Thurdsay January 29, 2015
1:43 PM Central Standard Time
Mercedes-Benz Superdome- Main Arena
New Orleans, Louisiana
Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
Well, there’s probably no good place and no good time to be forced to wrestle a fourteen foot swamp gator in front of a rioting pack of drunken Cajuns, but if the gator’s going to have a fatal heart attack (as the autopsy would show) in the ring, it’s definitely better if it has the heart attack while YOU’RE in the ring then, say, it’s next opponent. A dead gator don’t make your face grow back anymore, right?
But apparently he does get his own Memorial Show. R.I.P. Bubbles, you poor, unfortunate, one-off gag, you!
Anyways, Wendy spent Wednesday dealing with the aftermath of her first ever match to end in a fatality, mainly by parental locking Animal Planet from the RV’s television, and having a nice three-hour phone call with Dr. Jared Epstein, her therapist. She also burned her clothes, which had enough alcohol in them to fuel an IndyCar for a few good hot laps.
But now its Thursday, and that means show day. Velocity, from the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, which is where we fade in. Show prep is still going on, mainly on the FFW stage, while the ring itself has already been set up, and Wendy stands inside, alone, dressed in a pair of black pants along with a very brightly sequined purple and green shirt.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had a match in this building…” she begins, looking around at the empty seats in the arena, an almost dreamlike expression on her face.
“If you ask me, FFW doesn’t come here nearly enough,” Wendy glances at the camera, almost as if she’s unable to believe the numbers herself. “Twice. In nearly five years of this company being open, we’ve been here twice. Can you believe it? Once in 2012, once last year, and neither show was here in the Superdome, instead the New Orleans Arena… or rather the Smoothie King Center as they call it, now.”
Wendy pauses as something hits her. “Holy cow…” she whispers, her eyes going wide. “You realize that means… unless I missed something… the hometown girl herself, Scarlett Kincaid… she’s never been here before? Somehow tonight- only tonight is going to be her first ever time wrestling in the Superdome? My God, and you thought this show couldn’t get any bigger?!”
Wendy chuckles, shaking her head in disbelief as she looks around the arena. “Wow….you know, I hate to sound like Crystal Hilton here, but tonight, in a sense, does feel like a homecoming for me. I used to know this building like the back of my hand. Almost all of the Bayou Wrestling Association’s major shows came from either here or the Cajundome, so… we were here a lot. And… it’s been a decade- exactly. A decade to the day since the last BWA show happened, and then the political struggles ate the company from within. Ten years since I’ve been here… and yet...”
Wendy shakes her head, both sadness and remembrance in her voice. She walks across the ring to a specific spot, and looks around, and shakes her head, laughing softly. “Do any of you remember Stars & Stripes? End of July in 2004… I defended my Louisiana State Championship against Erik Cross…” she pauses, shivering involuntarily. “That man made Todd Williams look like a saint. I… I can’t even talk about some of the things he tried to do in this ring… just… he should have been blackballed from this sport from the getgo.”
“But I remember here… Erik suddenly decided on a whim that he’d rather beat me to a bloody pulp than win the LA-State, and he took… I think it was a baseball bat to me, and the refs couldn’t pry him off and…” she swallowed hard. “That was awful… I just wanted to be anywhere else but here then. But got him off finally, and dragged him away… and then Malik Johnson’s music hit.”
“I knew I was double-booked that night going in, but somehow, they had managed to work it so that the finals of the #1 Contenders tournament came right after my first match. I knew there were people back there who were afraid of me winning, who were terrified of the thought of a GIRL becoming the BWA Heavyweight Champion, and got it set up. Heck, I’m almost certain one of them paid Erik Cross off to attack me in the first place. And Terrence was begging me to forfeit, telling me I was in no condition…”
Wendy looks at the camera, a hard expression on her face. “But as Malik strolled down, all I could think about was how a month earlier he and his buddies had ambushed me and Pollaski from behind with a SHOVEL, and dumped us in the trunk of a car and left us to ROT on the side of the road across the border in TEXAS just so we could be out of the way and force Terrence to face Malik without anyone stopping them from interfering. It didn’t matter what I’d taken before… it didn’t matter if was bleeding or broken or barely able to stand- I was *NOT* going to run away from Malik Johnson!”
“You could say that was the night the White Knight got born. That was the night I resolved that I was going to STOP being a victim, and fight back, and leave anyone who sought to bully and intimidate me SEVERELY wishing they hadn’t. And then I’d do whatever I could to make sure other good and decent people wouldn’t become victims as well!”
Wendy takes a couple deep breaths, and grins over at the camera, almost savagely. “I wasn’t afraid of Malik Johnson after that. But I guarantee you that when it was all over, and the bell rang, and the referee was raising MY hand… Malik Johnson was pretty darn scared of me.”
Wendy turns away from the camera and looks back out at the arena again, laughing sadly, and shaking her head. “Over ten years,” she sighs. “Too long. Way too long.”
Another sigh. “I’ve gotten good at marking the passage of time, though. Maybe it’s something that develops as you get older- the more the years that fly by, the better sense you have of them. But this week marks another anniversary, one far more immediate than the decade old death of an old regional company. One year ago… three hundred and sixty-nine days to be exact, my FFW Championship reign came to an end. I’ve wanted it back ever since then, but well, so far…” She holds her empty hands out helplessly.
“I’ve spent a lot of time waiting over the past year. I’ve gotten good at being patient. Heck, I’ve always been patient. After beating Malik, it took nearly four months for me to get a crack at the BWA Championship, and that company handed out title shots on about a monthly basis. At least in FFW, its easier.” She smiles slightly. “It’s easier because you KNOW that if they ask you to wait, it means they have something big in mind for you. Last year, when they told me in FEBRUARY that I was waiting til Unstoppable, I was excited. Being down for the main event of the biggest show of the year five months in advance? Of COURSE that’s something you wait for! And it was going to be so big… so awesome…” her voice trails off, and she shakes her head sadly.
“It didn’t happen,” she says, her voice almost a whisper. “I didn’t get to face… who I expected. And when the day came, and the moment happened, all that six months of waiting, all that expectations, that entire MOMENT… slipped through my fingers mainly because a ring rope slipped into Mika’s without the referee noticing. FFW gave me the moment, nominally the greatest moment of the year, and yes, it was hook and by crook, but it got away nonetheless.”
She pauses for a moment, her teeth gritted, before taking a deep breath in, then out, letting her frustration go. “So here I am again. Four months after beating Valerie Lamb to earn another title shot. If I make it to Chaos Theory, it’ll be five. If I don’t, it’ll be longer. But all that gets determined by ANOTHER contenders match, because there’s so many of us now that we need to work out a pecking order!” Wendy bursts out laughing, shaking her head in almost amused disbelief.
“Some more… pragmatic types might think that this wouldn’t be what you’d want. If you have a shot in your pocket… why would you EVER want to be the one to go first? It’s like opening up a gauntlet match- all winning does is put you in the crosshairs of everyone else as everyone takes their turn. Come in in at the end, with the herd thinning… it’s better and easier that way, right?”
Wendy shakes her head. “No, no… I don’t want easy. I want THIS. I want to be the first. I want come in, and grab that belt for myself, turn around, and see everyone coming straight at me. I want to run the gauntlet, and I KNOW that sounds odd when everyone KNOWS that my biggest shortcoming is in holding onto belts. My average reign in FFW is just sixty-three days… barely two months, and I’ve TWICE now tied Michelle Taylor’s record for shortest title reign.”
“That stinks too. When you look back on your own reigns, and you see your successors, great women like Serafina, and Tara, and Caroline and Eileen, rack up months upon months upon MONTHS of longevity, while the best you’ve managed is a couple weeks… you notice it. Trust me. But if I’m going to get past that stigma, I want to get past it the HARD way. The way that will make people respect it. By winning tonight. By winning at Chaos Theory. By taking out each individual challenger as they come at me one by one by one… THAT is how I want to get this monkey off my back.”
Wendy pauses, and looks up at the stage. “And we all know the other reason I want to win tonight. We all know the match I want at Chaos Theory. I wanted it at Unstoppable… it didn’t happen. I wanted it at Anarchy after I beat Val… and that had the kibosh put on it almost immediately. It’s there. February 28th. And maybe there’s no guarantee that it will be one on one, but I’m not taking any chances. I want the dream match.”
“Mika, you love to throw out little numbers and statistics, like you and Kyle were shrilly doing on stage to start Breaking Point last week. Well you know what? I can do that too.” She smiles,“You’ve beaten every ACTIVE Hall of Famer? I’ve beaten every Hall of Famer, period. Except one. Of the six other women orbiting around the FFW Championship at the moment- the five competing tonight at Velocity and the sixth yipping at the door begging to be let in… I’ve beaten ALL of them… except one. ”
“I said already that I’m not adverse to waiting for the right moment. Well, you know what? That moment’s at Chaos Theory. And this time… this time, I’m not going to let it pass me by.” Wendy chuckles, and walks over to the ropes, reaching down and picking up a small bag, she reaches in, and pulls out the Scarlett Kincaid Nendoroid, holding it up. “THIS is MY one. This is my dream match, yes. But this is also the final puzzle piece in so, SO many pictures I’m trying to create. This is the moment I’ve waited for patiently, but now the chance is here, the prize is on the line, and all that’s left for me to do is GRAB it!”
Wendy turns to set the Scarlett Nendoroid down in the middle of the ring, pausing just for a second, and looking back at the camera. “I’m still not sure whether these things are cute or creepy…”
“All I have to do tonight is win,” she continues, regaining her focus and setting the Scarlett Kincaid figurine down. “Win, and the moment I’ve dreamed about is here- the biggest match I believe this company will have ever seen. I know for a fact it’ll be the biggest match of my career. Maybe Val will be there too, maybe she won’t, I can’t control that. All I can control is my own match, and that when it’s all said and done… I’m the winner tonight.”
“Winning tonight… easier said than done,” Wendy admits, reaching back into her bag for another Nendoroid. “When it comes to these multi-way, eyes in the back of your head style matches, my record isn’t nearly as good as it is with the one on one’s. But I haven’t been in a ton of them either. There was that triple threat back at One Night Stand of course. The first No Surrender Championship… that Ladder Match Colleen walked out of, I guess that still counts. My first chance at the Evolution Title. Really not a ton in the grand scheme of things. “
“So there’s me,” Wendy continues, pulling out her own Nendoroid, and setting it on a turnbuckle. "Two-time Evolution Champion. Two-time No Surrender Champion. Former FFW Champion. Hall of Famer. 2014’s Most Loved Wrestler. Guaranteed contender for the FFW Championship.” Wendy turns away from the doll, back to the ring, and looks at the scope of what’s in front of her. “Me. Against the world tonight.”
“Heck, tonight is actually a moment in and of itself.” Wendy continues as she paces over to the next turnbuckle. “I’m not sure you can say there’s ever been a match like this in FFW before. Perhaps on Pay-Per-View, but never on a… heh… ‘normal’ show like tonight’s Velocity. The four top contenders for the FFW Championship all in one place, all in one match. How often does THAT happen? Heck, even if there wasn’t the idea of Chaos Theory looming over the horizon from this, this match is worth both winning and watching, just because of the sheer amount of TALENT in here.”
Wendy reaches into her bag, and pulls out another Nendoroid, setting it on the turnbuckle. “Mika Demidov, former FFW Champion and the 2014 Femme Fatale of the Year.” She’s already across the ring, reaching in the bag again for another doll. “Tara Thunder. 2012 Femme Fatale of the Year. Former Evolution Champion… Former No Surrender Champion… envy inducing longevity in both reigns.” And then the march over to the final turnbuckle with the last Nendoroid. “And Crystal Hilton. Two time Evolution Champion. Two time Trios Champion. Winner of the 2014 Femme For All.”
Wendy goes quiet for a second after placing the Crystal doll, and retreats back to her corner- well, the one with her own doll in it. She surveys the ring, looking from one corner to another, glancing down at the center of the ring, and then again to all the corners. “We all deserve to be here. All of us have accomplished much. All of us have navigated our way through a roster of nearly seventy women to stand here, just below the pinnacle of our sport, and now compete for the right to go for that pinnacle…”
“And I’ve faced all three of you multiple times now, whether in tag, singles, whatever. I’ve spent a lot of time in the ring facing all three of you. This is my fifth go around with Mika… I think my, wow, seventh with Tara? Crystal… I don’t even know. And I’ve tasted defeat at every single one of your hands. But I’ve also beaten all of you. In fact, when you add everything up at the end of the day… I hold a winning record over every single one of you.”
“Now, that just eats you up inside, doesn’t it Mika? The thought that a 'pathetic mediocrity' like myself is won more often than not against your superiority?”
Wendy chuckles as she walks back over towards Mika’s corner, looking over at the doll. “We all love to have bragging rights, of course, but Mika, God… you *LOVE* them, don’t you. Every time you open your mouth… ‘I’m the only one who did this!’ ‘I’m the only one who ever did that!’ ‘I’m a special little snowflake!’ Right Mika, you’re special…. Just like everybody else.”
“See, Mika, every single one of us could have stood on the stage and said the EXACT same thing… only with different statistics. I’m the only woman who’s beaten every Femme Fatale of the Year… in the same year the won it, no less. Tara’s the only woman who’s held a singles title for six-plus months on two seperate occasions. Crystal’s the only one of us who’s ever won a Femme For All. We could all play “I’m the only one” ALL the livelong day because we are ALL special little snowflakes!”
“Mika, honestly should join with Jodie and form their own little support group for inferiority complexes. The way you both take an accomplishment and just grind it in over and over and over again until its nothing left but dust. You cling to the things you’ve DONE, because you’re TERRIFIED that the future may have FAILURE in it. There might not be a second championship reign for you, Mika. There may not be another award coming at the end of the year- this or the next. What if you’ve hit your high point already and it’s all downhill from here? And so instead of using the past as an asset to invest in your future to springboard yourself to greater heights… you cling to it, like a trophy.”
“And now the new one is ‘the 1 in 7-1’ started ever since Pollaski dropped his year end rankings, mainly to help fuel a hissy fit you had about falling to number three behind me and Scar. It’s an adorable phrase… did you or Kyle think of it? And I love where the accent is too… ‘THE one’ Just another example of what a special snowflake Mika Demidov is!”
Wendy pauses, and adjusts the Mika Nendoroid on the turnbuckle- it had been slowly tilting over. “You know who else is… ‘THE one in 7-1?’ Neveah Summers- she was the only woman to beat Kelly last year. And Starla McCloud’s one-upped you all… she’s ‘THE one in 8-1’ with a win over Caroline Stark. But all of you pale in comparison to… God help us… Ignis. ‘THE one in 10-1!’ with her beating Lilly Sheffield.
“But the one thing you failed to realize while you were screaming that and- I assume- contacting Miles to print it on a T-shirt? I’m ‘three out of the four… in 5-4’ So’s Scarlett, come to think of it.” Wendy chuckles again, shaking her head in disbelief. “But… but… TWO OF THOSE WERE TAG MATCHES! And to that I say… so? If tag matches don’t matter… why do we even bother to wrestle them? And one of those STILL ended with me sticking you in a Banshee, and hanging on til you were foolish enough to allow yourself to slip into unconsciousness, giving me the win. And Ten Femme Chaos mattered to you at the time, considering the aftermath when you threw a tantrum about your team, including chucking Camilla Pazzini under the bus.”
Wendy pauses, something clearly having just entered her head, and she breaks into a small smile. “What was that you were telling me the other day how the mentally mediocre point, call names, look for excuses and blame it on the rest of the world?”
The White Knight snorts in derisive amusement. “And while we’re on the subject of mental strength here… where does running your mouth nonstop about how great you are and how inferior I am for DAYS leading up to Anarchy… only for you to completely disappear for a WEEK in the aftermath… and completely shut up about the whole thing? Does that fall in the mediocre department… or do we need to go lower on the adjective pole here?”
“But hey, I’m here talking about it, so it’s clear that upset me… so win for you, right?” Wendy laughs again in derision, and sighs. “Same old Mika… runs and runs and runs you mouth and never once pauses to think about what she says. You’re good at ‘trash talk’, I guess… and that’s exactly what it is, garbage. And while it may be fun to sift through it from time to time and hold up something really embarrassing to you, ultimately, everything you’ve said in pretty much the past year has been rendered meaningless time and again, because instead of being well thought out and honest… it’s just ‘whatever I can do to get under someone’s skin’.
Wendy leans forward to the camera, her voice lowering. “I don’t trash talk, Mika. When I cut a promo, I say exactly what I mean to say, I say what I honestly feel, I bare my heart and soul, and I stand by it no matter what. This way I don’t have to hide for a week after a loss until people forget what an idiot I made myself look.”
“And so I stand by this 100%: If I had a choice tonight… if all three of you were lying unconscious in the middle of the ring, and I had my choice of who to pin… it’s you. It’d be awfully poetic. You took my title shot in July… I gave it up, gave everything I had, and you RIPPED it from my hands with illicit actions, and made me start all over again. The fact that you’re PROUD of the way you did it says far more about you than it does about me. Tonight… as you took, I can make you give. I’d LOVE to make YOU the one to send me to Chaos Theory, to GIVE me the dream match that you not only interrupted, but spit upon and MOCKED in doing so.”
“But, of course, pragmatism takes precedence over poetic justice,” she continues with a slight grimace. “And the fact is, with the likes of Tara and Crystal in that ring tonight, I DON’T have a choice. If I want to win, I have to get that fall on whoever I can, whenever I can, and there’s no being choosy about it. I’m not an idiot- I know what Tara and Crystal are, and I know I’d have to be a flaming IDIOT to ignore them to focus on you.”
“And quite honestly, Mika… I’ve given you more than enough of my time as it already is…” she finishes, checking her watch and backing away from the Nendoroid doll across the ring to where the Tara one is sitting.
“Tara Thunder…” Wendy pauses for a second… and then sighs and shakes her head. “I hate losing. To anyone, Tara. I don’t think many people do enjoy it but I really, REALLY don’t like it. But when you beat me back in May at Relentless, there was such a bittersweet quality about it. Because while it stunk to lose- and hurt like HELL given the way you downed me… at the same time… what you said afterwards about how much it meant to you to finally get that win… well it honestly made me feel a little happy for you. And I really hoped that getting the monkey off your back would have made you less… maniacal.”
“Problem for you, Tara… is that I was never the final boss you thought I was. There really isn’t a final boss in wrestling- there’s ALWAYS another opponent, another goal, another mission to fulfill. It’s one of the reasons why it’s such a great sport- there’s no seasons, no ending. Just the next match, then the match after that. But there’s a downside.. you can never be fully fulfilled or satisfied, or else… well, what’s the purpose?”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” she mitigates with a small shrug. “But that almost seems to me what happened to you at Unstoppable against Val. The fire you had thrown at me… it didn’t seem to be there anymore. It did against Jo, but that was right smack dab in your hometown, and if you can’t get motivated in Amsterdam, then there’s a big problem. But again against Scarlett… where was that fire you had for me?”
“And now we’re the OLD Tara... the Tara no one wanted... the lashing out. The hair-trigger confrontations. And no, I can’t blame you for calling out Pollaski for ranking you thirteenth or for giving you a seventeen percent chance to win tonight. I don’t agree with that in the least, and it’s good that you took him to task for that. But Chris Strike can’t even wish me, a longtime friend of his, luck without you jumping down his throat? What’s next? You’re going to start ranting and raving and conspiracies again? Are we going to start hearing about ‘THEY’… whoever ‘THEY’ are holding you back again?”
“And now this whole Future Shock thing.” Wendy pauses and raises both hands, massaging her forehead and temples as if she already had a headache coming on. “I hate to say this, and I now this is probably going to come back to bite me in one way or another, but…” she hesitates for just a second. “You sounded a LOT like Mika Demidov.”
“I’m serious Tara,” she continues quickly, as if already sensing the outrage. “That whole coming up with a point just to antagonize people and running with it as far as you possibly could into the idiot zone… that was Mika-esque. On a MUCH more painful level. So’s taking some sort of victory out of the fact that you antagonized them… and hang on just a second. Since when the HELL did irritating someone become some sort of a victory around here? ‘Haha I got you upset!’ well, yeah, you insulted them in the cheapest, dumbest way imaginable… I can’t blame them for getting upset. Here’s my question… so what?”
“I mean, I can understand it a LITTLE if the whole idea was to enrage someone to throw them off their game, but come on. We ALL have better mental discipline than that, right? I’d like to think I can be mad at someone and still keep my head, and channel any anger into a productive match strategy instead of charging blindly like a barbarian, and I’d like to think that the rest of the girls on this roster are capable of that too. So what is the POINT?!”
Wendy takes several seconds to catch her breath, “Sorry… that just… you hear it from Mika and from Tara and from Mileena it’s getting to be just shut up. It doesn’t work. We’ve all proven it doesn’t work. So could we make the arguments a little more… intelligent?”
“Like… maybe not acting like I just wholesale endorsed an opinion of yours when the exact words I used were ‘a little right and a lot wrong.’ Come on, Tara. I can’t even believe we’ve gone this route.” Wendy shakes her head and just sidelong glances at the Tara doll almost as if saying ‘your bigger verson can’t be this ridiculous, right?’. “The fact of the matter is, Tara, whatever you may think about the competition, and I honestly do understand some of the reservations you might have… Future Shock is real, it’s here to stay, and it’s brought in some darn good wrestlers.”
“And if you’re going to be FFW Champion in 2015 or beyond, Tara Thunder… you better learn to accept that,” Wendy says, her voice growing louder and more stern. “Because they’re coming. And I won’t be surprised if at least one of them, I don’t know if it’ll be Jodie, or Caroline, or Lightning, or Casey, or Jo, or whomever… but I think at least one of them is going to swing themselves an FFW Championship shot this year. And if you’re on that throne deluding yourself into thinking they’re just dumb reality stars…” she takes a deep breath and exhales. “Hoo boy…”
“Either way, Tara, I expect to see that old fire in you back tonight. You’re the one with the most to lose here after all… the rest of us have guaranteed shots, whether we win or lose tonight, or whatever happens to us at Chaos Theory. You don’t have that safety net guarantee. So while we’re all fighting for the pecking order, you’re fighting for your LIFE here. And I know it means a LOT to you to stay up here, because it took you dang near TWO YEARS to convince yourself to take this step, and you cannot, absolutely CANNOT let that leap of faith end with a whimper. So do NOT give me the Tara I saw against Scarlett, or back against Val. I want the Tara that *I* faced. The one that got me with the Down and Dead so hard my scrunchie flew out of the ring!”
Wendy paces over to the final corner, where the Crystal doll is sitting. “And last but certainly not least… there’s Crystal. You know Crystal…” She pauses as she looks at the doll, shaking her head. “You know, Pollaski’s right. This DOES look like something out of Toddlers and Tiaras”
With a small push, Wendy knocks the doll off the turnbuckle, cringing as it tumbles to the floor. “Nobody read anything into that… I… I… I just can’t look at it, okay? Nothing against Crystal… It’s just… too bizarre. Now… oh, God, where was I?”
Wendy gives a deep sigh, and shakes her head, trying to regain her focus. “Right, sorry. Anyways, Crystal… Congrats on winning the Femme For All. You did a fantastic job winning that tournament, and your victory over Valentina in the finals was well fought and even more well-deserved. And like I said back when we faced in October- you’ve undergone a transformation for the better over the past couple years, and it’s shown, both in your ring work and in your relationships with the locker room. And it’s been slow, and it hasn’t been smooth, and it’s hardly been- sorry- perfect, but it’s progress, and you should be proud.”
“But Crystal,” Wendy pauses, as if making sure her opponent is paying attention. “As your sister-in-law might say... the difficulty turns up here. From Hard to Chaos... or whatever's beyond hard. The point is... this level... is far more difficult and unforgiving than anything you've yet encountered”
“I think you already found that out the hard way a couple weeks ago, when Mika beat you. That wasn’t right what happened, and obviously she did that little rope grab stunt to troll me, but it was you who got screwed in the end. And I’m sorry for that. And I’m sorry that Mika holds you in so little regard that she used a match against you to try and send a message to me. ”
“But what are you going to do about it, Crystal?” Wendy asks, arching an eyebrow. “You’re responsible for your own revenge here. You avenge your own loss, just like I did back at Anarchy. YOU have to be the one to send the message that you’re not going to put up with her baloney. And maybe tonight isn’t the night to do it- maybe you have to wait for the next one on one… but up here Crystal, its up to YOU to make sure you don’t get bullied around.”
“And you know, the PERFECT time for you to prepare for all this was back in October, when we faced in Belfast. You’d already advanced to the Semifinals of the Femme For All- you knew point blank that this could be a reality. I knew it too… you had a good bracket laid out in front of you. And for the first time in YEARS, Crystal… I showed you respect. And that’s because for the first time in YEARS when we were facing… you DESERVED respect.”
“And I got… I don’t even know what I got in return,” Wendy sighs, disappointment evident in her voice. “Just you and Jenny, being discombobulated on camera. There was no fire there, no realization that was pretty much an AUDITION. You were flat and distracted in the ring, you blew a huge chance because you couldn’t focus, and that was very disappointing.”
“Well, now Crystal… you’re in the big girl division,” Wendy says matter-of-factly. “So it’s time for you to finally suck it in, and GROW THE HECK UP.”
“If that motivated you, Crystal… GOOD. Because you honestly know what? I believe, I TRULY believe that you belong up here, you make this top division a better place. And your shot’s going to come, and you’re going to get your chance to prove it to the world. But not tonight… not at my expense. You’re just not mentally mature enough.”
“So that’s it… the four of us.” Wendy says, turning and walking into the middle of the ring, chuckling at a random thought. “We’d make a good Valentine’s card with the color schemes. The WHITE knight… the RED Star… the PINK Thunder and the ROSE god-“ she pauses, having pointed to each turnbuckle in order, only to remember that Crystal got knocked off. “Just… imagine she’s still there.” She finishes quickly.
“And all of us fighting to get to SCARLETT Kincaid,” she adds in to the improvised theme, pointing to the doll at her feet. “But there’s not going to be any love tonight, no no. Tonight it’s going to be all about intensity, and aggression. And while I respect all of you for what you’ve done in the ring… all of you have more or less driven me nuts to varying degrees outside of it… and I’m sure I’m the same for you all. Just call that a hunch for some reason.” She gives a small smile.
"But tonight... it's not about our petty squabbles with each other," she declares with a small smile. "It's not about who ranked where in the Power-X, or predictions or percentage points. It's not about CGE or The Thunder family or whatever. It's about the MOMENT. And all of you know... I'm all about THE MOMENT."
“I had THE MOMENT here ten years ago, when I wrestled BACK-TO-BACK matches, beat a thug who had left me for DEAD on the side of the road, and won the exact same thing I’m going for tonight- the right to wrestle for the top belt in the company. I had THE MOMENT a year and a half ago, when I beat Val to claim the title for the first time. I had THE MOMENT at One Night Stand last year and Unstoppable later… and both of those went through my fingers, you'll never get them all... but you have to get as many as you can. And tonight… in FFW’s FIRST EVER time in the SUPERDOME… I have THE MOMENT again. WE ARE the top four contenders to the FFW Championship, and to beat the rest of you on the same night… that’s big…”
Wendy grabs her own Nedoroid doll, and sets it down in the middle of the ring, facing Scarlett Kincaid, and backs away.
“But it still won’t be as big as what’s going to come when I claim it.”
And the scene fades on the Scarlett and Wendy dolls continuing to stare at each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment