Post by Nicky Silver on Feb 15, 2016 13:36:17 GMT -5
I stared at the gigantic billboard that stood over 30-feet high…
“The Nicky Silver Story…” I mouthed the words, but they didn’t seem like my own…just like this story didn’t seem like my own, at least it didn’t anymore.
The images on the billboard looked familiar…but they were only parodies of the original. Snapshots taken from my life to form an incomplete picture of who I had once been and who I had become. I had written out my story as therapy while trying to recover from the spinal injury that nearly ruined my life. At the time that I wrote it, I had no desire to offer it up as a book or a movie…but as always, things got twisted and complicated when my friends got involved.
Crystal…or Christina as she was fond of calling herself these days had seen the story on my computer and wouldn’t stop raving about how inspirational it was. I have to admit, despite all the problems the two of us have had…her word still carries a lot of weight with me. After hearing her crow over it time and time again…she broke me down and I decided that maybe I could share this with the world…
This, of course, would prove to be a giant mistake!
I had thought that Christina would allow me to put the story out the way that I wanted…through her production company, with dignity, with humility, and most importantly with respect. Instead, my story got bastardized and whored out in a joint venture with CTN. Not only did they steal my story…but they didn’t even have the decency to get my input on the project!
THIS IS MY LIFE…isn’t it?!
I grew up in Brazil and while it has been said that I was from the streets…that’s not really quite the truth. I actually grew up fairly well-to-do. My mother was a famous model and when that career ended, she made a seamless transition into the fashion designer industry. She always had dreams of me following in her footsteps, but I had other dreams…I wanted to be a professional wrestler. I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, but I could never understand why my mother was so dead set against it…even angry over my attraction to it.
I would find out the reason for her displeasure was that my father was a wrestler…a famous one from America. She had fallen head over heels for the man when he had come to San Paulo on tour promoting his debut music album.
It wasn’t what I would call a classic…but it was music and back in those days if you sang…the girls would line up around the block for you. I really hate to think of my mother as a groupie, but I don’t know any other definition for it. Still, I suppose it wasn’t a booty call since they were a regular item. For a while, they seemed a good fit, but my dad wasn’t happy with the way things were going for him in the movie and music industry and he wanted to try something else…wrestling!
Needless to say, my mother was NEVER going to be with a professional wrestler, so they went their separate ways…but not before one last romp…which produced yours truly! The way I hear it…my mother was so distressed by the break-up that she couldn’t bring herself to continue working for several months…lucky for me, since most models in their prime don’t have children…they have appointments at the abortion clinic!
Mother had me on her own and never bothered to tell my father…at least until I was old enough to ask about him. By that time he was already making his way in the sport. Though I was really young at the time…I remember meeting him for the first time like it was yesterday. He took one look at me, then looked at my Mama and said, “Bitch, is you fuckin’ crazy?!”
I can laugh about it now…
One paternity test and a few days later and my Mama was no longer a bitch, nor was she fuckin’ crazy. My mother never forgave my Dad for not believing her and it was at that moment that she pretty much took it upon herself to hate everything about him. Unfortunately for her…I fell completely in love with my Dad and I wanted to be just like him!
I watched and read everything I could about him. I saw every match…listened to every interview. I knew everything there was to know about him and I wanted to be just like him when I grew up! Needless to say, my Mama was far from thrilled! She wanted me to follow in her footsteps and model…but I was a Tomboy and I wanted to wrestle!
The thing that I always found funny was the way my mother tried to wean me off my passion. She waited to see if I would grow out of it. She brought me Barbie dolls in all sorts of colorful dresses. I would cut their clothes up and sew them into wrestling singlets and have them lay the fucking smackdown on each other in the middle of my homemade wrestling ring!
When puberty came and I started filling out in all the places that a young woman is suppose to, my Mama did the unthinkable and tried her best to get me in to boys. I was only 12, but you would have thought that I was some sort of mail order bride with the way she was trying to pass me off. She invited so many young boys to our house to ‘meet’ me that she was officially labeled as the neighborhood’s ‘creepy cougar.’
Despite her efforts, I never once dated one of the boys she brought home for me…well…unless you count Juan-Carlos. Juan was a handsome kid and a smooth talker for his age. His father was a famous Luchador and that instantly got my attention. He offered to show me one his father’s wrestling moves once when we were alone in the house. I don’t really remember the proper name for it…but I would call it the French Tongue Titty Grab. I had never seen my father use a hold like that, but I did know a wicked awesome counter into my father’s version of the Ace Crusher, dubbed as ‘Quick Silver’ which I still use today. I’m not 100% sure about this, but I am pretty certain that my Mama was mildly irritated that I didn’t lose my virginity that day…but Juan-Carlos lost four of his front teeth.
Once I got to old two be told what to do by my Mama, I REALLY started working towards doing whatever I could to become a professional wrestler. School by day and wrestling by night. I did what I could to teach myself since my Mama refused to pay for a legitimate wrestling school. My father would come to visit or would sometimes send for me to join him, but he was never interested in teaching me holds or mic work…but I loved and idolized him all the same.
When I was old enough to work, I took a job in a bowling alley, called The Soup’er Bowl that was halfway across town. My Mama didn’t mind me working because she thought it would be good for me to do something else besides dream about wrestling. I loved working at the Soup’er Bowl because Mama didn’t know that the place hosted wrestling every single weekend!
I did what I could…helping to set up the ring every weekend until they finally let me go help the wrestlers get dressed in the back. I helped the wrestlers get dressed until they agreed to show me some moves. Once I learned more than a few holds, they let me wrestle.
I remember that first match like it was yesterday. I was as nervous as hell! The entire crowd was cheering for me, and that was really special because I had never met three out of the eight people who were there. I lost in a very close contest to Micromachine…our masked midget wrestler. You guys can say whatever you want, but midgets are a lot quicker and heavier than they look!
A lot of people would have been discouraged by losing to a midget, but I was hooked on wrestling and I knew that everyone had to start somewhere. For me…it was in a tiny bowling alley in the middle of nowhere. Maybe my love of wrestling is as much nature as it is nurture. Maybe it is just in my blood. I wrestled in my room against imaginary foes, I wrestled in the backyard with my friends, and eventually I started wrestling for chump-change in local arenas.
Wrestling was in my blood…but the acumen for the sport still wasn’t there. I got beaten regularly by everyone I ever faced. I came home, bruised and sore, but I wouldn’t stop. When my mother found out about me sneaking out to wrestle she was angry and she tried to stop me, but when she saw that she couldn’t…she hoped that I would get tired of the beatings and quit. I didn’t…I don’t think I ever will.
Fate stepped in when I was ‘discovered’ by Syn...a woman known to the LAW faithful as the social media mouthpiece behind Nyako Shinsuzuki. In her time, he had been no stranger to controversy. Her history was dubious, at best…but she was looking to change her public and professional perception by any means necessary.
She had learned of my family connection to Nikki Silver and she saw a chance to capitalize off it. She knew that I wasn’t very good, but she didn’t want me for my skill…she wanted me for my name…a name I didn’t even bother to use. I had grown up as Nicolette Lima and that was all that I had ever been known as. It wasn’t a famous name…but it was mine. The name Silver...Nikki Silver was my father’s name…a father that Syn convinced me to capitalize off of.
He was one of the most famous wrestlers on the face of the planet...and certainly one of the most flamboyant. It was a LOT to live up to.
My parents were mad as hell, but it was too late. Syn saw a chance to take advantage of my father’s name while she struck out on a venture of her own…breathing new life into The Violent Femmes wrestling stable, a group that featured a pair of the best women around in “The Latina Pitbull” Eva Rodriguez and “The Envoy of The End” Ashley Riot.
Before I knew it, I was on a private plane to America and I was thrown together with those pair of greats. I was a sponge in that time and I learned everything I could inside the ring. My very first match was a disaster, but in time…those women…those legends taught me the ropes, and before long I was off to the races. I was on a rocket to the top and I was winning titles and accolades just like my father had years before me. Nicky Silver was no longer just a gimmick…it was who I was always meant to be.
Being in that group immediately elevated me to main event status, even though I still had a lot to learn. I started living my gimmick…believing all of the lies that had surrounded me entering competition. After a while, I didn’t know where the truth ended and Nicky Silver began. None of that really mattered though, I was damn near untouchable and everything I did, no matter how stupid, never dimmed my star.
Of course, egos are a terrible thing and after mine had proven to be the biggest of them all…I fractured the group and soon I was on a mission to forge something of my own. The Femmes had been around for years and I was just another cog in the wheel. If I was going to ascend to the top, I needed to do so without the anchor of the past around my neck. I needed something new…and Chastity Pride..."The All American Blonde" stepped in and gave me that opportunity. She had achieved a lot in her time in and out of the ring and the thought of being under her tutelage was a tremendous honor.
Chastity came up with the idea of The A-Listers…a group that was young and was as vicious on the microphone as they were inside the ring. We wore our youth on our sleeves and we were as brash as brash could possibly be! It was probably the greatest time of my life…and the worst…
This group was on a whole other level…me, along with Serena Royale and Crystal Hilton? We were the bad girls of wrestling…hungry young guns that had no respect for the old guard and we were busting down walls and making names for ourselves in the process. We owned that company…and we owned any other organization that was stupid enough to try to come into our house and take food off of our plates! I don’t know if I was truly the centerpiece of that group, but I thought I was and I never let anyone tell me different. Life was so sweet at that time that it was only natural that I would start to take things for granted…and that is when it all began to fall apart.
I was barely out of my teens and I already had a resume that read like a veteran. I had faced the best and beaten them all. My career was set…my personal life was not. Crystal and Serena were classic beauties with exciting lives outside the ring.
They were pursued by handsome men and I was pining for only one…the biggest asshole in the company, Maleek Raheem. I only had eyes for him, even though there was a much better man attempting to court me in Michael Samsa. I foolishly threw myself at Raheem, only to be rejected time and time again. The more he said no, the more I wanted him…until finally…it happened…
I was a virgin and it was my first time. It wasn’t really magical…in fact, it hurt like hell…but it was with the man of my dreams, so I was elated all the same. I had dreams that he and I would become a power couple and we were going to find a way to rule the world, but all of that was just a pipe dream…and it came to an end before I could even come to the reality that I was now a woman, but convention thinking. Crystal knew how in love I was with Raheem and she had never shown any interest in him before…but as soon as I got what I wanted, she moved in and took it all away! Maybe it was her drinking? I don’t know…but Crystal stole Raheem from me and in that one single act, she destroyed me utterly. I was a broken shell of myself…I had no friends, no man, and no title. Before I knew it…I was nearly out of the business entirely and Crystal was on top of the world with my championship and my man.
I was ready to hang it all up and go back to Brazil, forgetting everyone and everything. I had lived the dream and accomplished everything that I set out to do. I had become a Tag Team Champion…
I had entered a massive tournament that was filled with some of the best in the business and I had managed to come out as the winner of the coveted Athena Cup…
I had climbed to the very top of the mountain and grabbed the brass ring…I had done what very few women in this industry get to accomplish, I had become a World Champion…in fact, the youngest in history...
With all of that, there was even one more accolade awaiting me…first ballot Hall of Famer. I had everything in the palm of my hand…but I had never felt so unfulfilled in my entire life. I should have been happy with the way my life had gone…but I wasn’t. I didn’t want my career to end like that…I didn’t want that dark stain to taint my memories of all those good times.
I returned to ring, declining the honor of going into the Hall of Fame…at least until I made amends for my despicable behavior. I think my new attitude surprised a lot of people, especially Crystal, who expected me to be vengeful about her betrayal. Truthfully, I had no more malice in my heart and I only wanted a second chance to do things better the second time around. No more cheating and no more juvenile jokes…it was time to fix my legacy…and with it, the friendships that had made it all possible.
I was 2-weeks away from making my return to the ring…it was November 12, 2010 in Osaka, Japan when my entire world changed. I wasn’t even scheduled to be in a match that night. I was supporting Crystal as she was featured in an 8-woman tag team match that included some of the best in the business…and one face that is all too familiar here in LAW, its current Champion, Oni Kymiku.
On that night, Oni was new to the American wrestling scene and she was just another one of Crystal’s team mates, but team didn’t seem to be in her vocabulary. I did what I could to motivate everyone outside the ring…supporting my friend as best as I could…doing the right thing…as I now saw it.
I don’t know what happened, to this very day…I can’t remember a single moment of it. Seeing the replay on video…it seems like it’s happening to someone else. Oni sent me head first into the steel steps, probably knocking me out with her initial attack. The next moment, she was on top of me, pounding my forehead with her fists wrapped in barbed wire. Blood was everywhere…but not even that was enough for her…
She picked me up and flipped me upside down…positioning me over the steel steps…then drove me headfirst into them…snapping my neck as she did…
…
…
…
When I woke up…my last memory was of getting off the plane in Osaka. I remember being confused as to why I was in a hospital…why I couldn’t feel anything at all. My career was taken away from me…before I could write the ending to it that I had intended. I was stuck in a wheelchair and there was nothing that I could do about it. Life was over for me…there was nothing for me to do but fade away into nothingness.
I could have done that…I could have given up, but I didn’t. My friends wouldn’t allow it. Crystal Hilton…the woman who had betrayed my trust was now standing in my corner the way I had tried to stand in hers. She pushed and pushed me…and I cried and I cursed her…but she only pushed harder. The days were long…I wish that I could say that I never gave up…but I gave up every day…I quit on myself and I quit on life. Crystal always reached back down to pull me back up…100 times a day…then 99 times…then 98…
On and on it went for weeks…months…until soon she no longer had to pull me up, because I was standing on my own two feet. No…I wouldn’t be wrestling matches or taking long walks in the park, but I’d be upright…and I’d be taking my very first step back towards the woman I use to be.
I returned to the ring in September of 2014 and by November of that very same year, I was standing side by side with Crystal as Tag Team Champions of Ladies All-Star Wrestling!
What a journey!
What a story!
What a life!
MY LIFE!
Life has come full circle for me and I am more confused right now than I have ever been. I fought to come back from adversity and just when I thought I had done it, I find myself still fighting…fighting for the rights to my own life’s story. CTN is nothing but a flock of vultures and I would expect nothing less from them…but Crystal knows better. She knows what I went through and she knows what this means to me! How can she just sit back and let them bastardize my life by partnering with them?
The movie will be whatever it is and I’ll be forced to live with whatever mockery they make of it. I may not have any control over that…but I do have control over what I do to Kenzi Grey on the opening weekend of the movie’s release! Come Rising Stars I am going to remove a tooth from Kenzi’s mouth for every lie and every marginalization of my story! CTN and Rose Productions may get their money from whoring my life out on the big screen, but I’ll make damn sure that there is a footnote attached to it that reads “This was Kenzi Grey’s LAST fucking movie!”
“The Nicky Silver Story…” I mouthed the words, but they didn’t seem like my own…just like this story didn’t seem like my own, at least it didn’t anymore.
The images on the billboard looked familiar…but they were only parodies of the original. Snapshots taken from my life to form an incomplete picture of who I had once been and who I had become. I had written out my story as therapy while trying to recover from the spinal injury that nearly ruined my life. At the time that I wrote it, I had no desire to offer it up as a book or a movie…but as always, things got twisted and complicated when my friends got involved.
Crystal…or Christina as she was fond of calling herself these days had seen the story on my computer and wouldn’t stop raving about how inspirational it was. I have to admit, despite all the problems the two of us have had…her word still carries a lot of weight with me. After hearing her crow over it time and time again…she broke me down and I decided that maybe I could share this with the world…
This, of course, would prove to be a giant mistake!
I had thought that Christina would allow me to put the story out the way that I wanted…through her production company, with dignity, with humility, and most importantly with respect. Instead, my story got bastardized and whored out in a joint venture with CTN. Not only did they steal my story…but they didn’t even have the decency to get my input on the project!
THIS IS MY LIFE…isn’t it?!
I grew up in Brazil and while it has been said that I was from the streets…that’s not really quite the truth. I actually grew up fairly well-to-do. My mother was a famous model and when that career ended, she made a seamless transition into the fashion designer industry. She always had dreams of me following in her footsteps, but I had other dreams…I wanted to be a professional wrestler. I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, but I could never understand why my mother was so dead set against it…even angry over my attraction to it.
I would find out the reason for her displeasure was that my father was a wrestler…a famous one from America. She had fallen head over heels for the man when he had come to San Paulo on tour promoting his debut music album.
It wasn’t what I would call a classic…but it was music and back in those days if you sang…the girls would line up around the block for you. I really hate to think of my mother as a groupie, but I don’t know any other definition for it. Still, I suppose it wasn’t a booty call since they were a regular item. For a while, they seemed a good fit, but my dad wasn’t happy with the way things were going for him in the movie and music industry and he wanted to try something else…wrestling!
Needless to say, my mother was NEVER going to be with a professional wrestler, so they went their separate ways…but not before one last romp…which produced yours truly! The way I hear it…my mother was so distressed by the break-up that she couldn’t bring herself to continue working for several months…lucky for me, since most models in their prime don’t have children…they have appointments at the abortion clinic!
Mother had me on her own and never bothered to tell my father…at least until I was old enough to ask about him. By that time he was already making his way in the sport. Though I was really young at the time…I remember meeting him for the first time like it was yesterday. He took one look at me, then looked at my Mama and said, “Bitch, is you fuckin’ crazy?!”
I can laugh about it now…
One paternity test and a few days later and my Mama was no longer a bitch, nor was she fuckin’ crazy. My mother never forgave my Dad for not believing her and it was at that moment that she pretty much took it upon herself to hate everything about him. Unfortunately for her…I fell completely in love with my Dad and I wanted to be just like him!
I watched and read everything I could about him. I saw every match…listened to every interview. I knew everything there was to know about him and I wanted to be just like him when I grew up! Needless to say, my Mama was far from thrilled! She wanted me to follow in her footsteps and model…but I was a Tomboy and I wanted to wrestle!
The thing that I always found funny was the way my mother tried to wean me off my passion. She waited to see if I would grow out of it. She brought me Barbie dolls in all sorts of colorful dresses. I would cut their clothes up and sew them into wrestling singlets and have them lay the fucking smackdown on each other in the middle of my homemade wrestling ring!
When puberty came and I started filling out in all the places that a young woman is suppose to, my Mama did the unthinkable and tried her best to get me in to boys. I was only 12, but you would have thought that I was some sort of mail order bride with the way she was trying to pass me off. She invited so many young boys to our house to ‘meet’ me that she was officially labeled as the neighborhood’s ‘creepy cougar.’
Despite her efforts, I never once dated one of the boys she brought home for me…well…unless you count Juan-Carlos. Juan was a handsome kid and a smooth talker for his age. His father was a famous Luchador and that instantly got my attention. He offered to show me one his father’s wrestling moves once when we were alone in the house. I don’t really remember the proper name for it…but I would call it the French Tongue Titty Grab. I had never seen my father use a hold like that, but I did know a wicked awesome counter into my father’s version of the Ace Crusher, dubbed as ‘Quick Silver’ which I still use today. I’m not 100% sure about this, but I am pretty certain that my Mama was mildly irritated that I didn’t lose my virginity that day…but Juan-Carlos lost four of his front teeth.
Once I got to old two be told what to do by my Mama, I REALLY started working towards doing whatever I could to become a professional wrestler. School by day and wrestling by night. I did what I could to teach myself since my Mama refused to pay for a legitimate wrestling school. My father would come to visit or would sometimes send for me to join him, but he was never interested in teaching me holds or mic work…but I loved and idolized him all the same.
When I was old enough to work, I took a job in a bowling alley, called The Soup’er Bowl that was halfway across town. My Mama didn’t mind me working because she thought it would be good for me to do something else besides dream about wrestling. I loved working at the Soup’er Bowl because Mama didn’t know that the place hosted wrestling every single weekend!
I did what I could…helping to set up the ring every weekend until they finally let me go help the wrestlers get dressed in the back. I helped the wrestlers get dressed until they agreed to show me some moves. Once I learned more than a few holds, they let me wrestle.
I remember that first match like it was yesterday. I was as nervous as hell! The entire crowd was cheering for me, and that was really special because I had never met three out of the eight people who were there. I lost in a very close contest to Micromachine…our masked midget wrestler. You guys can say whatever you want, but midgets are a lot quicker and heavier than they look!
A lot of people would have been discouraged by losing to a midget, but I was hooked on wrestling and I knew that everyone had to start somewhere. For me…it was in a tiny bowling alley in the middle of nowhere. Maybe my love of wrestling is as much nature as it is nurture. Maybe it is just in my blood. I wrestled in my room against imaginary foes, I wrestled in the backyard with my friends, and eventually I started wrestling for chump-change in local arenas.
Wrestling was in my blood…but the acumen for the sport still wasn’t there. I got beaten regularly by everyone I ever faced. I came home, bruised and sore, but I wouldn’t stop. When my mother found out about me sneaking out to wrestle she was angry and she tried to stop me, but when she saw that she couldn’t…she hoped that I would get tired of the beatings and quit. I didn’t…I don’t think I ever will.
Fate stepped in when I was ‘discovered’ by Syn...a woman known to the LAW faithful as the social media mouthpiece behind Nyako Shinsuzuki. In her time, he had been no stranger to controversy. Her history was dubious, at best…but she was looking to change her public and professional perception by any means necessary.
She had learned of my family connection to Nikki Silver and she saw a chance to capitalize off it. She knew that I wasn’t very good, but she didn’t want me for my skill…she wanted me for my name…a name I didn’t even bother to use. I had grown up as Nicolette Lima and that was all that I had ever been known as. It wasn’t a famous name…but it was mine. The name Silver...Nikki Silver was my father’s name…a father that Syn convinced me to capitalize off of.
He was one of the most famous wrestlers on the face of the planet...and certainly one of the most flamboyant. It was a LOT to live up to.
My parents were mad as hell, but it was too late. Syn saw a chance to take advantage of my father’s name while she struck out on a venture of her own…breathing new life into The Violent Femmes wrestling stable, a group that featured a pair of the best women around in “The Latina Pitbull” Eva Rodriguez and “The Envoy of The End” Ashley Riot.
Being in that group immediately elevated me to main event status, even though I still had a lot to learn. I started living my gimmick…believing all of the lies that had surrounded me entering competition. After a while, I didn’t know where the truth ended and Nicky Silver began. None of that really mattered though, I was damn near untouchable and everything I did, no matter how stupid, never dimmed my star.
Of course, egos are a terrible thing and after mine had proven to be the biggest of them all…I fractured the group and soon I was on a mission to forge something of my own. The Femmes had been around for years and I was just another cog in the wheel. If I was going to ascend to the top, I needed to do so without the anchor of the past around my neck. I needed something new…and Chastity Pride..."The All American Blonde" stepped in and gave me that opportunity. She had achieved a lot in her time in and out of the ring and the thought of being under her tutelage was a tremendous honor.
Chastity came up with the idea of The A-Listers…a group that was young and was as vicious on the microphone as they were inside the ring. We wore our youth on our sleeves and we were as brash as brash could possibly be! It was probably the greatest time of my life…and the worst…
This group was on a whole other level…me, along with Serena Royale and Crystal Hilton? We were the bad girls of wrestling…hungry young guns that had no respect for the old guard and we were busting down walls and making names for ourselves in the process. We owned that company…and we owned any other organization that was stupid enough to try to come into our house and take food off of our plates! I don’t know if I was truly the centerpiece of that group, but I thought I was and I never let anyone tell me different. Life was so sweet at that time that it was only natural that I would start to take things for granted…and that is when it all began to fall apart.
I was barely out of my teens and I already had a resume that read like a veteran. I had faced the best and beaten them all. My career was set…my personal life was not. Crystal and Serena were classic beauties with exciting lives outside the ring.
They were pursued by handsome men and I was pining for only one…the biggest asshole in the company, Maleek Raheem. I only had eyes for him, even though there was a much better man attempting to court me in Michael Samsa. I foolishly threw myself at Raheem, only to be rejected time and time again. The more he said no, the more I wanted him…until finally…it happened…
I was a virgin and it was my first time. It wasn’t really magical…in fact, it hurt like hell…but it was with the man of my dreams, so I was elated all the same. I had dreams that he and I would become a power couple and we were going to find a way to rule the world, but all of that was just a pipe dream…and it came to an end before I could even come to the reality that I was now a woman, but convention thinking. Crystal knew how in love I was with Raheem and she had never shown any interest in him before…but as soon as I got what I wanted, she moved in and took it all away! Maybe it was her drinking? I don’t know…but Crystal stole Raheem from me and in that one single act, she destroyed me utterly. I was a broken shell of myself…I had no friends, no man, and no title. Before I knew it…I was nearly out of the business entirely and Crystal was on top of the world with my championship and my man.
I was ready to hang it all up and go back to Brazil, forgetting everyone and everything. I had lived the dream and accomplished everything that I set out to do. I had become a Tag Team Champion…
I had entered a massive tournament that was filled with some of the best in the business and I had managed to come out as the winner of the coveted Athena Cup…
I had climbed to the very top of the mountain and grabbed the brass ring…I had done what very few women in this industry get to accomplish, I had become a World Champion…in fact, the youngest in history...
With all of that, there was even one more accolade awaiting me…first ballot Hall of Famer. I had everything in the palm of my hand…but I had never felt so unfulfilled in my entire life. I should have been happy with the way my life had gone…but I wasn’t. I didn’t want my career to end like that…I didn’t want that dark stain to taint my memories of all those good times.
I returned to ring, declining the honor of going into the Hall of Fame…at least until I made amends for my despicable behavior. I think my new attitude surprised a lot of people, especially Crystal, who expected me to be vengeful about her betrayal. Truthfully, I had no more malice in my heart and I only wanted a second chance to do things better the second time around. No more cheating and no more juvenile jokes…it was time to fix my legacy…and with it, the friendships that had made it all possible.
I was 2-weeks away from making my return to the ring…it was November 12, 2010 in Osaka, Japan when my entire world changed. I wasn’t even scheduled to be in a match that night. I was supporting Crystal as she was featured in an 8-woman tag team match that included some of the best in the business…and one face that is all too familiar here in LAW, its current Champion, Oni Kymiku.
On that night, Oni was new to the American wrestling scene and she was just another one of Crystal’s team mates, but team didn’t seem to be in her vocabulary. I did what I could to motivate everyone outside the ring…supporting my friend as best as I could…doing the right thing…as I now saw it.
I don’t know what happened, to this very day…I can’t remember a single moment of it. Seeing the replay on video…it seems like it’s happening to someone else. Oni sent me head first into the steel steps, probably knocking me out with her initial attack. The next moment, she was on top of me, pounding my forehead with her fists wrapped in barbed wire. Blood was everywhere…but not even that was enough for her…
She picked me up and flipped me upside down…positioning me over the steel steps…then drove me headfirst into them…snapping my neck as she did…
…
…
…
When I woke up…my last memory was of getting off the plane in Osaka. I remember being confused as to why I was in a hospital…why I couldn’t feel anything at all. My career was taken away from me…before I could write the ending to it that I had intended. I was stuck in a wheelchair and there was nothing that I could do about it. Life was over for me…there was nothing for me to do but fade away into nothingness.
I could have done that…I could have given up, but I didn’t. My friends wouldn’t allow it. Crystal Hilton…the woman who had betrayed my trust was now standing in my corner the way I had tried to stand in hers. She pushed and pushed me…and I cried and I cursed her…but she only pushed harder. The days were long…I wish that I could say that I never gave up…but I gave up every day…I quit on myself and I quit on life. Crystal always reached back down to pull me back up…100 times a day…then 99 times…then 98…
On and on it went for weeks…months…until soon she no longer had to pull me up, because I was standing on my own two feet. No…I wouldn’t be wrestling matches or taking long walks in the park, but I’d be upright…and I’d be taking my very first step back towards the woman I use to be.
I returned to the ring in September of 2014 and by November of that very same year, I was standing side by side with Crystal as Tag Team Champions of Ladies All-Star Wrestling!
What a journey!
What a story!
What a life!
MY LIFE!
Life has come full circle for me and I am more confused right now than I have ever been. I fought to come back from adversity and just when I thought I had done it, I find myself still fighting…fighting for the rights to my own life’s story. CTN is nothing but a flock of vultures and I would expect nothing less from them…but Crystal knows better. She knows what I went through and she knows what this means to me! How can she just sit back and let them bastardize my life by partnering with them?
The movie will be whatever it is and I’ll be forced to live with whatever mockery they make of it. I may not have any control over that…but I do have control over what I do to Kenzi Grey on the opening weekend of the movie’s release! Come Rising Stars I am going to remove a tooth from Kenzi’s mouth for every lie and every marginalization of my story! CTN and Rose Productions may get their money from whoring my life out on the big screen, but I’ll make damn sure that there is a footnote attached to it that reads “This was Kenzi Grey’s LAST fucking movie!”