knew that I didn’t have any validation for the feeling. In hindsight, maybe I should have listened to it more. Last summer… times began to change in Carnage. There was an influx of CWF competitors with… to be honest? It bothered me for non-competitive reasons. It bothered me because Jason Bridges had handed a world title shot to a CWF competitor just because the competitor beat the champion in CWF… I mean… SERIOUSLY. It’s STUPID! Carnage isn’t going to come knocking on my door for a title shot against Amber Ryan when I beat her… nor should they… (nor do I want them to…).

The CWF defectors fit in easily… though there were many friendships ingrained already due to the affiliation Carnage had with Jaiden Rishel’s company.

That summer, I even retained my title against one of the CWF defectors. But that same night? Magdalena won a number one contender’s match to get another shot at me….”

I paused my writing, recollecting the anger I was feeling and remembering how quickly it was becoming obvious to me that I wasn’t necessarily a golden child of the company.

“...I remember a number one contender’s tournament for a world title shot being announced… I remember being excluded from that…” I wrote as I recalled that anger. “I remember speaking out about this because why the fuck should I keep quiet… and I remember that fucking piece of shit Bridges feeling the need to respond to try to make ME look like a fucking idiot. Facing Magdalena again and dealing with her shit some more… it was driving me nuts. I couldn’t understand it. I tried to be pure about it. But as time went on, the harder it got… and I was already starting to feel an old ‘friend’ of mine come back…”

October 2019

It was the afternoon that I was supposed to once again defend the title against Magdalena Lockheart. Scotty and I were having some lunch, but I was completely unfocused. I wasn’t thinking about my life. I wasn’t thinking about the good that was going on in my life and career. All I was thinking about was my HATRED for Magdalena, one that was only growing. Scotty was talking to me, but I was largely ignoring what he was saying. What I was listening to was that darkness again…

“They don’t appreciate you…” the darkness inside of me said. “...you know that this isn’t what you want. You know that you want to be world champion. You know that it’s a bunch of bullshit that Carnage excluded you from the number one contender’s tournament all while a bunch of nobodies from CWF that you’d beat in your sleep were just handed that shot, mainly just by walking in the door…”

I was left in a daze as I kept ignoring Scotty.

“...you don’t have to deal with this much longer…” the darkness said. “Go back to your old ways… that’s how you’re going to get what you want. You can’t get there by being so pure and innocent and you know that…”

“Myra, are you hearing what I’m saying?” Scotty said to me, which broke me out of the trance that I had myself in.

“Yeah… I’m hearing you…” I said to him.

“What was the last thing I said?” he asked me. I was left with my jaw slightly dropped, having nothing to say at all. He let out a sigh knowing that trying to carry on a conversation with me was useless. “Myra… I get that this thing with Magdalena greatly bothers you…”

“The whole company bothers me…” I muttered under my breath to him, which caused him to raise his eyebrows in surprise.

“Let’s not go that far…” he told me. I sighed in my initial response before I tried to explain my feelings to him.

“I’m sorry… it’s just…” I paused and took a deep breath. “...you know how it is. The fight between what’s right and what’s wrong… it’s become a greater struggle for me than it was a few months ago. Am I wrong for feeling shunned by the company when I was never granted a chance to be in that tournament?”

“Let’s not cave in to old vices…” Scotty said. “I understand exactly how you feel. But you have to remember what you’re fighting for… WHO you’re fighting for… you can’t just cave to total darkness again just because things aren’t going your way…”

I didn’t respond, again, refusing to listen. My greatest weakness of the time was really coming out of me.

“I can’t do this anymore, Myra…” Scotty said to me, which got my attention. “...you’re too focused on the wrong thing. Don’t you think this whole saga with Magdalena is going too far?”

“I need to shut her up for good…” I told him. “...my daughter aside, that’s the most important thing for me right now…”

“...that’s exactly why I’m breaking up with you…” he told me to a face that had just become stoned with shock.

“Excuse me?”

“This is going too far. I’m seeing traces of the ‘old you’ coming out…” Scotty warned me. “You haven’t been happy in months. You’re taking this thing with Magdalena too personal and it’s going to destroy you if you don’t take control of it. If you don’t beat her again tonight then… you may reach the point of no return…”

“...I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me…” I said with shock in my voice. “...that part of me is dead and gone, Scotty. I’m not going back to the sinner that I was. I have no reason to stoop to those lows that I used to. I’m not that person anymore. I’m not going to let anything allow me to relapse and go back to what I was…”

“I do believe you…” Scotty said as he stood up. “...but for your sake, you better win tonight…”

He walked away from our lunch, leaving me with the bill. I was instantly dealing with the grief and the shock of being dumped, especially since it’s the first time that a breakup or a divorce happened where I was the one that was being dumped. It was a sore spot for my pride in the hours building up to that title defense… but it was nothing compared to the anguish that I would feel later that night…

...when Magdalena got the better of me…

Later…

I felt like a ghost, sitting in the corner of an empty room. There was no joy in my heart at all. There was no light in my spirit. I was shattered on the inside and I knew it. The fact that I was going to go back home to my daughter, without the Ultraviolent Championship, that destroyed me inside. I had already dealt with all the tears at this point. That cold, bitter feeling of letting down my daughter left me a void and left me at a rock bottom that I wasn’t sure I was going to recover from. It was the worst, most painful defeat that I had suffered ever since the night that I retired for the first time back in 2013. I was so numb that I wasn’t even sure if I was shaking.

“I did everything the right way…” I told myself. “I fought with everything that I had. I stood up for what’s right… and… the darkness won…”

Sorrow flowed through me like a river.

“I knew I’d lose that title at some point… I knew that someone was going to pin me for the first time in Carnage at some point….”

Anger filled me in an instant with an energy that you could compare to the sudden, explosive burst that shocked the entire world when Mount. St. Helens erupted. I let out this near, blood-curdling scream, completely losing it…

“BUT WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE HER?!?!?!?!??!?!?”

I gasped, taking a deep breath, catching myself in complete and total shock that emanated from that sudden outburst. I came to instantly regret that outburst… but the darkness was relenting…

“...you know what you have to do…” the darkness whispered to me.

“Yeah…” I thought to myself in response. “I have to claim what’s mine…”

It was at this moment that my hatred for Magdalena Lockheart had become an anger-filled obsession. I didn’t know how much I was beginning to lose myself… and things were only going to get worse.

“I’m not going home…” I told myself. “I can’t go back to face my daughter being the loser that I am…”

I stayed in that corner, all alone, even as Paragon stood front and center and stood tall at the end of the big show that month just like they always had… as if I needed something ELSE to be angry about.

It was definitely one awkward Thanksgiving and as a mother, the most awkward birthday I ever experienced when Kimberly turned six in November.

Present Day

“Damn…” I said, after I finished writing the chapter about losing the Ultraviolent Championship to Magdalena Lockheart. Some feelings of guilt were starting to invade my conscience as I reflected on how sour I was beginning to become toward Carnage Wrestling at this point. Adrianna was still on the opposite couch, minding her own business.

“I should have handled it differently…” I said to myself. “I let my own personal feelings get in the way.”

Letting out a therapeutic breath, I continued to write.

“Losing to her… it brought back all of my old insecurities: feeling like I was a failure of a mother, feeling like I was nothing, feeling like I was destined to be the overlooked one in Carnage Wrestling… feeling like nothing I did was ever going to be good enough… feeling that fighting the good fight, redeeming myself and that everything I had worked so hard for in the last 10 months meant absolutely nothing. I wanted to run away from Magdalena…”

God, writing that sentence was brutal for me… causing me to wince and causing me to grip my pen tighter… that feeling of guilt and shame that I had just admitted that I wanted to run away. Yet, I continued to push knowing that I had to be as honest as possible with myself… and with my audience once this became published… at some point…

“...I wanted to run away from her and no longer deal with her. I wanted to move on to the world title, hiding behind the feeling that I ‘deserved it’ and that I wasn’t going to accept being overlooked and overshadowed anymore. I wanted to just avoid her and never even face her again for reasons that I didn’t know at the time. Imagine the RAGE that boiled through me when I found out that I was getting a rematch against her at Ultimate Carnage, the company’s biggest stage, in December.

I was so DEVASTATED… (yes, really… devastated… the rare time ANY pro wrestler would EVER be devastated by getting a rematch for a title they just lost…)

It really was UWA all over again with being shoehorned back into a title picture I no longer wanted to be in because I wanted something greater… something that I felt like I really deserved… because that’s what it was about for me… proving that I could be a world champion the right way, the pure, honest way that my mother would’ve raised me had she lived to do so… the pure, honest way that my ex’s father trained me when I came up in this business… the pure, honest way that I had wrestled from 2008 to 2013 prior to my two year maternity sabbatical from this business. Being further separated from this goal felt like someone tore my soul out of me and stabbed it with an Olympic javelin until that soul didn’t exist anymore…”

I paused my written word for a moment feeling a somber mood go through me… the regrets of what I was about to write about already hitting me before I even got around to writing about it. My writing hand was beginning to tramble some and I was losing some slight control of my pen. I shuttered my eyes for two minutes, willing myself to keep going.

“...a shot at a title for title match was added to the rematch. I had a chance to not just regain the Ultraviolent Championship, but to get a world title shot out of it. Did that bring me back to the light? It didn’t…” I wrote. “...it brought out the worst in me…”

I took a pause again, using my pen as a bookmark as I turned over all the pages, revealing some pictures that I had taped to the inside of the back cover of the journal… pictures of the third and decisive battle against Magdalena Lockheart in the grandest stage of them all for the company. There was one action shot that I wasn’t devastated by, but the rest?

It told the story.

Seeing a picture of me bashing Magdalena’s brains in with a ringbell injected a vial of guilt into my bloodstream.

Seeing a picture of her being bloodied and the angry expression on my face as I continued to be responsible for her injuries she was suffering caused my hands to tremble a little.

Seeing a picture of me climbing the ladder and retrieving the Ultraviolent championship to regain it brought nothing to me but a void.

Seeing the anger in my eyes as I let out a slight smirk at the sight of Magdalena receiving medical attention brought tears to my eyes because I knew that I was staring at a moment in time where I had relapsed back to my old, dark ways. I was so caught up in my emotional roller coaster that I hadn’t noticed Adrianna moving next to me and sitting on the couch next to me.

“It was one slip…” Adrianna reminded me. “...you know you made a big mistake that night. You know that you let down your values. But you also have to remember that living in the light again was never going to be perfect. A night like that… where you lost it all over again… it was inevitable…”

I flipped back to my penmarked page and began to write about the aftermath of my horrendous actions that led me to winning the 18th championship of my career.

December 2019

Back in my home, I slammed down the Ultraviolent Championship that I had just regained on the table in front of Adrianna and Scotty. They both appeared shellshocked and this would only be driven further down that road when I placed the same ringbell I had used to bash Magdalena’s brains in, some of her blood and all, on the table.

“I did it!” I said with conviction, feeling like I had done the right thing. “I avenged myself. I feel like a worthy mother all over again.”

I grew confused by my sister and my ex-boyfriend not looking too happy.

“What?” I asked them. “I beat the darkness… and now Magdalena Lockheart isn’t going to wrestle for a very long time…”

“You beat the shit out of her…” my sister said.

“She was going to use that bell on me, Adrianna…” I reminded her.

“I understand the need to defend yourself…” Scotty said. “But did you really need to go THAT far? Take the ringbell from her yes… but you couldn’t have just tossed it aside? Did you really need to stoop to her level?”

“Stoop to her level… what?” I said with confusion. “I did what I had to do! I won the title back. I got the title shot that I wanted.”

“But to go BACK to what you were before… how can you?” Adrianna asked me.

“Sis… there comes a time where you have to wake up and realize that you have to go an extra mile…” I tried to explain. “...being the paragon of virtue could only go so far. I had to make a choice… okay? I had to choose between doing what’s right… or doing what had to be done. Two months ago, I did what was right… and it wasn’t good enough. She left me no choice! I had to do what needed to be done, the consequences be DAMNED!”

“You jeapordized someone’s livelihood, Myra…” Scotty reminded me.

“She deserved it…” I told him. “...for all the shit she put me through, for all I had to deal with because of her, for the bullshit she spewed toward me, for how desperately she tried to degrade me, the HATRED that she spewed… defaming my character… for questioning my integrity as a wrestler… as a CHAMPION… if she NEVER wrestles again, I’ve done this business a FAVOR!”

“...a FAVOR?” Adrianna said, sounding appalled. “Myra, you completely relapsed! You sound JUST like the person you were during your GCW years and when you first arrived in Carnage. There is NOTHING right with what you did to her. I know that she’s not the greatest person on earth, I get that she’s immature, I get that some of the shit she was saying about you was over the top, I GET how annoying she is, how grating she is, how pathetic of a person she is… but let HER be that pathetic person. It gives you NO excuse to bash her brains in and possibly end her career. You’re BETTER than that!”

“And yet… somehow… I don’t seem to care…” I said. “I shouldn’t care about someone who CLEARLY didn’t care about her own well being. She brought it upon herself. She brought the bell into the ring! I’m holding her accountable for her own shit… because lord knows she’ll NEVER be accountable herself…”

Anger continued to flow through me while my sister and ex-boyfriend continued to be stunned.

“...Paragon is next…” I said… reflecting upon the Everest sized glass ceiling that had loomed over me for my entire Carnage Wrestling run.

“Myra… don’t you see what’s happening here?” Scotty asked me. “Everything that’s going on in that company… the way it’s affecting you… that company is bringing out the worst in you. There is so little separating you from real darkness…”

“You better believe that sis…” Adrianna told me. “You’re self-destructing. Let us help you! Let us do everything we can to help you get through this.”

“There is a way you can both help me right now…” I said, with a stern tone in my voice. The mood over my 18th and most recent overall championship was anything but celebratory. “...you want to know how?”

“Anything we can do… let us know…” Scotty said. “Anything… to help you…”

“You want to help? Sure! I need you both to do something for me that would really help.”

“What’s that?” Adrianna asked.

“Get out…” I said with a cold, stern voice, further reflecting the darkness that I had relapsed to when I had beat the brains out of Magdalena Lockheart. “...get… the fuck… out of my house… NOW!”

I walked away from them, leaving them in the kitchen in stunned silence with their jaws dropped. The only light that I had in me at this point was my daughter. There was still enough light for me to do anything in my power to prevent her from seeing me at my worst. Deep down, I knew what I had done to Magdalena was wrong despite the front that I had just put on and I knew that the last thing that needed to happen was for Kimberly to see me at my worst. My poor daughter wanted to see me win back the title so bad and could never understand why I kept saying “no”. Bless that heart of hers, she still kept asking why. She still wanted to see the match. For weeks, I made sure that she never did.

That is until I walked in on her watching the match a couple of months later…

Present day…

I had to pause my journal writing at that point. Reliving everything that my daughter felt when she saw me relapse back to that darkness was too much for me to bear. The tears had strolled down my face. The devastation that I saw in hers the day that she realized that her innocent vision of me being this superhero to her was shattered broke my heart and remembering this did so all over again.

“I wrestled in that company with hate…” I admitted to Adrianna. “...this hate in my heart… all this hate… partially caused by my disdain for people that were only as relevant as I allowed them to be… and I let them be WAY too relevant… that whole relapse is my fault. I let my own insecurities consume me… these insecurities caused by the way I was brought up… you know… after my mom died… our father being an abusive prick toward me and you’re the luckiest girl on earth growing up with your own mother instead of him… and the sad part is, I’m no better than him…”

I let out a sigh, putting myself through some severe doubts about myself as a person.

“I have the same darkness in my heart that he always did… I’m just like him…”

“It’s not true…” Adrianna assured me. “...it’s not true at all! Sure… maybe you and him have a similar temperament… sure… maybe you both have some perfectionist tendencies… but the big difference between you and him? You care… you feel guilt… you feel remorse… you regret what you did… you strive to be better. He never had any of those qualities in him.”

“But every company I’ve wrestled in… every single one… it’s always ended on rotten terms. NSWA and WXWF… I abandoned ship when I was a double champion in both…”

“The latter was about to die and you got a deal you couldn’t refuse from PRW. You had every right to jump ship and for feeling like you were always going to be brought down by the glass ceiling NSWA had.”

“PRW… you know, when I had a chance to be the last world champion and I failed…” I reminded Adrianna. “GCW, when I bolted so suddenly because it was reminding me of UWA. UWA because I was tired of being ‘relegated to the X-Limits division’. Carnage… enough said…”

“Miranda, SERIOUSLY… pull through this… I know you can…”

These words inspired me, as my sister dropping my full first name typically would because of how much she really wanted to put a personal emphasis on what she was saying to me.

“...you think it doesn’t scare me that I’m staring at sunset right now?” I asked my sister. “...that I’m almost at the end of my career… whenever that is? Because it DOES scare me sometimes. I don’t want to leave this behind on a bad note. Everything that happened in Carnage just… I should’ve never let it get to me that way. I won’t let ANYTHING or ANYONE get to me like that ever again! Seeing Kimberly as devastated as she was when she saw me do what I did to Magdalena scared me straight… and I know I can never fall down the dark path ever again. I’m going to make it work in SCW… come hell or high water… and I have let another wrestler or another wrestling company define how I feel about myself for the last time…”

I paused, drying my eyes and closing the journal I had been using to write about my Carnage Wrestling journey.

“It was never meant to happen in Carnage…” I admitted. “...and it’s time I stop beating myself down for the way things unfolded there.”

I stood up, holding the journal and I bolted from the couch and walked down the stairs toward the basement. Getting there I found the lockbox that had accompanied the journal, using the small key that came with it to unlock the box. I put the journal and the key in the box, locked it for good, rendering it impossible to unlock at this point, and then I went back upstairs to the kitchen and chucked it in the trash. I turned to see Adrianna standing by the kitchen, surprised by what happened.

“...what did you just do?” she asked me.

“I’ve decided…” I paused and sighed “...that it’s best if there are certain memories that I don’t carry with me anymore… for my own sake…”

I finally smiled some, relieved that I had decided to lock and dump away, literally, a piece of my career that I decided that I wasn’t going to hurt over anymore. It was one hell of a roller coaster… and the lessons I’m taking from it are going to be invaluable for the future… but my heart, always wanting to do the right thing, knew that the right thing in this instance?

Was to let it all go and move on…

And by expressing my feelings toward that chapter of my career and not bottling them in anymore… and then by subsequently dumping and locking it away?

I had done just that...

June 5, 2020

“It’s incredible to some degree how I’ve been able to last so long…”

I said these words as the cameras came on me. I wasn’t doing anything too special. I knew that as I sat inside my old basement that was decorated with every piece of my wrestling career that I had at this point that I was definitely going through 12 years of my own personal wrestling history… almost 18 if you included the years that I had spent in the Independent scene and the two year maternity leave that I had back in 2013 through 2015. I was looking at a treasure trove of good memories… like my big breakthrough moment back in 2008… my first three world championships… the time that I spent in the early part of my career as the paragon of virtue that always did right by the business… my two Ultraviolent Championship wins in Carnage wrestling… but then I was also looking at the bad memories… the person that I was in GCW… the way things ended in Carnage, virtually everything about my UWA run, the memory that numbed me back in 2013 when I lost PRW’s last match ever to my arch rival… while I stared at the bad memories, I never looked at them in shame.

“I’ve been able to last as long as I have in this business both because of me… and in spite of me… it’s a tough pill to swallow, I realize this. My abilities have gotten me employed with a who’s who of wrestling promotions and I admit that as a young kid when I first got signed to NSWA on the day after Christmas in 2007… I didn’t necessarily have the greatest attitude in the world. I was a rookie who thought she knew everything…. Dealing with many insecurities and an internal darkness that was planted inside of me by the death of my mother, by my father being what he was… a psychologically fucked up, piece of shit who didn’t give a damn about me…, and even some of my own failures along the way in this business. I admit that I’ve had many chances… I might be on what? My tenth? I didn’t leave NSWA the right way. I walked out because even though I was a double champion, neither one was the world title and I got fed up with it and moved on to PRW. I left WXWF while I was in my first world championship reign of four because I knew it was only a matter of time before it died…”

I paused, expressing a sigh of regret.

“...I should have sunk with the ship… which I did with PRW… but failing my then unborn daughter and using that as an excuse to be what I was when I first returned to the business… it was the biggest mistake I ever made in my career. I bolted from UWA… because I was tired of settling for their secondary title. I left GCW because it was turning into UWA. And then there’s the last company I wrestled for before I got here… it’s no secret that I wasn’t happy there. It’s no secret that I tired of the same old same old. It’s no secret that the place made me feel insecure and that I’d never get to where I know I can be again as long as the same old, same old ruled the roost. But I left… not for those reasons… but because… it was triggering the worst of me. There’s one common thread here…

Insecurity.

I’ve spent my entire career being insecure… feeling like I’d never be good enough, feeling like what I had wasn’t good enough… pushing myself beyond my own means only falling into a worse hole every time. It’s a crappy way to carry yourself in your wrestling career… and for 12 years I’ve done that and I don’t expect sympathy from you, Amber. This doesn’t have much to do with you. Then again, at least I have the guts to admit my own faults when the bright lights are on, unlike you. When I look across the ring from you on Sunday, I’m going to see a mirror image of what I’ve been. Does it scare me? It doesn’t, because I have to face the past. I have to purge every ounce of emotion that I have about it before I can move forward with the clean slate that I’ve wanted for a long time. I dared you to be so BASIC with the bullshit that would come out of your mouth… sure enough, you were. Not even 30 seconds into your promo, there you go… the ‘tear down’ begins… the criticism begins. I won’t deny that at various times in my career… ESPECIALLY the dark ages when I started the second half of it, I was a narcissist. But hey, you REALLY felt the need to point it out, just like I thought you would. Is feeling the need to point out the flaw of another not narcissistic in and of itself?

Oh right… that’s “Baltimore” for you. Everyone there is basically a narcissist.

Let’s pull out the ‘basic bitch’ checklist shall we, Amber?

Here we go… the whole ‘you’re going to be ignored once the novelty wears off’. Right, because YOU get to decide that? Or again… is this something that you feel the NEED to decide?

Oh YOU are calling ME a “massive hypocrite”? Oh boy, just as I predicted… we’re going to be name calling now… WOW… that makes you SO SPECIAL doesn’t it? Aren’t we ALL at some point or another? So… we’re assuming that I’m a “massive hypocrite” right? Just like how we’re assuming that people dislike me? Oh wait… you’re assuming that I CARE that people dislike me. Tell me again Amber… how you’re such a “novelty” with such basic trash like that? You’re judging me over what? Just observations that you’ve made from a distance? Are you a licensed psychologist? You REALLY believe that you know me better than I know me… which… huh… last I checked, isn’t that the trait of a… NARCISSIST? You’re pretending like you have followed me my WHOLE career… as if we’ve travelled the world together… as if we’ve been rivals for more than a decade… when the reality is that we’ve only shared a roster together for what? A few months at best?

OH MY GOD… there’s that JAB at my WIN-LOSS RECORD… HOLY SHIT! There’s a “Baltimore” classic… never mind the fact that I’ve only wrestled two matches here… or the fact that you have women here such as Mercedes Vargas and Christina Rose that have below 500 records and are Hall of Fame members and former world champions.

You ASSUME that EVERYONE thinks I’m a piece of shit. You ASSUME that I AM one… you even ASSUME that I CARE about what people think of me…

But I’M the narcissist? I’M the hypocrite?

Yeah, I wear my heart on my sleeve. Yeah, I am open and honest about the adversity that I’ve faced in my life and my entire career.  What am I supposed to do? Pretend that it never happened? You know what’s funny about that, Amber? If that’s exactly what I did… I’d be no different from you, would I? Every wrestler for better or worse has a story and I’m not ashamed of mine no matter how fucked up things have gotten. I’m not ashamed to talk about the company that I wrestled for prior to SCW and how things didn’t go as great as I wanted to over there… hell, I’m not even afraid to admit that some of what had taken place there, I brought that upon myself. Carnage Wrestling isn’t the embarrassment that you may have thought it was Amber… you know what that was for me?

A lesson! MULTIPLE lessons!

You walked into this whole thing believing that oh my GOD, I’m going to have this HUGE chip on my shoulder because of what happened there… see… that would only make sense if I left there because of frustration… which I didn’t. Was I frustrated? Sure… but I left there because I had to… because I was going down a dark path that I wasn’t going to go down again… that I PROMISED my daughter and anyone else close to me that I would never go down again and sure… maybe I DID blame the company on my way out, stating they’re the reason why I went down that path… but I’m not stupid to the truth, Amber. I walked into that company ALREADY being insecure because of the dark path I was on. I teamed up with one of the biggest disappointments in SCW history because I was so DESPERATE to be relevant and that’s an insecurity that never left me during my time there.

I OWN that!

I OWN the fact that my insecurities caused me to hate a certain clique of buddies that you hang out with in Carnage for… well… my ENTIRE career there… I OWN the fact that these insecurities drove me to say things and do things that I would never do with a clear head. I’m flawed, I accept that. My career has never been perfect. I’ve struggled for a long time to be secure with who I am in this business and I’m one of the few people that are strong enough to admit that. Yeah, maybe what happened in Carnage was my own fault because I allowed other people there to define me. I was the one that allowed certain events and certain people to control how I was feeling about myself and I own it because Carnage Wrestling was a lesson… THE lesson that I’ve needed for what? My whole entire wrestling career? Hell… my whole life after my mother had died? I wrestled in that company for the wrong reasons, Amber… I wrestled for validation that I never needed in the first place.

I’ve wrestled for my whole career… prior to coming here… seeking validation… and that’s my own fault. It’s my own fault for allowing my own insecurities to knock me down over and over again, company after company, throughout the years. I came here… to this company… to learn more about who I am as a person… to accept who I am as a wrestler. I am who I am… the choices that I make… the mistakes that I make… they make me who I am… and maybe I’m not PROUD of some of the choices I’ve made in the past, but I own them because they make me a stronger person. THAT is what makes people like you in this day and age so MEANINGLESS to me because between companies, I FINALLY got it… I FINALLY realized that I don’t NEED validation from people like you because people like you? They’re voids. Why would I WANT validation from someone like you? A narcissistic person who acts like they fucking know everything but deep down inside could NEVER have the courage to do what I did and own up to the past and also… who could NEVER, EVER have the courage that I did and speak out about the trying times that I’ve endured and the triumphs that I’ve had coming out of those trying times? You spend SO much time and SO much energy running people down BECAUSE YOU FEEL THE NEED TO!

Think about my words so far…

Have I called you a name?

Have I tried to bring you down as a person?

No.

You know why?

Because I don’t NEED TO! I’ve matured and grown and evolved past the stage of my life where I need to bring other people down just so I can feel better about myself and that makes me… honestly… the bigger person no matter WHAT happens on Sunday because YOU need to beat ME to validate YOURSELF! You’re too much of a coward to admit it… but going through your WHOLE neurotic, narcissistic empty void you call a promo… you felt the need to take a stab at some old wounds.

You felt the need to call me a narcissist. You felt the need to refer to me as a piece of shit. You felt the need to ASSUME that you knew me. You felt the NEED to THINK that you know why I do the things that I do, why I’ve made the choices that I’ve made. YOU felt the need to throw stones. YOU felt the need to try to paint me as this “narcissistic victim” with a “woe is me story” and you know what? You can think whatever the fuck you want, but I KNOW BETTER! I KNOW that the words of other people… the words of LESSER people… the opinions of others? They don’t mean a fucking SHIT, Amber!

You, in that promo, did EVERYTHING that I expected you to do. Oh there you go calling me “trash”. YOU felt the need to do that. There you go, claiming that you’re better than me in everything this industry has to offer. YOU were the one that felt the need to do that… JUST as I predicted because people like YOU, Amber, are the most predictable voids that this business has to offer. What? Are we in fucking grade school now? “I’M BETTER THAN YOU”. You can be better than me for one night, for three seconds, for one moment… and that could very well happen this Sunday… but either way, I can look in the mirror and KNOW that I’m the bigger person because unlike YOU I don’t NEED to claim that I’m a better wrestler than someone else. I don’t NEED to go around calling people names. I’m ABOVE that shit, Amber. The fact that YOU’RE NOT? Tell me… who’s REALLY the bigger person? It sure as hell isn’t YOU, that’s for sure. How we treat other people, Amber… is a reflection of how we feel about ourselves. I admit that my bad choices reflect how insecure I felt. I admit that the way I treated other people… the way I used to abuse the shit out of them, the way I tried to destroy their careers… it reflects that I was that void once… I treated others that way because I hated myself for YEARS over something that had happened seven years ago. That was the MYRA LYNWOOD story, Amber…

And speaking of names… cute… you assume I changed my name BACK to Rivers… that’s right, BACK to my maiden name by the way… out of “narcissism and cowardice”? No… coming back to this business as Myra LYNWOOD back in 2015 was just that… I was ashamed of the Rivers name for years because that was the name I bore when I suffered that heartbreaking loss in 2013 that caused me to spiral into darkness. I’m reclaiming something that was as pure as honest that I could possibly be… I’m facing up to the past… THAT’S why “LYNWOOD” is OUT and why my birth name… my original wrestling name… is back.  

But YOU think that I’m going to make this ALL about Carnage, right? I mean… that’s what you said when you tried to play meteorologist and that I was going to try and make it ALL about that… that I was going to… WOW… you REALLY thought you had me figured out, didn’t you? Sorry… I spent all that time building a bridge above Baltimore and getting the fuck over it. I AM over it. Notice how I’m not making this match about some ‘empty revenge’ against your stablemates or how I’m NOT making this match about throwing a big ‘middle finger’ to that company… because I don’t NEED IT! I don’t NEED to beat you to move on from that company. I don’t NEED to send ANYONE over there a message. I don’t need to be validated by those people. Yeah, I spent my whole career over there seeking validation… but I never needed it. Are you SURE that you’re not going to fly that flag and make it all about that? Because you truly WERE obsessed with believing that I was going to make it about that.

At the end of the day, anyone, anything, any company, is as relevant as you allow it to be… and I spent a year and a half making “Paragon” relevant in my life.

Not anymore.

Especially when the person I’m facing feels the need to tell me to jump in a flaming dumpster… and feels the need to call me a “generic, Wal-Mart branded dime store version” of yourself.

You know, I really should thank you for thinking of me that way… granted, I’m not you and I never heard ANY comparisons between you and I… but thanks anyway!

Please honey, you can only WISH that I’d ever want to be you. Spoiler? I don’t. Because what I see of you is a reflection of everything I was in the past. Why would I want to be a person that feels the need to name call and feels the need to try SO DAMN HARD to make everyone think that the person they’re facing is that far beneath them?

Why would I want to be that again?

Sorry Amber… but all the shit you had to say about me? It doesn’t matter. It never did. NOTHING anyone has ever said about me anywhere that wrestled has ever meant a damn thing. The ONLY person’s opinion about Myra Rivers that matters… is mine. Because I KNOW who I am… I KNOW how to define myself. And I know that while I may not win every battle, that it doesn’t change a damn thing about me.

If you don’t want to believe that… then don’t… but that’s okay. I don’t need you to believe in me. I only need ME to believe in me… and here in Sin City Wrestling, I’m finally beginning to do that again… for good this time…

I stood up and I shut off the camera, satisfied with what I had to say. I looked around and once again saw the 12 years of memories from my career, both good and bad, before flashing a smile, expressing pride in every chapter of my journey, before walking upstairs and moving forward, proud of who I am… for all of my mistakes and my flaws...