The Line Between Pride and Pressure
Wolfslair
Two Days After the Texas Debut
The gym smelled like sweat, old canvas, and steel. The hum of the fluorescent lights buzzed above the ring as Alex leaned against the ropes, arms folded, watching his son move with the same kinetic energy he’d carried at that age. Dylan hit the ropes again, this time with purpose, no crowd, no adrenaline, just repetition, rhythm, and the echo of boots striking canvas.
Alex had expected the win in Texas to mellow the kid out a bit. Maybe give him a sense of calm. Instead, it had lit a fuse. Dylan was faster. Sharper. Hungrier. But he was also starting to drift into the same dangerous territory Alex knew too well, the place where confidence quietly mutates into recklessness. Dylan hit the mat with a roll, popped to his feet, and shot a quick look toward his father near the apron. “You watching or daydreaming?”
Alex tipped his head, jaw tight. “I’m watching you ignore what I told you about tightening your footwork on the rebound.”
Dylan scoffed, grabbed the top rope, and leaned over slightly. “I tightened it. You just didn’t notice.”
“If I didn’t notice, then you didn’t tighten it.”
The kid let out a long breath, dramatic, irritated, and went back to the center of the ring. Alex could feel the tension rising the same way humidity did before a storm: steady, creeping, impossible to ignore. Dylan ran another sequence. Leapfrog. Drop down. Arm drag. Smooth, until he decided to improvise again. He sprang onto the middle rope, twisting into a springboard crossbody. Alex growled under his breath. “Stop. Stop.” Dylan landed, rolled, and stood with his hands out.
“What now?”
“That wasn’t the drill. You’re freelancing. Again.”
“It worked in Texas.”
“It nearly got you put on a stretcher in Texas.”
“But it didn’t.” Alex stepped through the ropes, boots thudding against the canvas. He walked right up to his son, close enough that Dylan had to tilt his chin up slightly to meet his stare.
“Kid, listen to me carefully.”
“I’m listening. I just don’t think you’re saying anything new.”
That did it. Alex’s eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in that cold, sharp way a man looks when memories he hates start scratching at the back of his skull. “Every time you go off-script, you take a risk you don’t need to take……..Every time you do, I see a ghost standing in your place.” Dylan’s jaw clenched.
“Don’t do that. Don’t make this about Uncle Dylan.”
“It is about him. And you know it.”
“I’m not him.”
“No. But right now you’re trying damn hard to be.” The gym fell quiet. A couple of other Wolfslair members glanced over before pretending not to listen. Alex stepped back, rubbing a hand over his face. He hated how hard his voice sounded. He hated even more that he didn’t know any other way to say it. “Take five.”
Dylan hopped out of the ring instead of sitting in a corner like Alex expected. He snatched his water bottle from the bench, twisted the cap off so fast it snapped, and took a long drink. Then he looked over his shoulder. “Why are you acting like I’m one mistake away from dying out there?”
Alex blinked slowly. “Because sometimes one mistake is all it takes.”
Dylan didn’t reply at first. He stared at the wall, the mats, anywhere except at his father. “I get that you lost people. I get that you’ve seen things I haven’t. But that doesn’t mean you get to put a leash on me.”
Alex walked toward him, hands at his sides—not balled into fists, but tense enough. “A leash? That what you think this is?”
“That’s what it feels like.”
“I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt, not hold you back.”
“What’s the difference? Because right now, it doesn’t feel like there is one.” Alex opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. Because the truth was messy, ugly, and hard. And part of him did want to hold Dylan back. Not because he doubted him. But because fear was a language Alex had spoken fluently for twenty years. Dylan tossed the bottle onto the bench. “You want me to grow or not? Because I can’t get better without pushing myself.”
“Pushing yourself is one thing……Ignoring the basics is another.”
“Maybe my basics aren’t the same as yours.” That hit Alex harder than it should have. Not because it was disrespectful, but because it was true. He wasn’t training himself. He was training his mirror. Dylan stepped back toward the ring, grabbed the middle rope, and paused. “If you want me to be you, just say it.”
Alex stiffened. “…I don’t want you to be me.”
“Then stop treating me like a reflection.” The words cut deeper than Dylan probably knew.
The kid slid back into the ring and started stretching in the corner. Alex watched him for a long, quiet moment. The ring lights glinted off the sweat on Dylan’s shoulders, and Alex suddenly saw not a mirror, not a ghost, but a young man standing on the edge of becoming something. Someone. Someone he couldn’t control. Someone he shouldn’t try to. Alex took a breath. “Alright.” Dylan didn’t look up. “Run the sequence again…….Your way.”
Dylan’s head snapped up so fast he almost lost balance. “…What?” Alex pointed at the center of the ring.
“You heard me.” Dylan stood. Wiped his face with his wrist tape. Nodded once, hesitant at first, then with growing fire. He hit the ropes. He moved with instinct. With freedom. With purpose. And even though part of Alex wanted to bark corrections, wanted to step in, wanted to protect, he forced his arms to stay crossed, his voice to stay silent, and his eyes to stay open.
Dylan flowed from one move to the next, improvising with the same fearless spark Alex once had before life had sanded him down. Leapfrog. Back roll. Springboard arm drag, smooth this time. Dropkick with better elevation. Rebound back elbow. A spinning knee he’d never even shown in training. Alex exhaled through his nose, fighting the instinct to coach. When the drill ended, Dylan stood at the ropes, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his jaw. He braced an arm against the ring post and looked over. “…Well?” Alex walked forward slowly, boots echoing on the gym floor.
“You want honesty?”
“Always.”
Alex nodded once. “It was good.”
Dylan’s arms dropped. “…Seriously?”
“It was sloppy in places….But it was good.” Dylan blinked, stunned. Alex almost smiled, but then the weight of what needed saying settled in. “But good isn’t the concern…….My concern is what happens when your body can’t keep up with your ambition.”
Dylan swallowed hard. “You think I’m gonna crash.”
“I know the signs.”
“You think being excited is dangerous?”
“No……“I think believing you’re untouchable is dangerous.”
Dylan paced a few steps, fingers tapping against his thigh. Then he stopped. “I’m not untouchable.”
“Then start wrestling like you know that.”
Silence again, thick but honest. No shouting. No anger. Just the raw edge of two versions of the same man trying to fit inside the same story. Dylan finally lowered himself to sit on the apron. “You know… when I was in Texas, when the crowd was chanting, I didn’t think I was invincible.” Alex looked over. “I just felt like… I belonged.”
That, right there, hit Alex in the gut. Because he remembered that feeling too. He remembered needing it. Craving it. Letting it define him. Alex sat beside him on the apron, shoulders heavy. “I’m not trying to take that from you.” Dylan didn’t answer, but his posture softened. “I’m scared because I see how good you are.” That made Dylan finally look at him. “And I know what this business does to the ones who shine the brightest too early.”
Dylan’s voice was quieter now, but steady. “Then teach me how not to burn out.”
Alex stared at him, long and searching. “That’s all I’ve been trying to do.”
This time Dylan didn’t deflect. Didn’t argue. He nodded once. “Alright then… teach me.”
And for the first time in weeks, maybe months, maybe years, it wasn’t a challenge. It wasn’t defiance. It was trust. Alex stood. “Up.” Dylan hopped to his feet. “We do this together. Not my way. Not your way. The right way.”
Dylan cracked a faint smile. “Guess that’s fair.”
Alex motioned to the center of the ring. “Let’s get to work.”
And as they resumed training, not as father vs. son, not as coach vs. trainee, but as two wrestlers building something between them, the storm that had been brewing finally broke. Not with thunder. Not with shouting. But with understanding. A crack in the armor. A shift in the dynamic. The first small step toward something better, harder, and far more complicated: Growth.
Together.
A shadow
”There is a certain amount of satisfaction you get from certain wins and accomplishments in this business. Becoming a world champion is something that many will never experience. Even holding certain championships is out of a lot of people’s reach. But sometimes an unexpected accomplishment and win comes to define an idea. Ideas can be poison or pure inspiration. An idea that someone is good enough to be a world champion can carry them to a world championship, but often ideas are not enough. You need inspiration as well as talent.”
Alex chuckled and shook his head, spinning a small silver lighter on his fingers before clenching his fist around it and standing up.
”Alexander Raven, as good as he is, is a slave to that idea. He believes he’s good enough to be the SCW World Champion, and while he is certainly good enough to hold championships outside this company, he constantly gets close but can’t break through the glass ceiling above him to become a world champion here. And when faced with someone who has been a multiple-time world champion, not just in this company but everywhere else, he fails. The idea is that he has sparks. But they are sparks that are snuffed out with no real oxygen. What you need is an idea that sparks into flame. An idea that becomes a raging inferno. Something that Alexander Raven was not capable of.”
“I have always been a slave to an idea. An idea of a professional wrestling world moulded in my image of what I believe it to be. And see, in my idea of the perfect professional wrestling world, someone like Kat would not be a world champion. A smiling, happy girl, a lying snake who couldn’t be bothered to be a real champion. Someone who has little to no respect for the history of what we’ve all gone through and the history of this great sport of professional wrestling. But unfortunately, my idea has also failed to catch fire. My idea has failed to be a spark. The sparks ignite any type of real fire. And because of that, I have a simple declaration that you only need to hear. One that will speak to the very souls of those who still love this business like I do.”
“Professional wrestling…Is dead…”
“It died years ago. But it didn’t die with any type of sadness. Very few people even knew that it happened. It passed away with no remorse and no fanfare. A simple burial of the ideals of what this sport was all about. And now all we are left with is an empty husk staring at a ceiling on a cold slab. Forced to endure a tainted legacy and memory of what this whole sport represented. It represented strength. It represented heart. It represented humanity in a way that very few art forms could. And that idea of professional wrestling is something that I still love. It’s just too bad the rest of you, in your shortsighted bullshit, can’t see it. But you will. You’ll see the idea that I have for this business. You’ll see the vision that I have for what professional wrestling should be.”
Alex pauses again and slowly takes a deep breath. He relaxes before folding his arms over his chest and tilting his head.
”LJ, before I get into what this match means for you and also to me, I need to tell you all the story. You see, just under a decade ago, when Honor Wrestling died, I listened to somebody close to me talk about how women’s wrestling had become stagnant and was a joke. It was, of course, Alicia. I had rose-tinted glasses on and couldn’t see what was right in front of my face. So Alicia went on a mission to rejuvenate women’s wrestling. Destroying everyone over three separate companies, holding three world championships, including the SCW World Bombshells Championship. She rejuvenated women’s wrestling. She rejuvenated everything that she wanted to and brought it back to life from the brink of the abyss. And it was only after she accomplished what she set out to do that I saw the true danger that women’s wrestling was in.”
He shakes his head, a look on his face betraying his emotions. Almost shocked as he remembers back to that point in time.
”So, LJ. You and I are going to be going one on one in a match on Climax Control. And everything that I’ve talked about is either going to resonate deeply with you or you’re going to ignore it. If it resonates deeply with you, then I hope that you will see exactly what I’m trying to accomplish. See, I don’t say these things to make it seem like you can’t beat me or won’t beat me. But you are in danger of becoming just like your brother. And I know this isn’t going to be some weird pseudo-intellectual conversation where I accuse you of being your brother’s shadow. In fact, it’s the opposite. You set yourself apart from him with your attitude and your comments. Miles has tried to act like he is a complete badass, but in reality he’s a giant pussycat, and that’s something that Carter knows better than anyone else.”
“Miles will always operate within the rules. You, on the other hand, have no problems with bending them and taking a few liberties. You don’t care what other people think. But where you are in danger of becoming just like your brother is in the lack of real progress you’re making in your career. Everyone looks at you and your brother the exact same way. You are decent professional wrestlers, but you aren’t world championship material. You don’t have what it takes to beat the best of the best. You can get in the ring with people like myself and Carter and all of the other big names. But when push comes to shove, you can’t get that one big defining win that pushes your career ahead and makes you a main event player.”
“It’s a sad state of affairs, LJ.”
“So, what do we do about this? It’s simple. You need to win. You need to beat me. But I’m not just going to lay down for you. I’m not going to go out to that ring and give you a half-arse job so you can get a cheap victory over me and then hold your head up high only for you to fail at the next hurdle because you don’t know what to do with a win over someone who is in the Hall of Fame. I have seen this play out time and time again. Someone like you wants to rise up and be better than they are. They get a win over an established name, and then at the very next hurdle, instead of jumping over it and showing how good they can be, they fail and squander everything that they’ve earned.”
“I’m not about that…”
“If you are able to beat me, if you are able to get a win over me, then I want you to go ahead and start climbing that ladder. I want you to become a main event star and a huge player in this business and this company. We need the power of youth to drive SCW forward, but none of you are good enough to beat the old guard. None of you are good enough to prove me wrong and shut me up. And it’s driving me insane, LJ. Do you understand? I am looking for a successor. I am looking for someone who is ready and willing to carry on the legacy in the background and the platform the people like myself have laid, and none of you have been good enough. None of you. So now I’m waiting to see if you are good enough. And you get the first shot. You get the first crack. So tell me, LJ, are you going to be an inheritor of the legacy that people like me have fought for, or are you just another pretender just like your worthless fucking brother?”
