The Only Real Option

[Shea O’Hara]

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November 13th, 2024

What’s Past Is Prologue

Background Music: ‘In God We Trust’ by Sweet Little Machine.

IWF Survival Of The Fittest - 11/26/17: Extinction Event, Memphis, Tennessee.

~{Rowan and Vivienne square off with one another, the Wolf of the Abyss growling hungrily as she stares her opponent down. Vivienne shows no fear in the face of the Irish Nightmare as she moves to close in, ducking under Rowan’s strike and pulling her into a German Suplex, immediately bridged into a pin attempt! ONE! Rowan kicks out!

Rowan is almost immediately back on her feet and rounds on Vivienne with a feral snarl and kicking low to Vivienne’s knee, following the blow with a savage spinning back elbow strike that sends Vivienne rebounding off the ropes, nearly barreling into Shea O’Hara, who is circling the ring running her hand on the edge of the apron, mumbling something under her breath as she focuses on Rowan. Vivienne surges back into the fight with a grin, seemingly intent on not keeping Rowan’s attention fully on herself as she launches Rowan into big back body drop, taking the champion again to the ground. This time Vivienne doesn’t have time to try to pin as Rowan kips back up to her feet, taking Vivienne to the ground with a BEAST OF WAR! ONE! TWO! Vivienne snaps a shoulder up with authority!

Shea and Andrew make eye contact with one another briefly before the Imperial Champion nods and lets her pass, still running her hand along the apron as Andrew holds out a hand to keep the other Champions briefly at bay. Meanwhile in the ring, Rowan is about to look around, seemingly having had her attention drawn to the commotion in her corner, but Vivienne slaps Rowan hard in the face to keep her attention drawn! Rowan’s eyes flash savagely as she slowly turns her glare back to Vivienne before she whips the challenger into the ropes! Vivienne, however, recovers from the throw and uses the momentum from the rebound to SLAM into Rowan hard, taking the both of them to the ground as she crashes into Rowan with what looks like her first attempt at a spear! Vivienne hauls herself to her feet, checking briefly on Shea with a moment of eye contact, but Shea shakes her head, now on the third corner of her slow walk around the ring.

On her feet, Vivienne reaches down and grabs Rowan before the champion can recover, lifting her up as the crowd cheers with excitement before TAKING ROWAN TO THE SLUMBER PARTY! Two powerbombs! Three! Four! Five! After the fifth Vivienne staggers away, out of breath as she finds herself unable to either haul Rowan into a sixth or pull her into the Tik Tok. Rowan slowly pulls herself to her feet, eyes burning with hatred as she ignores any pain she must be feeling to drive Vivienne hard into the mat with the DANCE THE SPIRAL! She then gets back to her feet with her eyes on Vivienne, setting up for the lethal Balor’s Gaze… but instead of getting up, Vivienne sees that Shea O’Hara has finished her circle of the ring and crawls back to her corner, letting SHEA O’HARA TAG IN! Vivienne rolls out as Shea steps in, beaming wide as she cracks her knuckles on approach to her old enemy, the two Irishwomen staring one another down.

Rowan roars with fury as she charges her opponent, taking Shea down with a staggeringly huge knee lift to the gut. Following in Vivienne’s example she looks to put the match away, moving to the ropes to try to climb over them to set up for the Mark of Macha… but instead she hesitates. She strains at the ropes as though somehow unable to cross over them. She looks around, confused… before looking down to see the glistening moisture on the edge of the ring, left there from Shea’s hitherto unseen tour. Eyes flashing with shock and anger, Rowan whirls on Shea… only to see her challenger smiling in her face.}

Shea O’Hara: NOW!!!

{On cue, Andrew Jacobsen suddenly tangles with Spike at ringside, the two men getting Cable Arcane’s attention. As Cable descends to ringside, Andrew hits Spike Kane with a SUPERKICK that the Blood God sells more than he’s ever sold a strike in his life, acting as though he’s been hit by a cannon and knocking Cable Arcane to the ground! With Cable briefly indisposed, Vivienne reaches under the apron and pulls out a lighter, pressing it to the liquid that Shea spread on the ring, causing the edge of the ring to burst into bright white fire!

{Rowan whirls around like a cornered animal, rounding on Shea with a savage glare. Shea grins as she pulls herself to her feet, and draws a small, wooden symbol out from her outfit, brandishing it like a shield as she rushes for the Wolf of the Abyss! The two of them collapse to the ground, Shea shouting loudly, before the Irish Bombshell drives the symbol into Rowan’s gut!

The lights flash and die, and the flames shoot up high before dying as a loud, inhuman howl roars through the arena. When the lights return, Rowan is motionless on the ground… her mask cast aside, showing naught but the simple face of a barely conscious 19 year old girl underneath. She is slowly blinking her eyes, and it is clear from the camera’s view on the Imperatron that they are a simple brown instead of their normal predatory gold.

{Before anyone can fully react, Cable Arcane is back on his feet and paying attention to the action inside the ring, having missed the fire entirely. He rolls under the ropes as Shea goes for the cover on the insensate Rowan… ONE! TWO!! THREE!!! ~

🎸🎸🎸

November 13th, 2024

Best Prepared

If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.

If I want to be the IWF Women’s World Champion again, I have to try and recapture the same winning mindset that first won me the title almost exactly seven years ago. Those who never thought I’d ever make it the first time round were never few or quiet, but by the grace of God, I’m still here and they’re mostly gone. As I look around the IWF roster of today, fewer than half a dozen of the names I came up with are even still around, and most heartbreaking of all, a not insignificant number have already passed on, way too young.

Some of them never got a first crack at the mountain top and yet here I am with my second. Having the grace to see the world from that kind of perspective not only keeps you humble but also incredibly grateful for each new day that dawns for you.

Professional wrestling has always been the one great fundamentally irreplaceable love in my life. I would do anything for the betterment of the business and I would do anything to be the best in the world at what I love to do, once again. Some of my more naive contemporaries absolutely insist on painting such unbridled ambition as selfish and egotistical, but the way I see it if you’re not willing to look after yourself and your own interests as a matter of priority, get the hell out of my business and make room for somebody who is.

Friends are nice and all but I’ve never been wholly ignorant to the simple fact of the matter that in this business, they are a luxury, not a necessity. If you’re only here to make friends and have a little fun, once again, I say respectfully, get the hell out of my industry, you don’t belong here - and with that kind of attitude you never truly will.

For the rest of us who are willing to bust our butts and put in the work necessary to cultivate a Championship winning mentality though, the grind and the hustle never truly stops. To think, when I originally pulled up the on demand stream of the Extinction Event 2017 on the Network, I was only doing it as part of a private reminder I felt I needed of not only who I was then, but who I am now and who I have always been and will continue to be in the future.

I am in fact just as much a God damned force of nature as Rowan MacDonnough, the demon who once again seeks to loom large over the mountain I endeavour to summit this Sunday at Survival of the Fittest. Rowan’s return has been a stark and necessary reminder that for everything that changes in this life, there are still fundamental constants in our world.

I stopped her once, admittedly through most unorthodox methods, but I did, and if I hadn’t underestimated the kind of blind loyalty and devotion she inspires in all those who follow her and believe as strongly in the Devil as I do in God, I would’ve been able to banish her from our world forever. But now I know that she will always have devotees and mindless pawns who are all too willing to sacrifice themselves in her name to restore her, I will not be so shortsighted again.

As much as I’d like to believe that Dean Harper knows Rowan far too well to fall prey to her most twisted machinations in the nightmarish hellscape that is The Abyss Match, I have to be prepared for the worst and most severe fallout and what Rowan’s ultimate triumph could mean for the future of women’s wrestling in this company.

I’m not naive enough to believe Rowan’s thirst for revenge and need to make an example out of those who betray her will be quenched by several pints of her surrogate son’s blood. I have to consider the very real possibility that she’s looking to make Harper the prime sacrifice in a brand new unholy plague soon to be unleashed on my beloved division.

I simply can’t afford the luxury of wild optimism here. I’ve personally dealt with Rowan too many times in my life to believe the demon will keep her word and just disappear even if Dean somehow manages a miraculous survival and is still left standing after all this. It makes my blood run cold to know that nobody ever truly wins against Rowan MacDonnough, all the most fortunate ever do is survive her.

I am one of those precious few survivors, and as cruel fate would have it, I now have to steel myself for so much more than a thirty minute Women’s World Championship Scramble. Now I have to prepare myself as one of the precious few true Diamonds still left in this organisation to stand against torment and tyranny as history has shown that only I can.

🎸🎸🎸

~~~

Shea O’Hara was back at one of IWF’s primary developmental facilities in Dallas, Texas. It had been over a decade since this building site had been home to New Championship Wrestling, the popular American promotion that ran for six years and was the direct predecessor to the Imperial Wrestling Federation, before Roberto Verona had brokered a deal to fold the existing promotion into a new one.

As a self confessed professional wrestling junkie and historian, being here again was something of a spiritual experience. It felt almost like going back to the roots to rediscover herself. She sat in the corner of a practice ring, towel draped around her neck as Ciara O’Connor offered her some water. She hoarsely whispered her thanks before taking a hearty swig to refresh herself. It was obvious from the sweat glistening around her neck and cleavage that she had decided to push herself that much harder - Rowan’s return had put her on edge, particularly as from a certain point of view, Shea had orchestrated and lead the betrayal of the only person Rowan loved more than Dean, Brooklyn Madrox.

The temptation to drown in the catastrophic doom scenario of having already sealed her fate this Sunday, right alongside Dean Harper, with whom she was finally on civil terms, was strong, it was far too easy to entertain a scenario where the demonic spectre would rise from her abyss, victorious but unsatiated in her quest for vengeance. The thought that Rowan would gain a perfect measure of revenge by showing up in the twenty-ninth minute to cost Shea everything and that Brooklyn’s sister, April would prove to be the ultimate beneficiary disturbed her as she steadily came down from the adrenaline rush of the latest timed half hour practice match against three of the freshest and most eager faces of the Performance Centre, Saoirse Murphy, Marcy Horgan and Siobhan O’Reilly.

Friends, coincidentally from back home actually whom she’d known a long damned time, but had yet to be offered anything close to the kind of television deal Shea had been first offered in late 2015, and their collective frustration at that fact had undoubtedly fuelled their eagerness and determination to get in the ring with Shea for each of the four simulated Championship Scrambles Shea had practiced so far, each overseen by Ciara.

The Irish Bombshells as they’d informally been calling themselves collectively for almost a decade now were reasonable stand ins. Marcy made a half decent Charlotte with her speed and acrobatic baseline style. Saorise adapted remarkably well to playing Mai Everstone, almost as well in fact as when she’d stepped in to play the future version of Spike’s last daughter Hope for a brief television run several years earlier. And Siobhan pushed passed her reluctance and played a whiny and infantile parody of April Madrox, a portrayal so naturally hilarious that Shea was quickly reminded that you could have all the natural wit and charisma in the world and still not make the cut for a real IWF working contract.

Shea had precious little time to dwell on either that or her own remarkable fortune however. She’d put off one of the most important facets of her job for too long already. Nathan Westlake and his camera crew weren’t going to wait forever for Shea to fulfill her contractual obligation to lay out exactly how she felt about the Women’s World Championship Scramble Match publicly and for the record. As much as she wanted to continue training, because she still didn’t feel as ready as she should be, this also had to be done. Now or never.

Shea brought one knee up towards her chest as she finally made some effort to address the camera.

April, Mai, Charlie, we all know exactly what’s at stake here. We all know how important this match is not only in shaping our own individual careers but also the immediate future of the Women’s Division here in the Imperial Wrestling Federation, a landscape I’ve been a part of now for a whole hell of a lot longer than any of you.

This company has been my home now for damn near close to a decade. It actually means something to me, like. The whole fecking world to be honest. I’d be nothing without this job. If I wasn’t a part of this industry, I’d be lost at sea. Sure, I could easily do something else with my life and be pretty darn good at it, like. Only the most insanely jealous and most spiteful bitches around here would even dare to deny that I have the God given looks of a fashion model and the beautifully blessed voice talent to make a real splash in the music industry if I wanted.

Pro wrestling isn’t something I have to do, it never was.

No, pro wrestling is something I want to do, it always was.

So like, whilst I’m certain that I could walk out on this life tomorrow and be just fine with a lucrative contract from some modelling or talent agency, I wouldn’t hand nearly the same heart, passion or drive for any of those alternative career choices as I do for a lifetime spent in between a set of wrestling ring ropes.

I chose this life.

I choose to be on the road over three hundred days a year. I choose to be dogged at the airport at 3 A.M. by misguided but well meaning fans who hound me for autographs they’re just going to sell on eBay or selfies without make up and in street clothes that they’re just going to keep forever as a profile picture across their social media accounts because they have nothing else in their lives to make them feel as special as I did for the thirty seconds that they met me, quite by chance.

Thirty seconds in which they’re all so quick to confess their love for me. Thirty seconds in which I’ve had such an undeniably transformative impact on their sad little lives that I can always see the light in their eyes as they imagine either taking me to bed or waiting for me at the end of a flower strewn aisle in their dream wedding scenarios, like.

I am acutely aware of just how significantly my presence in the world changes so many lives forever. I know the tremendous responsibility I carry as a famous face in our industry. The celebrity life of a pro wrestler isn’t for everyone, precisely because it is inherently a life of such unbridled chaos and profound personal sacrifice.

All those thirty second chance encounters have to be worth something. All the sleepless nights on the road alone in hotels of various quality have to lead somewhere. Every bruise, welt and sore muscle I’ve ever endured from putting my body on the line on such a consistent basis has to coalesce and culminate at some point, surely. Or else why am I still here doing this, wanting this?

Wanting something tangible for being the best in the world at what I do?

When exactly did believing in myself and having confidence in my abilities and grand ambitions in my heart become such a crime around here? We’re pro wrestlers, having an ego and shooting your shot and making the most of every opportunity is such an inherent part of what we do week in and week out that it genuinely astounds me how idiots like April and Charlie can continue to get their panties in a bunch over it.

Sorry I’m not here just to make friends.

Sorry I’ve chosen a time and place to cash in the opportunity of a lifetime that I earned months ago that is wholly inconvenient for all the fecking idiots who just happen to be in my way. Let’s be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered if I was still a part of Birds of Prey, cashing in my Queen’s Gambit would have always been a mighty inconvenience for Charlotte Shimizu. Just as it wouldn’t have mattered if I was still a part of the Murder, my cash in would have always been an equally great inconvenience for The Madrox sisters.

Either way, none of my former associates were going to be thrilled.

I knew it was an impossible choice, the very definition of a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation” no matter what I did. I knew it from the moment I first came down off the ladder with my briefcase at the beginning of the year, in fact.

Nobody’s ever happy when you step up to seize the moment for yourself in this business because it more often than not means theirs is either over or being denied entirely. Charlie’s been sitting pretty for a little while now, and I get it girl, you don’t like that I’m coming to upset your apple cart so damned soon, like.

I know it’s gonna suck royally when after months of being unbeaten, you’re gonna lose everything you worked so hard for without even getting a single successful World Championship defence under your belt, but hey, take solace in the fact that you won’t be the first nor the last that has ever happened to.

Some of the very best there have ever been in the business have had moments where they stumbled at the first hurdle. Men and women who seemed to have all the momentum in the world after conquering the mountain and finally becoming World Champion, only to fall less than gracefully at the first challenge. That’s just life in the big leagues, Charlie.

Ask your snuggle bunny, Paxy-Waxy about it, history has shown he is intimately familiar with such unfavourable circumstances. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it whilst he soothes your bruised pride with those tender and sweet kisses of his.

And hey, if Verona has his way, you two might even have that in common by the time Survival of the Fittest is over. Won’t that be just so gosh darn sweet. Hey, I know, you could even make it a date to remember. Mutually supporting each other through life’s lows can only be a good thing for your relationship overall, right?

I’ve never had that, even when I dated in this business, so for that alone, you have my envy and my respect, professionally at least. I’m happy for you, even in spite of our personal differences. For every knock I have on you personally, I will never deny that you are one of the best and brightest to ever hold that Women’s World Championship.

But sweetie, even you must understand that nothing lasts forever, and I’m sorry to say that even for how gifted you are, you aren’t prepared for the threat of some unholy abomination like Rowan MacDonnough, after she’s done dealing with Dean Harper.

I have no reason to believe she won’t come for the prize she’s held twice before, and I was here through all those dark times and often felt like a lone beacon of hope. None of you have to like it, but the fact is I’m not just the best option to secure the division, I’m also your only real option here.

I’m someone who's been in the trenches already when the forces of both light and dark waged war across this entire company. I’m the best equipped to lead this division against the return of the ultimate and purest form of evil I’ve ever personally witnessed in all my years here in IWF.

I’m sorry, but being one of the brightest young stars in the history of our business or being the mousy sister of the real star in your family isn’t the kind of steely rallying focal point we need right now. We need someone who knows how to get the job done.

And when it comes to dealing with Rowan, nobody has ever done it better than me.

If you and April can’t handle that simple fact without being such petty little bitches about it, that’s neither my fault nor my problem. Save your childish attempts at character assassination for someone with thinner and less beautiful skin.

I quite literally don’t have time for your bullshit. I only have a bloody half hour to make sure somebody who knows how to stand up to literal hellspawn is waiting at the top of the mountain for Rowan. I won’t leave the fate of our division in the hands of a man, even one I have recently come to respect and admire, professionally.

Only I can save my division and my home.

Only I can stand against Rowan’s threat, as I have before.

Only I have the courage and strength necessary to sacrifice my friends, both old and new for the greater good of us all. And the only one I really feel bad for in all this is Mai Everstone. I hope you understand that it’s nothing personal, just some things really are bigger than the both of us. When I’m certain the threat has passed and the red smoke cleared for good and for real, I’ll give each of you another fair shot at me.

I promise.

But for right now, shut up and prepare to follow my lead.

I only have thirty minutes to save you from yourselves, and I fully intend to make every last second count, whether you like it or not, and I know you fecking don’t. But somebody has to survive the chaos and emerge as the Women’s World leader you need right now.

I know I’m not the one you all want, but needs must when the Devil drives.