How I Met Your Momma: A Peter Valentine Love Story

[Jaded]

I have no idea whether this is a good idea, but it has to be better than another attempt at a normal dynasty from me - my last one proved I suck at them. My booking of USPW has actually improved this time around, honestly... let's see if I can get the storytelling right with a different perspective.

 

Huntsville, Alabama.

July 4th, 2018

 

Dear Pete Jr,

 

I don't really want to write you this letter, and not just because I was a meathead at school and never really concentrated in lessons. No, truth is I'm hoping I'll be able to tell you everything in here myself, with you butting in to ask questions if you want to.

 

Thing is, though, I've not been feeling too well for a few months now... the docs can't find what's wrong, but I keep thinking I catch them looking worried. Maybe just my imagination, but never hurts to be careful. So, it got me thinking, by the time you're old enough to hear some of this stuff, your dad might not be around to tell you it. I know your momma will go through all the stories, but she always was kinda modest, and I got this feelin' she might not tell you what a big difference she made to my life.

 

So, sit back, Junior. Get yourself a Coke or something. And know that I'd much rather be there telling you all this myself.

 

Your loving father,

Peter Valentine Sr

[Jaded]

Well, I can't really say it was love at first sight the first time I laid eyes on your momma. At least not from my side. See, at this point, I was in my 40’s and headlining in USPW even though most people thought I was washed up. Sam Strong – your godfather, God rest his soul – had just gotten us our first ever PPV deal, and he’d promised me a title shot at Stars, Stripes and Slams Forever, our first PPV in January 08. December 2007, I won a battle royal to get the title shot at Jim Justice. Almost a week later, we got called to an emergency meeting, and Sammy told us that due to health and financial problems, he’d sold up to a group of businessmen. He also introduced us to the girl they’d brought in to run things, Kate Avatar. Yeah, that was her maiden name, back before she married me.

 

Well, can’t say many of us were exactly thrilled. Sammy had made a name for himself as an entertaining wrestler who was great on the stick, without ever being much above average in the ring, and USPW was pretty much fashioned in his image once Danny J got him involved. You looked around the locker room at that point, and there weren’t many people there who the ‘smart’ fans raved about. Hell, some people used to nickname the fed ‘Where The 90s Go To Die’!

 

Okay, Darryl Devine was a jumped-up little twerp, but I gotta say he could have wrestled rings around most of us. I always thought Jimmy J never got enough credit for what he could do in the ring, either. As for the rest of us – guys like me, Anger, Giant Redwood – let’s just say that even in our primes, we never had the tape traders fighting over our matches.

 

So we had a locker room that was kinda paranoid at the thought of new guys changing things around, making it more like the Coastal Zone, or MAW, or any of those other feds the net fans raved about. Then our new boss turns out to be about half our age, and a woman. Not only that, but a woman who could lay claim to being better in the ring than just about any of us. We already had Sam’s daughter – your Aunty Lissy – and Cherry Bomb, who went on to become one of your momma’s best friends. Your mom could probably have given the three of them a headline programme, and got a lot of praise for it.

 

Thankfully – for me at least – she wasn’t interested in that. Her big speech to us, she talked about how much she’d loved watching wrestling back in the days when it was full of ‘big strong hosses’, as she put it, looking straight at me. Said she didn’t know anyone who gave a damn about those little flippy-floppy squirts who looked more at home in a gym exhibition than a wrestling ring, and promised she wasn’t gonna change stuff too much.

 

Easy to say that, we thought. As a breed, I think us wrestlers are naturally suspicious, and when she put the lineup for her first card up – which saw her take on Lissy, her friend Cat Quine brought in short term to go against Cherry Bomb for the Women’s title – and Giant Redwood in a dark match, teaming with a guy called the Dark Defiler in a dark match – we weren’t too convinced. Heck, yours truly wasn’t even on the card, and it was headlined by a triple threat title match, Justice vs Chris Caulfield vs T-Rex, which everyone thought she should have built up too.

 

Anyway, when she told me she wanted to see me privately, I could guess what it was about. Thought she was gonna tell me my shot at Justice was gone, and I was starting to wonder whether she’d even put me on our first ever PPV. Luckily, I was wrong.

[Jaded]

I nearly blew it, though. Back in those days I had a kinda hot temper, so when she started by telling me I was gonna be the Dark Defiler, complete with black mask, I saw red. Told her it was a damn stupid name and a damn stupid mask and the fans would never buy it. She took me by surprise when she agreed.

 

“Calm down, Pete,” she said to me. “I got big plans for you – but they’ll stop you wrestling, at least as yourself, for a bit. This Defiler gig won’t make TV, but it’ll keep you busy.”

 

“What plans?” I asked her curiously. To start off with, I thought she was just blowin’ smoke, stalling the question. She asked if I’d ever seen Batman Begins. That was the first Bale one, before he went crazy, started ranting on Youtube and making five or six worse ‘n’ worse sequels. I said “Yeah, sure I have,” – and she started talking about the training part, where Bruce Wayne reinvents himself. She told me she wanted to run something similar with me, said she was all set to start filming the next day if I was in. I figured hey, if I get some camera time, she’s at least putting some effort into pushing me, so yeah, I was in.

 

I was planning a normal morning the following day, the get down to the gym where she was filming about two, maybe play some pool afterwards. Well, normal morning – in those far off days before you and baby Joanne were born – meant getting up about ten, maybe watching a DVD or two, then getting lunch.

 

Your mother had other ideas, kid.

 

Half past seven, my phone rings. I wake up, work out what the damn noise is, and panic in case my sister – your aunt Susan – or her kid Casey was in trouble, cause I can’t think of any other reason to have anyone calling me at that ungodly hour. Turns out it’s your momma, saying she’s standing outside. Well, I figured she was a bit confused on the idea of hazing – the old hands were meant to do it to the rookies, ya see – so I put the phone down. Five minutes later, she calls me again, telling me I got three minutes to get myself down there ready to go jogging or I was fired.

 

I stumbled downstairs, cussing her out all the way, and she got me to job a mile with her. Took me nearly ten minutes – and kid, if she’s reading this with you, she’ll say it was nearer fifteen, like she always does. That’s a damn lie, it wasn’t a second over twelve. Although the next mile was another story…

 

Anyway, as you can tell, I wasn’t in the best shape, back then. Your momma told me that she meant every word she said about big guys, but she also said some of us needed to get fit enough to go at least 15 minutes – I think her exact words were “No way are any of my PPV main eventers going to be less fit than three quarters of the crowd.”

 

Those early morning jogs were a big part of the first few months. Four or five times a week, she’d turn up unannounced and drag me out. I never got anywhere near as fit as her, but eventually I could actually move and talk at the same time, which is when she started pumping me for booking ideas. In fact, it was during a fairly early one I mentioned Anger had a soft spot for Cherry Bomb, which led to him managing her as Demoness Mischief, and probably boosted his time left in the spotlight from a few months to about five years. And does he even send me a Christmas card? Nah, the ungrateful…

 

Anyway, where was I?

[Jaded]

Oh, yeah, filming. Man… this was something else. Sam had never gone in for any of those pre-prepared segments. It wasn’t just cause they cost a damn fortune – it was partly cause he couldn’t see we needed them.

 

Something you gotta remember about Sam, kid – he was loved. I don’t mean the crowd cheered him a bit or that he was fairly popular – he was completely adored. Wrestlers before and since him have been big stars – Chord, Cornell, McFly, Dan goddamn Stone Jr, Smith, De Aske – but no-one has ever connected with the crowd like Sammy Strong did. Truth be told, I’m not sure anyone ever will.

 

Anyway, being so beloved was good for Sam, and it sure helped us when he came to USPW. Only problem was, Sam connected with the fans so damn effortlessly that he could never remember that not all of us did. He figured you went out, cut a promo, got cheered or booed – job done.

 

Your momma cut a real good promo too, but like I said, no one was in Sammy’s league. So she could sympathise with the rest of us, and figured pre-taping would help. When I got to the gym – Bernie’s Place, normally kinda busy – not that I’d really been there often enough to know what normally meant – and apart from her, a camera crew and a few guys she’d drafted in as extras, it was deserted.

 

When I commented on the lack of people, she explained that our new investors had hired it out exclusively – not just for the day, but for the year! She claimed they were keen to see guys like me getting fitter – some chance people like Bruce would spend hours every day down the gym, I thought. Yeah, I underestimated her.

 

Like I said earlier, I figured I’d get the filming done quick – maybe 20 minutes or so. She had other ideas. She wanted four segments, one for each episode of American Wrestling between then and the PPV. We started off just filming me hitting a punch bag. Even that took three tries before she was happy. For the 2nd week, she got me lifting weights and stuff. By the 4th, she had extras running in at me only for me to knock them out with one strike. Then we moved on to the voiceovers. “I used to break hearts, but now I break limbs.” Not exactly Shakespeare, but it got the point across.

[Phantom Stranger]

I am fascinated by this, so far.

[pepper2008]

Me too keep it up:) Push Peter Valentine:eek:

[doctorjones]

In spite of the fact that I despise Peter Valentine and push Giant Redwood ahead of him in USPW, I am still excited to see what comes of this.

[Jaded]

Woot, feedback! Thanks guys, was trying to work out if anyone was reading it.

 

Phantom, really good to hear you're enjoying it as your Philly diary was something of an inspiration to me to do something different from a 'normal' dynasty.

 

Just a short bit for today.

 

 

She was nervous as hell for the first show she booked the next day, but it was obvious she didn’t need to be. Not just saying that looking back, either – there was a real buzz around the fed.

 

I know that sound weird – 2 days earlier, most of these guys had hated the thought of a younger girl being their boss – but she was so enthusiastic, it rubbed off on people. Of course, giving backstage passes to that show to half of the AAA roster, and introducing the guys to her first two permanent signings, J-Ro and Raven Nightfall, didn’t exactly hurt.

 

Then there were Sam and Chris. We didn’t know it til a few days later, but Richard Eisen had made Caulfield an offer too good to turn down. Chris felt bad about abandoning us, and he did all he could to sell the rest of us on Kate’s management before he left.

 

And Sammy… man, he looked 10 years younger overnight. Any financial problems he had had obviously disappeared – and Kate had told him she’d do ALL the booking. She, before she came in, Sneer and Jillefski were supposedly in charge, but everyone knew they were burnt out. Half the storylines we had going, they’d needed Sammy to tweak to make them watchable – the other half, he’d written from scratch.

 

And with it being an open secret that he was, in effect, head booker, Sam had also cut down on his on-screen role. In fact, I think September 2008 was the last time he was on screen. It was crazy, of course, we’d tried to tell him he was the fed’s most popular by far and was wasted in a road agent’s position – but he’d watched too many feds where it was all about the owner and his family (hey, NOTBPW, we mean YOU!) and was desperate to avoid that. He’d even held off giving Lissy the uber-push everyone was expecting.

 

Kate told him straight off, “You’re our biggest asset and you can make the rest of these guys into stars a lot quicker if you’re on screen.” She moved him into the announce boost with Shane and Danny, and came up with a formula for every TV show – they’d start with a well-produced video showing the top stars, then he’d run down the card for us.

 

So that was how her first card started…

[foolinc]

Since the seal's been broken I guess I'll make comment. Loving this diary even though I usually can't stand Peter Valentine.

[Phantom Stranger]

Phantom, really good to hear you're enjoying it as your Philly diary was something of an inspiration to me to do something different from a 'normal' dynasty.

 

Definitely good to hear. Nothing wrong with the typical diaries - I read so many - but experimentation is good. And I'm a sucker for stories where we vaguely know the ending...

[Jaded]

OOC: Have added the grades for the show at the end. Will probably stick to this format for TV shows, just keeping them as part of the letter - for PPVs I'm planning on going more in depth and breaking out of the letter bit for the post. All feedback welcome!

 

Like I said, we had a glossy, pre-produced video. In fact, my “I break limbs not heads” quote was one of the opening bits – just after a few stills of Sam in his prime, and James holding aloft the World title. Even Chris was in it for two weeks, before being edited out when he moved on to Eisen’s fed. Sam ran down what was going on, and explained that he was joining the broadcast booth, before bringing out tonight’s special guest – Cat Quine.

 

USPW fans may not have been the most knowledgeable in the States, but there were still a fair few who knew who she was, and I remember her getting a decent pop straight off. Of course, it helped that she was the first one to benefit from a real entrance video on the big screen, instead of the collections of stills we’d used in the old days. Yeah, that’s right, Cat was in on a 2 or 3 shot deal, and your momma got creative to do her her own entrance video –she knew how important those first impressions could be.

 

Speaking of entrance videos, Cherry Bomb’s was incredible. Depending on when your momma gives you this, you may know a lot about women, or you may just be starting to learn about them. Hey, who am I kidding? I’m 50 plus, and even I’M just starting to learn about them. I know Micky Starr jokes that he knew about the same amount on his 70th birthday as he did on his 7th – sometimes they gave you stuff, sometimes they smacked you, and there was no real reasoning as to what they did when…

 

Sorry, kid. I get distracted.

 

Yeah, Cherry’s entrance vid. She wasn’t the best-looking of girls – above average, sure, but nowhere near as stunning as your momma, or Joanne or Raven. She didn’t have that star quality that someone like Cat Quine had. But man, give her a mic, and she was just great – not so much talented, just really enthusiastic and loving it. She’d straight away pitched this Lord of the Rings inspired idea to your momma and the entrance vid was based on that – your momma admitted to me that she’d had no sleep between the Monday and the Wednesday, she’d been so busy putting this stuff together, apart from a quick two hour nap so that she didn’t disgrace herself too badly in her in-ring debut. So, Cat’s vid is shots of her, shots of the belt, and her screaming “MY PRECIOUSSSSSS” over and over again, cut with clips of a few old interviews from previous shows. Big hit.

 

As was her match, the first one your momma booked. Cat put her over really strongly, and combined with Lissy beating your momma in another pretty good bout – well, your momma was never happy with it, but that was probably because she was so damn tired – it helped focus people on our women’s division, which had got kinda small.

 

What else happened on that card? Hey, I’m looking at some of the old magazines to remind me… I dug them out cause I knew this would happen, memory’s never been the same since I turned 50. I could pop in a DVD – your momma’s probably got you watching her library, every show she ever booked – but if I do that, I end up watching another, and another, and she’ll be telling me to go and do the shopping pretty soon.

 

Ah, got it. That was the start of the Bruce the Giant vs Jumbo Jackson feud. The first one, that is. Heh… USPW Magazine, which came out just before Stars, Stripes and Slams Forever, is talking about how “JUMBO COULD BE THE ONE TO STOP BRUCE!” A little bit early there, as everyone knows. But hey, we got the marks believing it for a week or two, at least. Jumbo beat the hell outta Hillbilly Al, then led the Sneer Corp in attacking the Giant. Oh, and Darryl’s heel turn was on that card as well. God, he hated that… stupid moron, acting like he was too big to put someone over on the way out.

 

He and Nicky Champion had got a tag shot at the Towers of Powers, but both introduced themselves to your momma on their way out to the ring. You could see they both liked her, she came out to watch, they got jealous of each other, and Nicky ended up taking a boot from Devine, who stomped off and abandoned him. Perfectly acceptable booking, given he’d just told her he was planning on joining SWF as soon as he could get the legal stuff sorted out, and a lot of bookers back them would have just let someone like Giant Redwood squash him. As it was, she gave him a two week storyline to put Nicky C over, and he spent the entire time bitching about how it made him look like a whiny bitch and ruined his momentum.

 

Yeah, that’s right, kid. ‘Mighty Fine’ Darryl Devine, who three years later was near the top of the SWF playing, you got it, a whiny bitch, actually hated the thought of it at first. God knows why, it’s not even like he had to act.

 

Then, of course, it was the start of Chris’ farewell. Same departure schedule as Devine, but as I already said, he was a helluva lot more gracious about it. Put T-Rex over like a monster in that triple threat, then grabbed a mic and screamed for a match next week against him at the end (JJ won it, but T-Rex was really dominant, and it started his big push.)

 

Anyway, I wasn’t planning on telling you all about every card she ever booked, but it’s kinda fun looking back at these articles and reminiscing – I’ll tell her to keep them safe for you if you want to see the pictures and stuff. By the time you read this, you might even recognize me in the pictures where I have hair!

 

QUICK RESULTS AND GRADES

 

Hype video (B)

Sam runs down the card (B+)

Sam introduces Cat Quine (C+)

USPW Women’s Title match, Cherry Bomb beats Cat Quine (D+)

Sam meets Kate (B)

Jumbo Jackson beats Al The Hillbilly (E+)

Sneer Corp attack Bruce (B+)

Darryl and Nicky meet Kate (C+)

T-Rex interrupts a Justice/Caulfield joint interview (B)

USPW Tag Titles match: Towers of Power beat Champion and Devine (D-)

Sam confirms Justice vs Valentine for PPV (B+)

Alicia Strong beats Kate Avatar (C-)

Nicky asks Sam for Devine next week, Sam books it. (D+)

USPW World Title match: Justice beats T-Rex and Caulfield (C+)

Post-match celebration between Caulfield and Justice (B+)

Caulfield requests a match with T-Rex (B-)

Coming next week video (B)

[Jaded]

So, as I said, that was a hot first show your momma booked, kid. Of course, while the rest of us were celebrating, she was busy catching up on all the sleep she’d missed – in between sending off e-mails to half a dozen or so other wrestlers she wanted to bring in. Yeah, she was building up the roster slowly but surely.

 

Her first three signings were masterstrokes, as well. Oh, I know it sounds like I’m just blowin’ smoke there, pretty much everything she’s ever done is perfect to me, I’ll admit.

 

But to bring in Puerto Rican Power… wow. She not only grabbed a guy who hadn’t been seen on the mainland for years, creating a reasonable buzz, and trebling our popularity in Puerto Rico pretty much overnight, but she showed us that she’d meant what she said about the type of guy she was looking to push. See, PRP, and the Dirty White Boys, who debuted on the same show, were just like the kind of guys we already had – but better in the ring than most of us, and a helluva lot fitter than guys like me, Cap or T-Rex.

 

The following coupla weeks, she brought in Steve Flash, who as you know went on to be huge, and got the DeColts for 2 appearances. If she’d done that straight away, then we’d have all been thinking “HEY! This isn’t what she said… dammit, she wants ring generals after all.” But by making those three her first picks, no disrespect to any of them – like I said, they were a sure step up from me at that point – we could see that the big man attitude was for real.

 

Of course, that’s those of us who could think about ANY other signings with J-Ro and Raven about. I swear, some of the guys were so gone on those two gals that if Christian Faith, Tommy Cornell, and Vengeance had showed up as a stable, they’d barely have noticed.

 

I remember that first weekend pretty well, mainly cause me and Chris hit a club. He was nervous as hell about leaving, and he actually asked me point blank if I thought he was doing the right thing – I think this was a day or two before he officially signed the contract.

 

If I’d said no, he wasn’t, maybe he would’ve stayed. Jeez… things might have been so much different, then. So many times since that weekend, I’ve looked back and wished I’d said to him “Yeah, Chris, hang around buddy. A few years time we’ll have hit the big time, you’ll be paid as much as you would have been there, but you’ll be a top star, not lost in the midcard.”

 

But what’s the use thinking like that? He’d been in wrestling over 10 years, he had a wife and kids to support, DAVE had never paid too well even when he was their big star, and Eisen’s offer was through the goddamn roof compared to what we could have paid him. I mean, your momma was bumping up production values and paying for bands and stuff, but she’d been given a clear warning on the wrestlers’ wages – keep them fairly low. Last thing her bosses wanted was a guy – any guy – being given a massive contract and everyone else suddenly saying “Hey, I’m more popular than he is, I want a bigger slice of the pie as well.” Even Puerto Rican Power, who was a real coup, as I said, was working fairly cheap. Hell, Jesse Christian finally stepped back in the ring for about 500 bucks a night when she lured him out of hiatus, chump change even 10 years ago.

 

So, I said to him, “It’s up to you, buddy.” But I didn’t try to get him to stay – partly because I would’ve felt guilty. I was never that popular in the locker room back in the day – even going back to my TCW days, there were always people claiming I coasted by on being Sam’s buddy, and can’t really say they were lying. Chris and me were getting along well, and I figured if I did think it was better for him to stay in USPW, maybe I was being selfish.

 

Dammit, the first unselfish thing I’d done for about 10 years, and look how it all turned out.

[Regis]

Subscribed.

 

Love it.

 

Good ol' Peter. What a guy.

[BloodyKnuckles]

Funny stuff, reminds me of that Benjamin Button movie, I'll definitely be following this.

[Jaded]

The second show your momma booked was a big one, mainly because everyone in the locker room knew that this was it for Chris and Darryl, and that we’d got the first proper new guys coming in. Your momma had also made it very clear that hazing – which Sam, being an ex pro, always turned a blind eye too – was not gonna happen, and I think a lot of us were expecting someone like Java or Redwood, who could be real jerks, might take it into their heads to mess with her on that.

 

Well, no one did for another 2 weeks, and we all know how successfully that went down.

 

I gotta say, I remember that show coming as a real let down to her, right until the show saving last half hour. And that’s without going through the results again…

 

We were in the West Texas Coliseum, you see? Sam had been keen on taking us around a few places away from our usual haunts, to help boost interest for the upcoming PPV deals. Your momma wasn’t quite so keen, but since he’d fixed up arenas and a lot of people had bought tickets, she didn’t have much choice in it.

 

Where she always says she’s to blame, though, is that godawful Nicky and Darryl segment that opened the show, after Sam running down the card. Darryl was dogging it, still in a real foul mood about being turned heel, and she bawled him out after the lousy promo. I walked in to find them arguing and stepped into intervene, telling him to do what she damn well said – of course, that went down well. She damn near bit MY head off, telling me she’d handle things herself, and she didn’t need some big dumb musclehead who could only just keep up with Jim Force in the ring trying to help.

 

I always thought that was kinda nasty, you know. I’d beaten Force in a dark match that day, and he may have carried me through it, but I was still getting used to that damn stupid mask she had me wearing as the Defiler.

 

Anyway, she thought I had problems in the ring, that was the first time she saw Bruce wrestle. Six minutes to squash Eric the Bull, who bounced around like a jelly for him, and Brucey looked like he needed an oxygen mask at the end!

 

I don’t know what Nicky Champion needed for that card, but anyone other than Devine as an opponent would have been a good start. He was definitely going through the motions, and he didn’t even hang around for the end of the card – Bruce, Sam, and Jim were all fairly vocal when he got back to the dressing rooms that they didn’t appreciate it. Of course, a few weeks later he was getting squashed like a bug by Paul Huntingdon, of all people, on Supreme TV, so maybe he regretted burning his bridges pretty quickly.

 

Of course, the big stars of that first show were the three guys making their debut. As you know, your momma’s a comic book nut and she’d shown me one of her favourite Spiderman stories, where a new superhero in town starts messing with Spidey because he thinks he needs to go up against him to win his acceptance. She ‘borrowed’ that one for the Dirty White Boys and Jim Justice, and she had the Boys jostling him backstage, challenging him to take either one of them on in a non-title match. He accepted, and we got him against Lead Belly in a pretty great semi-main. It helped that they seemed to really click together in the ring, and JJ gave Lead a helluva lot of offense. Post-match, Grease Hogg leaps into the ring, the fans think they’re going to jump him – and instead they raise his hands in celebration. Straight away, they were probably our top face tag team – before Hogg even wrestled for us.

 

Then again, our only other face tag teams were the Hillbillies and the Forces of the USA, so hey, not too difficult.

 

And then, there was the ending. Possibly the best TV ending of the first few months – T-Rex beats Chris in a match where Chris just let Rex toss him about from pillar to post – you can pinpoint a few different places for the start of T-Rex’s real mega-push, but I think that was the sign that Kate knew all along she wanted to move him towards the top if he could get his fitness levels sorted out. Then, with the credits rolling, and the pictures gone, we hear Sam Strong screaming “What the… GET OFF HIM!” and suddenly cut back to the live feed to see this complete monster just launch Caulfield out of the ring, and send him crashing to the outside. Sneer leaps up and introduces him as Puerto Rican Power, and the crowd were going ballistic at the pair of them. Good times, kid, good times!

 

QUICK RESULTS AND GRADES

 

Devine/Champion segment D+

Jumbo over Des D+

Sneer challenges Bruce B-

Bruce over Eric D+

Sneer Corp attack Forces C-

Redwood and Bruce stand-off B+

DWBs debut, shoving Justice B

Champion over Devine E+

JJ accepts DWB’s challenge from earlier B-

JJ over Lead C

JJ celebrates with Dirty White Boys B-

T-Rex over Caulfield C-

Hype vid for next week B

PRP attack on Caulfield C

Save made by JJ, Sneer intros PRP B+

[Jaded]

So just after that first show, while everyone’s buzzing from the PRP debut going well, your momma calls me into her office. Asks how I’d feel about going to Canada. I laughed… thought for a second she was offering me a free holiday.

 

Then, she tells me she’s got me a night in CGC. I couldn’t work out how, or why, at first, but she persuaded me it would be good experience. She’d swapped me, Bruce and Jim for Steve and Alex DeColt and Ryan Powell. (Apparently, the original deal was the three of them for Bruce, but she promised them JJ as well if they took me!)

 

They didn’t want either of the other two that night, saving them for the Elimination PPV a week or so later, but they brought me up there to job to Fate, from the Soldiers of Fortune. And man, was it an eye opener! In USPW, we’d go through our matches briefly with someone before the fight – either Sam or Micky Starr. In TCW, we’d done the same thing, normally with Archie Judge or Arn Westberry – occasionally with the big man TC himself. But in CGC, they took preparation to another level.

 

Oh, not the DeColts or the top heels. You put any combination of the brothers, Deeley, the Specialists or Ed Monton in the ring and they prided themselves on being able to improvise a great match just from being told the finish. But the lower-carders were given massive amounts of help. George DeColt himself sat down with me and Fate and spent 20 minutes talking us through our match – which lasted less than half of that – scripting in hope spots for him, my cheating start, and his big comeback for the win.

 

When I got back, I told your momma all about it. She liked the idea, and decided we needed someone who would go through matches like that with our guys, especially those of us less able to think on our feet than Justice. She asked me who I’d recommend, and the next two words I spoke were, in my opinion, the most important words in USPW history.

 

I said “Steve Flash.”

[foolinc]

Jaded, you know you have a good diary when I feel I am some how ruining it by me posting in it.

 

I don't know if I would have brought in PRP myself, but I liked the reasoning you gave for it. Steve Flash I get, maybe too well.

 

KUTGW!

[Jaded]

Foolinc, please don't feel you're ruining the dynasty posting here - I love getting feedback, thanks!

 

I’d never actually met Flash, but everyone knew his reputation. He was a three time World champion in RPW, and a tag champion in the Canadian big two. He could probably have still been in one of the big feds – certainly there’d have been a place for him in NOTBPW or CGC, and I’m sure Eisen would have at the very least loved to have him working the odd SWF match while doing stuff in RIPW. Instead, he’d dedicated what seemed to be the tail end of his career to getting NYCW to rise in the world. And then your momma happened.

 

You know, she’s never said what she did to bring Steve on board. He was getting decent money, sure, but nowhere near as much as he’d have commanded from a bigger fed. And he knew from the start that he’d mostly be wrestling dark matches, helping lugs like me improve our skills.

 

Heck, maybe he just REALLY liked the cowboy hat.

 

I’ve never been the most popular man in the locker room, as I think I mentioned earlier in this letter, kid, and even in the two weeks since your momma had taken over I’d had a run-in with Pete The Hillbilly – luckily she let me off with a slap on the wrist. With Chris gone, I was starting to feel slightly blue about losing a good friend from the roster, but me and Steve… well, first time we met, I think we knew we were gonna get on find. Your momma said to him “Steve, this is Pete. He’s going to be one of our main guys, and you’re going to teach him more about wrestling in six months than he’s learnt in the past 20 years.”

 

You know, most guys wouldn’t have been able to resist a crack there – hell, Steve could have taught me more about wrestling in six MINUTES than I’d learnt in the past 20 years, but Steve just nodded, smiled, and asked if I thought the sheriff gimmick would work. At the time, I was just saying yes to be polite, but damn, it really did.

 

That was the card Suzue Katayama came in on, for the first time. Blink and you missed her! She had a quick promo with Sam and Lissy to set up a tag match where she helped Cherry beat the Dream Team, and then she was gone for months. Real surprising, cause her and Cherry looked like naturals together. Still, she made up for it when she DID return. And there was the first match in that godforsaken Savage Fury vs Forces feud, as well. Java beat the living daylights outta the Captain, who sold it about as well as an ice cream delivery boy in the Arctic. Oh, and Anger’s TV title shot – by the next card, I’d made the earlier suggestion I was telling you about and he’d been paired with Cherry Bomb, meaning one less heap of junk in the ring.

 

Of course, no-one really cared about any of the earlier matches. The big news was the double main – Alex DeColt coming in to take on Puerto Rican Power, and doing an incredible job of putting over PRP as a monster in his debut, and Jim Justice vs Bruce the Giant in a hard-fought title defense for Jimmy. At the time, I remember we were all really pleased with that match – who’d have thought how quickly we would have raised the standards of what passed for a decent main event?

 

Plus, at the end, we had Steve’s debut, as Sam sacked Doom and brought him in. I remember people laughing at the stupidity of putting this great technical wrestler – who let’s face it has never been known as a charismatic guy – in a mainly non-wrestling position, but he loved that damn sheriff gimmick and he made a decent fist of it, as well as helping train us all.

 

Hype Vid C+

Sam hypes the card C

Sam introduces Suzue C-

Java beats USA D-

Raven/J-Ro bikini contest C-

Cherry/Suzue beat Dream Team D

PRP confronts Alex DeColt B-

TV title match: Nicky Champion beats Anger D-

Hype vid for DeColt/PRP C

PRP beats Alex DeColt D

Hype vid for Justice vs Bruce B+

Justice beats Bruce C

Bruce and Justice shake hands B+

Sam replaces Doom with Flash B-

Hype vid for next week B-

 

Overall rating C

[Jaded]

A couple of days after that third show, your momma decided to take a few of us on a road trip. Bruce and Jim had been booked for the Elimination PPV in CGC after the deal she’d made to get the DeColts in, so she arranged for me, her, Steve, and a couple of others to fly up with them, then we spent 2 nights in Canada. Looking back, it was the first time I remember her being interested in me in any other way than a wrestler – but at the time I didn’t realize it. Nope, I was convinced all the attention she’d being showing me was just because of my potential as a future USPW champion until Jumbo Jackson said to me “Hey, bud, the new boss is REALLY into you.”

 

I laughed it off at the time – hell, look at the age difference – but I spent the next few weeks and months trying to work out if he was right. Lucky, I guess – I might’ve blown it if I’d done my usual over-confident “So, how about…”

 

Hell, too much information, right kid? Anyway, just trust me on this one – when you find a lady you like, show her some respect and get to know her. Works a lot better than the usual teenage way, trust me. And yeah, the usual teenage way is REALLY bad once you get to be 40 or so.

 

So, we headed to Victoria to see the show – 10,000 screaming fans there, and trust me, it was a real experience for some of the guys who’d been bumping around the smaller leagues – which, let’s face it, we were at that point – for so long they’d forgotten what a real sell-out big arena felt like. The DeColts, at that point, were amazing. Not like those goddamn Stones. Nope, the DeColt boys always made their opponents look just as good as they did, and that’s why they’ve been so good for so long. I mean, the kick-off bout of the PPV proper was Steve against Nathan Black. At that point, Black had been in CGC for nearly a year, and many of the hardcore fans around us barely recognized him. He was only even on the PPV because whoever Steve was meant to wrestle – dammit, I forgot – had either got injured or flaked out. Dan or Jeremy would no doubt have squashed him like a bug. As it was, Steve gave him a decent amount of offense in 12 minutes and nearly had the fans believing this job squad heel could pull off a win.

 

Of course, we were there to watch our guys, mainly. Bruce had a fun bout against Eddie Chandler, putting Eddie over when Deeley and DaLay interfered, but that brought out the DeColts and Ryan Powell to make the save. Post-match, the guys shook hands with Bruce, and Ryan asked about a tag match to finish the show up. Bruce said he wasn’t in condition to wrestle again after the beating he’d just taken – but he knew a man who was – and Jim Justice walked out. Great, great, moment. Of course, Jim ended up eating the pinfall, letting Jack go over him, but it was a really fun main event and showed guys like me and T-Rex just how far we had to go – they went for nearly half an hour and looked like they could have wrestled twice that long, easily. Meanwhile, T-Rex and Bruce would blow up after 7 minutes if we weren’t careful.

 

Still, we eventually changed that for T-Rex, at least. Just took a LOT of work.

 

The other great thing about the DeColts was the way they let us plug the upcoming PPV. Oh, not that we were available in Canada, at that point, but we got a quick slot before their broadcast started to mention it to the numerous American fans who’d traveled over to watch it live, and returned the favor for them a week later. They were true gentlemen, and with guys like Eisen, Cornell, and Puerto Rican Power around, it was lucky we had some good friends in the business.

 

Oh, you probably don’t remember the whole Puerto Rican Power stuff, do you? I’ll get to it later kid, don’t worry about it…