The Show Must Go On

This is a true story, none of the names have been changed. None of us are innocent.

You don’t hear the crowd when you're walking through the curtain. Not really. You feel it, like a current, a pressure in your chest that makes your lungs swell a little bigger, your arms hang a little wider. Tonight was almost sold out. A big show. We’d built this one for months. All eyes on the main event: The Savage Brotherhood-Big Daddy Storm and the Outlaw Brody Hawk versus Mic Vicious and Solomon Hyde.

Me and Brody? We were the villains in this story. The monsters under the ring. The wrecking ball and the madman, two huge men who wrecked everyone. Dressed in black, tinged with red, black leather vest and black wrestling boots, we were a sight to behold. It was obvious we meant business.

Hyde and Vicious were the fan favorites, two misfit workhorses. Mic, short but incredibly stout at five foot eight inches tall and his psychotic partner, Solomon Hyde, a mute monster, at least six foot four inches, matching our size, but locked under a hideous mask. The fans loved him.

But this? This was our house. And tonight, we were closing the doors.

Everything was going to plan.

Mic took the early heat. We isolated him like wolves; cut the ring, stomped the soul out of him. Brody hit that neckbreaker on the ropes that made the first two rows scream. Hyde came in hot on the tag, but we slowed him too. I could feel the rhythm, the beat of the story we were telling.

We fought through the crowd, into the bleachers. We used every item we could find to beat each other with; a coke can, chairs, I even got tossed over the bleacher barrier, down onto the hardwood gym floor by the monster Hyde.

The dance of the battle was a back and forth war before we did what we do best. We took control and battered our opponents almost into submission, tossing their beaten bodies back in the ring as we slowly mocked the crowd, working the fans into a frenzy.

We finally got back into the ring and they were on us, the roar of the crowd lifting the fan favorites up, giving them renewed energy. Everyone could feel it, this was Mic and Hyde’s night.

They didn’t know we had one more trick up our sleeves.

It was time.

A quick nod.

Two simultaneous, unseen blows to the nether regions of our opponents.

Mic was down. Hyde was staggering. Brody gave me the nod; the finish.

I lined Solomon up.

The Ego Killer.

A leaping front thrust kick; mine, my signature, the nail in the coffin.

I took two steps back. The ropes behind me flexed like a slingshot. I loved this moment, everything about it, waiting on my opponent to turn and catch my size 12 boot right in the jaw. I’ve done it a hundred times, and I always got the same thrill. Time slowed. I was focused. Hyde turned. I launched. My boot connected square in his jaw.

I felt the satisfying impact.

Heard his grunt.

Another perfect delivery—

—or it should have been.

He didn’t plant right, his body twisting awkwardly.

His big damn size 13 boot landed under me just as I came down. My ribs slammed full-force onto the edge of his boot like I’d belly-flopped onto a fire hydrant. I didn’t even hear myself grunt aloud, but I know I did. The air exploded out of me. A flash of white pain flooded my head like I’d been struck by lightning.

I rolled to my side, hands clutched tight to my ribs. It was like something inside me folded the wrong way.

Hyde was down.

Mic was getting up.

Brody didn’t know. He thought it was all good to go.

I couldn’t tell him different.

He launched Hyde out of the ring like yesterday’s garbage and climbed the ropes.

I couldn’t breathe. The pain had my brain working overtime to assess the damage.

Every instinct in my body screamed to stay down, to wave the ref over, to call it.

But I knew what I had to do. There are no time-outs in wrestling. We don’t get to call “cut” and redo the scene. We’re live. It’s in those moments that you find out the truth about the type of person you are.

I got to my feet, slow, unsteady, holding my side like I was trying to keep my soul from leaking out. Mic turned around just as I grabbed him.

Sidewalk slam.

Lift.

His body weight pressed down like a wrecking ball.

I’m a strong man but at that moment a feather seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

Every step hurt like a hammer strike, and when I turned and dropped him down—

I blacked out for a second.

White-hot pain swallowed me whole. I rolled off him, toward the ropes, clutching my side and gasping like a fish out of water. The canvas was cold. My skin was drenched.

Somewhere behind me, I heard it:

WHAM.

Brody’s elbow drop. Pure Outlaw. He never missed.

Then the ref’s hand.

One.

Two.

Three.

The bell.

Boos rained down from the rafters like falling bricks, but all I could feel was the fire in my chest and the pounding of my heart against broken bone.

We’d done it. We’d won.

I couldn’t see much, just the lights and shadows dancing behind my eyelids, but I heard them coming. Other wrestlers, officials, Doc, the boys.

I felt hands on me, guiding me gently, carefully, off the mat.

The crowd was still roaring.

They were jeering me as we walked out, thinking it was all part of the show. Unaware of what really took place just moments earlier.

I was good with that.

It didn’t matter if they hated us.

The story got told.

Even when the finish goes sideways, when the pain is real, when nothing plays out the way you planned...

In pro wrestling?

The show must go on.

And dammit—we stole it.