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EIGHT YEARS EARLIER: SPRING - ORLANDO, FLORIDA
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Themorningsunlightcaughtthe edge of the United Wrestling Federation’s Performance Center’s glass doors as I pushed inside. The familiar scent of sweat, rubber mats, and industrial disinfectant settled into my lungs like muscle memory. There was something grounding about it all. No matter how many bodies came through these doors dreaming of the same thing, of a legacy, of infamy.
I’d been walking these halls long enough now that I could do it with my eyes closed. I’d been officially signed to the UWF for two years. Two years of grinding. Two years of being watched, evaluated, measured against ghosts that hadn’t wrestled in their prime since long before I ever stepped into a ring. Some mornings it still felt like my first day.
Some mornings it felt like I’d been born here, raised on the mats instead of in a crib.
My bag hung heavy over my shoulder as I stepped onto the training floor, my boots echoing faintly against the polished concrete. Evan Wilder leaned back against the wall near the entrance before I even reached the locker room, arms crossed, his blond hair damp like he’d showered and then second guessed his life choices by coming to train so early.
Evan hated early morning training, but in our two years of friendship, he’d never once told me no when I asked him to come train with me. Except this morning, he wore a look I’d rarely seen. It was a look that said something was coming whether I wanted it to or not.
“Reed,” he said, his voice sharp and familiar. “You dragged my ass outta bed for this. Are you going to get moving so we can train, or just casually stroll around the damn place?”
I snorted as I stepped through the entrance, dropping my bag on the bench in front of me, knowing Evan followed closely behind. “You’re already here. I didn’t think anyone else mattered.”
He rolled his eyes, sitting on the bench next to my bag. “The new guy is here, by the way,” he said, his voice dropping into something quieter, conspiratorial.
“Okay?” I said, confused. New guys came through these doors all the time, developmental contracts, tryouts, short term signings that flamed out before they ever even learned where the ice machine was.
Then Evan added, “It’s Deadlock.”
I kept moving, pulling my gear out of my bag, but something in my chest tightened just a fraction.
Deadlock.
The name had been circulating for months. Clips passed around phones in the locker rooms of both the developmental and main rosters. Grainy footage from high school gyms and VFW halls, packed crowds screaming his name like it meant something bigger than the building could even hold.
With that hype came the other stories, too. Hotshot. Difficult. No respect for hierarchy. A kid who wrestled like he’d never been told no.
“He’s seriously rubbing the entire locker room wrong,” Evan added, breaking me out of my trance.
I glanced at him sideways as I dropped a wrestling boot to the ground. “Rubbing people wrong how?”
Evan shrugged, a grin tugging at his mouth even as he nodded toward the ring. “This is his first training day here since leaving the indies. He hasn’t ever trained outside of the Ring of Desire promotion, and he’s out here acting like he’s better than everyone. Talking like he already owns this place. I’ve seen him piss off half the trainers in the twenty minutes I’ve been here waiting on your sorry ass to show up.”
All of that should have made me scoff in irritation at another ego tripping on the doorstep.
But it didn’t.
“Show me,” I said.
He was impossible to miss the moment we stepped out of the locker room. I spotted him long before he ever saw me.
Deadlock.
He was in the ring, a hoodie tossed in the corner, moving through warmup drills like the ropes belonged to him and him only. Tattoos wrapped around his arms and down his fingers, climbing up his torso, disappearing just beneath his overly defined collarbones. It was like the ink was part of his muscles. His dark brown, nearly black hair was slicked back with intention, the kind of look that said he knew exactly how he came across and didn’t give a single fuck who liked it.
What caught me wasn’t the look, though.
It was the movement.
He didn’t waste anything. Every step had purpose. Every pivot landed clean. He moved with the kind of control that didn’t come from backyard training or flashy spots for cheap pops. This was old school discipline like my father and uncle were taught. It was honed in places where mistakes cost you more than applause.
He wasn’t reckless. He wasn’t sloppy. He was exact.
