EPISODE 6 THE TRIPLE THREAT

There’s a phrase that goes “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

I landed among two stars. Charlotte and Sasha were unquestionably the ones primed to be the top and future of the women’s division. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time with enough grit, heart, and determination to make it work for me.

Plus, I looked at my life and career as a Rocky movie, and without downswings there are no comebacks. There is no heroic overcoming of the odds. And if there’s one thing I love, it’s overcoming the odds.

As it turned out, the talk with Vince worked (or management were veering in that direction anyway). They decided that it really would be the best match to have at WrestleMania.

I wasn’t going to get my hopes up, not until I actually got to Dallas. Not until I was out in front of 110,000 fans, which, by the way, is the population of Cork, the second-biggest city in Ireland! And even then, I had a mental image of one of those giant circus hooks wrapping around my neck and pulling me back through the curtain as soon as I stepped onstage.

I had already wrestled at my favorite PPV, the Royal Rumble. I was about to wrestle at the biggest WrestleMania yet, and there was one other goal that was about to be ticked off the list.

Mark Carrano gathered the women’s roster in a room for a big announcement from HHH and Stephanie. We were surrounded by camera crews and a podium was placed off to the left with a mystery item covered in a black cloth. The roster waited impatiently to see what was about to be unveiled until, with one swift flick of his wrist, Hunter removed the cloth, exposing the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. A new women’s championship belt. A stunning collection of white leather and diamonds shimmering against a red backplate.

No longer would we be fighting over a dainty butterfly belt, but a proper, legitimate-looking women’s championship belt. They were changing the ladies’ title from the awfully named “divas championship” to the much more progressive title of “women’s championship.”

I hated the term “diva.” The very definition of “diva” is “a self-important person who is temperamental and difficult to please”—a connotation I would rather not be associated with. Since the moment I got signed, it was a goal of mine to change the term back to “women’s.” And we were doing it on the grandest stage of them all.

I felt bad for anyone not fighting to win this gorgeous bit of hardware. Every woman on that roster had a hand in getting us to this point. But only three of us would be involved in making history.

Charlotte and I arrived in Dallas and hopped in Ric’s service car. This was old hat for him, but for us, this was the most exciting week of our lives and the most important match of our careers so far.

The energy in the city matched ours. Fans were camped outside of our hotel hoping to get a glimpse of us. Doing anything that involved leaving your room required meticulous planning based on the extra time that would need to be carved out for autograph signing and picture taking.

But if anyone asked me for something, I couldn’t say no. It was the fans who had supported me and carried me to this moment. Waves of gratitude followed me wherever I went. I found myself tearing up in the soup aisle of Whole Foods, thinking about how far I had come. Even the fact that I could now afford Whole Foods! My once-upon-a-time idols were now friends and mentors and I was getting to create history with two women I respected and adored. It was monumental. Thank god no one noticed me as I wiped the snot from my face and bawled over the kelp chips in my basket.

But there was just this one thing that bothered me. It may seem petty, well, I suppose ’cause it is. Everywhere I turned on the streets of Dallas there were pictures of superstars slated for big matches.

Only one person’s face was missing. Mine.

It gave me that chip on my shoulder that had helped propel me thus far. The race wasn’t over and there was still much ground to cover. I wasn’t meant to be in this spot. But here. I. Was.

Fuck you, motherfuckers. I’ll prove how great I am. Whether you want to attach a rocket to me or not, I telepathically berated the company that I had dreamed of being in, who were now paying my wages and putting me in their biggest show of the year.

I love a good shoulder chip. Sometimes I think I just invent them to keep me on my toes. Again, horrible way to live in terms of happiness but works great in wrestling.

Even if I wasn’t meant to be there, even if I wasn’t on the posters or banners, even if I was never pegged to be a “top guy,” I was proving I could hang with the best of them.

I walked into WrestleMania looking like a traffic cone: freshly dyed orange hair, orange-tinted spray tan, and, to keep with the theme, a bright orange jumpsuit.

We had already put the bones of the match together, but it needed a little more oomph, a little chutzpah. We still didn’t know who was going to win, and were dragged in a million different directions.

This was a historic WrestleMania for women. It was rare that the women’s title would actually be defended at WrestleMania, and more than that, there were two women’s matches on the card! Only a few years previous, the women had been standing in gorilla ready for their match when it got cut completely for time purposes. We had come a long way and we were setting the ground for generations to come.

I sat in the stands looking at the colossal stadium, imagining how this place was going to look in just a few hours as my opponents practiced their entrances on the ramp. Charlotte was being led to the ring by her legendary father while Snoop Dogg, who just so happened to be Sasha’s cousin, was going to serenade her to the ring. At the intersection of pop culture crossovers there was me. Becky from the block who needed no rehearsal but probably several punches in the arm, because what the hell was this life?

When the stars had finished rehearsal, we gathered in a practice ring in the back to iron out the kinks of the match, trying not to be distracted by the passing of megastars such as The Rock, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan. This match was the jumping-off point to one day be placed in the same category.

After much deliberation, it was decided that Charlotte was going to win by tapping me out in the middle of the ring. I knew my chances of winning were slim, but getting to put my friend over in the biggest way possible at WrestleMania was the next-best thing.

Besides, I didn’t need to win. I was going to do a suicide dive, i.e., torpedo through the top and middle rope onto Ric Flair at ringside in retaliation for Rumble, and that was as big a victory as anything.

And then, there was nothing left to do but do it.

I stood behind the curtain in gorilla, feeling the energy of the 110,000 excited fans in attendance. (Yes, there’s discourse about this number, but hey, shut up.)

The fans were ready to witness the dawn of a new era. We had the opportunity to set the table, change how women were presented in the industry, and steal the freaking show.

And as all of this swirled around my head, a feeling of calm came over my entire body. I was ready. I was prepared. I was shockingly not nervous. How could this be? I got nervous for every match I had ever had. And yet here I was, the biggest match of my career, and I was cool as a cucumber.

My music hit and I walked out, head down—as was my thing at the time. Hell yeah, Becky. Let’s freaking go. You’re so cool! I thought in my calmed state, feeling like an absolute rock star.

Only when I popped my head up and saw all those fans crowding the giant stadium, I peed myself a little. Not metaphorically, I literally peed just a wee (ha-ha) bit. I hypothesize that I was, in fact, actually so nervous that my body wouldn’t let me know it lest I die. Lest I just curl up in gorilla and cease to exist. Thanks, body, you’re a real pal.

I stood in the ring taking in the size of the place while the others made their grand entrances. Occasionally, I glanced down to see if I had any exposed pee on my shorts.

My brain couldn’t really comprehend what was happening as we went through the match, narrating, Yeah, fuck yeah, we are killing this shit! But also not being able to hear the audience reacting.

Are they in stunned awe of our greatness?

I remembered a warning that Sheamus had given me weeks before: “It takes a while for the sound to reach you in these big stadiums. You may have done a move a minute ago, and you hear them react to it when you’re seemingly doing nothing. Sometimes the sound just escapes and you can’t hear anything.” I felt like I couldn’t hear a damn thing as we went through our collection of moves and sequences. At one point Charlotte landed on my head from a suplex and I could feel my eyelid being cut, waiting for the blood to gush and inevitably stop the match and ruin this history maker. But it never came. I was wearing so much dang makeup it acted like a clog, saving my ass as we carried on—I dove on Ric, Charlotte moonsaulted from the top turnbuckle to the outside, there were frog splashes and dropkicks; me oh my, we were cooking. All leading to a crescendo of Charlotte getting me in her signature finisher and Ric holding Sasha back from making the save on the floor. I tapped out as Charlotte thanked me: “We did it, woman.”

I took the side ramp back to gorilla, adrenaline being shed with every step as the fans slapped my hand in excitement.

Sasha followed close behind and collapsed in floods of tears as we reached the back. Lita was there to hug me: “You did it, kid; that was fucking great.”

Great, now I was crying. Everyone in gorilla gave us a standing ovation. Follow that, fuckers—all three of us had the same communal thought. We had made history.