EPISODE 1 THE ENTRANCE

It was April 2020. I was the longest-reigning Raw women’s champion. And I was pregnant.

With the world shut down for covid and nothing to do, the least I could do was create human life. If ever there was a time to sneak a kid into the wrestling family, I decided this was it.

My fiancé, Colby, and I had just gathered our snacks, taking a break from our Game of Thrones marathon to watch the biggest wrestling event of the year, WrestleMania 36. The showcase of the immortals. The Super Bowl of sports entertainment. An event so big, it sells thousands upon thousands of tickets before even a single match is announced. Only this year’s attendance, precisely zero. And I was wrestling on it. Again, pregnant.

We had pretaped the event two weeks earlier, covid protocols calling for us to travel as little as possible, meaning we taped several shows at a time, weeks in advance.

Vince McMahon, our almighty overlord and the chairman of WWE, would rather die than cancel a show. That man believes in what he does and what WWE means more than anything. At a time when people were scared and confused, not knowing what the future held for them or their loved ones, people needed a distraction more than ever.

Vince, the almost mythical billionaire, could be a terrifying figure. He was never one to shy away from controversy or tough decisions. He even remains one of the few people to take on the United States government and win. WWE was his baby. But how the hell was he going to feel about my baby?

As I chomped down on my cheese puffs, I watched my opponent Shayna Baszler throw my expecting ass around like I was a kite on a windy day. I had recommended that she take the title from me at WrestleMania. Not because I was with child, but because I had been a babyface champion for so long and could feel the audience beginning to turn on me. I had gone from underdog to top dog, and such a situation can’t overstay its welcome. Plus, we needed to make more female contenders, and what better way to do that than having them win the title on the grandest stage of them all? Everyone wins.

Except me, whose request was denied. I wanted to lose, but I would actually win, so it was a loss.… Sigh. Wrestling is confusing.

“How am I gonna tell Vince?” I turned to Colby, realizing that beyond our immediate family, the most powerful man in wrestling needed to be the first recipient of our news.

“You’re just gonna have to tell him,” he responded.

“You think he’s gonna yell at me? Fire me?”

“I don’t think so. But he’ll probably be upset.”

“Ugh.”

I waited till the hullaballoo of WrestleMania weekend was over. All things considered, it was a success. Or as much of a success as a wrestling event can be when taped in front of absolutely no one, with only the grunts of our pain and effort to interrupt the awkwardness.

“You’re just going to have to call him,” Colby advised, looking at my anguished face while I was in the midst of something resembling a workout. “Just rip the Band-Aid off.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah. I can do that.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I’ll tell him how I can still keep working. You know, maybe I can… I could make a documentary about all this. Or I could maybe be a consultant on the creative team or something?!” I said as I scrambled for ways to save my job.

“I think you’re going to be fine,” Colby comforted me.

“Yeah, I’m The Man,” I said facetiously. “I’m gonna call him now.” Then I stepped outside to make the biggest phone call of my life.

Brrring, brrring. Brrring, brrring.

There was a light drizzle as I stood outside Colby’s Iowa gym, waiting for Vince to answer.

Brrring, brrring. Brrring, brrring.

I began to kick up the dirt on the ground, making patterns with my foot. My anxiety overriding my nausea.

Brrring, brrring.

It’s just life, Rebecca. You can have it all. The family and the job. The men do. Why not you? It’s not fair for anyone to ask you to choose. And it’s none of their business, I reasoned with myself.

Brrring, brrring. Click.

I reentered the empty gym.

“He didn’t answer,” I relayed, more relieved than disappointed.

“Probably in a meeting or somethi—”

“Oop! That’s him!” I yelled as my phone rang.

The drizzle had turned to a downpour as I ran outside, seeking refuge in my fiancé’s Tesla.

I took a deep breath before pressing the illuminated green phone button.

“Hi, Vince!”

“Hello! Sorry, I was just in a meeting. How are you doing?” Vince’s signature gravelly voice sounded like the embodiment of a death sentence.

“Oh, I’m, eh, I’m good. I’m calling you because, well, we have a little bit of a problem,” I began, searching for any signs of my big-girl pants in the car so I could put them on and get through this conversation.

Just say it, Rebecca. Just fucking say it. Okay, here it goes.

“Sir, I’m five weeks pregnant, and so I was thinking maybe we could…” I kept talking so that maybe he’d miss the gravity of the first part of my sentence and concentrate on this award-winning documentary I was somehow going to make.

Without waiting for me to finish, and with zero hesitation in his voice, he responded with the last words I expected to come out of his mouth.…

“Congratulations!”

Huh? I came here ready for a verbal ass kicking.

“Oh my god, Rebecca! That’s fantastic news. Wow! I’m so happy for you!”

I sat there stunned, tears beginning to stream down my face. Relief, joy, hormones. Of all the possible outcomes, this was the most surprising.

I had done a few things in my life. But this was about to be the biggest, and it was far from the way I was brought into this world.…

I made my prompt and elegant entrance into the world on January 30, 1987, in Limerick, Ireland.

My mother, having just uprooted her life to accommodate my father’s new job, learned midlabor that he had lost said job. As she pushed me out in the grimy Limerick hospital, the radiator repairman unceremoniously interrupted to complete his final task of the day.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am. Just a little jammed here. Hope you haven’t been too cold. That’s all fixed now.”

“Get out!”

“Of course, of course. Goodbye now and congratulations, by the way. That’s a beautiful little girl you have there.”

It wasn’t long after the radiator repair man had wished us well that Mom picked up and moved back to Dublin City.

When I was growing up, my mother was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I know just about everyone says that about their ma, but I had validation. External validation. Professional validation.

She was a model.

In fact, when the term “milf” was first coined, it seemed like the entirety of popular culture had been designed specifically to taunt my older brother, Richy, and me.

When modeling proved less stable, she traded in being a calendar centerfold for the equally glamorous (at the time) life of being a globe-trotting flight attendant.

Her head-turning good looks gave me hope that I might one day achieve this esoteric superpower whenever the puberty fairies would bestow their blessings upon me. However, these fairies seemingly missed the “make her a stunner” portion of their growth dust.

Or rather, my invention of the potato waffle and cheese white bread sandwich had my taste buds in a stranglehold from the age of nine and trapped me in their starchy, creamy prison, keeping those cellulite bumps on my thighs fed and happy, living their best lives.

It wasn’t just that I revered my mom because she was drop-dead gorgeous. She had a humility about her, almost as if she was unaware of the attention she garnered at every turn. She was also a hard worker and a staunch realist to boot.

It was all of these attributes that made her marriage to my father utterly confusing.

Don’t get me wrong: my dad was an absolute legend. He was a dreamer, a charmer, a man with his head in the clouds who valued imagination and originality above all else. He was constantly inventing the next revolutionary thing. But his ideas always seemed to exceed his execution. He never really found his footing in life, but the one thing he was most proud of was me and my brother.

My brother was an angel, but I, on the other hand, was Satan with a poorly cut bob. I could be bashing my brother over the head with a frying pan and my dad would reprimand Richy, “Just leave her be! She’s expressing herself.”

I don’t think I’ve ever met two more diametrically opposed people than my parents. My dad valued independence and autonomy. The first words I remember my mom telling me were “Be normal.” Even at five, I knew I was going to break her heart. My dad was in and out of employment for most of his life. My mom always had the steady job. The one thing, and possibly the only thing, they could agree on, however, was that they loved me and my brother more than anything and we should always come first.

To me, their contrasting personalities were a blessing. My dad gave me the courage to dream. My mom gave me the practicality to go out and work for it. My mom gave me hope I was going to grow up to be a babe. My dad diluted the gene pool enough for me to know I had to work on my personality.

By the time I was just a year old, they decided to call it quits and separate, which, in Catholic Ireland, where divorce wasn’t even legal yet, was immensely frowned upon.

It didn’t affect my life too much. (A) I was too young to know what the hell was going on, and (B) by the time I was four and old enough to realize my dad wasn’t around, my mom allowed Dad to move back into our house in an act of highly admirable parenting. A victory on all accounts.

We could have our dad, and she had help when she had to go away on longer trips.

Sure, living with your ex sounds like a downright nightmare, and they hardly talked or had much interaction at all and there was an undertone of tension in the house at all times that we were too young to understand. But they were civil enough to do everything as a family. Vacations, dinners, gatherings, you name it.

For Richy and me, everything was hunky-dory as our parents continued their separate celibate lives under one roof—which is the wistful assumption of all kids anyway.

It also meant we didn’t have to take time away from our quintessential lower-middle-class Dublin neighborhood, where every day was a kid party. There were about seventeen of us young hooligans all close in age running around together, causing havoc, with little drama ever breaking out among us.

Until we were infiltrated by the British in the summer of 1997. One of the neighbors had their English grandson Robbie come to stay while school was out. The kid had the charisma of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson packed into his tiny sixty-pound frame. He danced and sang to the amusement of everyone on the block. Everyone but me. I never liked this guy. I don’t know what it was about him. Maybe I was jealous of how beloved he was among my peers. Maybe I envied his rhythm and his angelic singing voice. Or maybe, just maybe, this kid was a little prick.

One day, while Robbie sat perched in a tree above me in the communal green area of the hood, likely performing a perfect rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” I swung from our makeshift swing below. It was essentially a rope hanging from a branch with a small plank to sit on. Our many hours of dragging our feet in the same spot had worn a dent into the packed ground underneath.

Suddenly the rope snapped! I landed on my ass with a loud thud.

“She’s so fat she broke the swing!” Robbie yelled, and laughed uproariously.

All my friends laughed along too.

I sat there humiliated, trying not to cry.

Eventually, when the urge had left my eyes and forcing any bravery I could garner, I got up and brushed myself off. Only to reveal that I had landed right on top of the indentation on the ground.

“She put a dent in the ground! Hahahahahaha!”

Everyone laughed again.

“I did not!”

“Then how did it get there? Hahaha!”

I couldn’t stop the tears this time and ran inside crying.

The next day, as every day, the whole gang was playing outside. I decided today was a seesaw kind of day—doubly so with the swing now out of commission. In addition to the swing, we had constructed a seesaw from a large plank of wood balanced haphazardly on a brick wall.

“Who wants to go with me?” I asked as I jogged towards the wall where the seesaw awaited.

“No, Becky, stop!” one friend shouted.

“What’s your problem?” I asked as I reached my teeter-totter destination.

I looked down at the plank of wood and quickly discovered their problem. Written in bold letters were the words:

BECKY’S GOT A BELLY LIKE A SACK OF POTATOES

accompanied by a sketch of me with a sack of potatoes–shaped belly, which, in fairness to the culprit, had been rendered with some skill.

The plank was literally covered in Becky-themed insults.

“Who… wrote this?” I demanded, before the finger-pointing started:

“It was her.”

“It was not!”

“It was him; he made us do it!”

How could I have such a wildly different interpretation of our friendship?

I grabbed the plank and once again ran home in floods of tears. Then and there, I vowed to lose weight so I might have a chance of actually being like my mom when I grew up. But then I got hungry and sad and just wanted pizza. Beauty was my mom’s domain. Pizza was mine.