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ElijahMartin · (12-14-2021)

Entry 1
29 November 2021

It has been a month of mixed results: the feelings associated with my personal life couldn’t have been more different than those connected to my professional life, and as a drastic change, it was my career I found getting the shit end of the stick.

My life on the road had been terrific the previous few months, which included a prolific win in a Triple Threat match at the biggest show of the year on the XWF calendar, therefore granting me the top spot on the Anarchy Championship contenders list. I was riding a huge high and traveling all over the world to promote the amazing quality of wrestling provided by the XWF, feeling as though I was strapped to a rocket ship ascending to heights I never thought possible in such a short amount of time.

But then, as the foliage started falling from the trees and parents had now hidden their kids’ Halloween candy to avoid extra trips to the dentist… the calendar turned to November and provided me quite possibly the coldest run I can ever remember in my time around this business. It all began the night after Election Day, the date of Wednesday the Third.

To understand how the events of that night came together, I have to explain something about myself. When you get into the business of professional wrestling, you are for all intents and purposes an independent contractor in the eyes of the government, therefore meaning you are your own business. There are thousands upon THOUSANDS of self-made businesses employed by this single entity of professional wrestling: Alias Incorporated, Terry Borden Incorporated, so on and so forth. That is something I was blessed to grow a keen understanding for during the very early days of my growth in pro wrestling from my trainer, who also happens to be one of my closest friends to this very day. He would tell me stories, good and bad, about taking care of good ol’ “Number One” no matter what the cost… with Number One obviously being me, myself and I.

With that in mind, I approach every single day that I am blessed to walk this Earth as a work day. Some days involve nothing more than sending a few text messages or making a phone call or attending a business meeting. Others are a lot more strenuous, like long travel days and, of course, actual event days. I always make it a point to set aside time at some hour each week to have a conversation with whoever is considered my superior within the wrestling company I am employed by at that time and at the very least, just say hello and check in, maybe share a few laughs and just make sure they know I’m around if they need to discuss anything. Now sometimes, those phone calls can have a specific purpose, like if a big event is coming up or if I find myself having issues booking travel in the near future.

Well a few weeks prior to this show on November the Third, I had one of those phone calls with Vinnie Lane, the man of the hour with all of the power around Anarchy. We were just having another one of our regular conversations, when he hit me with it… Corey Smith had spoken with him earlier in the day and said he wanted to defend his Supercontinental Title when he was in Brooklyn for Wednesday Night Warfare, but he wanted to give the shot to somebody who was rising in the ranks and deserved getting a match of this magnitude on cable television. And I’ll be damned, Vinnie told me I was the first person that called him in the half hour since he had gotten off the phone with Corey, so he asked how I felt about doing the match in Brooklyn. Normally I would have been jumping out of my skin to grab that brass ring and run with it, but I had a slight hesitation: three nights before that, I was booked on Halloween Night for a special XWF show in Romania, and I knew that the travel back was gonna have me all fucked up the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours I was back home. But then I was like… don’t be a fucking idiot, it’s the Supercontinental Title and the show is a short drive from your place, just take the shot and give it your best.

The match on Halloween Night was treacherous but a victory, so I accepted the punishment my body took as the price of picking up another W. The next morning, I found myself up at the crack of dawn to drive a little over two hours to the airport, jumping on the private jet XWF management had gotten for the employees who worked that show and flew back to the States. As luck would have it, most of us were exhausted and used the time relaxing and sleeping as much as humanly possible before landing at JFK. We landed and got out of the plane without incident, I grabbed my baggage and I was home within an hour of being back on American soil, with less than two days to prepare myself for a Glass Cage Match… oh, did I forget to mention that little stipulation for the Supercontinental Title match earlier?!

I remember being in the Barclays Center that night, and for the first time since I had joined the XWF in August, it felt like time was going slower than usual. I was trying to walk and talk like my normal self, but I just felt this brooding cloud just following me the entire time. It didn’t matter if I was in catering to grab some chow, taking a piss in the men’s room or standing at the Go Position right before my music hit… there was just something that wasn’t sitting well with me as I went through that curtain and I still have no idea what it could possibly have been. I wasn’t injured anymore than the “banged up” a traveling pro wrestler normally is, I didn’t have any sickness like the flu or anything of that sort, I wasn’t under the influence of any drugs nor alcohol… and yet, I just felt… off.

I walked down that aisle, stepped inside the glass cage and frankly… I got the ass whooping I deserved that night. I make zero excuses and have zero regrets involving the events leading up to that loss. When I decided to get into this business, I was well aware it wasn’t going to be all sunshines and rainbows. Nobody has ever gone undefeated from start to finish, because every once in a while I have to take a beating, regardless of whether I deserved it or not. But at this point in my career, when I’m getting ready to start making plans AFTER my wrestling life, I don’t care. The way I see it - everybody takes a beating sometimes… some take more than the average number of beatings, some take less. But in the end, it all evens out, because every match has gotta have winners and losers… and that’s the wrestling business in a nut shell.

I remember walking back through the curtain into the backstage area, eventually ending up in the trainers room to get random pieces of glass out of my body and to address other minor cuts from the match. I laid down on that padded table and I had never felt more lifeless than in that moment… I didn’t wanna do anything, I didn’t wanna talk to anyone, I wanted nothing to do with the world in general… all I wanted to do was close my eyes and pretend I was on a beach far away, with my toes in the water and my ass in the sand, not a worry in the world and a cold beer in my hand. And now as I reminisce about that twenty minutes I spent on that table, it kinda makes me wonder if that’s what happens when you know you are living the final seconds of life and just counting the final beats of your heart, the final breaths in your lungs… you just feel nothing.

I eventually got snapped out of it when the trainer said I was all set, but the disappointment would continue to linger for another day or two, before I realized I needed to prepare for a Triple Threat match the following Thursday for a Veteran’s Day edition of Anarchy. The match would pit me against two men that were part of my debut match in the XWF, which was a tag team affair - I was gonna face my former partner Edward Junior and HGH. I was pretty vocal after losing my debut match about how incompetent my tag team partner was and I still held the same opinion going into this match. I viewed Edward Junior as expendable and just someone who was gonna be nothing more than a nuisance that got in the way during the match. And then there was HGH, who had a big mouth and chose to trash my hometown of The Bronx by visiting the museum and talking shit the entire time. It was a tired, overdone angle from a guy who was clearly trying to take the easy way out by using the same old shtick I’ve heard and seen so many times in the past.

By the time that show came around, most of my cuts from the glass cage the previous week had healed, so I was feeling as close to a hundred percent as I could going to Missouri. However, that night would bring about a nuisance I did not anticipate in my preparation for that evening. For some reason, Vinnie Lane decided it was acceptable to allow that idiot commentator Bama T to have his chirpy this little shit of a dog named Sassafras accompany him at the broadcast area during shows. And for some reason, during that specific match on that particular evening, I allowed that sad excuse for a canine get under my skin to the point where I took my eyes off the prize and HGH was able to gain the victory. I was embarrassed, I was ashamed, but more than anything… I was supremely pissed off.

At the end of the night, I found myself mad at the world - I had earned a shot at the Anarchy Title over a month ago but didn’t get my opportunity yet, I had put my body through absolute hell the past month for the good of the company, and now I’ve allowed a little dog to distract just long enough to cost me the winner’s purse in a match I should have won without breaking a sweat. All of those thoughts and emotions led to the actions I committed at the end of the show, where I essentially threatened the life of Sassafras in order to get what was already contractually obligated in the first place, my EARNED opportunity to fight for the Anarchy Championship. It may have been childish, it may have been immature, it may have been irresponsible… but it got the point across and I received what I rightfully deserved… with a catch, the match got sanctioned as a Kennel from Hell match.

Since I had earned my open contract for that Anarchy Championship match, the belt had changed hands from the impressive rookie Latina Submission Machina to the longtime veteran Centurion. The scouting reports for those two talents are as different as fire and ice - LSM is a female luchador who is also well trained in submission wrestling, while Centurion has become reliant on his ground skills and brawling in the later years of his career. Centurion is already inducted into the XWF Hall of Legends, he has a career resume that anyone would bend over backwards to claim as their own, he had fought and beaten some of the best professional wrestlers in the world. And yet, I didn’t look at stepping inside the Kennel from Hell with Centurion as an honor or a privilege or a dream match that was coming true… I saw it as a tremendous inconvenience. I wanted the old man all to myself, just me and him, no glitz or glamour, no crazy stipulations or potential distractions.

And yet there I was, back in the Barclays Center, less than four weeks after the embarrassing performance I gave in my Supercontinental Title match. But this time, I felt completely different than I did twenty-five days earlier: I had a clear mind, I was focused, my body felt as close to perfect as I can get at this point in my career, I hadn’t been running myself ragged like I did the entire month of October… I was pretty much as ready as I could possibly be. However there was a problem that I didn’t expect when I walked down the aisle - the fix was already in.

Remember that dumb commentator and his little piece of shit dog? Well rumor has it Bama made some phone calls and arranged for some dude to dress in costume and interfere during my title match. Not only that, but this moron somehow loosened one of the walls of the cage, so after the fool left and Centurion happened to collapse into that side… the fucking thing fell to allow Cent a tainted victory via escape. As one would expect, I was HOT after the match ended and I wanted to give Bama a piece of my fucking mind… but I decided against it, keeping myself composed when I went back to my dressing room.

The only reason I did that is because behind the scenes, when the cameras haven’t been rolling and I’ve had my own private time, I went out of my way to negotiate the acquisition of someone’s services… a man that I will simply call… The Fixer. This man I have hired brings a very impressive resume to the table, for not only does he sport a law degree and a sports marketing certification, but he also has a background in the professional wrestling business. And that night, while I was competing in that God forsaken Kennel from Hell, The Fixer was tending to some business that I had requested of him earlier in the day. So after I got back to my locker room, The Fixer informed me that when Anarchy returns next Thursday in New Hampshire, I am going to have a No Holds Barred match against that poor idiot Bama T. The Fixer is going to be a tremendous asset moving forward, as it will allow me to focus more of my time outside of the wrestling business… which brings me to the reason my personal life is suddenly bright and cheerful.

As someone who has been around the wrestling business for two decades, I would constantly tell myself that I will always have time when I retire to focus on other life interests, notably having a romantic relationship and possibly even having a family. The latter of those two concepts is something I haven’t been familiar with for two-thirds of my life, since that was the last time I saw or heard from any of my immediate family. But during the first month of my tenure with the XWF, they were taking part in a potential rivalry with the eventual closed and rebranded OCW. I wasn’t really informed what the underlying issues were, so I decided to try being a peacemaker behind the scenes and became friends with a few of the OCW talents. In the midst of that, I befriended a young woman on the roster who was looking for someone to help mentor her, as she was still relatively new to the business with about two years or so under her belt.

Lexi Gold has a heart made out of exactly what her last name says - she’s kind, sexy as hell, considerate, sexy as hell, honest, sexy as hell, has a great sense of humor, sexy as hell, selfless… did I mention she’s sexy as hell?! A lot of people probably look at her, learn that she has a modeling background prior to her pursuit of wrestling glory and cast a bunch of assumptions about her. But let me tell you, she is extremely smart and one of the absolute best people to hold a conversation with. I find myself having effortless conversations that could go hours without any awkward pauses. She is just as beautiful and amazing on the inside as she is on the outside… needless to say, our friendship has recently blossomed into a romantic relationship and I’ll never be able to adequately put into words how much she means to me and how much I care about her. Lexi is my one in a million shot at true love, and I will NOT allow myself to lose her.

Let’s break this down: I have my body feeling pretty good, I’ve hired The Fixer, I’ve got the woman of my dreams on my arm… what more could I possibly want?! Well, aside from a proper rematch against Centurion for the Anarchy Championship, I want bigger challenges, brighter spotlights… but where could I find that? I’ve scanned up and down the XWF roster, I’ve found the ideal target and I’m ready to take aim at this man. The first time we faced each other, it was a brawl with many twists and turns, not the least of which was having to deal with our referee being blindfolded for the match. We blew the roof off Radio City Music Hall and had what I consider one of the most entertaining matches of my short career in the Xtreme Wrestling Federation. But now, this man has the XWF Television Title, which makes getting back in the ring with him all that much more enticing. So what do you say, Charlie Nickles… may I have this dance again?

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