Chapter 1: The Girlhood Dream

 

As a kid, you think the life of a pro wrestler is all glitz and glamour.  You see all of these impossibly buff guys and unbelievably beautiful girls on your TV screen each week, performing death defying action under bright lights in front of expensive, high definition cameras. And when they’re not on TV, they’re on your phone. On your YouTube and IG feeds, from various gorgeous ports of call, living their absolute best lives.

It's oh so very easy to believe that none of it is real, any more so than Supernatural or Riverdale are real. Oh, sure, each week the shows come from cities that you know are real… but they’re usually never ones that you’ve ever set foot in. I mean, sure, Chicago was only a two hour trip each way for me as a kid. But growing up the child of lower middle class RV plant workers in the Michiana region, a trip to see one of the major promotions put on a show in the Windy City was a bit too pricy a luxury than they ever felt they could justify.

Not to mention… look, my dad loved pro wrestling more than anyone I’ve ever known. Almost as much as me, even. But he could see the twinkle in my eye when I talked about wanting to be a wrestler when I grew up, and then he could look at the state of the major promotions and see what sort of opportunities were available for women… especially when I was a kid… and…

Look, I don’t wanna say he didn’t support me, because he absolutely did. But looking back, I can see where he might have made the choice not to go to some of those big shows so that maybe he wanted to give me a chance to see if I wanted something better for myself, instead of falling under the spell of all that glitz and glamour.

Still…

Even if you keep your distance, if you fall under that spell enough, you start to do some digging. And when you do that, you learn that below that glamorous world of the big leagues, there’s another wrestling world. Maybe not as glitzy or fabulous, but still thrilling and exotic in its own right. A world of smaller buildings and smaller crowds, traversed more across interstates than by acquiring frequent flyer miles.

And tucked away in that different world, still 2 hours up the road in Chicago, was a company that my dad did feel comfortable taking me to see. It was called Mighty Maidens of the Midwest. Their preferred abbreviation was 3M, though some fans (males in particular) definitely took to calling it MMM. Despite that name, however, the women in the company (which were just about everyone except for most of the refs) were presented as serious, legitimate athletes.

So yeah. Seeing my first big league show on TV was where the seed of me becoming a wrestler was planted. But it was sitting in the little VFW building in Chicago, watching 3M matches, where I actually made the decision to become a wrestler.

Even then, though, there’s a promise of adventure in coming up through the indies. But nothing ever really gives you a clue as to what it takes to get out on the indies in the first place. You don’t just show up at a building and tell the guy at the door you’re there to wrestle.

(Well, there IS that one company, that thinks you can take anyone off the street and make them a wrestler. But the less said about them, the better.)

No, there are the months and months you spend in school training, busting your ass as a barista by day and bumping your body in a rickety ring at night. Even once you graduate, you usually have to try to hold down a day job while you get your first bookings, especially if you have the misfortune of getting booked by some of the less reputable promoters in the industry, who aren’t always as forthcoming with their payoffs as they lead you to believe.

But, if you build up enough of a name, eventually you start getting better bookings. More reliable bookings. More frequent bookings. If you’re really lucky, you start getting booked enough that you can support yourself, however modestly, just working in the ring.

But the work to get you ready for the ring never ends. The early mornings spent at the gym, to keep your body in the best shape it can be in…

And I like to think I’m in pretty good shape. For one thing, I’ve still got youth on my side, having only just turned 24 back at the end of January. And God blessed me with… good genetics, if not great genetics. One thing a wrestler can have going for her is to be gifted with impressive size, and… well, I didn’t get that gift. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m hardly a munchkin. Hell, I’d say I’m probably a little bit taller than about half the women I pass on the street. But at 5’6”, I’m still gonna find myself sharing a ring with plenty of women taller than that.

Still, if you haven’t been blessed with the gift of size, you’ve got a couple of options. One is to build up your muscle, so that even without the hulking height you can lift a small couch or crush a watermelon between your thighs. The other is to work on your cardio, build up your stamina and focus your training on speed and agility. The latter was the route I’d taken, partly out of necessity. For one thing, there are just some people who could spend their entire life in the gym and not get jacked, which is a camp I definitely fall under. But beyond that…

Look… like I said earlier, I get what my dad was thinking when he worried what lessons lil Margaret McMillan might take from the way women were being showcased in the big leagues. But adult Maggie realizes that there IS a cosmetic element to this industry. And that goes for the guys as well as the girls. If you can sell boatloads of 8x10”s at the merch table, you’re gonna have advantages that someone more reliant on pure skill or brute force won’t.

And it never hurts to be a blonde in wrestling. I might not have gotten the blue eyes part of the deal, but there’s something to be said for being a brown eyed beauty. A great man once said fat looks better tan, but really, in this business a nice tan helps most people. And I have a… nice figure. I mean, no one’s gonna mistake me for Katy Perry, but I’m not exactly hurting upstairs. My stomach, on the other hand, is fairly flat and with just the tiniest hint of abs. I do have long legs going for me, and while I’m not sure how many lives my thighs have saved, I certainly wouldn’t call them twigs…

And there’s definitely some junk in the trunk. Maybe not as stuffed as Kim K’s, but pretty tightly packed.

But you gotta put in the work to maintain it. And if you really wanna make it in this business, you put in the work every morning.

And I like to make sure that a nice, relaxing soak in the tub comes every afternoon, once I make it home from the gym.

But today, my phone had different plans.

Hearing the hum of my phone as it vibrated on the edge of the tub, I closed my eyes and let out a sigh. Another thing they never really warn you about when you become a wrestler is, you no longer really have the luxury of ignoring your phone. You ignore your phone, you might miss a potential booking. Or you might show up for one that fell through. Prompting the lock screen to appear, I immediately notice the notification:

“SAH
Got u a booking. Call me ASAP”

I frowned slightly, just a tiny bit puzzled. “The Supermodel” Alina Harvey ran the wrestling school I had graduated from. She was an amazing woman. Australian by birth, she’d made her name with the fans and built her legacy within the business working the indies primarily in Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana. With her combination of technical skill and sex appeal, it had always boggled my mind that she never had a run with one of the major leagues. There’s no way I could ever overstate the level of respect I have for her… 

But she’s never once contacted me about a booking. She was a trainer, not a promoter.

“Hey, Alina,” I said once she picked up on the other end. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Which do ya want first, the good news or the bad news?” she asked, all those years spent in Appalachia having done nothing to lessen that Aussie lilt in her voice.

“You know me, Alina,” I answered, “always lead with the positive.”

“Well, the good news is… I still love ya, kid. Even if it’s not gonna sound like it in a moment.”

That wasn’t particularly encouraging.  “Oooooooooooooooooooookay…”

 “I’ve been in touch with Kathy Davies…”

“Kathy Davies?” I interrupted, caught off guard. Davies was the founder of 3M, and still runs the company today. Like I said, it was sitting in the crowd at 3M that really solidified my desire to become a wrestler. One day stepping in a 3M ring was a dream for lil Margaret. And once upon a time, it was a dream for a lot of the women in this business. With the way the majors tended to treat women, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that for some women, 3M was a destination promotion that the girls strived to reach, rather than a promotion you worked through on your way to somewhere bigger. In recent years, with more opportunities (and better opportunities than in the past) their roster had taken a little hit.

But they still had more than a little prestige.

“I’d heard she was gonna run a show just down the road from you in Fort Wayne, so I figured I’d tell her the best student I’d ever had lived about 90 minutes away.”

I was happy that she couldn’t see me blush. “Look, Alina, that’s very sweet of you to say, but you’ve gotten all the tuition out of me you’re gonna get.”

I could hear Alina stifle a chuckle.  “So,” she continued, “you’re working the 3M show this weekend…”

“… and I’m not yet hearin’ the bad news,” I replied.

“This isn’t a tryout match,” Harvey said, bluntly. “I mean, they’ll definitely be willing to bring you back if you show out…”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming…”

“Bitch, there’s always a butt with you around!”

Now it was my turn to hold back a laugh, even being as aware as I was how much Harvey relied on humor to stall when she didn’t wanna say something. “Alina…”

The first thing I heard on the other end of the line was a sigh. Which was then followed by a resigned, “They got you booked against Genesis…”

“Genesis?” I echoed. “Genesis Santiago?”

Until 3M’s last show, Genesis Santiago was the reigning, defending, and more importantly undefeated World champion. Obviously, I had never met her, but I’ve seen her. She was… imposing. Physically, sure, but not unreasonably so. I mean, she was only a little taller and a little thiccer than me. But she carried herself with the confidence of a women who knew you couldn’t touch her, let alone beat her. She had it all: the look, the skill, and the demeanor. She was talented, cruel and remorseless. She was considered a fiery, no-nonsense, sadistic bad ass when she was in a good mood.

And there was no way, after the past month, that she’d be going into this match in a good mood.

You didn’t need to be a 10 year vet to see what the expectation was. You didn’t even need the 2 years of loops around the indy circuit that I had under my belt at this point to get it. They were booking me to let her make a statement.

Lost in thought, it took me a few moments to realize that Alina had still been talking this whole time. “Look… I can call her back, tell her you’ve got another booki…”

“I’ll do it,” I said.  Simply.  Matter of factly.

I could hear Alina blink.

“Maggie…”

My voice was firm. Confident. Even as I felt my heart skip a tiny beat. “I’ll do it,” I repeated. “I mean, they call me ‘Mazin’, right?”

“I called you that,” Alina huffed. “Then you put it on your ass.”

It’s called building a brand, babes.  The first time I heard her call me that, I knew it had cache.  Besides… they’re already gonna be looking there.  Might as well give them something to read while they’re looking.

“Well…” I replied, feeling the determination within me growing.  They might be setting this up for Rodriguez’s benefit, but I knew an opportunity when I saw it.  “This seems as good a way as any to show everyone just how ‘Mazin’ I am.”