EPISODE 27 GIMME A HELL YEAH

Things were rolling at lightning speed. In the space of a year, every wrestling dream I had ever had was coming true. I was put on the cover of the WWE video game—the first time ever for a woman.

I was on the cover of magazines, even becoming the first wrestler on the cover of ESPN The Magazine. I did SportsCenter commercials.

I went for a week straight sleeping only on airplanes because I had so many appearances literally all over the world.

I got to work with The Rock, John Cena, Edge, film with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

I was on Billions on Showtime.

I filmed with Marvel.

I got a book deal. (Hi!)

I became the longest-running Raw women’s champion in history.

I bought my first house.

I had great matches. I had awful matches. I had underrated matches. I had mediocre matches.

I was getting to travel the world and work side by side with my best friend and now fiancé, and paid to do it.

Life was a series of ups with the odd down and little time to process anything or even be aware of what was happening.

However, I now had many voices in my head and my ear offering different advice. Some voices more dominant than others, with some ideas that were better than others. It was my job to navigate between all the noise; I was The Man after all. But sometimes I fought the wrong creative battles and listened to the wrong people. I got worked up over insignificant promos or outcomes. Approaching everything as if it were do-or-die. I felt the need to conform to what I had been doing on social media, i.e., being an asshole, leaving me feeling not so great about myself. Like I hadn’t been true to myself, and to use the quote from the beginning of the book that my dad had always repeated to me (which he misquoted from the Bible, but I liked his version better): “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will complete you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will destroy you.”

I loved my work. I hated how worked up I would get at every single week of television or every single creative direction. As if the wrong story would send me back to the pit of irrelevancy from whence I came.

I had worked so hard to be the first woman to main event WrestleMania and send the business in a different trajectory, but once I reached the top of the mountain, the first question was “What next?”

The company came and offered me a somewhat lofty contract, but now that I had achieved my ultimate goal I wondered if it was time to think about my next goal. One outside of the confines of the ropes: being a mother. I had badly wanted a family one day; I had found my perfect partner.

In work, I was becoming increasingly more anxious worrying about my booking. Having reached the top of the mountain didn’t mean that I could enjoy everything more—it meant I was concerned about staying at the top. And I’m positive I was a pain in the ass for the creative team. It’s so clichéd that it’s all about the journey and not the destination, but it was true. The destination was only the beginning of a new journey. But while I was worried about what was going to happen next, all of a sudden the world shut down.

We were supposed to fly out to Canada when we got word of the global shutdown because of Covid-19.

“Is the show still on?” I asked the travel department.

“Yes, for now. Just take the flight anyway.”

“But what if we get stuck in Canada?”

It was March 2020 and you couldn’t sit down to get coffee anywhere, but in WWE the show must always go on. Vince was the first person to put a show on after 9/11; he has run shows after the tragic passing of coworkers: he loves wrestling more than anything but also truly believes that wrestling is the distraction people need during hard times, such as a global pandemic. So unless the government made him cancel, those shows were going to run.

The government did indeed make him cancel that show, and many to follow, but they couldn’t stop him running a TV show, on a closed set, in front of no one.

And that’s what we did. All of our travel was changed to Orlando, to the Performance Center, where I had trained for all of those years.

In the classic, never-say-die Vince McMahon way, the show carried on as we hurtled towards WrestleMania. After all, this global shutdown couldn’t last more than two weeks, could it? No way? Even two weeks seemed like an eternity.

“Do you think we’re gonna have to cancel WrestleMania?” I asked Paul Heyman.

“I think you’re looking at the venue for it,” he responded nonchalantly.

“This? PC Mania? No way! You think it’s gonna last that long?”

“October at the earliest before we have fans back,” he prophesized.

I walked away, shaking my head, thinking what an alarmist he was. There was no way it could last that long.

This wasn’t any Raw, though. This was the return of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin on 3:16 Day—so-called after his famous King of the Ring promo where he notoriously said, “Austin 3:16 just whooped your ass”—leading to a global phenomenon and the best-selling T-shirt in wrestling history.

“Stone Cold” Steve Austin in the PC, drinking beers and giving the finger to no one, seemed so very weird.

All of this felt weird. Just a week earlier we were wrestling in front of fifteen thousand screaming fans in Washington, DC. Now it was us in our bodies, bereft of adrenaline, taking bumps to no reaction but still with the duty of entertaining millions of confined viewers the world over.

I had pitched doing something with Steve because we had been compared so much and it was a hard-and-fast no.

That was up until ten minutes before he went out for the main event segment of the show. Even though there was no one in attendance, we still went live, because that was the only system we had in place.

A writer came and grabbed me. “Hey, we might need you to come out and drink with Steve if we go under time.”

“Well, shit. That’s cool. Would have been nice to have planned something earlier—but sure!”

“Okay, great. There’ll be a cooler full of beers waiting at gorilla; bring that down and you guys can cheers or whatever.”

I stood behind the curtain, watching Austin, the coolest wrestler to ever lace up a pair of boots, in the midst of an awkward segment. That even seems weird to type. An oxymoron, if you will. “Austin” and “awkward” are just not two words that go together. It was simply so un-Austiny.

No people. Him holding cue cards. Bantering back and forth with Byron Saxton.

This shit was weird. And it was about to get a whole lot weirder when my music hit. Down I walked, cooler in hand. We cheered. We stunned Byron Saxton too many times; we accidentally kicked him in the dick too many times. Drank too many beers ’cause the music kept playing and there was nothing else to do.

By the time the segment was over, I was suitably shit-faced.

The company had never filmed a Raw in front of no one and I had never gotten drunk live on TV, but here we were. The year 2020 was wild in all the worst ways.

And it was about to get even wilder.…

Post Raw and in the throes of drunken passion, Colby and I took less caution than usual. Even though I did want to be a mother, I was still the champion and I fully envisioned it would take an eternity to become pregnant, even though I was only thirty-three, considering the damage I had done to my body over the course of nearly twenty years. Between taking bumps and eating disorders, I figured there was no way in hell that my insides would be working properly.

Oh, boy, was I wrong.

When we returned home from filming WrestleMania at the PC two weeks later, I was already feeling nauseous.

No, it couldn’t have happened that quickly, could it?

Holy shit. But what if it had?

There won’t be any fans for months. What will I be missing? If ever there was a time to be pregnant, this is it.

But then again, what if I lose all my momentum? Everything I have worked for could all come crashing down.

This has never been done before. How will Vince react? How will the fans react? How will my mom react? Out of wedlock and all that jazz.

Only one way to find out.

Take the damn test, Rebecca.

I bought one of those early response tests; “6 days earlier,” it said.

I peed on the stick. The control line showed up immediately, but not the second line, the “You’re pregnant” line.

Without waiting the full time, I threw it in the bin because I was so certain I was not pregnant.

Off I went to the gym, still nauseous as a sailor.

When I came back, I noticed the stick again, only this time there was a second line.

“Oh, shit.”

“Don’t read after 10 minutes,” the box said.

But that’s a second line. I could swear that’s a second line.

I showed Colby.

“Oh, shit. That’s a second line!”

“Right?! But it says don’t read after ten minutes.”

“When did you do this?”

“Before the gym.”

“Did you not read the instructions?”

“You know I’m not an instruction reader.”

“Well, fuck. Do another one.”

So I did.

Another faint line.

“I think that’s positive.”

“It’s very faint.”

I texted Rachel the next day, showing her.

“It looks negative,” she said. “Don’t be disappointed. It usually takes a long time.”

“But I feel it! I feel like shit.”

“Might just be your period. My sister was trying for a full year.”

I’m getting a goddamn digital test!

Life hack: always go for the digital test.

I went into the pharmacy to pick up the test. The man behind the counter offering me a “Good luck” as I walked out, box in hand.

After I actually read the instructions, Colby and I camped out in the bathroom, waiting for the little digital window to inform us of our fate. Those three minutes felt like we were waiting the entire duration of Schindler’s List.

“Pregnant,” Colby read out as he threw his arms up in the air! Proud of his seed. “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaas!”

Holy shit! Yes! But also no! What if I’m not actually ready?!

I’M NOT READY!!!

Now all those questions were real. “What will Vince say?” I asked, while simultaneously arguing that I shouldn’t have to care. I was a woman and had a right to become a mother. Sure, it wasn’t ideal that I was currently the champion. The men in our industry don’t have to skip over the important part of life choice that is starting a family; why should I have to? Apart from obvious reasons of the time away. But this is a new world, and these things should be taken into consideration. For better or worse, I was going to be the crash test dummy. Could women in wrestling have it all?

Colby sent his mom a picture of me with the test. She rang immediately and went as far as to start opening up her closet, showing all the baby clothes she had already purchased in anticipation for this day.

“Damn, Holly! We ain’t even been together that long.”

“I thought I had more time; that’s why these are the only things I have,” she said as she pulled out an entire wardrobe for a newborn.

Oh, man. I’m about to be someone’s mom.

We did the rounds.

We called Colby’s dad.

We called my mom.

We called my dad.

The dads cried.

Our lives were about to change forever.