[Frankie Holliday]

I suppose people are actually starting to listen to me when I speak.
At least I hope so.

The fact that now I’m being spoken about with a cautious respect is indeed flattering. I’ve heard some of the greats now utter my name as their equal. They understand the threat that I am and I have become in 4 simple matches. There is no dismissing me at this point. Even our champion knows that now. The doubting whispers have quieted and the fearful ones have begun.

Everything I have said I would do, I have done. By hook or by crook. At the end, I have what I earned, and I am going to get what I want very soon.

I wish everything was this easy.

But if you think that I’m not ready to make the tough choices, if I’m not ready for the responsibility of what I’m aiming for, you just haven’t understood my story.

Don’t worry, this is where school is out.

And I made the toughest choice of all.

Let me tell you a story…

Junior year and what I did with my senior year felt like it went by in a flash. I spent almost all of my time with Eddie. Trying to hang out and talk to Eddie. Get him to do stuff. I just needed Eddie around and everything was great.

Mostly because the rest of school wasn’t fun. I almost enjoyed U.S. history, but unfortunately, it was the case I mentioned before. All the good shit is in other books. You miss out on so much because you just have to speed through everything. You’re talking about, in 9 months, trying to do 200 years plus of American history. You just don’t have the time to really learn the important and more interesting stuff. Math will always suck, and English was more of the same “write a report on this book and what you took out of it and it had better match the teacher’s interpretation otherwise you clearly didn’t get it.

 Even Science, the subject I loved the most, took a hit because it was Chemistry my junior year. Chemistry can get fun, but my teacher, Dr. Crews wasn’t a very good teacher. He would read out of the textbook, word for word, and then at the end of a sentence or long paragraph, look up and say “Okay?” as if we all understood what was just said. Maybe some people did actually understand, but I was certainly not one of them. And of course, because high school is about being cool and really this happens after as well, people don’t want to look uncool so after that “Okay?” There was silence. And Dr. Crews took that as a sign that everyone, in fact, understood. When the exact opposite was true. And because nobody wanted to look dumb or uncool, it just went on like this.

My parents of course, never really paid enough attention to actually care about my grades. As long as the school didn’t call to say I wasn’t there or I was failing, they were fine with it. Chemistry I did struggle and ended up with a B+ at the end of the year, but I got through it. But it was so unpleasant to even be there. It felt like a job. A job I really wasn’t interested in doing. I did it because I was supposed to, but it wasn’t the same. I was now more interested in other things.

Mainly Eddie.

Eddie was a year ahead of me, and so I was able to see what the future held, and Physics at least looked interesting. Another U.S. history course, which… again… nothing good. Pre-calculus looked abysmal and I would be more interested in reading Shakespeare for English if it didn’t feel like I had to. More of the same.

When Eddie and I were first dating, we had that weird phase where we had to get to know each other. First dates in high school are some cringe shit. Imagine seeing your Tinder date 5 days a week and you aren’t even getting laid. Just a lot of work. Eddie always had the impish grin and sexy smirk. He tried to play it cool with everything. Again, it was the tattoos. They were everything.

Anyway, Eddie wasn’t book smart, per say. Eddie could do the work, and he most of the time did, but Eddie would fail classes and just do the summer school route to get to the next grade. He really didn’t care. He was interested in school, clearly, but he was interested in me. Maybe as much as I was.

“So, like… what do you like to do?” He asked me when this was happening.

“I don’t know… I like… to read, listen to music, and I like science stuff.” I replied with a shrug. Those were the extent of my hobbies, outside of one other thing.

“You don’t like… watch TV? Or movies?

“I mean… I do, but… you’ll think it’s stupid.” I said, opening myself to the follow up question for no reason. All I had to say there was “yes” and I could have listed movies or shows on TV in 2017, even if I hadn’t watched them.

“No, I won’t. What is it?” He said, holding his hands up in mock surrender. He even crossed his heart to emphasize the point.

“Yes, you will.” I shot back.

“No. I won’t. I promise. You just saw me cross my heart.”

This moment could have made or broken the relationship. I wasn’t really prepared for this to come already, we hadn’t even gotten anywhere and we’d already hit our first hurdle.

“ I like… wrestling.” As soon it escaped my lips it felt like a mistake. It was out there now, hanging nauseously in the air.

Without skipping a beat, Eddie shrugged.

“Cool.”

And just like that, the moment passed. I wasn’t being judged. I… no we got past it. Okay. Cool.

Eddie did not dig deeper into that and then looked at me.

“What kind of music do you like?”

“Oh, like… all kinds. Mostly just rock music.”

“Cool. Who is your favorite band?”

I didn’t have one. The reality was my music knowledge really came from Spencer and he was mostly into ‘80’s and 90’s bands. I only heard some other songs on the radio or in a movie that maybe caught my interest.

“Uh… I don’t know. Stone Sour, I guess.”

“Cool.”

“What do you like to listen to?” I asked, hoping to get off of me and onto him.

“Punk.” He said confidently.

“Oh, you mean like Green Day or The Offspring?”

Eddie looked at me like I had 3 heads. Then he laughed.

“You think that’s punk?” He said, almost incredulous.

“I don’t know, I don’t listen to Punk really.”

“No, no, I will have to have you listen to real punk music.

“Oh, okay.”

As we got closer, Eddie got himself a car. A 2012 Chevy Camaro. Eddie would come and pick me up for school, so I no longer had to ride the bus. He loved working on cars, which is one of the reasons he didn’t care about school. He loved working on cars and did it in his spare time and got a job after finishing school at a garage. He took extra special care of that car. He loved it.

And it was sexy.

Black with red stripes on the hood. It had a soft top and looked even better with the top down. I learned to drive in that car. The only thing that I didn’t like was that it was a stick shift but Eddie was patient and taught me how to drive it. I loved that car, and Eddie promised that when I graduated, if there was one around, he’d fix one up for me.

I had a goal headed into my senior year.

But, that’s when it all fell apart.

When I was 14, Charlie had begun taking an interest in me again. He all of a sudden wanted to be a dad after basically 13 years of nothing. Now he was interested in things I was doing. He didn’t really care, but he pretended to. I had Eddie meet him once and only once, and Charlie wasn’t sober enough to even remember this. He was borderline passed out when I did.

“Dad, this is Eddie, he’s my boyfriend.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir.” Eddie said, extending his hand.

Charlie stared for a long time. He said nothing, he did nothing. It was like he didn’t hear it at all. Eddie kept his hand extended for an embarrassingly long time before retracting it. Charlie finally looked up.

“Just remember to wear a rubber.”

I was mortified. That was my dad. That’s what he said the first time meeting my boyfriend. I was just completely done.

“Uh.. yeah… sure will.” Eddie stumbled out with.

“Let’s go.” I said to Eddie, as Charlie seemed to doze off to sleep.

We walked out and I was apologizing profusely. I had never been so embarrassed in my life. I was nearly in tears.

“Hey, it’s cool. Your dad is… uh… yeah, he’s whatever. It’s not your fault.”

Eddie and I grew closer after that and maybe in some weird way Charlie helped with that. I don’t know. I don’t want to give him too much credit.

But that’s when Charlie began to request I accompany him after work to bars. I was shown off to his co-workers like I was some kind of prize. I didn’t want to be there, but Charlie kept insisting that I needed to mingle with people. I was 14 when it started so being in a bar felt uncomfortable anyway, and then it was a bunch of drunk, lonely men who were now eyeing me like this.

I was 18 now, and it became increasingly uncomfortable because I had known these men who were in their ‘40’s and 50’s and now it was like… they were giving me gifts and hitting on me.

And with Eddie out of school and working full time, there wasn’t a way out of this on my own. I had to endure it and my school work began to suffer as a result. Senior year was a slog because I was exhausted all the time being out til 2am some nights and having school at 7am. I was so smothered and trapped and I just didn’t want to do this anymore.

Eddie finally came back around in April 2018. He would come by occasionally, but he wasn’t going to stop Charlie from doing anything. So I was trapped with him as long as he wanted it to be. But Eddie was the one to finally get me to face my enemy. We sat in his car late one night, and we had that talk.

“Listen, Frankie… It’s been so long since I saw you and I think you… I think you need to get out of that house.” He said, serious as a heart attack.

“What?”

“Listen, Jelly, this is getting out of hand.” He said shaking his head before stroking my cheek.

“I can’t just leave, Eddie.” I shot back.

“Yes. You can. I’m just worried about what might happen to you.”

“I still have so much to do, Eddie. I don’t want to pick up and start over.”

“You should, before you can’t.” He said, staring me dead in the face. “It’s not too early to start over.”

I looked at him and he saw the tears rolling down my face.

“My mom was 18 when she made that mistake. I don’t want to make the same one.”

“This is different, Jelly. You NEED to get out of there. This is toxic.”

This went on for a long time, but the more he talked, the more I listened, and the more I knew he was right. I needed to leave. But how do I do this?

Eddie accompanied me into the house where Charlie was asleep in his chair, several beer cans taking their usual spot around him. My mother was of course asleep upstairs on her pills.

“Dad?” I said.

No response, as usual.

“Sir. I think we need to talk.”

Eddie’s voice was unfamiliar to Charlie, who stirred from sleep, and when his eyes focused, he didn’t recognize Eddie, and in his drunken stupor, didn’t recognize me. He reached down and pulled a pistol from under his chair and aimed it straight at us.

“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

There was a moment, I thought that maybe, just maybe, my dad would snap out of it and see that it was his daughter that he was pointing a gun at...

but he did not. The gun was aimed, shaking and waving back and forth.

“Let me get my stuff and we’ll go.” I whispered. Eddie turned and left the house as I walked away to my room. I grabbed only a few things, like toiletries and a few changes of clothes. I found a few plastic bags and put them in. I grabbed my laptop and other essential electronics, chargers, batteries and the like. I didn’t really know what to pack or bring with me because I wasn’t planning on coming back.

I grabbed what I felt I needed and walked past my mother’s room. I didn’t know what to think of this woman at this point. Or how she would react or even notice. I stood there for a moment, and then… that was it. Charlie was already passed out again and I threw the stuff into the backseat of Eddie’s car. I got it, and I had no choice but to accept it.

“Let’s go” I said, staring straight ahead.

“Alright.”

And just like that… I left the chains of love behind.

And got different ones.


Are we good now?

Any more “Queens” hanging around the roster? Can we move on from that? Please let that be the end of it.
And now we get everyone’s favorite.

Two people having a one on one match soon become a tag team! Yay! Are you excited to see how Kayla and I get along before we fight each other? Do you care? Not really, and it’s against two charity cases to boot. Oh boy!

Fine, if you wish, that’s what will happen. Not that it will matter. We’ve got this match in the bag, folks.

Because I am teaming with the Bombshell’s world champion and she’s better than everybody! That’s right, I’m not worried about anything because Kayla Richards is leading the team! I’m set!

Well aye-aye captain! Why don’t you just go ahead and show me how good of a leader you are. I mean, clearly you don’t need me to do much of anything because you are so good and they are so very bad. This should be a piece of cake with you leading the charge, right? You really shouldn’t need me at all. You’re the best in the world at this stuff, right?

Oh, I’m just fucking with ya, Kayla. I know you probably after hearing that expect me to stand on the apron and not tag in and let you do all the work in some devious attempt to wear you down before Summer XXXtreme. It’s classic, it’s how it would normally go too. I mean, if I was going to do something like that, this is the best opportunity to do it. I could sit on the steps and not even watch. Because I mean, you should be able to handle this by yourself anyway.

But I wouldn’t do that to you. No, no, that’d be too easy. Then you’d have an excuse to fall back on. No, no, I am 100% committed to this team. You and I in this one match are going to make them wish they never retired the bombshell’s tag team titles! That’s how great of a team we can be! I will be there, hand outstretched for the tag should you need me. I mean, you shouldn’t… but if you do, I will be there.

But let’s not act like there’s going be an anchor tied to your ass either.

I know full well you can walk out on me, just as easily as I can walk out on you. But let’s be honest, we both just want to get this match over with, and an unnecessary loss over something like that is conduct unbecoming of a champion and number one contender. We should be better than that. And for those few precious minutes that we have to team, we will be.

But let’s just move on here.

Seleana Zdunich and Diamond Caldwell.

Well let’s just state the obvious here and congratulate both of them for remembering to do their interviews and promos for this match in the first place. I know, first time jitters got me too, but this is kind of our job, so it’s nice to hear from you when the time is at hand.

Well, no, I’d rather not hear from either of you at this point considering that you two are literally connected by Crystal both-of-your-last-names. Think about that for a second ladies. Why are you even still pretending like Crystal gives a flying fuck about either of you?

Especially you, Seleana. Crystal has stomped on your heart right in front of your face and laughed afterwards she’s caused you so much emotional damage. And you, just stand there and take it. I know the feeling of feeling like you should stand up for yourself, but when I needed to, I did it. You on the other hand, continue to drown in your own Crystal related swamp.

And at this point, I’m tired of hearing about it, or seeing it written on your face each and every time you have to come on screen. Why would you continue to do this to yourself? I guess maybe that somewhere deep down, you still “love” her, but it’s pretty clear to me that you need to drop that and move on with your life because your career has suffered the entire time since.

You are such a strange case, because despite being a former Bombshell’s world champion, you are viewed as a joke. I don’t know if we can class you as an underachiever or an overachiever. Because you’ve somehow managed to be both at the same time. Wrestling fans and internet trolls alike are all wondering if you being a world champion is a complete fluke, or a hint of what you are capable of. Of course that was like 3 or 4 years ago and I’m here to render the verdict.

Seleana Zdunich, you’re just… there.

You’re neither over or under achieving. You exist and that’s about as good as you can hope for at this point. Part of me wishes that when I’ve changed everything around here that I could do something with you, but at this point, it’s like a potted plant on the steps. I could keep it, I could remove it, but will anyone actually notice? So many people have tried so hard to get you to do more than you do, and it’s unfortunate the stench of Crystal just permeates through you. No one would want to touch you. She has made you toxic.

And so, you will continue to simply be here. Show up, do your duty and fight for the lost cause of your love life instead of yourself, and you will continue to be just… one of the bombshells hanging on the roster. I don’t know if there’s anything I can really do with you to make you stand out. You had the chance to do that so many times that it’s a waste of my time and frankly your time to even bother.

I would say I’m sorry Seleana, but I can’t be when you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Diamond, you on the other hand, you have potential.

There’s still time for you to also get away from that toxicity. You have the chance before it’s too late. You see what happened two weeks ago, you thought perhaps Crystal would protect you or make your landing in a new place easy. But that didn’t happen, did it? She watched you fall flat on your face right out of the gate and did nothing to help you. The only thing she was concerned with was then getting the name correct for your next huge embarrassing failure.

She’s not coaching you up, preparing you anything is she? And you are married to this woman? Why on earth would you do something so dumb? Was this like a pity thing? You still have the chance to start over, and be your own person, Diamond. You can be a diamond, but hey, you hear your own wife talk don’t you? You hear and see how your own wife is now more concerned with teaming with another person, a champion, instead of you? Why is SHE not in this match, Diamond? Why is your wife not teaming with you?  Why is she sticking you with her baggage? You have seen what Crystal has done to Seleana, so you have to be aware that the same fate awaits you, right?

I just want you to pay attention and understand the obvious. And if you do, and you make the correct move, when I change this place, you will be ready to take the spot that you should have that Crystal is occupying. You know that as long as she’s around, she’s going to put herself first. She’s going to rob you of all your opportunities and throw you to the wolves every chance she gets. You can do yourself and the world a favor and just take her out of the picture, and stand on your own.

You know you want to.

You would instantly be a hero around here. Instantly. You can make that choice, Diamond.

Or, you can choose to be exactly like your partner and suffer greatly for it.

Let’s face it, you’re cannon fodder again this week. If you don’t make the move after this, if you don’t consider this a wake-up call, you’re going to be doomed to the level of mediocrity that Seleana has fallen to and that Crystal has fallen to. She’s going to bring you down with her if you continue to stand with her. You still have the chance to make a true name for yourself, other than Crystal’s “other wife.”

And no, I don’t really care how your relationship works, I just know you clearly have a terrible person as the connection between you.

And this is coming from me. I know I’m a terrible person. I’m actively trying to break up three people in a dead-end relationship. I’ve told people to do some horrible things, said and done horrible things. I am a piece of shit person. But you are married to far worse person.

The only person who doesn’t see it, is you.

So, Seleana and Diamond, I have laid out the truth in front of you both.

You two are just not going to win this match, but there’s at least a good thing, a positive thing you can take from it.

Remove the cancer from your lives and maybe you can enjoy what’s out there.

It’s a pretty easy choice to make if you ask me.

But, I know you won’t listen to me, you think I’m just fucking with you to drive a wedge between you. You think I’m just talking shit to get in your head.

I don’t need to. Not this week, I have the champ on my team. I’m good.

I’m just giving you information. Just telling you the truth. A choice you can make to make your life better.
Everyone else who has failed to listen to me has lost.
it will be much easier if you listen.

Trust me.