March 4
The day after my win over Krystal Wolfe, I was in San Diego’s airport coming back from that match. I was walking through the tarmac just trying to get out of there and to avoid any rabid fans but there was one that recognized me and stopped me.
“Wait, are you Julianna DiMaria?” the young lady asked me.
“Yeah…”
“SCW Bombshells World Champion…” she added.
“You want an autograph or something? Is that it?”
“No, I’m not your biggest fan. I can’t wait to see Kayla Richards kick your ass. Cool meeting you though!”
My eyes narrowed with anger as the young lady walked away from me. I shook my head and had some internal thoughts.
“Everyone is rooting for me to fail and why wouldn’t they? I’m the outsider that came in and took the company by storm harder than any other Bombshell has in a long time. I love how someone is already writing me off as far as Kayla Richards is concerned…”
I was already thinking about the face to face encounter we had the night before where we had agreed to the contract signing that was to take place the next Sunday.
“...but I’m getting the match that I wanted…” I thought to myself. “When I beat her, all the disrespectful pieces of shit like that bitch that just said that to me are going to quit throwing their shade at me.”
I sighed, shook my head and then continued down the tarmac until I ran into Liam.
“What? Are you here to tell me that Kayla is going to kick my ass too?” I said, acting really snappy toward a recent friendly face that I’ve been spending a bit of time with lately. Liam was taken aback by my snappy attitude.
“Let me guess, a fan?” he asked me.
“Yeah… what are you doing here though?”
“I knew you were landing soon and I wanted to catch up as soon as I could. I have a flight out of here myself to Seattle to take care of some career related stuff for the next week.”
“Right…” I said with a sigh.
“I need to be honest with you, Julianna. I’ve really enjoyed reuniting with you and spending some time with you.”
“Thanks…” I said awkwardly, not being used to compliments from a guy.
“I’ve got plans for Phoenix later this month and I scored some spring training tickets for the Padres. I was wondering if you wanted to go with me.”
This put my head and my heart in a bind. My heart wanted to say yes, but in my head, all I could think about was Kayla Richards and wanting to beat the hell out of her. I looked down on the floor and then back at him.
“I can’t…” I said, the disappointment in his face becoming clear immediately. “Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with you too and Spring Training sounds like fun, but I’ve got to be focused with my career right now. You saw last night how I just scored what’s going to be my toughest title defense yet…”
“Yeah… sure…” Liam responded, clearly still disappointed.
“I hope you understand that it’s not you. I like you. But right now, I can’t have any fun. I’m so pissed off that the company I represent as a world champion continues to short change me. I mean come on, I had to face Krystal Wolfe last night. God, I got no joy in beating that wannabe. It was SUCH an insult and opponents like that aren’t going to silence the idiots I have to deal with. I’ve got to stay on top of my game to humble and silence ANYONE that comes in my way and KAYLA… well, I can’t wait to put my fists in her fucking face for all the cowardly side talk she dropped on me for weeks…”
“Right, I understand Julianna… being the dominant wrestler that is SCW Bombshells World Champion comes first…” Liam says with a sarcastic hint in his voice. “...because apparently, being a person isn’t that high on your priority list. I need to check in for my flight…”
Liam turns and leaves and I was left taken aback by his answer. I sighed, feeling a little bit bad about the rejection I gave him.
“I can’t let up… not against anyone… not for any reason…”
I sighed, turning back and walking out of the tarmac and the airport.
Sadly, my ‘obsession’ with my career wasn’t just limited to rejecting a date.
March 11
“What the hell do you mean you have to cancel dinner this week?” my mother asks me over the phone as I sit on my living room couch.
“I just found out about my match and it’s against that sorry ass Swede that can’t keep my name out of her mouth and if she beats me, she gets a title shot and I CANNOT HAVE THAT HAPPEN!”
I could hear my mother let out an annoyed sigh.
“You’re canceling dinner because of Selena Seduc… Sedew… how the hell do you pronounce her last name? Honey, seriously. Don’t you think you’re worrying about your world title reign just a little too much now? The longer you’ve been champion the more you’ve been pulling away.”
“Mom, it’s not like that. I just REALLY need to focus, okay? If I lose to that woman… GOD, the embarrassment! I mean, it would prove everyone that ever criticized my reign right and it would really give Kayla a massive advantage over me!”
“Why do you insist on going down this path, honey?”
“”Because I’m sick and fucking tired of the disrespect, that’s why! I’m tired of people criticizing my reign. I’m tired of wrestlers lesser than me throwing shade! Even I’ve got to admit that I’ve had an okay reign, but I’m never happy with it…”
I paused to let out a sigh to showcase my frustrations with my title reign.
“I had to go after Kayla because the fact of the matter is, my SCW Bombshells World title reign isn’t good enough yet… not until I get the supercard main event that I want so damn bad to bring the title back to the prominence it lost under my supercilious, stupid cunt of a predecessor…”
“Oh honey…” I could almost imagine my mother shaking her head on the other end. “...maybe it wasn’t the best idea to throw you right into the main event picture just four matches into your SCW career. You’re becoming too obsessed and you’re becoming too hard on yourself. Your reign is more than good enough right now. It hurts me to say what I’m about to say with you and your wrestling career, but when it comes to that…”
I could almost hear the reluctant pause on the other end.
“...you’re just like your dad…”
“EXCUSE ME?” I said, almost yelling at my own mother.
“You’re both exactly the same! Remember all of those times you wanted to spend time with him but he wasn’t willing or able to do it because he had this very important wrestling thing or because he had to train extra hard for a main event match. You’re doing the exact same thing right now! You can’t even spend time with your own mother just because you’ve got to be ready for your possible supercard main event. Unbelievable! I didn’t raise you like this!”
“I am nothing like him…” I said, with an annoyed anger in my voice.
“Julianna, please take a step back for a little bit and think about what your life outside of your career is like and you tell me if that’s a life that you want to continue living. It’s only a few minutes out of your BUSY SCHEDULE! I better see you at dinner next week…”
“Sure mother…”
I rolled my eyes as I hung up the phone. As much as I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t help but stop to think about my life outside of the ring. I thought about my friends in my life…
…the ones from high school were already long gone from my life.
Christy, Ally and Liam were basically the only ones from wrestling school I still talk to and the latter, I only started having contact with again.
I reflected on a time where I wanted to get married and have children of my own as well as the fact that my last relationship was with a disgusting, sexual deviant named Minka Carter, another wrestler in the business, who was obsessed with seeing me naked and wanting to have sex with me far more than ever having a serious relationship.
“Shit…” I said, coming to the horrible realization that for all of my success in the ring, I hardly ever took the time to take care of myself and be my own person.
“Mother’s right…” I added with a sigh as I reflected on how my father was when it came to my upbringing in the business.
October 23, 2016
Sin City Wrestling happened to be in San Bernardino that night, not TOO far from San Diego and I was beaming being backstage at that night’s Climax Control just a day shy of my 22nd birthday. James Tuscini and Ryan Keys (WHO?) were the main event that night in a “Steve’s Rules” Roulette Championship but for me personally…
“Dad, they told me that I had a great tryout match…” I said to him as he seemed to be less than impressed. Silly, naive me was just way too excited.
“That’s nice, Jules…” he said, further showing how unimpressed he was. “You did pretty good against that local chick and you won as I expected you to, but did you get a contract? Did they tell you anything? Is Sin City Wrestling going to sign you?”
I was a bit frozen with what to say considering I had just come out of a conversation with their officials and I had already known the answer.
“Well…”
“What did they say, Jules? Damn it!”
“To quote them… ‘You had a great tryout match and the fans seemed a bit into you, but right now, we think you could use a little more seasoning in other places and actually break mainstream first before we can look at you again….’
“Unfuckingbelieveable…” my father told me.
“Basically, they said ‘not now, but with time’...”
“Yeah, I know how to interpret that. But why the hell are you so happy when they rejected you just like the other three places you tried out for did the same?”
“They told me that I was very close to being offered a contract so…” I said, still beaming with pride. “...this is the closest I’ve EVER come to making it, Dad! I’m so excited about that!”
“Sit down…” he snapped at me.
“...Dad?”
“Seriously, sit down.” he said, with a more demanding tone.
I complied, having no other choice really. He towered over me and he was making it clear before he ever said a word that he wasn’t happy with me.
“Julianna, you’ve got to make sacrifices to make it in this business…”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“It’s time for you to practice that. Starting right now, until you make it in the big leagues, you are going to sacrifice.”
“...sacrifice what?”
“You are going to have no social life! I don’t care how ‘close’ you came to SCW signing you, but they didn’t sign you so ‘close’ don’t mean shit.”
“But Dad, if they put me up against an actual Bombshell, I could’ve beaten them and gotten a contract and…”
“Nah, stop it! I’m tired of you coming ‘close’ to being signed. Federations aren’t signing you because you’re not good enough yet, pure and simple FACT! The ones that make it in this business go out and make the sacrifices that they need to do to get ahead and go to the next level. They don’t sit there going ‘could’ve’ or ‘should’ve’, they get SHIT DONE! You’re not taking this seriously enough. So, until you get signed? No parties. No friends. No boyfriends. No dates. NOTHING!”
“....daddy, REALLY? You’re going to just take my whole social life away? I’m literally going to have no freedom at all!”
“You’ve got to treat this business like it’s your life, Julianna… starting NOW! That means… no distractions! I’m sure your boyfriend… what’s his face… will understand when you call him right now and dump him.”
“...what?”
“Call him right now and tell him you can’t see him anymore…”
“I turn 22 tomorrow, are you KIDDING?”
“DO IT! No more distractions! No more excuses! Or are you the useless daughter I always thought you were?”
I couldn’t help but cringe as I pulled out my phone and reluctantly called my then-boyfriend at that time to tell him I couldn’t see him anymore.
How humiliating…
March 11, 2024
Once I was done reliving that memory, I was completely haunted by it.
“...is this a healthy way to live?”
This was the question I was asking as I suddenly felt an immense amount of guilt toward how I treated my own mother and Liam recently all because I was putting my wrestling career first, second and third just like my father instilled (some would say brainwashed) into me.
I thought about the way Liam came at me in the airport after I said no to him and the guilt really became overbearing at that point. I felt compelled to call him and that’s exactly what I did because I came to realize that the way I treated him was horrible. He answered the phone after a few rings.
“Yes?” he asked me, giving me the vibe that he wasn’t quite willing to talk to me yet.
“Liam, I wanted to say I’m sorry. My behavior at the airport and how I treated you was unacceptable. I don’t want to be just like my dad and I’ve realized that I’ve been acting like him. You know that my wrestling career means the world to me and I want to be the best that I can be at that, but I shouldn’t be letting it consume my personal life. I really need to step back and quit being so obsessed with SCW, and Kayla Richards and all of that.”
“I appreciate that, Julianna. I got frustrated when you said ‘no’ back at the airport. You’re a great girl, more than you could ever give yourself credit for. But I don’t want to hang out with Julianna the professional wrestler. Underneath all of that rough exterior that you feel like you have to wear all the damn time is a hell of a person that I really want to be around. I support your career, don’t get me wrong. But I want the best for you as a person more than anything. I’m crazy about you and I don’t know why…”
“Do me a favor?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you hold that thought until you elaborate in person? Say… a Padres spring training game out in Phoenix?”
I could hear Liam laugh on the other end.
“Woman, you’re unreal! Sure! We’ll do that. I need to go, but I’ll send you all the information later.”
“Fine… good night!” I said, before I heard him return the farewell and then hang up the phone. I came to a realization not long after he hung up.
“Maybe I should start to focus on taking care of myself better instead of being so obsessed with my SCW title reign…”
As my match with Seleana Zdunich grew closer, I was beginning to weigh any possibilities of how I was going to accomplish that. But soon enough, I was back in ‘game mode’...
March 15, 2024
Finding myself in Stanford, I couldn’t help but be amused at the irony of being in a college town knowing that my opponent was an absolute dunce. I was on the main campus of the university itself and I was watching a replay of “The Game” between Stanford and California football where the band ran out on the field at the end. I could only smirk as I turned off the camera and began to express my thoughts.
“There’s the band running out on the field during that infamous football game over 40 years ago. You want to know why I am playing that clip so randomly, Seleana Zdunich? Because THAT is what it is going to take for you to beat me this Sunday and even then, it’s fair to say that even with the help from the marching band, you probably still wouldn’t be able to beat me. You know, this whole thing between us has been building up for months even though recently it’s all been from your end which is honestly quite sad. I have to ask you this…
Why are you SO obsessed with me?
No really, ever since I name dropped you a couple of times following my SCW Bombshells World Championship win, you’re name dropping me at every god damn turn as if you want to cheat on your fucked up excuse of a wife for me. Oh wait, is that ‘making hen out of feathers’? Don’t fucking talk to me about that Seleana, because this whole obsession that you’ve had with me regarding whatever it is between us has been YOU doing that! I mean, ever since I name dropped you the way I did, you’ve been complaining and whining and bitching about that clearly showing that you got your feelings hurt. I mean seriously, how many times did you name drop me in your recent promos? You’ve had so many chances just to face me without this bullshit Golden Opportunity thing: the Golden Briefcase… which you lost… and a little further back, that stupid four way tournament that Bella Madison won in which going into that match, you cut this HORRIBLE promo toward ME as if you were facing ME and not Bella Madison…
I mean no wonder she ultimately kicked your ass, am I right?
More on that putrid excuse of a promo, Seleana… but I want to address some more recent examples of where you have shamelessly name dropped me. Exhibit A… the golden briefcase match itself…
You’re talking about how you’re sorry that I can’t find a better excuse of my time then to bring up your marriage?
Girl, I’m sorry that you can’t find a better excuse of your time as a WRESTLER than to painfully try to talk shit about me in your promos basically every time you cut one. I’m sorry that I’m in your head so fucking bad. I’m sorry that in that specific promo for the Golden Briefcase match, you couldn’t find a better use of your promo time then to defend such a psychotic excuse of a person going around sucking the ass of former Bombshell Andrea Hernandez whenever she was in this company. And you want to call me “lazy” and “uncreative”, right? When you’re over there spewing nonsense toward me that you clearly copied out of Courtney Pierce’s homework notes… quite badly I should say.
I mean if you’re going to copy off of someone else’s homework, can you at least copy notes of someone that actually BEAT ME? Oh wait, NOBODY in this company has beaten me. You spent like 60 percent of your first golden briefcase promo targeting ME… all because I said some MEAN THINGS about you, your career and your personal life…
But I’m the ‘hen maker’...
I merely scoffed at this and rolled my eyes.
“You did so AFTER I decided I was done talking about you because once you lost to Bella in that tournament, I had no reason to even follow your career… or what’s left of it. God knows you haven’t won on a Supercard in God knows how long. I’m not going to get into how long you haven’t held a championship, but I think you SHOULD begin to understand what I am getting at. You’ve blown TWO recent world championship related opportunities but SOMEHOW you have this match against me to potentially get your own title shot and it’s SO laughable because you haven’t done shit to earn a shot at my title since… fucking hell, I don’t even remember how long ago that was. You want to know why you’re so fucking butthurt about what I used to say about you that you continued to throw shade at me in your pathetic excuses of promos long after I decided that you weren’t even worth talking about anymore?
Because what I said about you is the TRUTH!
You ARE a relic, Seleana!
You haven’t accomplished anything relevant in this company in YEARS!
After your last tour of duty with the SCW Bombshells World Championship many eons ago, you stopped giving a real fuck about your wrestling career because you were too busy being the embarrassing side chick of that lunatic you got married to and whose fault is that, Seleana? That’s not my fault. That’s your fault. Whose fault is it that your career has sunk so low that it can see the bones stuck at the bottom of the infamous La Brea tar pits? That’s your fault! Don’t take your fucking insecurities out on me because you haven’t accomplished a damn thing in this company in god knows how long. Don’t be turning on the camera and being a bitter, stupid little bitch like you tend to be and take digs at people better than you when more often than not, you can’t back it up and you haven’t backed it up in ages. You throw shade at me for months over two weeks worth of me telling the truth about your career, but I’m the hen maker, right?
NOW let’s talk about the ‘hen maker’ promo you had.
You know, the one where you were trying to trash my title reign which by the way was stupid because for one, my title reign was only a few weeks in at the time and far too soon to even give any criticism for and two, what the FUCK do you know about being a world champion in this company, Seleana? Like I said, you wasted 80 percent of that promo against Bella talking about me. You gave away that fucking match before the bell rang because you were so fucking obsessed with me and ti was really hilarious, but also really sad to watch as you self-destructed and unraveled over a bunch of comments that I made about you. You tried to talk about how I ‘fear’ that nobody will target me as champion like that’s supposed to be some kind of insult but I seem to recall that Kayla was going after me for weeks before I finally got her in the ring and confronted her face to face and then how I had my grand celebration to open up 2024 only to be interrupted by someone that wanted a title shot. Yeah, I’d say that comment aged as well as your career has. I mean, let’s be honest with each other Seleana…
The only time you were world champion?
You know… for all of like 14 days or however short it was?
The only reason why Alicia Lukas targeted you was because she wanted that belt back from you, otherwise?
Nobody would’ve targeted you. Hell, other than Bea Barnhart in recent years, who actually HAS targeted you? Who in their right mind has come into this company and said “damn it, I wanna kill Seleana Zdunich…”
NOBODY…
Other than Bea… only because she was obsessed with beating you after she had failed to do so in 5 tries…
And SOMEHOW, you can’t look in the mirror and see that YOU’RE the fucking problem with your career and why it’s in the pits that it is in right now. You had this championship for TWO FUCKING WEEKS, Seleana. TWO FUCKING WEEKS… and you brag and boast about that and you act as if everyone was out to get you when you had ONE four way defense against the former champion who wanted the title back, your wife, and some other bitch whose name escapes me at the moment. SOME CHAMPION you were, Seleana! Oh my god, everyone wanted a piece of you as champion for all of TWO FUCKING WEEKS! And really, the whole theory that you had of why they set up a mini tournament ‘just for someone to pay attention to you’ is FUCKING LAUGHABLE… and bullshit…
‘
And it really reveals not just how poorly educated you are in general, but how you’re willing to stretch the truth and say whatever it is you want to fucking say about me and try so hard to make it true when it never will be… almost as if you’re…
GASP…
Making a hen out of feathers!
Hey idiot, let me ask you a question.
What if Courtney Pierce wasn’t a fucking egomaniacal, sore loser MORON that wanted to rush the title rematch between her and I to the first Climax Control after High Stakes? Yeah, don’t you think that instead of defending my championship against the winner of a stupid tournament like that between four women that didn’t fucking deserve that shot in the first place, that I would’ve defended it against her at the Supercard instead? NO! Because you’re so BUTTHURT and you’re such an insecure little BITCH that instead of putting the blame for your mediocrity on yourself where it needs to be, if you can even call it mediocrity anymore because I think you’ve become the saddest excuse of a Sin City Wrestling Bombshell this side of Chloe Benton… or perennial loser Jessie Salco… you decide to take it out on people that are far superior than what you’ll ever be again!
You don’t THINK…
You’ve never learned HOW to think.
No wonder you’ve fallen so far down the pecking order that the name Seleana Zdunich makes people laugh rather than make people stand up and take notice like they did way back when.
You made this fucking STUPID lie about me and my title reign, copying Courtney’s ‘nobody cares about you’ fucking NONSENSE and you made something out of basically little…
All because I said a few words about you two Climax Controls in a row about your career and where it was at and said that you were a thing of the past…
All because I spoke the truth…
But I’M the problem?
Girl, I’m not the one that’s obsessed. YOU are! Everything that I just dissected proves that! Someone needs to put a damn straightjacket on you and take you away to a mental health facility because if you’re that damn obsessed with me, I’d hate to be around you when you happen to hold anything resembling a gun or a knife.
I’M not the one going out of my way to devote more than half of my promo time to you when I am facing other Bombshells…
YOU ARE…
The ONLY reason why I am even addressing you NOW is because I HAVE TO… because trust me Seleana, I’d rather do better and more productive things with my time than address a psychopathic piece of shit that clearly cannot accept the fact that she’s past it… or at the very least accept responsibility for the state of her own career and how she put it there herself by being just like Mercedes Vargas, just like Jessie Salco, and just like all the other dumbass ‘old school’ Bombshells that used to infect this place with their Golden Girls bullshit or STILL do… looking at YOU Sam Marlowe: by being unable to EVOLVE!
You’re a tired act, Seleana.
You put yourself in this situation because you don’t evolve, you don’t change, you don’t adapt to the changing times of this company. You never have! This division has passed you by and you don’t have the passion to do anything different or to evolve and grow in any way…
THAT’S why this match is bullshit…
THAT’S why you don’t deserve this match…
THAT’S why I’m going to beat you and just cast you aside….
Let THAT hurt…
BITCH!
At this point, with all the rage in me, I shut off the camera and take a breather, knowing that someone like Seleana Zdunich is NOT worth my anger…
