The first big news item for you people is that yes, we are indeed running another show soon. It’s a shock, I know, but seriously, it’s happened before, and it may even happen again. Now, a preview:
DARK MATCHES: So dark, very match-like.
MATCH 1: Patience Halliburton-Vanzetti vs. Twilight Princess Zelda: The official debut of Zelda Lucabrasi going through a phase most people go through in junior high. Whoever wins, I’m sure Patience will be very upset, and I’ll have to hear about it.
MATCH 2: The Turd Boyz vs. The Rockin’ Rocksmen – Because sometimes, you just gotta add a random match. Also, there was no First Class Family representation on the card, and Johnny San Diego bitched at me all week after the initial announcement, which I guess is a good argument for wrestlers getting managers.
MATCH 3: Junior Grim vs. Agent Bulldog – With the Pac vs. Fang title match as the co-main, we went with an Evil Administration vs. B.A.R.S. theme for a couple of the undercard matches. So it’s a match between the EA member that First Lady Evil considers dead weight, versus the BARS member that President Evil considers to the the same. It’s Dead Weight Bowl 2022! Yeah!
MATCH 4: Uno Muerte vs. Captain STRUGGLE: Major title implications here, in this match between the two guys Pac beat for his shot. High probability of this being the best match on the card.
MATCH 5: Agent 35 vs. Black Panther Mask – Huh. On one hand, you’ve got a guy who’s emerged as a major main event-level player against a guy who seemingly never wins. But on the other hand, the never-winning guy is a staple-slinging deathmatch ghoul, which is always a wild card in any situation.
MATCH 6: Zippity Duda vs. Screaming Rage Man – This was added at the last minute, like it’s not even listed on most of the posters around town. And it’s such a bad idea. So very, very bad.
TALES OF THE INVISIBLE BACKSTAGE CAMERA!
(At the Hoss Dojo, ACE LA GRANGE is once again imparting the wisdom of the ages on his put-upon protege, ZIPPITY DUDA. As always, it proves to be a bad idea)
ACE: …And you see, brother, here’s the reason you lost that match: It’s because Froggy Terry‘s got something you don’t have.
ZIP: What, like self-confidence, any trace of athletic ability, or a strong desire to be a professional wrestler?
ACE: No brother, it’s aggression!
ZIP: I guess there’s that, too.
ACE: So brother, your next lesson is going to be a lesson in aggression. You’re too timid out there, brother! You just let your opponent come to you, when you need to go out there and get somebody!
ZIP: Well, y’know, I’m more of a technical kind of wrestler than a brawler or whatever, maybe I don’t need to go out there and get somebody.
ACE: Bullshit, brother. When you do that catch-as-catch can crap, all you end up catching is an ass-whooping. You need to be ruthless! And aggressive! You need Aggressive Ruthlessness, brother! I’m gonna show you what it means to really get out there and take the fight to your opponent!
ZIP: Oh. So is there some drill or something I need to do, like should I be in the ring right now?
ACE: No, brother, we’re doing this for real! Live fire, brother!
ZIP: Uhh, what?
ACE: Yeah, brother, i pulled some strings and talked to some people, and I got you a very special match at the next show!
ZIP: A very special… Oh… Oh god… Why?
ACE: Because you can’t learn, unless you’re doing it for real!
ZIP: I guess that’s why they just plop a prospective airline pilot into the cockpit of a fully-loaded passenger jet.
ACE: Hell, I didn’t know they did that. You learn something new every day, brother, and at the next show, you’re gonna learn a lot, when you face Screaming Rage Man!
ZIP: W-W-W-WHAT!?
ACE: That’s right brother! So are you excited or what?
AZIP: Excited!? Ace, that man – that thing – is a killer! He’s an animal! A monster! He speaks no known human language! His presence causes plants to die! Dogs fear him! I once saw him bite through a truck tire! While it was being driven! ON THE HIGHWAY!
ACE: Yeah, brother, so you better learn to get aggressively ruthless then, huh?
ZIP: Oh my God, I’m going to die…
MATCH 7: Annihilation vs. Bad Religion: Annihilation gets their first real test against a team that isn’t just a couple of losers or weirdos, and the once-unbeatable Bads hope to reestablish themselves as something more than the test dummy for new teams to style on. This should be brutal, in a good way.
MATCH 8: WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH – Jezebel Grim vs. Becky With the Evil Hair – The theme here is THE DAMN NUMBERS GAME, with a near-certainty of heavy Evil Administration vs Jezebel-Gun action on the outside. The Evil camp might have the advantage here, with the ability to slap a mask on some rando for a 4 on 3 situation, but I guess we’ll see.
TALES OF THE INVISIBLE OMNIPRESENT CAMERA!
(At the suburban home of YUMIKO LA GRANGE, the three members of JEZEBEL-GUN have just completed a fairly standard training session, except that something has seemed a bit off about theoretical team leader JEZEBEL GRIM all day, who disappeared to the bathroom at some point and hasn’t been seen since. YUMIKO seems unconcerned, and is icing down her knees, until TOSHIYO NAKANO suddenly enters the room with an air of urgency.)
TOSHIYO: Yumiko! I, uhhh, there is… Uhhh, there’s, ah, I mean, uhhh…
YUMIKO: What?
TOSHIYO: Well, ah… It, uhhh… You see, uhhh…
YUMIKO: Words. Use them.
TOSHIYO: But, I don’t, uhhh… How do you say…. It is, uhhh….
YUMIKO: Fuck’s sake, just speak Japanese.
(NOTE: From here on out, anything [inside these lil’ brackets] is translated from Japanese)
TOSHIYO: [Look, I think that, uhhh… Maybe, ah, I dunno…]
YUMIKO: [Did you get hit in the head too hard or something?]
TOSHIYO: (angrily) [No! Look, it’s Jezebel. She’s still in the lavatory, and, uhhh… I think there’s a problem.]
YUMIKO: […And I’m sure a bathroom-based problem is something she wants to keep private.]
TOSHIYO: [I know, but… Look, I’m pretty sure I just heard her vomiting in there, Yumiko. Someone needs to check on her.]
YUMIKO: [Sooo…. Go check on her, then?]
(TOSHIYO grits her teeth and shakes her head rapidly)
TOSHIYO: [Nope, not going in there. That’s just… No. Ew.]
YUMIKO: [Oh come on, you’re an adult!]
TOSHIYO: [Yeah, well, you’re more of an adult.]
YUMIKO: (frowning) [Are you calling me old?]
TOSHIYO: [No, I’m just saying… Look, you’ve had a kid for a while now, you know how to deal with… Fluids.]
(YUMIKO grunts, stands up, and hands her ice bags to TOSHIYO)
YUMIKO: [Welp, I guess it falls on me to deal with one of my other two children, as always.]
TOSHIYO: [Three other children, if you count Ace.]
YUMIKO: Ugh.
(YUMIKO heads to the bathroom and knocks on the door)
YUMIKO: Jezebel! Are you okay in there?
JEZEBEL: I’m fine. Go away.
YUMIKO: I doubt it. Toshiyo says she heard you puking in there.
JEZEBEL: I said I’m fine! Just fuckin’ leave me alone!
YUMIKO: People who are fine do not get angry in bathrooms. I am coming in.
(YUMIKO openes the door and walks inside, to see JEZEBEL kind of hunkered down on the floor next to the toilet. She is visibly distressed, and looks like she’s been crying)
JEZEBEL: Goddammit, I said-
YUMIKO: Well, it is my house, and you neglected to lock the door. So what is this? Stomach bug? Hangover? Oh god, you are not pregnant, are you!?
JEZEBEL: What!? No! I’m just… (sighs) Yumiko, I am freaking the fuck out.
YUMIKO: About what?
JEZEBEL: You know… I got that title match, comin’ up, and just… I dunno…
YUMIKO: I can see being nervous, but this seems excessive.
JEZEBEL: It’s like… I dunno, what the fuck am I even doing!? I’m not supposed to be the one fightin’ for the title, that’s for people like Lorelei, and like… You. And here I am, I got a title shot, I’m supposed to be your leader for some fuckin’ reason, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m even doing! I ain’t championship material, I’m a fuck-up, Yumiko! I shouldn’t be here, I should be in that basement across town, gettin’ my ass kicked by men in stupid-ass barbed wire matches, in between arrests. I should just, I dunno man, I should just ask them to call this whole thing off…
YUMIKO: Yup, classic impostor syndrome. Been there before.
JEZEBEL: Do what now?
YUMIKO: You feel like you are somewhere above your station, and that eventually, someone will figure out that you are not what you are perceived to be, and it will all come crashing down. I was the same way before I had my first match for the OJW title, a thousand years ago.
JEZEBEL: Yeah, well. i know how that all turned out, I’ve heard the stories. “Undefeated in singles title matches,” and all that shit.
YUMIKO: Ha! And you actually believed any of that!? Jezebel, I was seventeen years old, wrestling Raja Dunk at her peak. I ate a one of those spinning backfist things she does that broke my fucking left eye socket and knocked me out cold. Technically, the only reason it was not considered a loss was because it had a fifteen-minute TV time limit, and time ran out before the ref had a chance to tell that that I was unconscious.
JEZEBEL: God damn, really?
YUMIKO: Yup. Also had a rematch with her a few years later for the same title, a few months before I came to the states. I lost clean in about twenty minutes, but at least both eyes made it out okay that time. If I recall correctly, it was my fourth unsuccessful attempt to get the big belt. The whole “undefeated in title matches” thing was something Stevie Ruggle made up before the title match I had with Minerva – which I won, of course – after I had to vacate the old STRUGGLE belt, when I blew out my knee. (sighs) The first time I torched a knee…
JEZEBEL: Still don’t see what any of this has to do with me.
YUMIKO: Look, win or lose, you will be fine. I do not think you understand this about yourself, but you are fucking enormous, and you are a third-generation wrestler, from a fairly storied wrestling family. This shit is literally in your blood, Jezebel. Not to mention that you are actively batshit bonkers, in ways that help a great deal with organized violence. If Becky beats you, I can assure you, this will not be the last chance you get.
JEZEBEL: Yeah, I guess… But what happens if I win? I ain’t somebody to represent a wrestling promotion.
YUMIKO: So? Is Becky someone you would want as the public face of a promotion? How about President Evil? Or Ace? Or Immortan Jimmy? I mean, hell, if you knew me sixteen years ago, you would absolutely not have wanted me being the one interviewed on the local news. In all honesty, though, you should not concern yourself with having a lengthy reign, anyway. You will more than like just lose the belt to me in a few weeks, anyway.
(JEZEBEL sits up straight, narrows her eyes and looks at YUMIKO, who just smirks and wiggles her eybrows)
JEZEBEL: (laughing) God damn, dude, you’re not even joking are you?
(YUMIKO just shrugs)
JEZEBEL: (still laughing) You evil motherfucker!
YUMIKO: (smiling innocently) Yeah well, you know. You were well aware that I was a snake when you picked me up, Jezebel.
(YUMIKO stands up and reaches down to JEZEBEL, who takes her hand and uses it for leverage to stand up, as well.)
JEZEBEL: Heh. Remind me to beat your ass in a few weeks.
YUMIKO: Yeah, you can try, but after all, I am undefeated in title matches.
JEZEBEL: This may be true, but I know to go for your left eye now.
YUMIKO: That is the spirit. Now, let us leave the bathroom, before my cousin thinks you fell in.
MATCH 9: CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE MATCH – Tupac Machine vs. Agent Fang – Finally, we’ll get to see whether this will be the night that the Evil Administration asserts its dominance, loses all its titles, or does something in-between. Or maybe the building will get hit by a crashing commercial airliner, freeing us all from this nonsense.
OTHER NEWS AND WHATNOT
After a fairly… questionable… match at Warriorversary 4, our own President Evil has “earned” a shot at the Warrior Pro World Title, currently held by Doc Wyatt. We here at STRUGGLE Pro are conflicted about this development, as we famously have no current heavyweight or other title traditional viewed as “world,” so Evil winning would at least give us a brief taste of what it might feel like to grow up and become a real promotion once more. However, it is President Evil we’re talking about here, and man, fuck that guy, you know? And what happens if Becky and Fang still have their titles by then? Oh god, those “Evil Pro” shirts aren’t going to be a cruel joke on just Warrior Pro anymore, will they?
In other news involving great human suffering, Donita Zapata‘s neck surgery was deemed a complete success, and while we won’t know an exact time frame until the bones start doing the whole T-1000 thing to each other, she’s still going to be out until at least August. In the meantime, she’ll be absolutely broke as shit, so after a couple weeks off, she’ll be picking up a larger role at the Hoss Dojo, and has actually made inquiries into trying her hand at refereeing. We already have three refs, but both Gus and Brown Shoes (or at least a mysterious masked referee of her exact skin tone, hair color, voice, and everything else) have been moonlighting with TSLL, and let’s face it, Gus is at least three hundred years old and could keel over at any second. Who am I kidding, he’ll outlive us all.
After the events of Fall Forward #1, the situation regarding Farrah Bakshi, the wrestler formerly known as Taco Belle, has been… murky. Technically, she was an employee of Taco Belfry, Inc., to the point where we weren’t actually the ones paying her, so she’s officially a free agent now. And while we’d be more than happy to try and find a way to scrape up the cash to hire her for real, she’s not returning our calls or anyone else’s. As far as we know, she might have given up wrestling altogether, or hell, she might have signed with the SWA, who knows? Meanwhile, the Taco Belfry people, who I’d probably be calling assholes right now if they weren’t such gracious and generous sponsors of our failing promotion, have assured us that apparently, Taco Belle will be returning soon, in some form. I’m guessing it’ll be a different person, which is pretty awkward in a non-masked wrestler situation, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
Speaking of Taco Belle, the other half of the catastrophic match that has proven to be her last around here, Darkside of PARTY TIGER, (seriously, I guess we’re supposed to call her that now) has been suspended for the next few shows, for being a staple gun-wielding, fireball-throwing maniac, breaking a bunch of shit backstage, and taking a massive leak in front of the building, in full view of fans exiting the building. I mean, it was one thing when she’d go out behind the dumpster, but there were witnesses this time.
With all this attrition to the women’s division, we’re explored our options to keep things up and running. Hoda Duda-Day is going to be a little less of a part-timer for at least a while, and we’ve considered some early Dojo call ups, (Pepper Scoville in particular was already an established name down south, and her trainee status is frankly baffling) borrowing some TSLL talent, and giving some more work to freelancers, like Miss Payne, Slashley, and Nat Twenty. The wild card here is the working relationship with Notoriety, whose corporate backing gives them an unlimited budget for plane tickets, and were already planning to send some of their people over here for STRUGGLE dates.
On that subject, I guess we can let the cat out of the back now that it’s fallen through, but the internet rumors were true for once, and we were trying really hard to make that Yumiko La Grange/Meiko Shimoda dream match finally happen. But apparently whatever beef Shimoda has with her former tag partner is more of the “dead to me” kind than the “I would like to beat you up in a wrestling ring” kind, and she not only refused the match, but refused to wrestle in the same building as Yumiko, under any circumstances. God damn, that’s some real-ass street beef, right there. However, Fall Forward #3 is expected to see Yumiko face Notoriety’s Violence Khunbish, a former judoka from Mongolia who’s apparently a real mean motherfucker, so while it’s not necessarily a dream match, it should get pretty wild.
Finally, in some injury-related news, while he’s been pretty silent on the matter, Tyrannosaurus Plex may be eyeing a return to the ring soon. Apparently, he had been nursing some nagging shoulder issues for a while, and after the match at War Party 2021, he had both of his (surprisingly long, for a tyrannosaur) arms worked on, and has been out ever since. It’s going to be interesting to see if he still gets the same amount of distance when hurling people through the air. Also, Big Bird Machine got pretty dinged up in his match with Rampage Hunter a while back, and while his neck injury was believed to be a pretty minor one, he hasn’t been seen since. In all likelihood, this is more of an “extended vacation for a really old guy” situation than an actual lengthy recovery, and he’s given us no indication of a potential return date. We’ll let you know if we find something out, or just have him come out as a surprise, and you’ll be all “ohh daaaang, anything can happen here, and I should watch every show from now on, and buy lots of merchandise” or whatever.
