Saturday March 29, 2014
Bell Centre- Backstage Hallway
Montreal, Quebec
2:17 PM Local Time
The scene opens backstage at the Bell Centre, with Wendy leaning against a backstage wall, dressed in a simple green t-shirt and jeans, smiling softly as the camera comes on.
“One year ago, I was right here.”
A small pause.
“Okay, not HERE, per se… I was actually fifteen hundred miles to the south, in the Tampa Bay Times Forum, but relatively speaking in terms of arenas, I was right here. Backstage, in a hallway, walking towards Cody Kincaid’s office. That’s it down there… second door on the left. Think it was a bit further back in Tampa, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“The point is, I was back in a hallway in an arena in which the Chaos Theory PPV was being held. I had been in the green room, watching the first ever Ten Femme Chaos on the backstage monitor. I had just been cleared to compete again after my back injury. I had just re-signed with the company, and I was SO convinced that the Power Trip would do something nefarious in an attempt to steal the match, that I asked Mr. Kincaid to keep my return a secret, so that if things went south, I could help out. Make sure things stayed fair.”
“They didn’t need me. The match broke down, like these always tend to do… chaos, pardon the term, ensued. Then Val’s in the ring, dropping Isabella Pazzini on her head, Jodie’s being dragged out of the ring by Miss Demeanor… ding ding ding. Good guys win, Power Trip loses, everyone’s happy, onto Hardcore War.”
A pause, and a shake of Wendy’s head. Obviously the story had a bit of a different ending.
“So I was back here, heading back to see Mr. Kincaid, and ask if there was any way I could get some last-minute airtime to head out into the ring, and announce my return in a less… impactful manner. I was actually pretty sure the boat had sailed, since the main event was coming up, so I’d be returning on the first Breaking Point after the PPV as well. Ah well, I made a guess, I was wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time… or last time, for that matter.”
“And then I heard the stagehands talking and shouting. Whatever the Power Trip was unable to do during the match, they were more than making up for it afterwards. And even worse, two of the team, Scarlett and Kelly, had walked away. And it was right here, one year ago tomorrow, that I spun around, and headed back the other way. I was needed after all.”
Wendy begins walking down the hallway as she talks, towards the entrance area, the camera following her as she walks.
“Yeah, it was definitely a longer run back in Tampa. I think I was about here, the sound guys- I don’t know how they do it- saw me coming, and cued my music, and before I knew it… I was… here.”
Wendy bursts through the curtain, out into the empty arena, looking down at the stage towards the ring.
“You know, this entrance ramp is a funny thing. Some nights, it can seem a mile long, other’s only a couple of feet. That night, I honestly felt like I cleared the ramp in a single step, and then I was in the ring, the tables were turned, and Jodie and Isabella and the rest of the power trip were halfway up the ramp.”
“Some have called what I did grandstanding, or white knighting, being a showoff, spotlight stealing, whatever. I simply viewed it as something that needed to be done. But I won’t deny that it felt great. Being out here, hearing the crowd, feeling the ring again under my boots, participating in a sport I absolutely love, even if it was a bit… unsanctioned.”
A small, chagrined, smile.
“It hasn’t been too bad a year for me since that night. I got to whoop a couple Power Trip members, main event the biggest show of the year, win the FFW Championship, hold it for four months, and get announced as a participant in the main event of Unstoppable Five in Feburary…”
“That parts scary, honestly. To be told by management that they have so much faith in you, they’re going to go ahead and ink you in for an FFW Championship match at the biggest show of the year five months down the road? That’s showing an insane amount of faith in someone… especially since that could SO easily backfire. Complacency is a curse in this business- you are always fighting either to improve or hang on to your position, so to have it guaranteed for nearly half a year… I can think of SEVERAL wrestlers, both current and former, who would use that as an excuse to let off the gas. Get a little lazy, take things a little less seriously… excuse it as ‘conserving their strength’, for the big important match.”
“Fortunately I’m not wired that way. If I have a job to do, I have a job to do, whether there’s a gold strap on the line or not. I don’t let off the gas, I don’t coast, I don’t take nights off. I don’t take things for granted, whether they’re ‘guaranteed’ or not. Complacency leads to extinction, as they say. I’m not going to coast on the faith Mr. Kincaid and Ms. Star have shown me, I’m going to prove its deserved. I’m going to put any worries they had- and I KNOW they had to have them- over naming me to such a huge match so early. I’m going to give everything I have between now and that late July night in Los Angeles, and then I’ll still have some. So you can bet I’ll be treating tonight like any other match I’ve ever been a part of. The only difference is that I have four highly capable, competent individuals standing beside me.”
Wendy tests the back wall of the stage for stability with the aura of someone who’s made that mistake before, then leans against it, folding her arms.
“And to be honest, I couldn’t ask for better partners. Between us all, we have five FFW Championship reigns, three Evolution Championships, and three No Surrender Championships. We have countless main events between us. And when it comes down to it, this team has, the four current best, most dominant wrestlers in the company today.”
“And yes, I’m well aware that we have different outlooks on life. We have different codes of ethics and morality. Different standards we hold ourselves to. Different ways of raising our children, different ways of loving our husbands, different ways of wrestling, different ways of training, different ways of eating breakfast in the morning. We’re five incredibly different people.”
“Heck three of us, we’ve spent the better part of the last six months fighting amongst each other. I took the FFW Championship from Val, Scarlett took it from me… by pinning Val. I got frustrated with Scarlett’s apparent apathy and Val’s apparent unwillingness to stand up to her problems, Scarlett called me a grandstanding white-knighting spotlight hogger, and Val screamed at me for five minutes in a promo because… I’m not sure actually. Honestly I think she just views screaming at me as excellent stress relief.”
Wendy flashes a grin.
“But despite all that- or maybe even because of all that, we are still capable of respecting each other when we get into that ring. Scarlett and I already proved that we can be bitter rivals fighting over the best prize in wrestling one month, and a cohesive, effective tag team the next. Scarlett and Val have already proven that they can work as a team and win a match like Ten Femme Chaos, because they did it last year. And Val and I have proven time and again that we can actually exist in a room together for a considerable legnth of time without squabbling, regardless of what gets said when we actually face each other.”
“Why? Because we’re professionals. And professionals do their jobs, reguardless of what is between them on a personal level.”
“Then you throw in Caroline, who has proven her ability to be able to work with anyone and be a consumate professional time and again. Add in Kate Steele who- for all her flaws- is as passionate and desperate to prove herself as anyone in this company, and we have a team.”
Wendy pushes herself off the wall, and looks up at the giant video screen that’s still in the process of being hung.
“A darn good team, I might add. It might not be a well-oiled machine, completely in sync with each other, but in a match like this, that’s actually, best. This is Ten Femme Chaos, and the show is called Chaos Theory for good reason. The chaos theory states that the more complex something is, the greater the odds of it failing. So tonight, we’re going to keep it simple. We wrestle as a team, but we also wrestle as ourselves. Five individuals, who play to their strengths, but at the same time, respect, and most of all TRUST each other.”
“And by trust, I mean ALL of us. That includes the one that everyone’s been questioning- Kate Steele. I’ve had my own doubts about it too, and I know the rest of the team has, but when it comes down to it, Kate knows her job just as well as anyone else here. She knows what she has to do, and despite her apparent… budding friendship… with a certain member of the opposing team, I believe that the opportunity, along with certain... implied consequences, will keep Kate focused on her goals just like the rest of us.”
“But now let’s flip the script here, and take a look at how the other half lives. Strong wrestlers? Yes. Dangerous threats on an individual basis? Absolutely. As a team though? What is there? At least the Power Trip had its collective agenda to keep that team adherent, and even that wasn’t enough in the end. Now we have… like Diet Power Trip… a group of women with the Power Trip mindset, and none of the glue that held them together.”
Wendy shakes her head.
“Certainly not what we have. Respect? None of them respect much of anything, least of all themselves. Professionalism? The only way you could make their combined antics any more bush-league is by swapping out Tara for Laura Steele. Focus? Tara, definitely, and MAYBE Mika. But the others have far too inconsistent records to be considered keyed-in on their jobs. Trust?”
She bursts out laughing, shaking her head, as if the mere idea of trusting any one of them is hilarious.
“So what do they have in the end, as a uniting force? Their mutual dislike of us? Yeah, that’s what Camilla and Mika had a month ago, and it didn’t do them much good. There’s only so much that “she stole my spot!” and “she’s a hypocrite!” and “she’s boring!” can do for you.”
“The fact of the matter is, we are facing five INCREDIBLY whiny, egotistical, self-absorbed, borderline-cartoonish Millenial BRATS who are SO quick to rub their successes in other’s faces, but can’t take responsibility for ANY of their setbacks. And maybe I’m wrong, but I just can’t see five bloated senses of entitlement being much of a uniting factor.”
“Of the five, Tara Thunder is the least of this problem, and is also- not coincidentally- the best and most accomplished wrestler of this lot. I know I’m going to be seeing her a lot over the next couple of months, as we’re facing off at Relentless one-on-one, which I’m more than okay with, especially given the apparent alternatives. We had an incredible match at Unstoppable III, and to rematch nearly two years later will be a testament to how far the both of us have come.”
“But Tara has fallen into that ugly ‘blame everyone’ trap. Especially blaming ME, because from the sound of things, pretty much everything Tara’s done in her career the past two years has been designed as a way to get back at me for vacating a title I was forced to vacate… which makes even less sense now that I’ve said it out loud. But apparently I’m her nemesis, with my completely and utterly DOMINANT 3-2 record against her…”
Just a bit of sarcasm there.
“To her credit though, Tara is the poster-child of actions speaking louder than words. In front of a camera, she suffers from verbal diahrreah to the point where it’s almost impossible to take anything she SAYS seriously. But she can back herself up in the ring… boy can she, and there’s not a soul in this company that would dare say otherwise. And ultimately that’s where it matters.”
“Which is probably a message Tara should teach to her largest partner, Camilla Pazzini, who has taken herself, in just the span of a year from a completely dominant threat to the FFW Championship to little more than a buffoon. A large, boisterous woman who loves to brag about how she is a “LIVING LEGEND” in between losing eighty percent of her matches. But you can’t help but be sad when you look back and see how good she WAS. And the saddest part of all is that Camilla can’t even make the connection. She can’t even see that her own downward spiral began with the onslaught of this attitude. She thought betraying Valerie would somehow take her career to new heights… and it’s done the exact opposite.”
“It’s… actually all too similar to what we saw with Katherine Stryfe. Great wrestler, FFW Championship material. And then at one point the bitterness and jealousy sets in, and the sense of entitlement starts, and then the losing gets worse and worse until a once great career is in shambles. But it’s never THEIR fault. It’s always someone else’s, whether Scarlett, or me, or Valerie’s. But a funny thing happens when you start to spit on people… that saliva doesn’t always go where you intended. And Camilla’s getting a lesson in Physics 101. If you try to spit on someone above you without managing to climb up to do it…”
Wendy looks up, and mimes a loogie with her fingers- flying up, and flying right back down to splat on her face.
“A message equally applicable to Mika Demidov, who dropped such gems as calling me a ‘mediocrity’, and ‘pretender’ hours before I mediocrely made her pass out in a pretend Banshee for a very mediocre tag team win… or something. Then again, this is coming from RUSSIAN who apparently has no idea what socialism is…”
“Yeah, there I go being judgemental again, which of course Mika hates, because she has no answer for it, despite the fact that she prett much trashes everyone she can possibly see and nary says a positive thing about anyone who’s not a member of Team Kyle. Unless of course she suddenly has to team with them, in which case the shovel gets put away and she quickly begins wiping off the dirt, because you can’t really team with someone you’ve called an attention seeking idiot before. Now she’s one of the most violent women she knows!”
A short laugh, and Wendy shakes her head.
“Say what you will about me, but at least I’m consistent. I don’t trash people’s talent one week, then praise them the moment I have to team with them. That’s because I’m quite aware that what we say on here has consequences, and aren’t forgotten, and believe it or not, I’m not out to make myself into a cartoon character.”
“Which brings me to Mileena, Dudley Do-Wrong in a skirt, so to speak. Honest to God, I hope the Centre Bell lets Mileena know what the average Canadian think of her tonight, because I think she’s going to be in for a shock. The fact of the matter is, Mileena is every bit as boorish, vulgar, and trashy as the Americans she loves to mock. It’s almost an exact replica of the ‘MURIKA! culture that is so frequently made fun of. Only… it’s Canadian… so… KERNERDAR!?”
A small grin at the joke that probably falls flat.
“Mileena’s ‘Canada Uber-Alles’ routine was old back in 2001, when I started wrestling. Heck, it was even tired and cliched when I was in CCW, which was based out of Ontario. Nobody buys into it anymore, because it makes Canada come off as a country with a massive inferiority complex, instead of a great nation in it’s own right. Canada has many athletes it should be proud of, and many of those are in FFW. Mileena’s every bit as effective for foreign relation as William Randolph Hearst was.”
“And last, but certainly not least is Madelyne McTaggert. The supposedly reformed Madelyne McTaggert… apparently. Right. I’ve seen her play the “I can change” gimmick before, right before she framed Brydon Talinsdale on drug charges, took over his company, and tried to have my career ended by standing behind an equally narcissistic jerk named Kris Keebler. So pardon me if I’m a teensy bit skeptical of-”
Wendy interrupts herself, sarcastically smacking herself on the head.
“Oh wait… I forgot. She lost to Penny Buchanan! That totally and logically proves her reformation! Or… something?”
“Yeah, it’s really tough to cheat after Penny knocks you out, so I think I’m going to remain a bit on the skeptical side. Anyone who’s THAT desperate to prove to me she’s reformed clearly has an agenda, and it’s not one I’m letting myself fall prey to.”
“Besides, when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter.”
Another shake of the head.
“She’s still on the opposite end of the ring, reformed or not. That mean she’s still a target, and she’s still getting everything I have thrown at her, whether or not I believed her. And the same applies to ALL my partners, and ALL of our opponents. Afterwards, if Maddie genuinely wants to go be friends with Kate Steele, she can be friends with Kate Steele, or whoever else. I don’t care. But tonight… tonight they’re opponents, and Kate will put her down just as much as any of us will. Because, again, there’s that professionalism coming into play.”
“And that’s why we’re going to win tonight. We may not like the five across from us, but we don’t let that control our actions. We wrestle to WIN, not to humiliate or to injure, and that’s exactly what we are going to do. So whatever whiny self-justifications they can come up with after TONIGHT after we defeat them… bravo.”
“But as always, the only one they'll have to blame is themselves.”
Wendy shakes her head, sighing, and walking off the stage towards the back.
