Full Circle

Detroit, Michigan
Little Caesars Arena
April 24th, 2022
Apex Wrestling “Higher Power”




Emmy liked the feeling of leather and precious metals in her hands. Her body was sore, her head was hurting but she managed to hold onto the Next Level Championship. APEX was a new league, a new starting point for plenty of wrestlers from legends to grizzled veterans to rising stars like the man she had beaten to retain her title. She had only had two matches for the promotion so far but they resulted in her claiming a title and successfully defending it. It was the kind of good vibes and positive results that the California native had suddenly become desperate for. The frustrations of not being able to reclaim her Shogun Championship and now suddenly being adrift of the Grand Championship scene in Project Honor were taking their toll. There were times when she considered just going away, just taking the money she had made in the sport and doing something else with her life. She spent so much time hating the travel, hating the people, hating everything about it that she hadn’t noticed she was falling in love with it until she was already head over heels for it. The crowd growing more and more positive as they got to know her, it stuck.

And so there it was, Emmanuelle, champion wrestler, entrepreneur and lover of pro wrestling, gingerly made her way towards a small table that had been set up for her backstage. The company, while certainly operating with a big budget, didn’t have the mass of press that some of her other ventures just yet. It was much more intimate than usual proceedings and she gave all of those present a warm, genuine smile as she displayed her championship.

“V1. I know that this isn’t the World Championship, but I’m starting to realize something the longer you stay in this game: everything that you accomplish should be celebrated. Every achievement, every little scribble you make in your legacy book should be taken seriously. Look at this: it’s a black leather strap with platinum plates and a few jewels on it. There’s no legacy to it. There’s no tradition no….flavor, for lack of a better word, to describe it. It’s blank. I’ve been pushing myself hard, maybe a little too hard. Results have not been going my way but this feels like a good, genuine step for getting back to where I wanna go…if I can bring APEX to the Next Level, pun intended, then I’m all for it.”







Have any of you ever seen the movie “Last Action Hero”? Had Arnold Schwartzenegger and that redheaded guy who played one of the Lannisters on Game of Thrones and Anthony Quinn, one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century. I’m dating my movie taste so bear with me. There’s a scene in it when Quinn gets killed by his henchman in his pool. He accuses the henchman of turning a “360” on him. The henchmen has been dealing with the old guys incompetence for the first quarter of the movie and is exasperated and is like. “It’s a 180…IF I HAD DONE A 360 I WOULD BE BACK WHERE I STARTED!” The poor old guy is still confused so the bad guy just shoots him. Bang! POW! New movie villain.

That quote has nothing to do with wrestling of course, but it’s a perfect synopsis of where I am in Project Honor right now. I’ve been lower, I’ve obviously been higher as a former Grand Champion. But now, I find myself back in a similar situation as I was a year or so ago. This Gates of Hell match is nothing new to me. It’s a horrible match with a brutality that most matches on Proving Ground usually doesn’t have. Weapons. Steel, seven other opponents to fight that you have to contend with. And the thing is, everyone thinks that they’re ready for it, that they can handle the rigors of such a match. I still have all the scars on my body from all the abuse I took in participating in the first Seven Gates of Hell match. I remember the bruises. I remember the pain that I was in for a long, long fucking time after it was over. But you know what else I remember? I remember the fact that I won.

I saw the names of the people involved. And to tell you the truth, it’s an interesting mix. Familiar faces, psychotic bastards, rising stars. People hungry to make a name for themselves in one of the most dangerous matches anywhere…a match that I was one to put on the map. I didn’t want to defend my Warrior Rising Championship at the time in a match like that, but that’s what they came up with. That night, filled with blood and sweat and a few tears, made that Championship respectable again. Now, this isn’t about a championship. This time, it’s about pride. It’s about showing that even though I’ve fallen on some tough times, that I’m a tough person, tougher than seven other men and women who think that they understand this and what it’s all about.

Brandon Hendrix does know what it’s all about, so I have to give him at least a little respect. You were in there last time. You remember the noise. The violence, the chaos. You were in on all of that. For the longest time you were one of my biggest pests on the Proving Ground Roster. You were coming after my title. You came after my hygiene for no reason at all. You got in my way in the Clive Darling Memorial Tournament. But there’s one thing that you couldn’t do with all those chances: figure out a way to beat me. You have shown a lot of fire. You’ve honestly been one of the biggest challenges in my career in Project Honor because of your size and power, I’m honest enough to be able to tell you that without blowing smoke up your ass. The problem that you’ve got is that I’m used to wrestling people bigger than me. I trained in a dojo where I was pretty much the smallest person involved with every drill, every sparring session, everything. I’ve learned pretty well how to shut down big strong boys like you and you have firsthand knowledge of that. What’s going to be different this time? Are you going to turn it up to a gear that you haven’t shown? I saw your match at Public Execution where you were…well, publicly executed. But you seem to have found that spark. I know that you want people to take you seriously and you’re going to enter this match with a degree of intensity to show that you not only can compete at a high level but also that you can win at a high level. So, hopefully you’re rested up from the ass-beating you got in that Ultimate Submission match and you’re fully prepared to take another one. You’ve been pegged as one of the ones “next up” for a while, jokes about your commitment be damned…and it’s my job that your wait to reach that Chosen One status lasts just a little longer.

There’s another one that I’ve been keeping my eye on. I see a lot of female wrestlers like him now that I’ve visited Japan a lot and he reminds me of them. A very stern, very simple guy that came here looking for a fight. James Raymond. He’s got all the tools as a wrestler to make it. Never mind that he’s as bland as a glass of ice water, but just watching his style of wrestling I can see him making an impact in a match like this. What does this guy do in his first match in the company? He knocks a motherfucker out on worldwide television. If that doesn’t get your attention as someone in the locker room, you’d be a fool. I’m interested in you, mainly because you’d be a new flavor of wrestler for me to experience, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily like you. From what I hear, you’re one of those types who wants the whole promotion to be a certain way. You have your own views on the place, blah blah blah. Well, my friend, this is not going to be your vehicle to launch your career into the stratosphere, should I have anything to say about it. Being able to wrestle and to fight is one thing, but being able to endure what this match forces you to endure is quite another. Have you ever walked into something like the structure that we’re about to walk into, James, with a target the size of a sumo wrestler’s ass on your chest and back? With people knowing you’re the prohibitive favorite? Have you ever been around a pack of people like that? I have. Humbling people that think they have more wrestling skill than everybody else is an occupational obsession for me, so I more than welcome the challenge of mixing it up with you. That’s if you make it to the end of the road. Just telling you from experience, wrist locks and shoot holds won’t mean diddly shit if seven other people are hitting you with chains, bats, chairs, and so on. It’s definitely not the same level of competition as John Blade and the other tomato can you supposedly fought. This is serious business.

Then there is this weird guy named Silas. I…I don’t even know what the fuck you are exactly? Are you a clown? Are you a Joker knockoff? Are you one of the Killer Clowns from Outer Space? Are you related to Ronald McDonald but a vegan instead? Or maybe you’re going for Bane from the Batman movies? Look, I don’t know and honestly I don’t care. You’ve already got one strike against you for being British because a lot of them tend to annoy the hell out of me. You claim to be EEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIIIILLLLLLLL but the most Evil thing it appears to me that you’ve ever done in your life is raid Ozzy Osbourne’s wardrobe. So, I don’t know. Stay out of my way if you don’t mind, but if you do decide to get in my way just understand that a lot of very bad things are going to happen to you in a very short amount of time and you will regret crossing my path. I could have made an “Iron Man” song reference but nobody else under thirty-five would probably get it besides me. Just…do your little plotting and scheming somewhere besides around me and I won’t open up your skull and donate whatever’s in there to science to study. Got it? Great.




Detroit, Michigan
Radisson Hotel
April 25, 2022




Emmy was blissfully sleeping. She had partied well into the night after her triumph in Apex Wrestling, crashing into her hotel bed around two in the morning. She was planning on spending the night in someone else’s bed, but she had promised to see someone who was taking a greater interest in her career in the morning. But little did she know that April would be banging on her door at FIVE IN THE MORNING!

“C’mon! I’m not standing out here all day Emmy, let’s go! You remember the deal right!? When we met up here at the hotel what did I tell you!? I said I’ll go out with you if you get up and train with me! You had your fun…now it’s time for me to have mine!”

Emmy opened the door with an annoyed grunt. She figured that April would pull something like this so she was at least prepared in terms of dress, wearing a black sports bra top with matching shorts. The body or the mind wasn’t quite as prepared.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Five past five in the morning. Do you think people like Billy Bennett or Arata Asakura are standing around looking lazy right now? Do you think people who are holding championships that matter are getting hammered on a nightly basis?”

That was the kind of disrespect that Emmy wouldn’t tolerate, even from friends. She was extremely proud of her newly won title, just as she was of all her other victories. She squared up immediately to the former Airman, who didn’t blink.

“Being criticized by a woman who is a functional alcoholic at best isn’t the best way to start the day, so do you mind cutting that shit out?”

“What are you gonna do about it if I don’t?”

There was a long, extremely tense silence between the two of them, which was broken by April letting out a heavy sigh before speaking again.

“Look, Emmy, I like you. You know that, right? But right now, I’m just trying to make sure that you’re at your best. I know what it’s like to endure losing streaks and have a career that most people would call inconsistent. It took me years to win my first world title. Along that way, I found little things that I could pick up as a wrestler. I started just as a shooter. I was incomplete as far as the whole pro wrestling game but you? You’ve got the goods and you act like you don’t even know it! Do you know how many people would kill to have your talent, your looks, and your brain for the business combined? Even your enemies know how good you are…and that’s why they’re going to do whatever they can to outwork you. You have to focus more. Stop messaging all those thots you run into on Twitter and Instagram-”

Emmy was about to interrupt but when April held up her hand to cut her off she stood there, arms folded across her chest. Carlos had instilled in her as well as his other proteges that their seniors (people who graduated from his training regimen before them) should be respected, almost like uncles and aunts if not older brothers and sisters in his wrestling “Family Tree”. She was one of the most stubborn of his proteges, but even she understood this. She knew April was trying to get under her skin not to hurt her, but to help her get better. And she did it not to make money for herself or to hold it over her…but it was because she genuinely cared. Admittedly, growing up an only child, April was her first true taste of having a “Big Sister”.

“You want to hold the Grand Championship longer than a month next time? Or are you just happy to get your name on the record books and then toil around doing nothing else?”

“.............You know the answer to that already.”

“Then stop bitching and let’s go.”

She stopped bitching and went. April was right. Her focus needed to return to where it was before. Her intensity needed to be dialed up some more. Sure, she was friendlier and a little less of a bitch to most people she came across, but Emmy needed to rediscover that killer instinct, that fire that she had in her belly every time she wrestled Chris Sabertooth or Arata Asakura had to be consistently in her. Her friends were good friends, great people, but April was by far the best at telling Emmy what she needed to hear instead of what she wanted to hear.






There seems to be a common theme with wrestlers these days. It’s what they grew up wanting to do, it’s all they know. It’s their dream. For a long time this was a foreign concept to me, even when I started training to become a wrestler. See, when I was growing up, I didn’t care a fucking bit about this business. Not that I was one of the people who screamed about it being lowbrow entertainment, I just couldn’t be bothered. I cared about fashion, cooking, running little side-hustles for money. Sports like basketball and eventually water polo were my outlets. When I was growing up, I didn’t know what I was gonna be or what I even wanted to be. My parents were trying to groom me for the family business, to take their spot when they wanted to quit. But that’s not what I wanted. Anybody can be successful if they’re slotted into a position from birth. Anybody can make money off of the hard work of other people before you. What I wanted to do was come into my own in a different way, make my own waves in the world. Wrestling has been the way that I’ve been able to do that and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

So, Douglas and Stella, I get where both of you are coming from. You’re obviously very different people. One of you is a weirdo that doesn’t even have a hometown, the other is an actual fucking witch. Both of you love this, you chose to walk this path for whatever reason, right? I have a question and don’t take offense: are you just satisfied being on the shows, being in big matches like this? Doug, I’m not sure about you since you have all the emotional output of a decommissioned robot, but Stella, you seem to deeply care. You want to be good but you’re not just so sure how to get there just yet. I believe that both of you, in your own way, can make an impact on this match. I also believe that the two of you, in your own way, can work your way up to a higher place than you are right now. If you have anything that you want to show the world to let them know that just existing on Proving Ground isn’t enough, that you want to not just survive but thrive…now’s the time. People can say I’m inconsistent or nonchalant about wrestling sometimes, but what I do better than arguably anyone who lives in the world of wrestling is take advantage of opportunity. I had a surprise chance to wrestle Scott Oasis for the Warrior Rising Championship. I took advantage. Same with Arata being forced to defend the title against me even though I was in the midst of a losing streak. Took advantage. Same with this match, almost a year ago. The Gates of Hell were opened up…and a little devil found her own slice of heaven on the other side. So, are you two going to be underperforming, self-indulgent babies…or are you going to retrieve your guts and show the world what you have, show ME what you have? I’m hesitant to put Declan in the same category as you two. He’s someone I’ve only seen in action a couple of times. I don’t have a read on his fire just yet. But you two? Yeah. It’s time to step up.

There’s one other person in this match, right? You see, the other six of you, if I wasn’t involved I would probably root for each and every one of you to succeed, even Brandon after he, wrongly, called me musty. Casanova. You proved your point on Proving Ground, didn’t you. Since I’m doing movie references, have you ever seen Con Air? There’s a scene where a serial killer breaks down one of the main bad guys’s faults and problems. “Happiness for that gentleman hurts.” Me, I’m not exactly a ray of fucking sunshine all the time and I’m usually the last person to bring up someone’s gender when it comes to certain things but….what were you thinking? Is your life so bad that you wanted to injure a fucking pregnant woman? Is your self-esteem and ego so goddamn shattered you were willing to take out Tara and possibly compromise her pregnancy just to feel pain? You see, this is different from my battles with Tara or Brandon or Sabertooth or even Arata. I have varying degrees of emotion about them from people I adore to people I begrudgingly respect, either because of their talent or the way they represent themselves or both.

You don’t fall into that category. Not anymore.

You see, I don’t care about winning and losing one match. It’s just a match. Did I get banged up some to save a friend from harm? Yeah. But that wasn’t even just about Tara right there. Me doing that was to protect someone that’s completely innocent. You, you selfish little prick, crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed. And now you’ve made an enemy out of me. You think your ankle and leg hurt the last time we wrestle? Then boy you better pray to God, if you believe in that sort of thing, that I don’t get my hands on you in that dome, that prison we’re going to all be scrapping in. I may even just cut my way through those other six like a fucking surgeon just to put my hands on you. You’re a sad, strange little man and you have absolutely none of my sympathy. You walk around like people owe you the world because things aren’t going in life how you planned. You, Casanova, are nothing more than a parasite that leeches off of others to secure your own desires. You’re talking about working your way into the Grand Championship scene, how you’re going to do this and that.

Not while I’m around.

It’s personal now, very fucking personal. I’m going to beat the hell out of you like Tara wants to but can’t right now. You want something to mope about? I’ll give it to you…and your little punkass friends that you roll with too. What happened a couple of weeks ago is going to look like a scrimmage compared to what I have planned for you buddy, so make sure that you’ve got yourself a nice and patient physical therapist on hand. Because your receipt for kicking me in the head and trying to hurt one of the sweetest human beings I’ve ever known is coming…and I don’t think you have the facilities to handle it.

This match, this structure that we’re all going to step inside in just a couple of short days from now, it’s where I started to build my legend in this company. Becoming a Champion was one thing, but surviving and enduring this made me into somebody. Now it’s time for me to “go back to my roots” and show the world that I’m still very much the Platinum Standard. To the seven of you who are about to enter Hell, I know that for whatever reason you’re looking at this as an opportunity. An opportunity to grow your career. An opportunity for redemption. An opportunity to hurt people. An opportunity to look Evil. I don’t know your motivations like the back of my hand, but I’ve gone out of my way to study each and every one of you. I know what it takes to survive in this cold, cruel Hell.

I’ve come full circle, yet many still feel like I’m the hunted instead of the hunter. No. I’m hunting this year. I have more to prove in a match than any match I’ve ever had before. I’ve got more motivation than all of you combined to come out on top. And no matter what you all do, no matter how hard you hit me or what weapon you find or what move you learned in some old Canadian’s basement is going to keep me from my goal.

Out of everyone competing in this match, there’s no one who measures up to the Platinum Standard. Period, cut and dry. This may sound arrogant, it may sound cold, but I’m on another level than each of you. And one by one, broken body by broken body, you’re all going to realize that being locked in a cage with someone like Emmanuelle is not the sunshine and rainbows you thought it would be. But all of you, I do encourage you to at least make it entertaining for the fans? That fight for second place is going to be fun to watch.

We already know who’s going in first and coming out last.