9-29-2024
Something that I would almost never admit in public is that the day of Violent Conduct and my first Internet title defense, I was rattled. That morning, I was doing everything I can not to fall apart. I was trying so hard to focus on my title defense when I arrived in London to get some last minute practice in, but I wasn’t feeling it. The death of my grandfather was haunting me and I was feeling it. I wasn’t coming off the ropes as hard. My moves didn’t have the same impact. I was wrestling too conservative against a practice opponent and she was wrestling circles around me. Eventually, I let out an angry sigh and retreated into the corner.
“I can’t fucking do this right now…” I said with anger in my voice.
“If you wrestle like that, Raine is going to destroy you…” my practice opponent said, which just further ticked me off.
“HELLO? My grandfather died recently and everyone’s in Germany doing a bunch of shit to get his body and his funeral going over there so a practice match against someone like you who can’t even get out of this country to the States for an Indy booking is the furthest thing from my mind right now.”
“I was just offering helpful criticism, god damn!”
“What you can offer me right now is a FUCKING BREAK! Get the fuck out of my ring!”
My practice opponent didn’t take kindly to the way I was treating her and she left the ring. I slumped into the corner and it’s highly unlikely that I would ever go into any match with a shred of doubt, but I was definitely feeling it. My heart and mind were split in two places. I felt guilty for even TRYING to wrestle this title defense at all.
“It’s bad enough dealing with this…” I said with a sullen tone in my voice as I realized that my grandfather’s passing was affecting me more than I thought it was going to initially. I felt angry at the world for taking him away from me so soon after I finally saw him in person for the first time in over a decade. “...but to deal with the piece of SHIT that I’m dealing with…”
Not since Courtney Pierce did I go into a match hating someone personally more than I did Raine. Her empty, vapid words… most of which were obviously untrue… were making my blood boil. It was the rare time where I went into a match knowing that if I ended someone’s career, I wouldn’t feel bad about it at all.
“Normally, I can just laugh off her shit…” I admitted to myself. “Ninety percent of her nonsense is shit I haven’t heard before. Yet, it stings worse than usual. It shouldn’t, but it does. Maybe there’s some truth to the shit she was saying…”
“Nonsense…” I heard someone say nearby. I was caught by surprise to see Klaus, my mother’s trainer, entering the ring with me.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m doing your mother a favor. Do you mind standing up for a minute?”
I was a bit annoyed knowing some of the harsh truth Klaus spewed toward me when I met him, but that was the least of my worries right now. I stood up to meet him in the eye.
“Your mother wanted me to look out for you. I know you’ve got plenty going on and the thing is, if it wasn’t for your grandfather, those empty words from your opponent wouldn’t even come close to bothering you right now.”
“Wait, you mean to tell me that you’re ROOTING for me?” I asked with a scoff. After how I was treated when we met, I would’ve thought he’d be rooting against me. “You hate me…”
“Come off it, young lady. I don’t hate you. I just don’t think you have the same spirit that your mother does. However, if you win tonight considering the circumstances your family is going through, you just might prove me wrong.”
“I don’t have shit to prove to you…” I said to him with defiance, which surprisingly made him smile.
“Good! You only have to prove something to yourself and this is one of those matches. Julianna, I know it seems awkward for me to say this, but you’re the strongest one in your family right now. If anything, win this for them. I’d rather see a champion like you who is rough around the edges but is TRYING to get better get a deserved victory over someone who has an even worse ego than you do, has no perspective on anything, doesn’t give a shit about this business, and who is everything she actually whines about end up with that Internet title.”
I was the one smiling.
“You heard what she said…”
“Lord, she had enough material for a slander lawsuit, young lady. I know your attitude isn’t something I am a fan of, but you’ve never gone as low as to stoop to plastic surgery or any of that other stereotyping crap she put on you. Your mother would never…”
I let out a sigh and Klaus even put an arm around me.
“Don’t let this tragedy skew who you are, Julianna. At the end of the day, you’re still a Schroder and you come from a long line of bold and strong people. This is the time to be bold and strong. That idiot isn’t even WORTH your anger. Think of a time your grandfather was supportive of your career, and you’ll understand what I’m saying.”
“...thanks…” I said awkwardly as he left the ring. I stood by and happened to remember the conversation my grandfather and I had after I won my first world championship…
2021
It was only three days following what was, at that point, the biggest moment of my career. I was sitting on my mother’s couch just soaking things in as I held that world title on my lap. I thought back to what I was able to pull off against all the odds that were stacked against me. Inside, I felt like I was healing from all of the abuse that my father put me through regarding the wrestling business. I thought back to him telling me that I’d never amount to anything and then thinking that I was a failure of a daughter to him.
“I proved YOU wrong, didn’t I…” I thought to myself. But, I didn’t get to be with my own thoughts as my mother walked in holding her tablet.
“Julianna?” my mother said, surprising me a bit. “There’s someone that wants to talk to you…”
I rolled my eyes, assuming the worst.
“I don’t want to talk to that son of a bitch…” I said, shocking her and causing her eyes to widen with shock. “...he was never there for me and now he wants to be on the bandwagon? Fuck him!”
“...Julianna, seriously?”
“I don’t have time for his fucking praise after he was never there for me! I’ll say it to his face too…” I said with anger in my voice.
“Honey…” my mother began, realizing why I said what I did. “It’s not YOUR father that wants to talk to you, it’s mine.”
Suddenly, my eyes lit up and that anger faded away like it was never there.
“OH! Well, give me that damn tablet…”
I had never been more excited to hold a tablet in my life up to that point and sure enough, my grandfather was in his home all the way in Berlin.
“JULIANNA!”
“HEY! So…”
“I heard about your huge win!” my grandfather said. “Your grandmother and I are proud as hell of you, you realize that right?”
“I wish you could both be here with me honestly…” I said, with tears of joy forming in my eyes. “I proved to myself that I could do this. I remember when you both wanted to be there for me but my dad decided to keep me away from you…”
“Yes, we remember. We knew he was going to be horrible for your career and in the beginning, he absolutely was. You were rock bottom a year and a half ago and now look at you! You’re a world champion!”
“It… feels surreal hearing that…”
“I feel like I’m reliving your mother’s success all over again…”
“...nooo….” I said with a bit of embarrassment. “Don’t say that. I could never match what my mother did.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Julianna. You’re so much stronger than you give yourself credit for.”
“Am I?” I asked, still sounding unsure of myself.
“That abuse your father put you through was CRIMINAL…” my grandfather said in a tone that made it sound like he’d kill him if he could. “You didn’t deserve to go through any of that. He kept putting you down, laughing at your shortcomings, rooting against you, sabotaging you every step of the way, pressuring you, making it clear he didn’t want you as his daughter. It’s a shame you collapsed and hit rock bottom but… you came back from it. Most people don’t. You’ve overcome the worst abuse and the most awful torture any person on this planet will ever put you through, you realize that don’t you?”
I was left a bit stunned hearing this and quickly realizing how right he was.
“Not enough as I should’ve…”
“It’s time you realize your own strength, young lady. If you can overcome your father, you can overcome anything and anyone that stands in your way no matter how tough they are, no matter how badly they want to destroy you with their empty words and no matter how much you come across someone that wants to drive you through the dirt and bury you because they feel like a piece of shit. Don’t let anyone out there get to you again, got it?”
“I’m going to keep fighting that good fight…” I said, feeling empowered.
“I love you kiddo, I always have…” he told me, warming my heart.
“I love you too, thank you and give my grandmother my best… please?”
“Of course!”, my grandfather said as we wrapped up the call.
Back to the present…
His words of wisdom were ringing in my head now as my training opponent got back in the ring.
“You can overcome anything and anyone…”
“Don’t let anyone get to you…”
“Their words mean nothing…”
“You are who you are, not who someone else says you are…”
“Ready to get destroyed, bimbo?” my training opponent said, ticking me off to the point where I grabbed them and nearly broke the mat with a hip toss that left her stunned in the corner.
“I’m winning for my grandfather tonight…”
Once I said that, I never looked back or felt like I was going to lose my championship…
After Violent Conduct…
Being as beaten and sore as I was, was the furthest thing from my mind. I was in the parking lot following my successful title defense and I held that title close to me. My emotions were on a high at the moment especially since I used my grandfather’s old words to spurn myself to the win.
“That was for you, grandfather…” were the first words I said as tears rolled down my face. I wiped them away, but I was in for one more surprise…
“He would’ve been very proud…” I heard my mother say in the near distance.
“...MOM!?!?!”
We ran up to each other and gave each other probably the biggest embrace ever.
“I thought you were still in Berlin…”
“I flew in about an hour and a half ago…”
“...really?”
“I wasn’t going to miss this. I know that everything has been hard on you lately and the fact that you were defending your title tonight against an awful human being…”
“...considering the whole situation, I was NEVER going to allow someone like THAT to take this title away from me.”
“GOOD! That fucking cunt…”
“Mom, she’s not even worth getting angry about.”
“It’s the mother in me, Julianna. Do you honestly think I am going to stand by, watch my own daughter be slandered, degraded, stereotyped and lied about by someone that was ironically everything she said YOU were? FUCK THAT! That was never going to happen without me saying anything about it. I KNOW who you are more than anyone in the world and you showed me that tonight when you took those empty words and you shoved them right up her ass. This is why you NEVER judge a book by its fucking cover. You may look the way you look, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the way you look at all by the way, but that doesn’t disqualify you from having the heart and passion for this business that you’ve always had. I’m fucking proud of you for proving that. Vapid little tramp…”
“Mother…” I said with a sigh. “It’s done with. I’ll speak out about it in my own way when things calm down and such, but that kind of win that I got tonight is a win that I’ve been getting on a regular basis god knows how many times. The honest to god truth is, she was a cupcake compared to my father who you know has said worse about me and directly to me.”
“Right…”
“I didn’t want to make this title defense about shutting her up because I knew deep down that she wasn’t worth that. She’s the type that’s going to be gone sooner than most think…”
Little did we know that my prediction would be right far sooner than anticipated.
“...because she lacks the heart to carry on in the face of adversity…” I added. “Not me! I had it all right in front of me. This wasn’t about my opponent. This was about giving our family the boost that it needed in such a tragic time. I admit that I hadn’t had this amount of tension going into a match since last year’s High Stakes, or maybe the night I beat Tempest, but it had far more to do with avoiding the awful fate of letting down the family… and especially my grandfather. It’s like he once told me, I am who I am… not who someone else says I am…”
My mother took a deep breath and finally calmed down realizing that I was right and that vapid nonsense that I had to deal with from my opponent wasn’t worth all the emotions she was going through, especially since they were still heightened with my grandfather’s death being very much a fresh wound in both of our hearts at the moment.
“That sounds like my dad alright…” my mother said with a laugh. “I’m going to warn you. It’s going to be tough these next few weeks since there’s so much legal stuff to deal with, a living will to read, finding out what he decided to pass along to everyone else and I can’t even think about my mother and how alone she’s going to be…”
“She’s not going to be alone…” I reassured her. “We’re both going to be there for her. I sure as hell hope that tonight helps her pull through this.”
“Trust me, honey. It will. I haven’t heard from her, but I bet she’s learned about your win by now and I bet she’s grateful for the emotional boost. Just keep fighting and doing what you do, Julianna. You’ve dealt with so much crap over your career, you still continue to deal with it even here, and you still get stronger through it all where most people collapse and quit…”
We exchanged another embrace.
“Fighting is what I do…” I reminded her, as we shifted the conversation to family matters.
I haven’t lost that glow of that successful title defense just yet…
11-1-2024
Inside SeaLife Aquarium in the Arizona Mills mall in nearby Tempe, I had plenty of things on my mind. As it turns out, the cameras cut on me in front of a shark tank with some sharks swimming in the background. I had my championship around my waist and I had a pretty stark confidence about the match ahead. Still, I had an angry glare on my face as I began to express my thoughts.
“I have to say that while it’s been a minute since I’ve been on SCW television lately, to come back and wrestle is exactly what I need. I had a horrible family tragedy… my grandfather for those that didn’t know, that I was dealing with and only now are the clouds beginning to clear on that. Most wrestlers that were in my situation at Violent Conduct would’ve folded. They would’ve allowed the empty, bullshit words of my opponent to break them. They would’ve collapsed and been unable to compete, maybe even begging for the match to be postponed. But, something that most people in this company just never seemed to get whatsoever is that I AM NOT MOST WRESTLERS! Nobody has made the waves that I have in this company before me and nobody new has done it ever since. My opponent at Violent Conduct THOUGHT she was going to be that special breed even though she was a carbon copy of so many bitches I’ve seen before and when I exposed her as Just Another Gal, she decided to bitch out and quit. But enough about that. I’ve gotten out my feelings on that a few weeks ago…
I look forward to finding out what’s in store for me at High Stakes, but for now, I have to face a familiar challenge and that’s Alexandra Calaway. I’ve had a couple of run ins with her. We won that handicap match against Harper Mason as part of that Queen of the Day bullshit that enabled me to get an Internet title shot and prior to that, we faced off for the World title in a match that I won. Trust me, after Violent Conduct, the last thing that I am going to do is rest on my laurels here just because I’ve won a match against her. So Alexandra, I know that the first thing that is going to be on your mind, besides trying to build some momentum for your match with Andrea and Alicia very soon, is trying to avenge that title match we had and that’s fine. But see, in the event that you haven’t figured it out by now…
I take a pause as the camera gets a couple of good shots of the sharks swimming behind me.
“The Bombshells division is many oceans. You’ve done well in the oceans full of coral fish and jellyfish beng Bombshells Roulette Champion twice over, I won’t deny you that. But your history of swimming with the sharks? NOT good! See Alexandra, you’re the type of wrestler that thinks that they deserve to be on a bigger stage than what they really are or that don’t realize what their ceiling is, but when they get the chance to break that ceiling or to back up their words… they end up choking in the end. In all honesty, I am the WORST opponent you could face just before you can face Alicia and Andrea and that’s on top of the fact that it wasn’t all that long ago that you got to face Andrea one on one and you lost to her.
So what’s going to happen is that you’re going to have LESS momentum and LESS confidence than you think you should have going into that triple threat because your history of being eaten alive by the sharks of the Bombshells division is about to rear its ugly head. Trust me, I’m not out to get you or anything. I’m not out to slow you down or to put that ceiling above your head. That’s not why I’m fighting this match. I’m fighting this match to build my own momentum for HIgh Stakes, to continue to fight for the family that’s behind me after my grandfather’s death and to continue to count down to 350 and trying to break Myra Rivers’s single reign Internet Championship record. This match? I mean, sure beating you again would be great, but it’s more about me than it is about you. I KNOW who I am, I KNOW what i am capable of. I know what it takes to get to that next level in this company and with you? As much as I don’t even dislike you, as a matter of fact, you’ve been more gracious toward me than most in the Bombshells division when you actually FEEL like being nice to me, you haven’t shown that you’ve got what it takes to be at that main event level.
Not that it’s a bad thing, mind you…
And it’s not ME saying something that deep down, maybe you already know but are too afraid to admit…
You can be a Roulette division mainstay and STILL be a Hall of Fame member as Jessie Salco proved…
Not saying that’s your future, but I hope you get what I mean.
But you, Alexandra, need to learn that you are what you are. However, your biggest problem, and ultimately the ONE thing that holds you back, is your inability to do that. You seem to just pick any lane you feel like picking depending on who you’re facing, what stakes there are in a match and so on without knowing which lane is the RIGHT lane! I’ll highlight some examples for you. Going into Violent Conduct, you were telling your opponents that this wasn’t ‘just about championships anymore’, but in your next match against Cassie Mason, you were telling her that Violent Conduct was about reclaiming what was yours. I don’t know, but that sounds like someone who is JUST about championships. I seem to recall that you’ve had a recent obsession with Kayla Richards and trying to beat her… if not for the mixed tag championships… which you failed to do on multiple occasions away… but for recently, the World Championship.
Answer me this, Alexandria…
How are YOU someone that is ready to be a world champion when you have a different ideology or a different mindset practically every single match that you wrestle? How are YOU ready to be a world champion here when you can’t even stay consistent not just with wins and losses, but also with what I just said? Are you SURE that some of the shit that you told Seleana Zdunich going into your Belle of the Brawl qualifier don’t apply to YOU? Let me recap what you said to Seleana, alright. Actually, let me QUOTE YOU and direct that quote back at YOU because yes, honey, what you said to Seleana DOES apply to you…
Though with a slight variation because I don’t believe in treating my opponents the way you treated Seleana and the way Courtney Pierce treated me…and I MOSTLY QUOTE…
You think you’re ready to face me again? You’ve scratched, you’ve clawed, but this second time around against me? It STILL won’t be enough and I think somewhere in you, you might realize that. I mean, you really do live in SOMEWHAT of a denial considering that you described yourself as “dominating” when you’ve never been able to swim with the sharks like Kayla, myself, among other main event players in this division, Hell, you couldn’t even swim with the barracudas like Luna Vanity at Violent Conduct. You’re so DOMINATING… HOW? By winning only, and literally, half of your matches? We have the same amount of wins in this company and yet, I’ve wrestled just a tick below sixty percent of the matches that you have. Tell me how you’re dominating? Losing to Finn and Kayla over and over? Sorry, i think you’ve got the definition of the word “dominant” a little twisted. Beating Seleana Zdunich over and over again isn’t dominating. Honestly, do you even THINK about what you say before you say it? Who are YOU to tell ANYONE that they’re treading water when much of the time in your career here, you’ve barely been able to keep your head above that same water at times? And by the way, I’m sure if you’re “drowning in fire” as you described yourself going into that match with Seleana, then you’d literally be dead.
I’m not sure if I should credit you for still doing the very best that you can to continue to push herself to the upper tier of this division no matter how many times you’ve been knocked down and no matter how many times you have choked in the biggest situations you have faced that didn’t involve the Roulette Championship or if I should just be the one woman on this roster that needs to beat you upside the head and drill it through your damn skull that your niche is the Roulette Championship… or the Internet Championship after my reign is done of course. It saddens me that a wrestler of your talent and your caliber just can’t seem to put it all together when it counts the most and can’t seem to understand their limitations. It honestly makes me sad that you’ve got enough talent to possibly have that breakthrough at some point, but psychologically, it’s just not there… at least not here.
You worry too much about the worst case scenario and you worry far too much about what other people think about you. I’ve seen you praise people in one promo and then th next time you face that person, you’re wanting to trash them and you’re wanting to talk a bunch of shit. If you go around and ask the other women in the locker room or even some of our fans and you ask them “who is Alexandra Calaway?” and they’ll say that you’re a wrestler, they’ll mention your Roulette Championship reigns, as they should. They might even mention any accomplishments that came your way and all of that. But when you ask the question “What does Alexandra stand for really? What are her true morals? What’s her real M.O.?”
Everyone’s going to be stumped because there’s not a damn person that is going to figure out the answer to those questions. Hell, I even question if YOU know what you TRULY stand for when it comes to this business. If you DID know what you truly stood for, you wouldn’t be changing your values every match going from “it’s not JUST about championships” about one match and then in the next saying that the same match you said “it’s not JUST about championships” was all about reclaiming what you lost. It doesn’t fucking work that way, Alexandra and I am going to be brutally honest with you. I hate to say what I am about to say because I KNOW you’re going to hear this and take this the wrong way but it’s the TRUTH: until you figure out EXACTLY what you stand for, EXACTLY why you do this, EXACTLY what this is all about for you, and you get a grip of who you truly are and who you can truly be in the long run in this company, you’re ALWAYS going to have a difficult time getting to that next level and you’re ALWAYS going to struggle against women like Kayla Richards.
Your biggest weakness honey, is you.
You’re the type of wrestler that gets all up in her feelings too easily, something that you exposed many times before… and the most recent example I can think of is your loss against Andrea where you weren’t so much worried about beating her, but you were worried about her treating you the same way that Kayla Richards has.
Where you are strong physically, you’re on the lighter side psychologically and that’s what holds you back.
If you were in MY shoes at Violent Conduct, defending my Internet Championship against that woman that wanted to do nothing but bury me and label me as everything in the book that I’m not, you would’ve taken it all to heart, played right into her hands, collapsed like a house of cards and lost the title to her. You’re spinning your wheels here, Alexandra, and as much as I know you want revenge on me for our last one on one encounter and as much as I know you want that momentum going up against Alicia and Andrea, and as much as I know you BADLY want to beat Kayla Richards JUST one time, as it has generally been the case with you… just WANTING IT won’t be enough against me… yet again. You have to REALLY push for it, you have to grow beyond what you’ve shown so far. You have to change YOUR game and make the adjustments that, as your track record has shown, you HAVEN’T made…
I mean shit, the fact that you have lost three of four supercard matches this year alone, including that Blast from the Past final and the match we had, is evidence that if you HAVE made any adjustments to your game since our last match, they are either not enough or hardly noticable.
And really, when I look at you now, even though you regained the Roulette Championship between our two matches and even made the Blast from the Past finals this year, I still see the same flawed wrestler that I beat back in February and that I WILL beat again…
I’m about to prove you’re not ready to be a world champion…
With that, I shut off the camera and walk away from the shark tank, confident that Alexandra’s about to suffer a huge momentum loss before her triple threat…
