RPW: Rise of the Resistance - A 2003 (and beyond) Wrestling Odyssey

[Dubb]

They say power corrupts, and absolute power… well, that makes you Vince McMahon.

As for me...

Well, wrestling has been my life for as long as I can remember.

From a young age, I loved it. It was all I ever wanted to do in my life. I knew from the moment I watched Hulk Hogan bodyslam Andre The Giant - wrestling was gone to be my life.

It has been my life, but not quite the way I expected.

From wrestling in my living room with my friends to wrestling in the backyard - I thought I was going to be the next Ted DiBiase or Macho Man Randy Savage… (my friends always chose Hogan or Warrior… but that wasn’t my speed).

So much time spent training. So much hard work and dedication. I was going to make it to the big leagues.

And one day… the chance came. I was told the WWF was in town and they needed some locals to be enhancement talent (I mean they called it jobber, but I prefer the nicer term) for the “Fed” while they were in town. This was the opportunity I was looking for. Sure, I’d be fodder for a bigger name… but stepping into a WWF ring with one of the stars I looked up to? I couldn’t pass this up.

And the name I got to put over?

Yokozuna.

And there I was, standing across from Yokozuna, a mountain of a man whose shadow swallowed the light. The roar of the crowd was deafening, drowning out my pulse, every beat a reminder of what was at stake. I thought I’d get in a few moves, maybe even impress a scout or two. But fate, that cruel mistress, had other plans

The match started, and for a fleeting moment, I felt alive. I landed a couple of flashy moves, but Yokozuna just stared me down like I was a fly on his wall. Then came the moment that turned my dreams into a nightmare.

It was time to hit his finisher. The Bonzai Drop.
Now for those of you who don't know, which I imagine is a small minority of you, because if you took interest in my story, you probably are well versed in wrestling history... BUT... that being said, Yokozuna was not a small man. He was not an average size man. Hell, he wasn’t even a large man. This was a billed 600 pounds coming off the ropes and collapsing his mighty caboose down onto my chest.

The impact was more than just physical; it shattered my dreams. I awoke in a hospital bed, the sterile smell of antiseptic choking me, gasping for breath. Broken ribs and a collapsed lung were the results of Yokozuna’s landing.

I had hit my marks perfectly. I was right where I was supposed to be. But still…

My dreams had been destroyed on that night.

I realized that perhaps being in the ring wasn’t for me.

But that wasn’t the only fallout from my little wrestling adventure. My injuries echoed through the WWF, reaching the ears of one of their biggest stars, Bret Hart. Suddenly, he refused to work with Yokozuna, putting their big WrestleMania main event in serious jeopardy.

I was visited in the hospital. Not by Vince McMahon, mind you. No, he had more important things to worry about, I’m sure. Or more important people to bribe or blackmail perhaps. Or far worse.

But no, he did send some corporate stooges to my bedside. They came crawling to me. They wanted me to lie. To spin a tale where I took the blame for my own injury. “Just tell Bret it was your fault,” they told me. And if I did, I was promised a job for life.

I was certainly conflicted. I knew I had done what I was suppose to do. This was the moment I had been waiting so long for. I made sure everything was right on my end. I wouldn’t want to mess up. Yokozuna landed wrong. But if I couldn’t go in the ring… there were other opportunities. And the WWF was still where I saw myself working.

So I did what I had to do. They sent Bret Hart to visit me. And while I had to act like I wasn’t star struck, I came up with a story. Luckily, I’ve always had a creative mindset and perhaps this was the first time I wrote a storyline… the story that got Bret to work with Yokozuna and made WrestleMania IX happen. Yeah… sorry about that.

Fast forward to two years ago, I was a cog in the machine. A creative guy with big ideas. Dreams, even. But you know what they say about dreams? In this business, they get bought and sold for a paycheck. And mine got cashed out the second I opened my mouth about the monopoly Vince was building. The ink hadn’t even dried on the WCW deal when I found myself sitting on the curb outside Titan Towers, severance check in hand, watching the empire expand while the competition fell like dominoes

You’d think I would’ve seen it coming. But I didn’t. Call it idealism, call it stupidity—hell, call it both. I just thought… I don’t know. Maybe competition meant something in this business. It used to, before Vince started buying up everything that even thought about challenging him. WCW, ECW—gone. And with them, any hope of the wrestling world being more than a one-man show.

But that’s the thing about power. Once someone has all of it, it’s hard to breathe. And Vince? He had his boot on the throat of professional wrestling, squeezing tighter by the day.

That’s how I ended up in Australia. Not exactly the land of opportunity, but it was far enough from Stamford and Vince’s all-seeing eye. Andrew McManus had this ragtag outfit called World Wrestling All Stars—WWA. It wasn’t much, but it was something. A few of the old WCW boys, some ECW hangovers, Attitude Era washouts, and guys who never got their shot in WWE. I helped out where I could. Booked a few shows. Came up with angles for guys like Jeff Jarrett, Scott Steiner—hell, even Mick Foley and Ken Shamrock got roped into it once or twice.

We had something, or at least we thought we did. But as the months dragged on, the dream started feeling less real. The crowds were good, the matches were solid, but we weren’t making any real waves. And the question kept gnawing at me—why? Why weren’t we pushing harder? Why were we tiptoeing around WWE like they owned the entire damn industry

Then I found out the truth.

Turns out, Vince wasn’t just watching us from afar. He was pulling the strings. WWA could run as many shows as we wanted in Australia, Europe, hell, even Japan. But the moment we tried to set foot on American soil? Forget it. Vince had made sure of that. McManus had cut a deal with the devil himself. We were allowed to exist—barely—but only as long as we stayed out of his yard.

I was livid. I stormed into Jeff Jarrett’s office that night, laid it all out. I expected him to be just as pissed off. Instead, he just looked at me. Tired, almost. He sighed, leaned back in his chair, and nodded.

“I know,” he said. “And I've known for quite a while, actually.”

I couldn’t believe it. Jeff Jarrett, of all people—Double J—knew about this and wasn’t doing anything? This was the guy who smashed guitars over heads in every promotion from here to Memphis. The guy who once told Vince McMahon to shove it.

“You knew?” I asked, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.

“Yeah,” he said, “but what can we do?”

“Fight back?! I’ve had about enough of the WWE.”

“It ain’t worth it, Jay. Trust me. I’ve tried.”

“What do you mean?”

“My old man tried starting something up in Tennessee last year. Vince found out. The next day, my father pulled the plug. Never seen him so damn scared in my life.”

I stood there, hands on my hips, trying to wrap my head around it. Jerry Jarrett—the Jerry Jarrett—scared? What the hell did Vince have on him? It wasn’t just business anymore; it was personal. It was a vendetta. Vince wasn’t just making sure he stayed on top—he was making sure no one even thought about challenging him.

I glanced at Jeff, hoping for some kind of answer, some spark of rebellion. But all I got was a shrug.

“If you want to do something about it,” Jeff said, his voice low, “you might have to try something yourself. Start small… see where it goes. We’ve seen what happens if you go too big too fast. Look at what happened with our ol’ pal Jimmy Hart. XWF barely had a chance to get off the ground. Heh, was funny seeing Hogan fail at somethin’ again though. And now where is he? Prolly tryin’ to crawl back to old man Vince for another nostalgia run or some shit. But… yeah… sorry, goin’ on a tangent there. Whatever you do, just be careful, okay?”

I walked out of his office that night with more questions than answers. What had wrestling become? Was there even a point in fighting back? The smart thing would’ve been to leave it alone. Take what I knew, keep my head down, and ride out whatever paycheck came next.

But I wasn’t built that way. Never have been.

So I did what any idiot with a grudge and a severance check would do. I packed up my bags, took the next flight out of Sydney, and headed back to the States.

My plan? Simple. Just like Jeff had suggested.

Start my own promotion.

Use the money Vince had handed me—ironic, isn’t it?—and build something small. Keep my head low, keep my hands clean, and maybe, just maybe, I could stay off Vince’s radar long enough to make a difference.

Or maybe I’d poke the bear just enough to get noticed.

Either way, the game was on. The first move had been made. And if there’s one thing I knew for certain, it’s that Vince McMahon doesn’t like losing—not even in a game of Monopoly.

But this time? This time he wasn’t the only one playing.