‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol (28 page)

Wrestling Promo Poster.

January marked the beginning of a new era for me professionally in which I had been bit by the metal bug and knew my ambition was hungry again for a new challenge, which I had to balance with 3PW’s position in the business at that point. If we got the investments in for 3PW, great, if not, we’d keep rolling right along, and I figured I could have the best of both worlds with metal and wrestling in the same time. We had one of our best shows ever at the end of that month, with Al Snow, and the ECW Arena was beyond packed! I felt I’d finally made my mark as the most successful independent wrestling promoter — and a female at that.

That February, it was time to do our two-year anniversary show, which we held on the 21st and billed as ‘3PW: Second Anniversary.’ It featured matches including: Derek Wylde defeating Rob Eckos; Slyk Wagner Brown w/April Hunter defeating Mike Kruel; the FLORIDA X-TITLE MATCH featuring Roderick Strong w/Ron Niemi defeating Mikey Batts to win a vacant title. Ruckus vs. Damian Adams; a TAG MATCH between Rockin Rebel & Jack Victory defeating C.J. O’Doyle & Blue Meanie; ‘Macho Man’Matt Striker w/Miss Talia defeating Monsta Mack. The DOG COLLAR 3PW TITLE MATCH, which featured Raven defeating ‘ Pitbull’ Gary Wolf to retain the title; and finally the TRIPLE THREAT match, which starred Joey Matthews defeating Sabu and Jerry Lynn.

We still did well with crowd capacity in spite of how crappy the weather was at that time of year, which made it really difficult traditionally to draw people in. We kept that show to a little bit of a lower budget by using some independent talent along with the headliners for the undercard matches. I felt it was nice to give up-and-comers an option to work somewhere where they’d have a chance to wrestle before a large crowd, because the mainstream wrestling business at that point was getting tougher and tougher to break into with Vince McMahon’s stranglehold over everything. Because of that, I had A LOT of wrestlers coming to me for work; I did my best to strike a balance between booking the headline talent that brought in the bulk of our crowd, but also introduce some new local talent via the opening matches. I knew 3PW fans had also become accustomed to seeing our shows. It was a potent combination, and one that I had masterminded from the beginning, and had watched it become our hallmark over the next two years.

Around this same time, I had been speaking with Cleopatra Records owner Brian Perera about starring in a DVD series called
Metal’s Dark Side
, which would basically be a much larger scale, mainstay version of the documentary. He had me interviewing metal bands locally around L.A. up to that point. Perera had seen promise in it as something larger that could be distributed on a national level via DVD, and felt I was the right personality to host the series because of my talents as a host but, I believe he also recognized I was an authentic metal head.

In March, I headed back East for what was scheduled to be the next 3PW show, and ahead of the gig, which was scheduled for later that month. I shot a mainstream, independent film called
Communication Breakdown
. I worked for scale on the project because it was one of my first ‘real’ movies — as opposed to the type I had made in a previous life and I had jumped at the opportunity to break into that world. In any event, we shot on location in North Carolina, and of course, I underwrote our expenses (from meals to the Holiday Inn) because he had a bit part in the film and I still believed in him as a talent. We were a team in the eyes of a lot of industry people, so they felt I think in a way having us both in the film would play to our wrestling fan-base, in addition to my broader mainstream following. We shot on a soundstage where the set had been built to look like a radio station. Our director, Richard O’Sullivan, was really on his game with the movie, and eventually signed a deal with Comcast On-Demand to debut the movie, in addition to DVD distribution.

Once we’d wrapped shooting on
Communication Breakdown
, Brian and I drove back to Philadelphia to prepare for the next 3PW show, which was supposed to begin in early April. Prior to that, I had been cast to appear in another independent film,
Coalition
, which was shooting in New York, and starred Frank Vincent, who played mob boss Phil Leotardo on
The Sopranos
. My first day on set was the day following St. Patrick’s Day, and because I had to be on location at 5 that morning, I’d taken it easy on my partying the night prior. In hindsight, I should have whooped it up because my being a good girl ended up making no difference when I shot up out of bed the next morning with a searing pain in my stomach. I felt like someone had stabbed me with a 12-inch blade, because it was a pain I’d never experienced before in my life, but I thought at first it was just food poisoning or something minor, and didn’t want anything getting in the way of my movie shoot. I know that sounds retarded reading it now, but that’s how much a professional I am, and how ambitious I was to break into mainstream film that I sucked up the pain, and worked through the day.

I had been cast as a Hispanic newscaster, and everyone on the set were all Italian guys who were also all big wrestling fans, which reflected where 3PW was at that time in terms of its street credibility. I’d like to think it’s not the sole reason I got the job, but I knew it played a part, and that was fine. We’d shot all day in Williamsburg, and upon arriving back at my mother’s house that night, the pain I’d been ignoring all day suddenly overtook me like a Tsunami wave, because all I remember is collapsing to the floor like a rock and passing out. When I woke up hours later I was in the hospital, and the doctors told me my appendix had burst. On top of the emergency surgery I underwent to have my appendix entirely removed, it also turned out I have a very rare blood type which they had to search the city over to find a match for. Thankfully, they eventually did, and when I woke up in recovery, my mother and some other family were all there with me. I felt lucky to be alive based on how close the doctors told me I’d come to death. While I was chomping at the bit to get out of the hospital so I could prepare for that weekend’s 3PW show, they ensured me I would be putting my health at even greater risk if I discharged myself premature to a full recovery.

That essentially translated to mean that we were forced to cancel the entire show scheduled to be on March 20th — because of how involved I still was in running the day-to-day operations and the fact that I wrote all the checks. We simply couldn’t have pulled it off. Everyone was understanding about it, for the most part anyway. Brian had gotten through making calls to everyone letting them know what had happened and it necessitated a cancellation of the main event. I was shocked to find out that one of our wrestlers — Matt Stryker, who I’d given his start to and eventually went onto wrestle for the WWF — had asked Brian if he could go to the hospital and get his money for him. Even though the event was cancelled, and we didn’t have that kind of a clause in contracts with any of the talent, that he still had the balls to ask such a thing of me was a shock. I couldn’t believe what a greedy, nasty son-of-a-bitch he was for saying suggesting something so horrible while I was lying in the hospital!

He was blackballed as far as 3PW was concerned after that. To add insult to my existing injuries, I additionally discovered that Raven — one of our main stars at the time — was trying to fly in on the ticket I’d booked for him in conjunction with the 3PW event to come in and wrestle for a competitor. Our show had been cancelled. On MY DIME — I don’t think so honey. I was deeply offended by both of their actions, especially in the case of Matt Striker, who I had put into business in the first place, and had a lot to thank me for. I put him on T.V. and given him a profile he never had prior to coming to work for 3PW, but what Raven had done bothered me even more because he was seasoned enough to have known better.That he had the nerve to try and fly in on my dime to wrestle for a competing promoter was laughable and horrible in the same time. One of the few good things to come out of the entire experience was the chance I had to see the true colors of those I had surrounded myself with in the 3PW camp. Many showed their loyalty to me by not saying a word about the cancellation of the show. Others however, like Raven, cost themselves high-profile spots in my organization by the way they treated me during my health crisis.

I decided — while still lying in my hospital bed — to get my revenge by hiring Raven, who at the time was 3PW’s reigning champion, for one final show in late April — without telling him ahead of time it would be his last. I set it up for him to square off against Joey Matthews, and had pre-determined that he would lose the match and ultimately be stripped of his belt. I was in recovery for over two weeks, and had to have followup laser surgery to remove the scar it left entirely. Everyone but Raven had sent me get-well cards in the hospital, and my VERY first day out, I called both Raven and Matt Striker and cussed both of them out, letting them know how low and out of line I thought their behavior had been. I had been a very good boss to everyone, and had deserved better, which was the bottom line.

The re-scheduled March show was held on April 17th, in an event billed as ‘3PW: The Future is Now,’ which I thought perfectly captured the spirit of things as we prepared to exit Raven from our league. The show was packed at capacity, and our roster results included ‘Pitbull’ Gary Wolf defeated Ron Zombie; Slyk Wagner Brown w/April Hunter defeated Ricky Vega; CJ O’Doyle defeated ‘The Amazing’ N8 Matson. Matt ‘Macho Man’ Striker w/Talia vs. Rob Eckos went to a NO CONTEST.TAG MATCH: Jack Victory and Rockin Rebel defeated The Blue Meanie and Roadkill; Mike Kruel defeated Monsta Mack; Jerry Lynn defeated Sabu; and Ruckus defeated Damian Adams; all leading up to Raven’s defeat in the title match by Joey Matthews. After the match was over, I felt redeemed, and decided that I was going to focus as much as possible on branching out beyond wrestling with my new
Metal’s Dark Side
DVD series, which Brian and I had planned to officially launch that summer.

Making up for the lost time due to my appendix emergency in March, we held a 3PW show on May 15th, which we titled ‘3PW: Not Enough Time.’ It featured a bunch of bad-ass match-ups including:  Rob Eckos defeating Amazing N8 Mattson, a 3-way match wherein Ruckus defeated Mike Kruel and Damian Adams; a match where Jack Victory & Rockin’ Rebel defeated Ron Zombie & Don E. Allen. CJ O’Doyle  vs. ‘Pitbull’ Gary Wolf; a match with Roadkill and myself defeating The Blue Meanie and 3PW TITLE Matches between Jerry Lynn and Joey Matthews (Champ); Slyk Wagner Brown & April Hunter w/Todd Gordon defeated Matt Striker & Miss Talia; and the headlining match between Christopher Daniels vs. AJ Styles.

In June, I shot more interviews for the
Hollywood Rocks
documentary for Brian Perera out in Los Angeles, which I loved because I got to interview Helmet drummer John Tempesta (who also played in Exodus, Testament, White Zombie, The Cult, and Rob Zombie) and. We held another 3PW show, on June 19th, titled ‘3PW: Splintered,’ which as usual featured a ton of exciting matches including ‘Amazing’N8 Mattson defeating Ron Zombie; Damian Adams defeating Mike Kruel; Rockin’ Rebel vs. Johnny Grunge (of Public Enemy fame); the Blue Meanie defeating Roadkill w/ME. CJ O’Doyle defeating ‘Pitbull’ Gary Wolf; a tag-team match between Slyk Wagner Brown & April Hunter vs. The Ultimate Striker & Rob Eckos. Sabu defeated Ruckus and the 3PW TITLE ‘FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE 3-WAY’ match wherein new 3PW Champion Joey Matthews defeated Jerry Lynn and AJ Styles to retain his new title.

With things going as well as they were with 3PW, I found I had A LOT of people hating on me at this point all over the internet. My rule of thumb with that is and has always been — that whenever people start bad-talking you, it means they’re jealous and you’re doing something right. Whenever the noise stops, the day when people stop saying anything bad about you: that you have to worry. I was proud to be hated, and always will be, because I’m one of those people everyone has always loved to hate on: from my adult film career through my time in wrestling, because I was a threat to what had been a male-dominated establishment. There had NEVER been — and hasn’t since — been a female promoter who got as high up the latter as I did in that business, and people didn’t know how to deal with that.

As well as we’d done with the May and June 3PW shows I decided to tighten the belt a little and stopped paying for our wrestler’s hotel rooms. Everyone was making more money but the company, and we deserved to be turning more of a profit given how far we’d traveled to get to where we were at that time. Everyone in the organization supported it, and when I got shit from some of the other wrestlers, I told them, ‘You guys wrestle on other shows together and share a hotel room.’The bottom line was: if our talent wasn’t so picky about when their flights — which we continued to pay for — left, we’d have been able to possibly continue with the hotel perk. Even after that, I still retained a very loyal cast of wrestlers who regularly worked our shows, because they all got paid, and it was one of the biggest draws in town at that point. I treated everyone on the same level where compensation was concerned: my wrestlers were paid what they drew in crowd capacity, and by that point, we could tell who the crowds got most excited about.

Also, we gave raises to wrestlers as they got more popular working in our league, which is something NO other independent did. 3PW had built up all these independent wrestlers’ profiles so well — including talent like Matt Striker, C.J. Styles, Rukus — and I’d always used headliners like Raven to loop fans in to see what else we had to offer, and by that point, it was paying off for us big-time. On July 17th, we held the ‘3PW: No Limits’show, which reflected where we felt we were as a league at that point. It featured matches including CJ O’Doyle vs. Monsta Mack; Jerry Lynn defeating Low Ki; a tag-team match between Rockin Rebel & Jack Victory vs. Rob Eckos & Matt Stryker as Sandman); Ruckus defeating Damian Adams. Another tag-team match between The Pitbulls 2004 (Mike Kruel & Gary Wolf ) defeating Roadkill & Blue Meanie; and 3PW TITLE Matches between Joey Matthews vs. Slyk Wagner Brown; and Christopher Daniels defeating A.J. Styles.The headlining match between Chris Daniels and A.J. Styles was really cool, because we had no time limit on the match for 45 minutes, which was unusual. We called it an ‘Iron Man’ match, with the intent being to determine who would be the contender new 3PW Championship belt. So we were setting the audience up for the August show, and it worked perfectly.