The message vanishes and is replaced by a ‘sent’ notification, almost immediately after the text is sent, the phone lets out the guitar riff from Sweet Child Of Mine. The name ‘Alex’ is shown, and a sigh can be heard, an “Ah, shit” is muttered softly before a thumb moves in to view and connects the call.
“Hey Alex, what’s up?” Her reply can’t be heard, but the conversation continues. “It’s absolutely fine, we’ve done a couple of shows, she’s been treated really well, and she’s not been at any risk out there, like I said. This isn’t the late 90’s and I’m not working for bad people!” While Alex inaudibly responds the view zooms out a bit. We’re in a hotel suite, Stu-E Price is sitting on the floor topless, leaning against the king size bed, an ice pack on the back of his neck and cold beer beside him.
“Ok, don’t worry about it, she’s just in her room watching Stranger Things, two seconds.” He glances over to the open door and shouts out for Laney who doesn’t answer, just walks into her Dad’s bedroom and smiles at him. “Your Mam is on the phone, darling.” He hands the phone over to her, and gets up off the floor, sitting on the bed as Laney takes the phone to the other room.
Laney must have paused the episode, as the Kate Bush song comes to a halt too. Stu-E reaches over to the side table to grab his laptop and reaches down for his beer, taking a swig of it and relaxes back, resting the laptop on his chest.
“Suppose I better double check the match...” he says to himself as he loads up the wrestling side of the 411mania website and finds a news report covering Havoc. Selfishly, he skims through most of it before coming to a bit with clips of his match. There is a photo of him walking down the aisle with Laney in her new T-shirt, and the fans cheering for her, which brings a smile to his face before he gets to some clips, pressing play on the first one.
Stu-E comes storming over to Sean and picks him up for a running powerslam, but Sean slides down his back and launches him overhead with a German suplex. Sean sprints to the corner onto the top rope and dives off on him with the Diving Wyvern. Both men lay on the ground breathing hard with sweat rolling off them. Finally, Sean rolls over and throws an arm over Stu-E for a pin the referee goes for the count 1………..2…and he kicks out. The Fans are on their feet cheering for both men who start to their feet and Sean greets Stu-E with a solid right and Stu-E returns the exchange with one of his own.
The next video up from a twitter page shows further action from the match.
Sean drives a boot to his Stu-E's midsection and hooks him up sending him to the mat with the Alatreon Embrace as the fans go nuts. Laney is slamming her little hands into the mat, yelling for her dad to get up and be it her little voice in his ear or the fight left in him he starts lifting his head up.
Stu-E smiles at this, one of the things about being a parent is just how much strength your kids can give you, without even realizing. He’s no fool, he knows he hasn’t been back in the game for a long time, and he knows he’s going to showing ring rust but just that little bit of encouragement kept him going. But... He does wonder though, if it was really a fair match with Sean, knowing what he had gone through prior to the match.
Out of the crowd comes Fallen and hops on the apron as the fans boo. The referee is yelling for him to him to get down as Sean looks over it at him. Legion hops the barricade behind Sean and the referee’s back jumps to the apron and smacks Sean upside the head with something in his fist and Sean drops to the mat. Legion hops back into the crowd and satisfied Fallen drops off the apron and goes into the crowd as security rushes down. Back in the ring Stu-E gets to his feet unaware of what just took place, and Sean himself wobbles up gripping the rope for support. As he turns around Stu-E catches him with the Stun Cutter. He drops down into a cover and the ref counts 1……………..2…………….3.
“The bastards!” He closes the laptop after coming face to face with the actual end of the match, he had wrongly assumed everything had just taken its toll on Sean, hence he could spring in with his patented Stun Cutter. It had been a good few year since he had even hit the move, much less got a three count and a victory right after. He picks up his phone and thinks about calling Sean to talk but something stopped him.
The wrestling business isn’t fair all the time, he’s learned that through the years, deep down he knows Sean will know you’ve got to take the win when it presents itself, because you very well might be the baby kissing white meat good guy, or the baby slapping bad guy but without that instinct to take your chances, you’re pretty much dead in the water. Hopefully, they can step foot in the ring again and have a match with much less controversy but before that happens, what next for Stu-E and Laney?
When he agreed to the reunion show, he did not see himself working this much, maybe once in a blue moon he would be wheeled out as a nostalgia act but now he’s wrestled on both Havoc’s he’s actually feeling great. Some wrestlers move out of the spotlight and end up doing spot shows all around the World for crap pay and worse opponents, but he accidentally did the best thing for him, and that was recover from the bumps and the lifestyle. And in the process, he’s gained a new lease of life and a motivation he’s not had in years.
Stu-E Price might have been done and dusted several years ago, but he’s happy to leave that version of himself in the scrap pile. This new journey, this new path just might take him to places he maybe thought were out of reach previously for guys like him, journeymen wrestlers who sometimes just showed up to drink beer and wrestle anyone. And now it is all the sweeter with Laney by his side.
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