Itwasn’t a title match. It was a “Cool Down” match, put in place by the producers to let the crowd breathe between the high stakes drama. But I didn’t treat it like filler. I treated it like an audition.
I wanted to show them wrestling.
While Cal was chaos and Evan was spectacle, I was precision. I worked Hayes’s arm, transitioning from hold to hold with a fluidity that felt like water. I didn’t play to the crowd. I didn’t taunt. I just wrestled.
The humidity made the canvas slick. Sweat poured off me in rivers, mixing with the baby oil, making every grapple a struggle for friction. I could feel Hayes’s heart hammering against my back during the chain wrestling.
“Come on, kid!” Hayes grunted, slapping my chest. “Hit me!”
I hit him. I delivered a chop that echoed through the arena like a gunshot. The crowd went wild. I finished him with a high angle Senton, holding for the three count, my toes digging into the canvas. As I stood in the center of the ring, my arm raised, listening to the respectful applause of the Puerto Rican crowd, I felt a deep, steady satisfaction. I didn’t need to be the Rockstar. I just needed to be the best.
But then came the mayhem.
Street Fight: Deadlock vs. “The Butcher” Bronson.
This wasn’t wrestling. This was violence.
Cal walked out to the ring not with a strut, but with a stalk. He wore ripped black jeans and taped fists. No wrestling gear. No rules.
The bell rang, and for thirty eight minutes, they tore each other apart.
They fought into the crowd. They fought on the announce table. Bronson threw Cal into the steel steps so hard Cal’s head snapped back on the monitor feed.
“Jesus,” Evan hissed, sitting next to me with an ice pack on his shoulder. “He’s going too hard. He’s going to get a concussion. Why is he taking those bumps?”
“He’s selling,” I said, though my stomach twisted into a knot. “He’s fine.”
He wasn’t fine.
Bronson pulled a kendo stick from under the ring. He cracked it over Cal’s back. Once. Twice. The sound was sickening, like a dry branch snapping in a storm. Cal arched his back, screaming, huge red welts rising instantly on his pale skin.
But then, the switch flipped.
Cal laughed.
He stood up, his back bleeding, his hair wild, and he laughed in Bronson’s face. He grabbed the kendo stick, snapped it over his knee, and went on the offensive. He was a whirlwind of manic energy. He hit a reckless dive off the top rope to the outside, crashing through a table, taking Bronson out with him.
The crowd chantedDeadlock! Deadlock! Deadlock!
Cal dragged Bronson back into the ring, hitting him with a steel chair, and pinned him.
When he stood up, blood trickling from a cut above his eyebrow, chest heaving, arms raised in victory, he looked terrifying. He looked beautiful. He looked like a god of war who had just found his religion.
The adrenaline in the room was palpable. It tasted like copper and victory.
Evan was sitting on a bench, staring at his Television Title like it was a holy relic. He was still wearing his gear, refusing to take it off.
I was icing my neck, coming down slowly from the high of my match.
And Cal… Cal was vibrating.
He hadn’t showered yet. He was sitting on a training table, a medic stitching the cut above his eye. He was covered in sweat, dried blood, and angry red welts across his back that looked like lash marks. But he wasn’t in pain.
Hewas manic.
“Did you hear that pop?” Cal asked, his leg bouncing nervously. “When I went through the table? I thought the roof was gonna come off. I couldn’t even hear my own music.”
“You’re lucky your head didn’t come off,” I muttered, walking over to hand him a water bottle. “You took that chair shot flush, Cal. You have to protect yourself.”
