Honestly, after that little pep talk from Tamara, part of me was kinda sad I couldn’t head straight down to the ring now and get the match started. But we were still a couple of hours away from showtime, so once I’d finished making my introductions to everyone already here, I found a place where I could drop my bag and start to change.
I feel like I should repeat, just for the new arrivals: most of the time, what they might call a locker room on the indy circuit more often than not didn’t actually have any lockers. You found a spot to call your own, put your bag down, got changed, and trusted the sisterhood that it would still be there at the end of the night. On this side of the aisle, at least, that was pretty much a safe bet. I couldn’t tell you about across the hall. I know they say there’s no honor amongst thieves, but I gotta believe even they have to find some things sacred.
Amid the bustle of other women milling about, chatting with each other, and getting prepared themselves, I went about getting dressed for tonight. By the time I was done, I was—as much as anyone in the professional wrestling industry can truly say it—dressed for battle. My usual gear was a two piece look, a baby blue sports bra style top with gold lining and matching, high cut briefs with a gold waistband. And of course, my moniker of ‘MAZIN’ was proudly emblazoned upon my ass in flowing gold cursive script.
Hey, I know what I’m working with. I know which of my 8x10”s sell the best. In this business, if you got it, you damn sure better flaunt it.
But yeah, back to the gear. I’m not a barefoot wrestler. I’ve never particularly cared for the feel of the canvas under my feet, and besides, I’m not prepared to play THAT much to the horndogs of the world. My knee and elbow pads are also gold. I know there are some girls out there who don’t go for pads. I’ve never understood that. I’ll always be kind to my joints.
And hopefully, they’ll be kind to me thirty years down the line.
Of course, both while I was getting dressed and after, I had the new arrivals coming up to me as they came into the venue. Quinn remained my only friend in the dressing room—well, not counting Jaz and Nikki, of course—but some I knew by reputation. Assuming I might be lucky enough to stick around in 3M after tonight, maybe I could get to know them better.
About an hour before bell time, there was a knock on the door. When it opened, a blonde woman juuust north of the border between 39 and 40 slipped inside. She was about 5’5”, and clearly spent a good chunk of her waking hours in the gym. Or perhaps on the ranch. Now, being someone who’d followed 3M for fourteen years, I recognized her right away: “the Good Hand” Betty Coughlan. When I first started coming to 3M shows, she was one of the most beloved figures on the undercard. Unfortunately, despite a couple of runs with the Midwestern title, she never reached the pinnacle of the company. And even more unfortunately, issues with concussions had cut her career short about five years ago. Since then, “the Good Hand” had become something of Kathy Davies’ right hand, from doing a little commentary to just about any job backstage.
But seeing her right here right now, I’ll tell you one thing: I STILL wouldn’t wanna find myself caught in her scissors. Girl’s thighs could crush a watermelon.
“Heads up, ladies,” she said in a thick southern drawl, taping a sheet of paper to the wall beside the door, and then promptly slipping back out as quickly as she had arrived. The other girls quickly moved toward the door, eager to see the rundown for the show tonight. Me being the new girl in town, I held back, allowing the vets to get the lay of the show before I took a look at when I was going on.
I was both surprised and not surprised to see my match with Genesis in the fourth spot on the show. Oftentimes, the first time I showed up in a company, I tended to get put in the opener. Now, there are two ways a talent can look at being asked to open a show. The first, which is how I usually took it, was as a sign of faith in you from the promoter. There’s a psychology to putting together an event, and in an ideal world, your first match really gets the crowd engaged and energized right from the jump. Not just anyone can be entrusted with that responsibility.
The second way to take it, which even though I’ve never met Genesis Santiago I would wager my purse from tonight’s match was how she looked at it, is as an insult. The lower down on the card you were, people often felt it was a sign of how little the company felt they mattered. And as quick as every single person has been since last night to express their sympathies for the pain and humiliation that Genesis Santiago was going to inflict on me, maybe they saw it as a mercy, not putting her in the position to make me pay for her further indignation of being asked to jerk the curtain.
With the question of when I was going to be going on now settled, all that was left now was to wait for showtime. As the clock ticked closer and closer to bell time, a bit more of a din drifted from the curtain outside toward the dressing room door as the house began to fill up. And as the seconds passed, a lot of the girls stopped socializing and started drifting more to themselves, falling back into their own individual rituals for getting themselves psyched up and ready for violence.
Every girl has her own thing. Some go through something of a warm up, some… well, “meditate” sounds a bit too pompous, but some definitely slip into their own headspace. Me, I like to slip on the headphones. I’ve got a few songs I’ll listen to, but my entrance music is never on the list. That’s as much for the crowd as it is for anyone else. It speaks for me, sure, giving an audience that might not know me a taste of who I am before the bell has even rung. And it speaks to me as well, but not necessarily in the way that gets the blood and the adrenaline pumping. There are a few songs I go to for that, but I always end on the same one.
“Till I Collapse.”
Couple of reasons for that. First, it gets me in absolutely the right frame of mind to go out and leave every ounce of blood, sweat, strength and determination I have in this body out there in that ring. Second… it was dad’s favorite song. And hearing this helps me to feel that he’s here.
As that song drifted to silence, I called up my lock screen. Only a couple of minutes now before the first match. Taking a deep breath, I slipped my phone back into my bag and left the dressing room, venturing out into the makeshift backstage…
Now, I know what you’re thinking: is that safe? If you watch the big companies on TV, you see a lot of confrontations in corridors. Hell, even in parking lots. But honestly? Here in the indies… while those sorts of things definitely CAN happen, it’s not nearly as common. In the big leagues, ambushes like that… yeah, they’re to put a hurting on whoever you’ve got an issue with, but they’re also to make a statement to the wider world. There’s less incentive to do things like that here where there aren’t as many cameras. Doesn’t mean an indy backstage is completely safe, of course. But it’s usually incidents well before showtime, like my little encounter with the Hurricane Sisters earlier.
I wasn’t worried about them right now. They had a title match to get themselves ready for. As for Genesis, I suspect she’s counting on the intimidation factor of her rep to do a number on my nerves, and that sort of psychological warfare works best when she makes me wait to actually lay eyes on her as long as she could.
Could I be certain that was her thinking?
No.
But call it a calculated gamble.
I found a spot close to the wall, where I could pull the curtain back just enough to peek through. With the house lights still up, it looked like the building was maybe… 60% full. Which is to say, there were maybe about 120 people here. Not awful for a small show away from 3M’s home base, but I’ve definitely wrestled in front of bigger crowds. In the ring, there’s already a referee, as well as a prematurely bald man in his early 30’s, pretty much of average height and build, in a smart suit. That would be Matt Weston, 3M’s beloved ring announcer, doing his best to get the crowd pumped as we neared the first match.
As much as possible, I liked to watch the matches before mine… and, depending on the circumstances and the condition I was in, the matches after. There were always lessons you could draw from seeing others compete, either in the form of scouting future opposition or drawing inspiration from others that can help you hone your craft.
The first match of the evening was a tag team bout. The first team down to the ring were a blonde and brunette, both about my age (the blonde may have been a little younger) and about my height (the brunette may have been a little taller), both lithe yet curvy, and decked out in cheerleader uniforms. These were Kendall Davis and Rowan Smith, collectively known as the Pep Squad. And they were an excellent choice to open the show: youthful, bubbly, energetic. They had no trouble getting the crowd engaged and cheering, even before their opponents came out.
Oh, but when their opponents did come out…
The other team consisted of a brunette and a redhead. The brunette might have been the shortest woman in the match, if only by an inch or two, but she made up for any deficiencies that might come from being vertically challenged in thiccness. The redhead was definitely the tallest woman in the match. I don’t think she quite made it to six feet, but you could announce her as such and I’m not sure how many people would question it. She also wasn’t quite as thicc as her partner, but she definitely looked thiccer than either Kendall or Rowan. And where the Pep Squad were enthusiastic ingenues, these women had the look of seasoned killers. The brunette appeared to be in her mid-thirties, the redhead in her mid-forties.
Like Genesis, I didn’t know them personally, but I certainly knew of them by reputation. Vivian Myers and Jorddan Addams. (Rumor has it each of Jorddan’s legal names only had a single ‘d’, but she added the second ‘d’ to each for her ring name to match her bustline.) Between the two of them, they had almost half a century of in-ring experience. Hell, Vivian alone had been wrestling longer than either Rowan or Kendall had been alive! They’d each had cups of coffee in the major leagues. Vivian had even spent about a year working in a major promotion that no longer existed. But neither had achieved the success on the grand stage that they felt was their due. While they both had years upon years of experience, they’d only recently crossed paths and joined forces, creating the team of Reality Check.
By which, they meant they intended to give their opponents a reality check, showing them just how much they (didn’t) measure up.
And ohhhh did Rowan and Kendall find that out tonight, finding themselves dominated for nearly six minutes before Myers and Addams put them out of their misery. Vivian made effective use of her height, hoisting Rowan up with the back of her head resting on the redhead’s shoulder, Myers holding the brunette matchbooked. Or, put another way, held in position for a Muscle Buster. Which would have put on exclamation point on this match in its own right, only as she fell backwards, Jordan caught the falling cheerleader and added extra emphasis to her landing with a sitout powerbomb.
They could’ve demanded a ten count, if they’d wanted one.
Next up was a singles match. Out first was a young blonde woman with icy blue eyes and bow shaped lips. This was Jade Olson, “the Cosplay Cutie”, who tonight was wrestling dressed as Baby Doll from Sucker Punch. Gotta say, it was a very fitting choice for her, as she nailed the look exceptionally. Just as in tonight’s opener, though, Jade had drawn an older, more experienced opponent… and a far more gothic one. This woman’s hair was dyed a bright green, her left arm sporting a full sleeve of ink. Her right forearm was likewise tatted, and the hint of ink could be seen beneath the fishnet that adorned each thigh. Her bottom lip was pierced on both the left and right, and she wore a septum ring. Her skin was a flawless porcelain.
And she had possibly the most striking blue eyes I’ve ever seen.
This was Selena Nyx. The Pagan Princess of Pain and Punishment. A self-styled witch of the ring. She was someone else that I had never met, but I’d heard stories about her. Most of the women I’d met who had faced her had been left unnerved by their encounters with her. It would be easy to just call her a mistress of mind games, but could it be more than that? Certainly, she didn’t have mystical powers… and yet, I’d talked with women who knew they had wrestled her but couldn’t remember a single thing about the match.
Or the rest of the night.
I’ll give Jade credit, she was able to put up more of a fight against Selena than the Pep Squad had managed against Reality Check. But it wasn’t enough, as Nyx put her away with a diabolical spin on the grounded Octopus stretch. Olson found herself on her belly, her right arm locked under Selena’s left, the blonde’s left arm loosely scissored between the witch’s thicc thighs… but only for a moment. Just the moment it took Nyx to thread her left calf under Jade’s chin and locking that foot against the pit of her right knee. It didn’t take long for the Cosplay Cutie to start frantically waving her right hand and pleading her surrender.
Not a good night for the good girls so far. Hopefully this wasn’t an omen.
The next match brought a smile to my face, and I couldn’t help but let out a supportive whoop as my girl Quinn made her way down to the ring. And sure enough, the cowgirl had this Hoosier house eating out of the palm of her hand as she made her way down to the ring.
Never should’ve doubted Quinn Hughes.
Her opponent tonight was quite possibly her polar opposite: “Picture Perfect” Khloe Cummings. The Model Wrestler. Unlike Selena, I didn’t need to hear stories about Cummings. Like Quinn, I’d been on a handful of shows with Khloe. Even had a match with her once.
Wish I could say I came out on top that night. But…
Khloe was a little smaller than Quinn. All the physical aspects of the match definitely leaned in my girl’s favor, but never underestimate the Model Wrestler. She had guile. She had cunning. And she used every shortcut in the book to try to steal the win tonight. But none of it was enough. A few moments after turning the tide with what I felt from the first moment I saw her was possibly the best sitout spinebuster in the business, Hughes put her down for the one-two-three with the Round Up, a fireman’s carry Michinoku Driver.
Not gonna lie, I was the first person at the curtain to meet Quinn when she came back from the ring. And not just because my match was next. Beaming, I raised my hand as she parted the curtains, and a grinning cowgirl met me with a high five. “Nice work out there tonight,” I told her.
“Thanks, babe,” Quinn replied, then pulled me into a quick, supportive hug. Leaning in, she whispered into my ear. “Now it’s your turn, Mags. I know you can shock the world. Or at least Indiana.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Just as I’m sure she knew I would. Girl was definitely trying to make sure I went out there loose.
“It’s your night, girl,” Quinn added, before pulling
away. “Go get it!”
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