Member-only story
Going Over
A short story about professional wrestling and what comes after
The roar of the crowd always got Tommy Buckley’s blood pumping, but he’d never before heard a crowd quite like this. This was Wrestlepalooza, baby, an event he’d dreamed of being involved in all his life, and not only was he involved, he was in the effing main event! He was competing for the National Wrestling Federation’s top prize, the world heavyweight championship, against his boyhood idol, “Gentleman” Craig Thornton.
Tommy was standing in the gorilla position (named after wrestler and announcer “Gorilla” Monsoon) poking his head out the curtains near the entrance to the locker rooms, watching the match between popular tag team champions “Smooth Jazz” (twin brothers Chris and Nicky Courage) and their equally-popular opponents, “Cowboy” Bob Dodge and Robert Fernandez. The crowd roared as Dodge hoisted Nicky Courage onto the turnbuckle for a superplex, and cheered even louder as Nicky countered the move and nearly pinned his opponent with a sunset flip.
A babyface versus babyface match in wrestling was rare, even more so for a tag team bout, because, unless it was done perfectly, the fans never knew who to root for. This match, however, was being executed exactly as it should be, and he was proud to be part of the card. Still, though, the previous five matches had…
